This past week our Annie turned one month old!
When Annie was born, she weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces and measured 20 inches long. At two weeks, she weighed 6 pounds 6 ounces and was still 20 inches long. Annie doesn’t go in for her one-month checkup for another week.
Annie has been pretty chill and very alert right from the start. She gets fussy when she wakes up alone, when she’s hungry, and when she wants snuggles. It takes a lot to get her really riled up. Normally, she calms down considerably when you pick her up, even when she’s very hungry.
Annie is a huge snuggler. She always wants to tuck in with me when she’s finished eating and would stay that way for hours. I do my best to maximize snuggling with her while Olivia and Genevieve nap in the afternoon and after the kids go to bed at night.
Annie also loves to be swaddled. We keep her swaddled in a muslin blanket the vast majority of the time right now, both during the day and at night.
Annie was born with her dark hair, and she’s kept all of it so far. The jury is still out on her eye color. Right now her eyes are hazel. Sometimes you can see blue in them. Other times her eyes are darker.
Annie has some of the most serious expressions and the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. She’ll scrunch up her whole forehead and get big wrinkles over her eyes.
Many of you know that Annie hiccupped all the time in utero. She would hiccup almost every day for months. Now on the other side, she still hiccups pretty much every day.
The older three kids are all crazy about Annie. They give her lots of hugs and kisses and are as gentle with her as you can expect from little kids. Tommy is always excited to see Annie when he comes home from school. Olivia and Genevieve constantly ask if Annie is awake or not and want to see her when she is awake. While it’s been an adjustment for them having me and Jake splitting our time with another kid, they’ve done so well for the most part.
It’s amazing to see how much Annie recognizes all of our voices. I experienced this phenomenon with Tommy and his birth mom. The way he looked at her as a baby was so different from the way he looked at me. I expected this familiarity for me and Annie. It’s so neat to see how she responds to Jake and the kids as well.
Annie is wearing a small selection of newborn and 0-3 month clothing. It just started fitting her (as opposed to being really big) when she was about four weeks old. I’ve been sticking with the smallest pajamas and one-piece outfits we have and waiting to put her in anything else until she gets a little bigger. Annie is still wearing newborn diapers.
Right from the start, I’ve been breastfeeding Annie and supplementing with formula. I mentioned in her birth story that she was rooting pretty much immediately and latched right away. My milk didn’t come in fully until postpartum day four or five. She was so hungry in the hospital, and they were monitoring her blood sugar because of my gestational diabetes. So I’ve been supplementing.
In the hospital, Annie would eat 20cc at a time and so quickly, which is still crazy to me. Over the course of the first month, we’ve worked up to two or three ounces in a sitting. Sometimes Annie will be fine after breastfeeding for a few hours. Other times, she’ll want formula right away.
Annie has had zero issues switching back and forth between breastfeeding and bottle feeding. She hasn’t been picky about the type of bottle or temperature of the formula. I’m still blown away.
After Olivia and Genevieve, especially Olivia who wasn’t sleeping through the night consistently until well past two years old, I was dreading going through newborn sleep again. Thankfully, Annie has been an amazing sleeper right from the start. She wakes up twice between midnight and six a.m. By three weeks, I was making three ounces for both of these feedings, which has worked well. Once Annie’s full, she goes right back to sleep without a pacifier or a lot of snuggling or anything, and I can transfer her back to the bassinet.
Whenever possible, I put Annie down for naps in her bassinet at least a couple of times during the day to give her longer sleep stretches that the other kids won’t interrupt. She’s done so well with bassinet naps. There have only been a handful of days thus far that she wouldn’t settle for a long bassinet nap.
In my other initial update posts for the older three kids, I talked about the increase in laundry. Between toddler messes and needing to wash Tommy’s school uniforms and my maternity clothes regularly, I was already running at least one cold cycle clothes load per day before Annie was born. I add her swaddle blankets, bibs, burp cloths, and clothes right into this load, so we never run low.
After bringing home two babies in cold weather, it’s so nice being able to take Annie out on walks. We’re keeping things low-key in terms of activities. Tommy and Olivia have school. Tommy is still swimming, and the girls have a music class. That’s it right now. But we’re not quarantining, and we saw family right away, which is also a nice change of pace from what it was like bringing home Olivia and Genevieve.
We’ve spent all of 2023 anticipating Annie’s birth and Tommy starting kindergarten. It feels so good to be here at last and settling into this new routine.
I’ll be writing monthly update posts for the first two years of Annie’s life, just like I did for Tommy and Olivia and am still doing for Genevieve. Most likely, I won’t be sharing new baby/toddler favorites. I have lots of baby favorites and toddler favorites posts for Tommy and Olivia as well as a preemie newborn favorites post for Genevieve. Additionally, I have an essential baby and toddler gear list with my all-time favorites in one place.
You can find all of my baby/toddler updates for all of the kids as well as general family updates and other family-related posts in the family section of the blog.
