She is still wearing some newborn clothes and some 0-3 month clothes; it really depends on what it is. She is finishing off her newborn diapers and then will be in size 1 all the time. She wears size 1 at night because she's a heavy wetter.
Her feeding has been a challenge, but we've figured it out. She was breastfed, but it eventually became a struggle for her. She would end up choking and turning blue, so I ultimately decided that pumping would be our best bet. She took the bottle just fine, but then she would scream after each feeding. I thought maybe she wasn't getting enough, so I tried feeding her more. Well, that didn't work. She wasn't eating too much because she wasn't spitting up. Then I tried gripe water and gas drops, which helped temporarily but you can only give them so much of each in 24 hours. I then tried giving her a bottle of Enfamil Gentlease formula, to which she hated the taste but she ended up eating it and did a whole lot better. I still wanted to give her breastmilk for the nutrition, so I decided to do half breastmilk and half formula. This has worked out so much better for us. She no longer screams after eating. I wanted to try to see if it was the combination working or if it was just a phase. I gave her just breastmilk for a day, and she screamed again, so we went back to the combo. Is this ideal? Not at all, but this is what is needed for her. She is doing 7 bottles of 2oz of breastmilk and 2oz of formula every 24 hours.
She is sleeping extremely well. She came home sleeping 6 hours. Then when her stomach issues began, she would only sleep about 4 hours at a time at night. Once I began giving her the formula/breastmilk combo, she has been sleeping about 7 hours at night. Her last bottle at night is around 9, then she will wake up around 4 to eat, and then she will wake up for good around 8. I am not complaining one bit :)
She hasn't really done a whole lot this month because she is in that sleepy newborn stage. She is really close to smiling and she is starting to coo and "purr." She loves to be held and does not like sitting in a dirty diaper. If she is ever upset about something, and she's not hungry, all I have to do is change her and she is good. Her favorite place to lounge is in the bouncy seat or in the boppy pillow on my bed. I can tell she knows when her brother is around. She always seems to perk up (if she's awake) when he comes over to love on her. I can't wait to see how they interact when she's awake more.
Here's a picture of her from this morning. I've also posted a picture of Connor when he was a month old. You can tell that they resemble each other. He was a bit bigger at one month (almost 11 pounds) but they look similar.
Update (9/5): Maddie had her 1 month well check-up yesterday. She now weighs 10 lbs on the dot (61st percentile) and is 22 inches long (84th percentile). We also talked to our pediatrician about her feeding issues. It turns out that it's not gas that's causing the problem, it's acid reflux. We have her on some medication to help heal her stomach and hopefully she will be back onto 100% breastmilk in the near future. This is why she turned blue while eating, screamed after eating, loves to sit in the boppy pillow (elevated) and never wants to be put down. I'll be glad when we have this all figured out because holding her all the time and chasing an 18 month old around is hard work! She is also smiling some now. She gave me her first smile on August 30th! I've uploaded a picture of one of her sweet smiles.
It's not a full smile because I was too slow with the camera... but it's still sweet :)
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