Week nine of Brittlynn’s life was from Jan 31st through Feb 6th. She had a great week while mine wasn’t so wonderful but we’ll get to that!
Sleep: She officially started sleeping in her big girl crib (you can read why we waited so long HERE). Honestly, I noticed zero difference. I don’t think she had a single issue with the transition from the pack and play to the crib. And I’m glad we had her in the pack and play so long as I think it’ll help her sleep in it well for when we travel!
I was feeling so horrible that on Tuesday night I slept through the dream feed, again. She actually didn’t wake up at all though so she slept from 9 pm until 7 am!!! It was the first time she’d completely slept through the night in awhile and we decided that the dream feed may have been messing up her sleep cycle. When we went in there to get her she was completely unswaddled and had a full poop diaper. We were shocked she slept so great!
She is a beyond happy child. NEVER fusses and really has no sleep cues. I literally have to go by the clock. When I put her down she will fuss for up to 20 minutes but will fall asleep on her own. Sometimes she won’t even fuss at all. She really loves her mobile and we can hear her chatting away to it before she drifts off to sleep. We rarely have to go into her room at all now! She now will sleep solid for the nap and will start to wake up right on time for her next feeding. And when I do have to go in and wake her at feeding time she greets me with a HUGE grin. It’s AWESOME!!! Her worst nap is the last one of the day (from 6:30-8) which is normal for babies at this age. It can be tough since that’s a busy time of the day for Kye but we get through it! We do not use the paci at all unless she simply will not sleep for a nap. I’d say if she ever gets it (which is rare) then it’s during that last nap of the day.
At night I completely stopped feeding her if she wakes. Zach takes the mobile out into the living room and turns on the bathroom fan in our room so I can’t hear her crying then he lays on the couch until she falls back to sleep. She’ll scream sometimes but she will go back to sleep. Often she wakes at like 6 and does this and it isn’t too bad at all. Sometimes she only makes a few noises then goes back to sleep and sometimes it’s 20 min of crying.
First time sleeping in crib!
Often when she does wake in the middle of the night it was due to her being completely unswaddled. I thought the great thing about the miracle blanket was that they weren’t supposed to be able to break out of it so we were pretty annoyed. Then I asked Kelly about it and she asked if we were making sure to swaddle her with her palms down…um nope! When you put them palms down they can’t bend their arms and break out 😉 It helped SO much!!!
Isn’t it a wonderful thing to have a great sleeping child?!?! It’s not luck…it’s Babywise!!!
Schedule: Since we decided to drop the dream feed she does have a newish schedule now and is down to eating 5 times a day.
7:00: start the day, change diaper, eat
8:00-8:30: change diaper, get dressed, awake time
8:30-10:30: nap
10:30-11:30: eat
11:30-12:00: change diaper, awake time
12:00-2:00: nap
2:00-3:00: eat
3:00-3:30: change diaper, awake time, alone time with Mommy
3:30-5:00: nap
5:00-6:00: eat
6:00-6:30: change diaper, awake time, family dinner
6:30-8:20: nap
8:20: awake, bath, put pjs on
8:30-9:30: eat, last feeding of day
9:30: put directly to bed after eating
I like not having the dream feed and think I’ll probably still pump at 10:30 just to be fully empty before bed so I can be comfortable through the night.
Here’s what else Britt has been up to:
- She ran out of size 1 diapers so I opened a BIG, HUGE value box of them then she started having tons of blow outs so I realized she needed the size 1-2 transition diapers. Awesome. Guess I’ll have a TON of diapers for any upcoming baby shower diaper cakes 😉
- Even though her hands are usually in a fist, I LOVE her long sweet fingers
- While Britt still has wet diapers every feeding (very wet btw) her poop amount went down a lot. Sometimes down to just one a day but she’ll typically have a poop diaper in the morning meaning she’s pooping at night.
- If we skip her bath her hair gets really greasy so she’s a must-wash-hair-everyday girl
- I don’t have to work to keep her awake during feedings anymore, except for the 8:30 one at night as she does get sleepy quick at bed time!
- Her nursery is officially (mostly) finished!
She still has her little angel kisses beside her ear and below her nostril. She also still has her stork bite on the back of her neck (hidden completely by her hair though, which she also still has PLENTY of yay!).
She has so much hair, in fact, that if I don’t brush it when it’s wet then she wakes up with CRAZY hair like her mama and brother do! It cracked me up that this was how her hair naturally was one morning. What was even funnier was that Kye went in with me to wake her up and the first thing he said was “oh Britt your hair is gorgeous!” haha. Kye LOVES to wake up Brittlynn, here’s a video of him going in with me to wake her. Love it 😉
She worked on bringing her hands together
and can do it!!!
She’s so big that I decided to try out her size 6 month stuff and it fits!!!
Only 9 weeks old and wearing 6 month size already!!!
She has ZERO baby acne, I wish I could have her pretty skin!
Every single second that she is awake she is so happy which makes everyone around her happy too
She has a contagious laugh and smile
I just want to squeeze her when I see pictures this cute 🙂
Postpartum Update: Whew. Rough one. You’d think by this point that I’d be 100% adjusted and good to go…I’m totally not trying to scare those of you who are adding a second baby to your home, but it’s not easy by any means!!!
I mentioned last week my concerns about my bleeding, exhaustion, and headaches. I debated about whether or not to call the doctor and decided I’d call on Tuesday morning (the 7th). Of course I woke up and had completely stopped bleeding! SO my luck! I still decided to call as, also with my luck, I figured I’d start up again. They said they wanted to see me so Mrs. Charlotte came to the house that afternoon and kept both kids so I could run up there. Zach was home too and it worked out good because he was able to show her how to put Brittlynn to bed and how to handle her during naps and such so she’ll know when she starts babysitting for us 😉 I kinda regretted going to the dr. It was pretty much a joke. The midwife I saw wasn’t very helpful and kinda looked at me like I was stupid. She said that I need to make sure I’m eating often and resting. She said that having a second baby is a BIG deal and I need to focus on just taking care of myself. They had to draw blood (yippie) and it all came back fine.
While it’s great news that I was fine, it was bad news to me that I need to take it easy. I felt like an idiot and a failure. I mean I’m tougher than that! NINE weeks postpartum?!?! I should be 100% back to normal, not still feeling so tired. I was really upset with myself and had a little pity party to get over it.
Wednesday night I woke up several times during the night, barely able to move my right arm. They drew the blood from the crook in my right elbow so I thought maybe it was sore from that? Especially since I have bad veins? It was KILLER pain. When I woke up I realized I also had a fever. It was 100.5 degrees which is MEGA high for me. Since it was a Thursday Kye didn’t have school. I knew I was way too sick to be taking care of both kids and didn’t want Kye to get sick so I called Mrs. Charlotte and asked if she could watch Kye for the morning so I could try to sleep it off when Britt slept during her naps. I texted Robyn about it and she said I needed to go to the dr. Good call!!! So instead Mrs. Charlotte came to the house and watched both kids for me again so I could go to the dr. I was able to get to the walk-in clinic right when they opened. Thankfully, the kids pediatrician is also my dr! Isn’t that great? So I can use the walk-in clinic too!
Typically I pride myself in never leaving the house looking less than my best. Um. Not that day. I literally didn’t wear any make up and wore one of Zach’s baseball hats to cover my hair. Awesome. The lady I saw said, right away, that it was mastitis. Which shocked me. The night before my right breast had a tiny bit of pain when I pumped but nothing major. How could it be mastitis?!?! She said the infection was actually in my right breast and my right arm. SO random. She prescribed me 10 days worth of meds (three times a day) and told me to continue to nurse Britt, but always start on the right side. Then to pump after each feeding and in the middle of the night.
It was a REALLY rough time for me. I felt horrible. Thankfully the meds kicked in quick but Zach left Sunday for Texas for 5 days for work. Great timing. On top of that the meds really affected Brittlynn. She started having pretty bad diarrhea like all the time. And she started taking 2 HOURS to nurse at EACH feeding. It was crazy. Poor Kye! He wouldn’t get to eat dinner until after his bed time because I’d be nursing her from 5 until 7! I’m pretty amazed with myself for getting through that crazy week. I’m kinda glad I’m behind on the blogging b/c I’m sure I would have been hardcore Mrs. Negative if I wrote this post when it was actually going on!!!
On a positive note I did lost 0.8 lb 😉 And on another positive note I got a TON more breastmilk stored up from all my pumping! It’s really crazy that I got mastitis because I honestly didn’t even see any symptoms coming. It just HIT me. I heard from some other moms that they get it with every child. Since I had it twice with Kye, and now once with Britt, I can only assume I’ll be getting it with babies 3 and 4 too.
Zach joked with me soon after Britt was born that he can always tell when I’m tired because my eyes get further apart. It’s become a running joke with us and while he was in Texas, while I was nursing for a total of 10 hours a day, dealing with mastitis, and taking care of two kids for the first time completely on my own…I was for sure the most exhausted I’ve been in a long time so I took a picture of myself. I wanted to see these crazy eyes 😉
They don’t really look further apart but my right one looks funky huh?!?! Like smaller and lower!!!
THIS is what exhaustion looks like…at least I’m still smiling!!!
Looking back on Kye’s Nine Week Summary makes me feel a little guilty about Brittlynn. I was hardcore working on all kinds of stuff with Kye and I feel like I’m not able to do nearly as much with her. There are so many advantages and disadvantages to each place in the birth order chain. While I feel like I don’t work with her on as many things as I did Kye, I feel like she has a big advantage of learning so much from her older brother. She’s exposed to a TON more language than he ever was at this age. So it’s a give and take I guess. Looking back at his post…I said in it that I was rushing him through milestones and that someday I’d look back and wish I could slow things down. That statement couldn’t be more true! I wish I could savior each and every second with my sweet kids while I can!!! I can’t even remember Kye being that tiny! Check out his hair too…makes me hopeful that Britt will keep hers because he was already pretty much bald by this point. Poor kid 🙂
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EM, she is seriously scrumptious 🙂 I love her hair, too! ANd btw, mack had the clearest most beautiful baby skin i've ever seen adn Britt's ranks right up there w/ his. So funny!
I agree with Kelly !!! She is beautiful- such a doll!! And in some of these pics I was seriously thinking she sorta reminded me if Mack…maybe it is that beautiful skin!-Danielle B
@91ddb49b23c85dd62065741fa42f7b4a i think we have twin children! to me, rhyan and kye favor each other and britt and mack do too!!!!