Tabitha - Week 1

My hope is to post at least weekly...we'll see how it goes.

Week one of Tabitha's life went by quickly. I can't believe she is almost two weeks old now. The first few days were spent at the hospital. Because she had lost over 12% of her birth weight, we left the hospital having to supplement my breastfeeding with formula, which was a very frustrating task. What it did do was bring Ben and I together to work as a team in helping Tabitha, and that part was great. Ben worked the syringe full of 10 ml of formula while I breastfed Tabitha with a narrow tube going into her mouth. We wanted to do it this way to avoid feeding her with a bottle so that she had the best chance to adapt to breastfeeding. I think we did the supplementation for a little over 48 hours. The day after we took her home we were back at the hospital getting her weight and bilirubin level checked. Tabitha thankfully had gained weight and we worked with the lactation consultant to develop a get well plan. Two days later we were back at the hospital and Tabitha's bilirubin level had dropped and her weight was looking good.It really was such a relief. The weight battle is still ongoing, but thankfully it is going very well and we are a little less stressed. We still feed her every 2.5 hours, which is a little daunting, but it is well worth it to see Tabitha doing well. Unfortunately since she is a very sleepy baby right now, we have to wake her up a lot of the time.

She received her first bath this week. She wasn't too thrilled about it, but that was to be expected.
Ben also started playing tummy time with her, which she isn't fond of, but she is getting stronger.

It snowed a lot this week. Too bad she isn't big enough to play in the snow, but someday she will be.

She got flowers from both of her grandparents.
She made a lot of dirty diapers. This is only three days worth. She got her picture in a shoe box. When she turned one week, we took a family picture and then a picture of her alone on our glider which we plan to do each week to see how she grows.

Here are some more pictures from week one.