Thankful for a Month of Milestones

With Turkey Day around the corner, I thought I'd write about recent Rosalie milestones that I've been so thankful to witness while on maternity leave. She's growing so fast and I'm sad to think that January 12th, when I return to work, is just around the corner. Not because I'm sad to go back to work - I'm actually looking forward to it - but I will miss spending so much time with my little girl. I have really gotten to know her well over these past couple of months and am always delighted when I see her developing and learning new things.




Milestone #1 - Hand in mouth
No - not hand in mouth disease, or foot in mouth disease for that matter. :-) I'm talking about Rosalie finding more coordination with her hands, enough to put her right hand into her mouth. They say that babies love their hands and Rosalie is becoming quite the drooly mcdrooly now that she's found her right hand. We have yet to see her find the left one, but I'm sure that will come soon.

Finding her right hand

Milestone #2 - Grasping and batting
In addition to finding her hand to put into her mouth, she's also started to use her arms and hands to bat and grasp at the dangling critters hanging from her jimney mat (thanks for the mat Nana Joy!). She has come a long way from what Adam called - her Astronaut newborn body - in which she was trying to figure out that her limbs were a part of her space suit - to now actually experimenting with them. I don't think she totally knows yet that she can control them, but she's getting there.

Rosalie in her "teacup baseball uniform"
She can pitch a mean knuckle ball (into her mouth) and bat at a dangling elephant with the best of them

Rosalie on her Jimney Mat

Milestone #3 - Chatty Cathy and Smiley McSmiley
Rosalie has been quite the chatty girl over the past few days. She's been cooing for the past couple of weeks, but most recently she is making more sounds, almost as if she's trying to talk. Check out the video. She also loves to mimick my ooooh's and ahhh's.

And, her smiles have become more plentiful these days whenever she sees or hears her mom and dad. They can make any bad day happy. :) She even has laughed a couple of times for us.

Milestone #4 - Rolling over
We've been practicing "tummy time" with Rosalie to help build her neck muscles. Tummy time - it sounds so fun, but initially she hated it. Poor thing would face plant her little head on the mat and kick her legs and butt into the air as she strained to lift her head. Tummy time wouldn't last but a minute or two before she'd be crying it up. But over the past week, she's spending more time on her tummy and just yesterday she figured out how to roll over from tummy position. Check out her tummy/roll over video!

Milestone #5 - Sleeping in her own room
Rosalie has been a pretty good sleeper ever since we brought her home. She regularly sleeps 6-7 hours every night with only one wake up. We've had her in a pack and play in our room, but decided to transition the crib in her room this week. We decided to make the big move so that Adam and I wouldn't have to whisper once we got her to bed. The transition was super smooth. I was nervous the first night, double and triple checking that the monitor worked so that we would hear her and leaving our door open in case the monitors failed. The monitor didn't fail and we heard her little wail at 5am that morning. It's been great getting her to bed by 8:30pm and having time to chat with Adam without whispering.

A photo of one side of Rosalie's room

Milestone #6 - Double digits!
The other week we had Rosalie's 2 month check up and shots. She weighed in at 9 pounds 4 ounces! Over the past few days she's been eating a lot more than she normally does so we weighed her last night to see if she's gained any. And guess what??? She's in the double digits! She's now about 10 pounds.

Milestone #6.5 - Weaning from the nipple shield and taking a bottle...kind of
I am still using the nipple shield to nurse Rosalie and so had another lactation consultant visit last week to help get advice on how to wean her from the shield. I had been trying to get Rosalie to nurse without the shield for a few weeks now, but she would only latch on for a few seconds and then cry if I didn't put the nipple shield back on. But whatdya know - the first time I try to have her latch when the lactation consultant is there she latches on right away and proceeds to do most of a feed without the shield. She did demonstrate trouble when I switched her to the other breast and so the lactation consultant gave me good advice on positioning.  I haven't been able to replicate the success since then, but we're working on it.

In addition to shield advice, we also got bottle advice. Since I'm returning to work in January, the lactation consultant recommended we introduce one bottle a day starting now so that we can be confident Rosalie will eat when I'm away. So starting the same night she slept in her own room, Adam started to feed Rosalie from the bottle once a day. He's only tried two times now. The first was super successful - she ate 2 ounces without a fight. The second day (today) he struggled to get her to eat 1 ounce and she cried much of the time. He tried again at a different time of day and she wailed the entire time. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure out the transition soon. It's actually pretty stressful - especially for Adam.

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As you can see, Rosalie has been progressing a lot in her short 2.5, almost 3, months of life. And for that (and her health) I am extremely thankful.

I am also grateful that her Granny L was out to visit and help me take care of the little one while Adam was out of town for work last week. Here is a nice video of Granny L singing "A rose is a rose" to our little Rosalie.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. There are so many things to be thankful for and I am ever so grateful to have such loving family and friends in my life.