Tummy Time...Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

So you go to the pediatrician who tells you all of these things you should and shouldn't be doing with your baby:

• Place your baby on her back to sleep
• Don't leave blankets in with your child while she's sleeping to eliminate the possibility of suffocation.
• Don't swaddle your baby for bedtime or naps.
• File their nails instead of using clippers.
• Give them plenty of tummy time.
• Don't give infants/toddlers milk, peanut butter, strawberries, or egg whites until they are at least 1 year old.

Most of these things are sound pieces of advice and should be followed to the T. Blankets in a crib can cause suffocation. Swaddling baby kind of falls in this category also. Filing nails, while it is a HUGE pain sometimes with such tiny fingers that do not like to be held still for any length of time at all, is much better than trying to use clippers and taking a chunk out of your baby's nails (sorry for the imagery but that's how I look at it). Also, not giving them those certain types of foods is good because it can help prevent allergies of those certain types of foods. All of these things are great pieces of advice. The two pieces of advice that I have found difficult for Lola to live by are: putting her on her back to sleep and tummy time. Lola absolutely will NOT sleep on her back. She might lay there for a few minutes but then she decides that she does not want to be there anymore and demands for us to flip her over. Yes she is a pancake baby: she needs to be flipped at the appropriate time.

Proof of her sleeping on her tummy. My pediatrician's worst nightmare.

Another rule that I have found to be very difficult for a 2 month old is tummy time. (If any new moms read this and have any ideas of how to make it better please let me know because I have tried everything to make her enjoy this.) I'll lay her down on her play mat and within 5 minutes she is screaming like we've killed her or she falls asleep. Puts us in a very hard position in trying to develop her motor skills. Man it's not fun. So bring on the endless screaming every time we lay her on her tummy when she's not up for it...it's the one rule that we need to follow more.

Little Lola and the few minutes of tummy time she would handle.

But man is she cute while she's doing it!!

Smiley Faces

Have you ever seen your baby smile? I guess this question only really applies to parents, but it's an amazing thing to see your baby smile for the first time. What's even better than that is when they smile at something you do so you know that it's not because they're pooping or just doing something different with their face. Drew and I have been making Lola smile for a few weeks now. It's AWESOME!!!! We make noises at her or just talk to her and she lights up.

This is the most we can catch on camera because she gets camera shy I guess.

Another little smirk caught on camera.

8 hours of sleep?!?!?! CRAZY!!

So after almost two whole months of waking up every 2 to 5 hours to feed and change our darling little alarm clock, we got a "full" night of sleep. I put full in quotation marks for a reason. Lola ate and was changed at 11:30 pm. This is a typical feeding time for her. It's like her midnight snack. It satisfies her for a few hours of sleep, but until a few nights ago that was only 5 hours at most. We laid her down in her crib with the hopes that we wouldn't hear her little cries of hunger until about 5 am. To my surprise and yes with a slight panic, I woke up at 5 am to go to the bathroom but was not awoken by Lola's little hunger cries. As I rush to the crib to make sure she's alright, I was pleasantly surprised to find our little bundle still in a deep sleep and breathing normally. That is probably one of my biggest fears since Lola doesn't like sleeping on her back at all is that I will awaken to find her not breathing or not okay in some way. With the assurance that everything was alright, I continued about my business and then climbed back in bed. Again, with a little bit of panic when I awoke at 7:50 am, I checked her and she was starting to wake up. This was the light at the end of the tunnel that everyone had been talking about. I could see it, more restful nights are in all three of our futures. My aunt assures me that our next baby will not be this well-behaved and will not be this easy (she also has said this about my next pregnancy being so easy, but I really hope she's wrong about that since my pregnancy was pretty much a cake walk). Despite the fact that any future children might not be as amazingly well-mannered as Lola, I'm going to enjoy the fact that my little Lola is sleeping through the night and not worry about what her brothers or sisters might be like.

You know you're a mom when...

• You know you're a mom when you joyfully anticipate the fact that Pampers is releasing a more absorbent, thinner diaper AND you know the release date!!!

• You know you're a mom when you pick up your naked baby when she's drenched herself in pee only to get the pee all over you instead of her getting cold while you clean up the changing table.

• You know you're a mom when you anticipate your child's next poop like it was fireworks on the Fourth of July or Christmas morning.

• You know you're a mom when 3 hours goes from a nap to a full night's sleep.

• You know you're a mom when you stand in the isle with the pacifiers debating for 20 minutes which is the best kind to buy and if she'll like them or not.

• You know you're a mom when you take a million and one pictures of your baby laying on a pillow.

• You know you're a mom when you text the babysitter 100 times while you go get dinner AND the babysitter is your mom.

• You know you're a mom when you say "I need to grab my purse" and accidentally grab the diaper bag instead.

• You know you're a mom when you go in to the store for one thing and you come out with 10 things that are all baby-related.

• You know you're a mom when you slam the person next to you in the chest whenever you break abruptly in traffic.

• You know you're a mom when you get excited when there's a sale on baby clothes at Babies R Us.

• You know you're a mom when you hear a baby cry at a store and go running BUT you left the baby at home with your mom.

• You know you're a mom when you can make a bottle and change a diaper all while you're half asleep.

• You know you're a mom when you say the pictures of your baby right after birth are cute, even though everyone knows that all babies look like aliens for the first day or so.

I'm sure I have a ton more of these but I'm too tired to think of any right now. The joys of being a mom. Haha.

Two baths in one day...Hmmm what in the world is she doing?

You would think that a 1-month old wouldn't get that dirty, but today really changed my thinking about that one. One-month old babies don't really need to be bathed on a daily basis because they don't really sweat or get dirty. We've been bathing Lola every third or fourth day depending on any accidents she may have had. Today I decided it was time to give her a bath since her hair was getting very oily and she'd had a few really poopy diapers. Bath time was pretty fun. She really enjoys being in the warm water. I think it's because it reminds her of being back in my belly, but who really knows what babies think about. After the bath, we put some baby oil on her and got her dressed. After a few hours and a pretty hefty feeding, Lola decided she wanted to explode poo in her diaper. This is not an uncommon phenomenon for her so I was prepared for that whenever I changed the diaper. What I wasn't prepared for was for her to be a pee geyser as I go to put the new diaper under her. She must have been holding it just for this particular occasion. She offloaded a TON of pee and was essentially bathing in it. It even got all the way up in her hair!!! I figured that even though she was all nice and baby fresh it was a good idea to clean all that pee off of her. Back into the bathtub she went. And out she came again smelling clean and baby fresh. I can't really complain because it's great to watch how much she loves the bath and I LOVE what her hair smells like after we wash it. I also have to look at the positive...I could be washing poo out of her hair instead of pee.

1st Night Without Drew

After a month or so of job searching, Drew finally got an interview. He decided that it would probably best if he stayed at his parents' house to get a good night's sleep before his interview. I told him that was totally fine, as I sat there thinking to myself, "God, please help me get through the night." I was very nervous being alone for the entire night with her. Not because I can't take care of my daughter on my own, but because the past week has not been the best of nights for us. Since we switched her formulas, we've been trying to get back to a regular schedule of sleeping, not an easy process with a gassy, semi-constipated 1-month old. Instead of really worrying about it, I just did my motherly duty and took care of her all on my own, something hundreds of thousands of mothers before me have done. She took a short nap from 9:30 p.m. until 11 p.m. I decided to give her a bottle of the thicker formula because it seems to satisfy her a little more than the other formula does. We stayed awake until about 12:45 a.m. when she finally decided to drift off to sleep. We slept until 5:15 a.m. which is an accomplishment for her! I gave her another bottle and then she decided she wanted to sleep some more so we slept from 6 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. when she finally decided she wanted to be up for the day. I can't believe how refreshed I feel from only having to wake up twice in the night. I don't think that I've slept this well in a very, very long time. Hopefully we'll have a repeat performance tonight.

Baby Bath Time

The first time we gave Lola a bath when she came home was very good. She was quiet and content. We decided it was probably because she was milk drunk. We had fed her and cleaned her and she was just totally out of it.

Babies first bath time with daddy.

This was the last time that she would be happy during bath time. We have bathed her quite a few times since this amazingly peaceful moment. Each time we've bathed her, she screams like it's the end of her entire world. Anyone who has given a baby a bath knows that it's quite a process. You only uncover the part of the baby's body that you are washing. You start with their face and work your way down. The head is usually done second to last so they don't lose a ton of heat. You do their bottom last because you don't want any cross-contamination from their poo. We couldn't even get to her head before she would start screaming.

Tonight we realized the joy of the baby bathtub and baby insert for the tub, kinda like a baby hammock that you put inside the baby bathtub to hold them up. We ran the bath water and prepared ourselves for the worst. We put her in the bath tub and after a little outburst of cries, she realized that the bathtub was a good thing and calmed down. She loved every single minute of being in the bathtub, even getting her hair washed!! Then we oiled her up with baby oil and she loved it!

Baby Lola getting her hair washed. She had a full spa day: nails filed earlier, full bath, and then a little baby oil to top off the whole day.

Drew holding Lola up on the baby sling so she wouldn't slide down into the bathtub.

Pretty good shot of Lola's double chins while I'm washing her body. She looks so content!!

Bright-eyed while we soap her up.

Grandma holding baby Lola after the bath.