One Week Birthday

Today is Reese's one-week birthday. I still feel as clueless as the day we brought her home.

Luckily, the day she came home from the hospital we were invited to spend the weekend at my parent's house. It helped a lot to have all sorts of support and people to hold Reese. But since we were not at home, we discovered that we had a lot to learn about packing for a baby. Will had to run home at least three times to get things that we had either forgotten or not brought enough of.

Feeding Reese has, by far, been our biggest challenge so far. She did great at the hospital, feeding on average for between thirty and forty minutes at a time on the colostrum (the pre-milk milk). But the day we got her home, my milk came in and we started having problems. It started taking an average of twenty minutes just to get her to latch, and then we were lucky if she would feed for twenty minutes total. Plus I'm all cracked and raw and it hurts like... something that hurts a whole lot. So were throwing Reese's one-week birthday party at the lactation specialist's office. Hooray!

Reese has decided that her most favorite time to be awake is right after her late evening feeding, usually between ten and eleven at night. She sleeps most other times. But when she is awake, she's usually an angel. She can be happy just being awake and looking around. I love her eyes. I can't help but just stare and admire her (a lot of the time, but especially when those bright eyes are open).

She got her first at-home bath this week. She cried straight through her bath at the hospital, but seemed to really like the bath at home. I thought she would be screaming, as she does whenever her diaper gets changed, but we were pleasantly surprised.

We've also received a lot of help and support from family, friends and neighbors. In the past I've volunteered to bring meals to new moms through Relief Society sign-ups, but I never realized what a blessing it actually was until I was on the receiving end. I wish there were a way to adequately express my gratitude.

I love watching Will with Reese. You can tell how much he likes her.

And she likes him.

We were halfway through the bath when I remembered the camera. At least this time I remembered before we were all done.

She looks upset here, but enjoyed the bath for the most part.

And then she got dried in a way cute ducky towel, courtesy of my lunch lady friends from Freedom Academy.

Great-Grandpa Faber came to visit Reese

Reese gets socks on her hands so she doesn't scratch her face. She was born with claws.

We use undressing her as a method of keeping her awake in the middle of feedings, so we have a lot of pictures of her in a diaper. I thought I would post this to prove that we do, in fact, dress her.