Jen's parents came in to visit and stayed with us this week. Here's Alice feeding her first grand daughter.
Jim and Budinski became fond of each other during the course of the week. Jim also gave me a hand with the deck and gave me some direction on some other projects that I'm looking to tackle around the house.
Claire getting ready for her first walk. The anticipation put her to sleep.
Claire executed the walk flawlessly. Jen did a great job pushing her.
Speaking of firsts......Claire's umbilical cord finally popped off so it was time for her first real bath. Grandma K. delivered the first bath on time and within budget.
We decided to give Claire her own hollywood star for the walk of fame but as you can see that didn't work out as planned.
My two favorite ladies are tuckered out. Jen had to have surgery this week to clean up some remaining pieces of pregnancy.
Jen has been pumping breast milk and we're delivering via the bottle because Claire hasn't quite gotten the hang of the boohah yet. We're going to rent a baby scale next week to see exactly how much she's taking from Jen at each feed.
RECAP:
We had Jen's parents staying with us this past week. During that time it seemed like Claire grew quite a bit. At the tail end of the week she was 7lbs 0oz and looks and acts like a typical newborn. Her due date was supposed to be tomorrow so I guess that makes sense. Her body fat around her arms and legs has finally filled out and her skin color looks great. Her temperment continues to be sweet as can be and very tolerable but when she gets upset she can blow it open if she needs to. She's feeding around 3oz per feed and she's on about a 3 hour cycle between feeds. We've started cluster feeding her at around dinner time and topping her off with a dream feed at between 10pm-11pm. We're working towards getting her to sleep a 6 hour stretch at night. Right now she's been sleeping around 4 1/2 hours so we are still waking up a couple of times each night.
Here's what her typical day looks like for feeds: 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 6pm (cluster one), 8pm (cluster two), 11pm (dream feed), and 3:30am. The idea is to feed her enough throughout the day that she slowly starts to wake up less during the night.
A typical cycle looks like this for this week:
* Wake with some wimpers and will escalate to a full cry if we're not quick enough
* Eat for 30-40 mins
* Activity time for 30-40 mins of mainly just talking to her, reading, singing, moving her arms & legs, etc
* Sleep for 1 1/2 to 2 hours
* Repeat.......
After the 6pm feed we started to give her a bath followed by a book and a swaddle. That's her current bedtime routine. All of the feeds after the 6pm feed (8pm, 11pm, 3:30am) we just feed her in a lowly lit room, re-swaddle her, and put her back to bed without any activity time. We're doing this to try to get her to associate the difference between day and night and eventually sleep through the night.
It was nice having Jim and Alice staying with us. Alice helped out quite a bit with Claire and Jim gave me a lot of pointers on the deck project along with some future projects that I'm looking at taking on. He is quite a riot to be around and keeps things fun. It's always nice to see family!!
Next up my sister Melissa, her husband Tony, and baby Ben will be coming in to stay with us this Friday for a week after Jen's parents head home on Tuesday. We're looking forward to seeing Ben again. I'm sure he's grown a ton since we saw him at Christmas.