Ingrid is two months old! She is beautiful. She is smiling and cooing now, which melts me instantaneously. Her smile is ridiculously bright. She still loves taking baths. She also loves soft things touching her face. If she is close to falling asleep but not quite there, she usually closes her eyes the moment a soft blanket touches her face. She is a calm, easy-going baby. She is content in her carseat, in her swing, on her playmat, in my arms, in her crib, on the floor. She's easy peasy! Owen, Ingrid, and I have lots of fun at home, but we do still leave the house every single day just to change it up a little and maintain the sanity of our family. Before she was born I worried that we would never be able to leave the house. I actually ended up getting out of the house with both of them before she was a week old because I was so panicky about it.
She weighs 11 lbs 6 ounces and is 22.5 inches long. She is wearing size 1 diapers (and some newborn that we're trying to use up, but it's a stretch) and 0-3 month clothing. She's been sleeping in her crib for night time and one nap since she was 6 weeks old. The transition from our room to hers was nothing for her. The first night she took short naps for the first couple of hours instead of a solid sleep, but that was the only "rough" part.
I've done the Babywise eat-wake-sleep routine with her, just like we did with Owen. It was the best thing for Owen and me, so I knew I was going to do it with Ingy, too. It helps us know how our days are going to go, and it also helps establish good night time sleep habits. She's eating every 3 hours during the day, usually 7:30, 10:30, 2:30, 5:30, and 745ish for her bed time feed. I am more flexible with it than I was with Owen. For example, sometimes her first feed is at 7, so then we do 7, 10, 1, etc., but sometimes it isn't until 8, so we do 8, 11, 2, etc. It almost always falls somewhere in between, though. She's usually awake an hour or so and then asleep for two or so. I wake her up if she is asleep when it's time for her next feed, again for the sake of night time sleep. If I don't wake her up, she usually wakes up sometime soon after that 3-hour mark anyway. For the past month, she's only been waking once a night to eat... except for the week we got home from the hospital. I think she got used to being woken frequently at night by the nurses, and it took her a while at home to sort that out again. Her night time feed is usually at 3 or 4 am, and then she goes back to sleep until sometime between 7 and 8. I always lay her down awake for naps and bed time, and she puts herself to sleep. We've done it that way since her first week of life, and it is so nice to be able to lay her down and walk away. Sometimes I rock her because I want to, but she won't usually go to sleep that way.
I might write a separate post about this so I will spare most of the details here, but this month we spent four nights at Arkansas Children's Hospital. She had Urosepsis, which is basically a complicated UTI. Look it up and you'll find it's a "life threatening emergency." Her white blood cell count was 49,000. Apparently "normal" is 5-10,000. On the copy I have of her lab results, it actually breaks down her white blood cell count into microliters. A normal range is 0-9. Hers was 132. Terrifying. We are having to also treat her for meningitis due to that insane number and inconclusive spinal tap results. We're home with a Picc line, which she'll have in until October 7th. When we got home from the hospital, her night time sleep was whack for a whole week (i.e. she woke up almost every hour, probably because she was woken up by nurses for a week), but she is now back to normal.
Her first real smile happened while at the hospital, and I teared up. In fact, it happened during her VCUG, which is a very painful test. The significance of that is not lost on me. I'd been waiting for her to smile, and for her to do it at a time when I felt so hopeless is not something I will forget. I think it's a small glimpse into who she is. I know I say this often about both of my babies, but I am so proud to be her mom. She is the loveliest and sweetest little thing. She is already such a bright light in our lives! I pray the Lord uses her in a special way.
Here are some of my favorite pics from the past month:
