Her first month

I cannot believe that my baby is already a month old! Well technically today she is five weeks old, but lets not go there yet.

There is NOTHING in the world that can prepare you for having a baby. Even if you had a perfectly happy, healthy, easy baby - which Abigail did not bless us with the good fortune of being easy.

The first three weeks were so very hard! She developed a pretty bad case of acid reflux which made things almost unbearable. She was only sleeping about 6 hours a day, spitting up most of what she was eating and crying the rest of the time. Seeing your baby writhe in pain and not know why is heart breaking. Then add to that the one - two hours of sleep a night I was getting (five minutes here and there) was maddening and I really had doubts whether or not I was even cut out to be a mom. Those moments laying awake at night, sleep deprived, feeling helpless in comforting my child made me feel like a failure.

Realizing that people would not willingly go through child rearing again if this were "NORMAL" we sought help from our Pediatrician. And just in the nick of time!



Abigail is now on some medication for acid reflux and it has made all the difference in her little life. No more writhing in pain, and she is sleeping again. She fusses when she needs to tell us something, and that is what we call NORMAL.

Although her size is still small (9 lbs or so) she has made some big progress in her development. From the first moment she arrived she made a statement that she was ready to take on the world.



She has stayed true to that her first month. Her hands are always in motion, open and exploring. Her typical poses are what we refer to as jazz hands and drama queen hands. She often is found with her hands folded together resting on her chest. She has also discovered that she can fit parts of her hand in her mouth to comfort herself. This is a discovery that we sure hope doesn't develop into a "sucking" problem.



Abigail is very alert and will follow objects, and her look of surprise is precious! There is nothing quite like your baby looking right into your eyes. I wonder what she thinks about when she does.

There was lots of practice time on her smile. She gave us a few good ones.

Spending time with her during her quiet and calm time, usually after feeding her, makes the thought of leaving her to go to work almost unbearable. It breaks my heart to think that there will be milestones and development happening and I will miss out those "first time" moments. Someone else will experience them and probably not even think twice about it. There must be a better solution! I am working on that and I think about what I can do to prevent her going into daycare. It is on my mind most of the day. I am open to suggestions by the way.



I know that she will never be this age again, and I am definitely soaking up as much of the wonder and amazement that she offers while I can.

She is pretty awesome.