Hadley Marie: Three Months

Hadley continues to be a super baby.  I posted on Facebook today that I feel like I've won the Mommy lottery.  In an unscientific at-home measurement, she weighs 15.6 lbs. and is 24.75" long.  This puts her in the 100th percentile for weight and 90th for length.  Go Chubba-Chunk!

She's been sleeping through the night for three weeks now.  And when I say sleeping through the night, I mean the entire nigh - she'll crash around 8 or 9 pm, then I'll do a dream feed around 10 or 11 pm and then she doesn't wake on her own until 7 or 8 am.  I usually wake her at 6 am to feed her and then put her back down while I get Arden up and around.  She just goes right back to sleep and we don't hear a peep from her until it's time to load her in the carseat.

She's super happy and smiley - showing off her two dimples pretty regularly.  In the evenings she turns into quite the little chatterbox, cooing and babbling away for at least half an hour.  She loves to have her diaper changed - laughing and smiling immediately when we lay her down.  I'm not sure if it's because we're paying her close attention or if she just really doesn't like to be wet.  She also gives a good belly laugh when I'm getting ready to feed her.  I'm not sure if I should take that personally - I guess boobs are funny!

A development that dearls indirectly with Miss Hadley is that I have caught up to her with my milk supply, and am building up a happy stockpile.  I'm even thinking I might have enough soon to consider donating some excess milk (gasp!  I never thought I'd have enough extra!!).  I need to do some research to determine if and where I'd want to donate.  I have a friend who donates hers locally and advocates for that, but there are also national organizations that accept and process breastmilk.  I'm pretty excited to be in a position to possibly help some babies.

I love putting this little monthly collage together.  Next month she'll be in a different outfit, cuz those pants aren't going to fit for much longer!  She's pretty much in 6-9 month sleepers, and I'm starting to phase in that size for daytime clothes as well.  She's also in the Medium gDiapers, which means that Arden and Hadley use the same sized inserts.  Arden still wears a diaper for sleeping even though she wears panties for daytime.

Establishing Routine

It's been nearly three weeks since Hadley arrived into our lives.  My body is recovering well, and we're all doing remarkably well with sleep and routines.  We were monitoring her weight gain closely for the first couple of weeks because she lost a couple more ounces between being discharged from the hospital and her well baby visit with her pediatrician.  I was trying to exclusively breastfeed, but we had to supplement with a little formula to meet her feeding demands and she went from 8 lbs. 2 oz to 9 lbs. in less than a week.  This is pretty much par for the course for us as we had to supplement Arden's feeding a little as well.

Arden has truly exceeded any expectations I had for her as a big sister.  She is very gentle with Hadley and completely unprompted says goodnight to her with things like "cutie pie" and "I love you".  She brings toys for her to look at and is always willing to help bring me things while I'm feeding Hadley.  We discovered that she can swap out DVD's on the machine in a much easier fashion than my father can!

The little fair isle sweater I knit for Hadley fits really well right now, so I've been devoting any free time I have to trying to finish Arden's matching one so I can get a picture of the two of them together before Hadley outgrows hers.  I have the back and both front pieces completed, leaving the arms and cowl to go. 

Hadley is a really sweet baby - we've taken to calling her mouse to Arden's monkey moniker since Hadley is pretty quiet except for some squeaks and squawks and happy little grunts while feeding.