Isla’s One Month Update

Today Isla is one whole month old! Her first month has been challenging and exhausting and so much fun. She’s such a busy, active, curious kid. It makes her very entertaining to watch and interact with. Already she’s changed so much. She’s less and less jerky, and she makes fewer and fewer of some of my favorite faces from her first couple of weeks. (Her startled bird face, which has earned her the nickname “baby bird,” has barely made an appearance at all this week. Sadz.) You can tell she’s starting to make sense of the world, and with people, she’s turned into quite the flirt, making lots of eye contact and cooing noises and giving lots of big grins. She makes so many silly faces and is in constant motion. She’s hard to keep up with already.

Right now, she’s sleeping through the night, either in her bassinet or in bed with us depending on how badly I need sleep. She barely sleeps at all during the day, though, which I think is the cause of some fussiness on her part. I guess that comes with being so busy all the time. Sleep is for people who don’t have so much to see and do.

She’s still eating like a champ. I’ve started pumping, and we’ve also given her a few bottles of formula mostly so I can replace a feeding with some power pumping and boost my pumped stash. She’s a pretty indiscriminate eater, thankfully. She’ll take breast milk from a bottle or from me, and she’ll take formula or the real deal from the bottle. No nipple confusion. No fussiness over the different kinds of food she’s getting. Generally, as long as her tummy is full, she’s a happy camper. Don’t give her a pacifier, though. She knows that’s not going to fill her up, and she’ll have none of it.

Our biggest challenge has been gas. Her tummy has definitely been hurting her the last couple of weeks, and I don’t like the days when she’s fussing because her belly is bothering her. We’ve started a regimen of mylicon drops, though, and that seems to have helped the pain. She’s still gassy as ever, but it seems to pass pretty painlessly. I’ll take it.

So far…

Isla likes:

• Bath time. I still really need to get a video of this. She’s so cute at bath time. She kicks her little arms and legs and dips her cheeks in and generally has this expression of “Is this heaven?!” on her face the whole time.
• Being naked. While she’s not a huge fan of diaper changes, she definitely enjoys the moments when the diaper is off and no new diaper has been put on. I think that’s part of why she likes bath time so much. Total freedom.
• Peek-a-boo, being called “Missy Boo” and having her lips blubbed. Best ways to get big smiles out of her.
• Being held or put in the carrier. Like most babies, she likes being snugged up next to someone. It’s pretty much the only way I can get her to sleep during the day.
• Her grandmas, which is good, because they’re totally in love with her, too.
• Being jiggled by daddy.
• Food.