Dear Sophia,
It is the 15th of March as I sit down to write this post. It seems a lifetime ago that I had a bump instead of a baby. It feels like you have always been here now, a part of us. The last 4 weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions and the hardest I’ve ever worked before. There have been some days where I sit in my pyjamas nursing you from morning ‘til night, not being able to put you down for even a few minutes. Most days feel like a sea of breastfeeding, sterilising bottles, pumping, laundry and changing nappies but there is nothing else in the world I’d rather be doing. When you look at me with your big, dark blue eyes I realise I would do anything for you. I’m so blessed to be your mummy.
Sleeping
You are in a better routine with sleeping lately. You sleep at regular periods throughout the day and night. The past few days you seem to alternate between being awake for about an hour and a half and then asleep for an hour and a half in the day. This works perfectly as I feed and play with you then while you nap I can do a few jobs around the house.
You are now used to your moses basket at night time and it takes a lot less time to put you down of a night. We just swaddle you and lay you down and you’re usually asleep within five minutes. You sleep from about 11:30pm, waking between 4am and 5am for a feed and then sleeping again until about 8am. This is very good for a baby of your age and we feel very lucky that you have got yourself into this little routine!
Eating
This has been the toughest part of the month! After your weight losses in the past few weeks we turned to supplementing your feeds with formula. This was great in some ways because it meant you were gaining the weight back and you were much more satisfied after being fed. It also meant that Daddy could feed you which he loved! However, due to this my milk supply started to reduce meaning I had to give you even more formula…we had began on a slippery slope!
After feeling like I couldn’t keep up with your hunger anymore I made the decision to move to formula completely, I felt it was the only option to keep you happy. But it felt horrible and I felt awful about my decision. I absolutely love breast feeding you and feel like I want to give things one last really hard try to ditch the formula and get back to exclusive breastfeeding. I’ve written out a plan to gradually reduce the formula over the next few weeks and have bought an electric pump and some herbal remedies to help increase my milk supply. You deserve the best and I know I would always regret it if I gave up now without doing absolutely everything I could to get back to breastfeeding. And if it doesn’t work then at least I know that I have done my best…
Developing
Your development is coming along well and you are starting to do new things everyday. I get so excited when you do something that I’ve not seen you do before. This month you can…
- Grab objects near your hands (your toys, our fingers, mummy’s hair!)
- Watch us. You love to watch us either when we are sat near you or when we walk around the room. It’s so cute how you watch me walk around the kitchen whilst I make lunch!
- Stare at our faces. Sometimes you’ll also copy our face expressions like sticking out tongues.
- Look at books. I’ve started reading a book to you everyday and you seem to enjoy the rhythm of my voice as I read the story and you look at the pictures for a short time.
- Lift your head. You are a strong little girl and you can lift your head for about 5 seconds. You’re having tummy time everyday now so I hope that this will help to develop your neck muscles even more.
- Respond to sounds. You move your head towards sounds now and you are becoming more alert to different sounds. It also means we have to be more careful not to wake you now!
- Follow objects with your eyes. You have a black and white panda rattle that you love to look at. We move it in front of you and you follow it with your eyes.
- Smile! This is definitely the best event of the month (other than your birth of course!). In the last few days you have been smiling in response to us. Daddy made silly noises at you and you smiled. I played peek a boo and you smiled. Yesterday we were looking at your ‘That’s not my bunny’ touchy feely book. As I read it and helped you to put your hands on the feely bits you smiled. On all of these occasions we don’t think you had wind and are pretty convinced they were genuine smiles. Seeing you smile is the best feeling in the world!
This month has been the best! Although we can’t wait to see you grow and develop we are so enjoying you at this stage as we know it won’t last long. We want to savour every second! We love you more than words can say.
Happy 1 month birthday beautiful girl!
Lots of love from Mummy and Daddy.xxx
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