On Tess’s second day of life it was her due date! I couldn’t believe I had my baby in my arms instead of in my belly. I had been so nervous about going past my due date. So worried about the appointment I had scheduled for that morning. I was BEYOND thankful to not have to go to that appointment!!! She arrived at the perfect time and I’m so grateful for God’s timing in it all!
Leading up to her birth I was very excited to take a LOT of pictures in the hospital. Again, I knew once we got home life would be crazy. And I also knew that my easy-going-letting-the-baby-sleep-wherever attitude would be ending once I went home. I wanted to take as many sweet newborn baby pics as I could while in the hospital. Sure, it meant I wasn’t sleeping when the baby was sleeping. But I got through okay and have no regrets about that 🙂
Other than her busted blood vessels in her eyes and her clogged tear ducts, she was such a perfect new baby! Her skin was SO PRETTY and just everything about her was flawless. Katie said it best…she said that if we lived in Hollywood and talent scouts were at our hospital looking for babies for tv shows and such that she’d FOR SURE get picked haha. I def agree 😉
Everyone constantly says how much she looks like Britt. I’m planning to do a comparison post but I really don’t think she looks all that much like Britt at all. Her lips are one of my favorite things about her and it’s funny because I always loved Britt’s lips too. But my girls have drastically different lips. Britt’s are MEGA full on the bottom and Tess’s remind me more of Kye’s where they are fuller on the top.
Love her sweet little ears and those MEGA long lashes!!! I have NEVER seen a baby with such long lashes!
Her hair looks a little wavy doesn’t it? I’m interested to see if she ends up having some curl in it! It looks black but actually has a LOT of light hair mixed in so I’m sure it’s going to lighten up like her siblings. She looks like she may have a small stork bite on the lid of her left eye but it’s barely noticeable. She was also born with SUPER long finger nails and I had to nibble them down in the hospital and were super mindful of keeping mittens on her. She didn’t get scratched up one bit!
Both Kye and Britt held their heads up pretty much right at birth…but not Tess! She was truly a doll baby and couldn’t hold hers up. I assumed its because she is my smallest newborn? She was 7 lbs and 20 inches, Britt was 7 lbs 13 oz and 20.5 inches, and Kye was 7 lbs 6 oz and 20.75 inches.
Even though she’s asleep in pretty much all of these pictures, Tess was MEGA alert right at birth and continued to have wide open eyes for our hospital stay too. She opens them so wide and I love making eye contact with her. She also smiled constantly, especially when she heard her daddy’s voice which I know he loved 😉
She is similar to Zach in that she sleeps with her mouth open much of the time and that she marks easily. If I held her she’d have little red spots on her skin from where I had touched her. Zach’s skin also turns red easily! But I do think her darker skin tone comes from me 😉
I REALLY wanted one of these hats when we had Britt but they didn’t have any so I asked for one when Tess was born. I love, love, love the little bow 🙂
When we ordered the baby bedding for the nursery we sent the designer the ultrasound picture that revealed if we were having a boy or a girl. We’d never gotten an ultrasound picture showing “those parts” before! And, no, we weren’t tempted AT ALL to look!
I had them put it in an envelope and then I mailed it to the bedding designer so she’d know which set to make (we planned both a boy set and a girl one). When she sent me the bedding (which we left unopened and in the nursery closet until after Tess was born!) she also sent a separate envelope with the ultrasound inside! It was neat to check it out (although I have NO CLUE what the heck I was looking at haha) and to see “it’s a girl!” on it!
I was pretty excited to take these pics! I bought a set of “Hello My Name Is” tags and brought along both a pink and blue marker so I could make them girly or boyish for some pics!
And I packed several bows too 🙂 I had a couple boy accessories ready too!
Pretty blue eyes!
Good view of those long lashes…and bushy eye brows 😉
Her little feet were so wrinkled and precious!!!
Even though I was tired, I was feeling GREAT! I did ask for some pain meds to help keep me from hurting and they worked great (it was some kind of Tylenol). I wanted to prevent pain as much as I could. My arms were a bit sore but my legs felt fine. Having the big postpartum room meant I was pretty far from the bathroom and I think that walking really helped in my healing.
I stayed out of the bed as much as I could and my bleeding was not nearly as much as it’d been in the past. I didn’t originally plan to wear my pj pants but am glad I packed them because I wore them the entire time! I also took a shower both nights and did not pass out this time 🙂 I was careful not to stay in too long. Our town has had water issues lately and there was zero water pressure so it wasn’t like I wanted to stay in anyway haha!
The first 24 hours my nipples were tender and hurt pretty bad. I let them air out as much as I could and loaded up on lansinoh cream between feedings. I think every nurse in the hospital saw my boobs by the end of my stay haha I kept apologizing about it and they told me that they had pretty much seen it all. Speaking of having seen it all…the first day when we had Tess seven other babies were also born. Zach made a joke to one of the nurses that three of the babies born that day were his and she believed him!!! Haha! She said it legit happens often that she’ll see the same daddy up there multiple times with different baby mamas. SO funny!
Also when we checked into my room my phone was missing and they said people steal them all the time. I mean who would steal a hospital room phone?!?! SO random! I tried, even when tired, to be super nice to the staff and I was VERY impressed with everyone this time around. They have seriously made a LOT of improvements since I had Britt and I enjoyed my stay the most this time…I really considered it a mini-vacaation and was in no hurry to leave 😉
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She is seriously one of the prettiest newborns I've ever seen. It sounds awful, but my babies just don't look that great as newborns. They're always BIG (9lb 7oz and two 9lb 10oz) and they just don't look like cute little newborns. Kind of like immature 2 month olds. Haha!
Bren had busted blood vessels in both of his eyes when he was born. It wasn't so bad at the hospital, but it was a ton more noticable when he was about a week old. I was pretty worried about it, but my doc said it was no biggie and was from the pressure at birth! Of course, since he weighed over 9 lbs, he probably did have a lot more pressure than is {much} smaller sister who didn't have anything like that!