Monday, July 02, 2012

All Rachel, all the time

Alright, now that Rachel is a week old, I guess it is time to post the last of the hospital pictures! 
The first night Rachel and I spent the night alone in the hospital, Eric was toast and apparently was fortunate enough to go to bed at 8p and slept until 8am the next morning.  I on the other hand wasn't so lucky.  Rachel is something of a pistol, now not near as a pain as the other ones, but around 2:30 in the morning (you know when she was 1 day old!)  She really couldn't be settled, I tried nursing and rocking and walking after about an hour I gave up and called in the nurse, who re-swaddled her and she quieted for a couple minutes, and I tried nursing her again and then she went out.  But it was truly a pain in the tail, and a foreshadowing of our first week. 
Rachel at this point loves to be held.  She especially loves it when someone who is not me is holding her, unless she is being nursed and just fell asleep.  Sometimes she will sleep in her pack-n-play.  Sometimes she will not.  We haven't really figured that out yet, it is kind of a crap shoot. 
Rachel doesn't seem to want to spend anytime awake yet.  She will be fine for about 20 minutes, if that then she will start crying.  Fortunately, Eric and I have a lot of experience with crying babies.  We've done this before!  Of course she is 100x better than Gwen and the jury is still out whether or not she will be better than Nate.  At some point Nate started to fall asleep on his own.  I am not sure that Rachel will. 
Rachel has a strong urge to suck.  I am not sure if that is because she is 9 pounds and I am not keeping up with her or she needs that to soothe.  We don't typically use pacifiers, and I am holding out for a while to make sure it doesn't interfere with her growth and my production. 
But, my word, when she sleeps she sleeps like a champ!  All Gwen wants to do is hold her, Nate just wants to kiss her and touch her.  When she cries they come running.  There doesn't seem to be any sibling rivalry, but I wish that it wasn't 100 degrees here so I could at least take everyone outside! 

2 comments:

Lesley said...

Congratulations! Beautiful little girl, and I love the name. I'm sure things will settle down soon, esp now you're such an experienced mom! Take Care.

Melanie said...

Thanks Lesley! Starting to settle down now.