Sage turned seven weeks old yesterday and a lot is happening! She gave me her first real smiles yesterday morning - and it was beautiful. I had been waiting impatiently to see her grin. I tried to get a picture, but this was as close as I could get:
Not quite the full-on grin with her eyes involved and dimple showing, which will break your heart it's so adorable, but cute!
She has also started sleeping for one 3.5 - almost 5 hour stretch at night. Last night she even did one 4.5-hour and two 3-hour stretches, so Mommy's feelin' pretty good! It's a good thing, too, because I'm preparing for parent-teacher conferences (I have to do them over the phone even though I'm on leave) and I'm nervous.
In other exciting news, we had a snowstorm hit on Thursday, so Matt got to stay home from school with us for two days and Sage got to see her first accumulating snow.
Matt has not been so thrilled with the effects of the snow on our driveway, and has been getting stuck coming back home a few times. We are supposed to get another 2-6 inches between tonight and tomorrow also! I'm hoping for another snow day for Matt. I really enjoyed the four days that our little family got to spend together.
Sage also got to experience her first trip to the Fulton Wal-Mart yesterday when we went to pick up a few things before we get snowed in again. She was not impressed.
It's hard to believe how much Sage has grown in the past six weeks. I have been taking a weekly photo of her in her crib with a bear that Matt's cousin Amy gave us for a growth reference, but the lighting in her nursery is terrible so I may have to start taking them somewhere else. Anyway, I will try to start actually POSTING the photos weekly, but for now, here's the past six to catch you up:
She weighed 7 lbs, 8 oz when she was born and is now 11.2 lbs and has grown an inch and a half in length. She has officially outgrown her newborn clothes, most of which she never got to wear because of her harness. I love those adorable fat rolls, though!
We haven't really been doing tummy time in the traditional sense so far with Sage's harness. She reallly hates being flat on her tummy doing the splits, and who can blame her?? Up till now, I've just been holding her tummy-to-tummy with me laying back and she pushes up on my chest. After we got the go-ahead from her doctor to let her out of the harness on Monday, I was eager to get her practicing. Here is a video of what we accomplished:
Sage's doctor said we can start weaning her off the harness by letting her out of it for four hours a day! He said after that we will go to just wearing it at night, and then will be totally out of it in about a month. Here she is celebrating:
YAHOO!
One the flip side, we also had to go to the pediatrician on Monday because Sunday she woke up with a goopy, red eye and slept all day. She has a cold and pinkeye. We bought anitbiotics for her eye and saline drops for her nose, and since we started using the saline she's slept much longer at night. We got THREE 3-hour stretches last night! Woohoo!! She's always been kind of snorty at night so I think maybe the dry air was bothering her.
She has been crying most of the day, but I did manage to capture one content moment:
This outfit was very cute until she pooped all over it.
On our first outing as a family after leaving the hospital, we went to the pediatrician for Sage's first well-baby checkup. They weighed her, measured her, poked and prodded her. I should have taken pictures but I was in such an overwhelmed state that I didn't bring the camera. She had lost weight of course but everything about her was healthy except for one thing. All babies are checked for something call "hip click," and Sage has it. It's real name is hip dysplasia, and you can read about it here.
We were sent directly across the street to meet with a pediatric orthopedic doctor, who fitted Sage with a Pavlik Harness. I bawled. I totally lost it. She was screaming while they put this contraption on her and she just looked so pathetic. Not proud of myself, but hey, I was hormonal.
Sage in all her harnessed glory
It holds her legs at a ninety-degree angle to help her hip socket grow properly. We have to be careful not to pull on her legs when changing her diaper or push her legs together. We aren't supposed to take it off except to wash it or bathe her, though I sometimes remove it for a photo shoot here and there. I know it may sound stupid, bu I just don't want ALL of our memories covered up with straps and Velcro.
In reality, the harness does not bother her at all and we are lucky that they caught her condition this early so that we can fix it now and she won't have problems down the road (hopefully). The doctor said she would probably have to wear the harness for about 8 weeks. We are on week 5 right now and have a checkup on Monday to see how things are going. It does make changing diapers a pain, and we are very limited in what clothing she can wear, but if it's that or have her go through pain and surgery later in life, I'll take it.
It is a little sad, and hard to put her back in the harness, when she curls up like this:
She's our baby. Oh yeah, I was pregnant. I never blogged about that because, well, I was too busy being miserable. Being pregnant is no cake-walk, folks. I might write about it someday but for now, I'm just glad I can drink a beer again.
Anyhow, Sage was born on Sunday, January 6, 2013 at 10:29 AM. She was 7 lbs. 8 oz. and 19 inches long. I had a C-section because she was breech and refused to turn, though not for lack of doctors trying (ouch).
How can anybody not love this face?!
The days since Sage was born have been a blur, and have blown by so fast that I'm not even sure they really happened. I've been surviving on about 2 hours of sleep at a time, granola bars and a love so strong I can't put it into words. Really, you think you'll be bothered by the poop and the spit-up and the exhaustion until you look at your little baby and your heart fills so full you think it might explode. She is the most precious little thing I've ever seen. I would change a billion slimy, yellow diapers and get puked on every day and never love her any less.
She turned five weeks old as of yesterday and is already growing up too fast. I wish I could stop time and freeze her just the way she is, but I'm also so looking forward to seeing her first real smile, hearing her laugh, and finding out what her personality will be like. And also, sleeping more.
