I can’t believe my little princess is already 4 months old.  Time is flying by.  Noelle continues to be such a joy and blessing.  We are enjoying her tininess but love watching her grow.

Noelle had her 4 month check up this week.  She weighs 12lbs 7oz (15%), is 24.25 inches long (42%) and her head circumference is 40.8 cm (47%).  She is a little peanut!  Unfortunately her percentiles in weight have dropped the past 3 visits (53%, 30%, 15%).  Her doctor isn’t too concerned but we don’t want her to drop off the chart.  For now we will just fortify her bottles of breastmilk with formula that she gets at daycare.  We will also hold off on solid food since there are more calories per ounce in milk.  Other than her weight, we also had to discuss her blocked tear duct and ears.  Her eyes are still green and goopy a lot of the time.  And I took her to her hearing test (since she didn’t pass her screen at birth) and they couldn’t do the test because she had fluid on her right ear (she had had a cold).  The doctor checked her ears and she still has fluid so we are going to treat her with an oral antibiotic to try to clear up both her ear and her eye infection.  Other than that she is a healthy girl!

Noelle has learned all sorts of new things this month.  She started rolling from her back to her belly about 2 weeks ago.  She has also started laughing, especially when we kiss her belly.  She has started to reach and grab and pull things into her mouth.  She is almost always smiling.  She is usually happy to be doing whatever the rest of us are.  She rotates her awake time between being held, playing on her play mat, sitting in her bouncy seat or swinging.  She is generally content and happy unless she is tired or hungry!  She especially loves her big brother.  Her face lights up when she sees him.  He always gets her best smiles!

Noelle continues to be a pretty good sleeper.  The past month has been a little rough with her being sick as she gets congested and mad at night.  We have transitioned her back to her crib (and out of the rock n play) now that she is rolling around so much.  She seems to enjoy being able to stretch out.  About a week ago we decided to start sleep training.  She was waking up multiple times after I put her down asleep (usually before we went to bed) and would also wake up several times after I fed her.  She caught on very quickly.  We used the “progressive waiting” approach and would go check on her after a few minutes of crying.  She will now fall asleep on her own with no crying!  She also will sleep for much longer.  Her naps are still pretty inconsistent during the day.  She has started taking a longer afternoon nap, which is great when Ethan is asleep too!

Our little princess is no longer a newborn!  She is still such a little darling.  We are enjoying her tininess and her bald head and gummy grin.  Here is what Noelle has been up to.

Eating – Noelle has finally started spacing out her feedings and eats about every 3 hours.  She had a week or so where she wasn’t eating very well so I took her to check her weight.  She weighed 11lbs 15 oz, so she has gained about a pound a half over the past 4-5 week, so I think she is doing fine!  She definitely looks bigger to us.  We can tell her face is changing and she is getting longer.  It is funny to me that she has such long skinny feet compared to the short stubby feet Ethan had.  She is starting to fit into her 3-6 month clothes.

Sleep – Noelle is still sleeping well.  We have all had a cold over the past few weeks and she seems to be more congested at night and some nights isn’t sleeping as well.  For the most part she is still waking up twice at night to eat.  We feel lucky that she goes right back to sleep easily and rarely wakes up otherwise.  Occasionally I will get lucky and she will only wake up once.  She is still unpredictable at bedtime.  Sometimes she will go right to sleep and others she likes to yell at us for awhile before she will calm down and sleep!  She has been sleeping in her crib unswaddled for a while, but we have been putting her back in her rock n play since she has been sick.

Noelle has started to prefer to sleep in her room for naps.  Though she naps in a swing at daycare, she usually yells at me if I put her in her swing when she is sleepy.  I usually rock her and she will go right to sleep for her naps.  Her naps are still pretty inconsistent, but usually last 45 minutes to an hour.  Occasionally she will take a long 2 hour afternoon nap.  She will sleep in the car as long as it is moving but wakes up as soon as we stop.  I try to be home as much as possible when she needs a nap but it is pretty hard since she naps so often!

Awake – Noelle has had longer periods of awake time over the past few weeks.  For a long time she could only tolerate being awake for about an hour before she would get fussy and yawn and rub her eyes.  Now she is awake for 1.5 – 2 hours at a time.  Right before bed she is usually awake for 2 hours or more.  She is usually such a happy girl when she is awake.  She has the best smiles and coos.  She is content for a long time either laying on her activity mat looking at her animals or sitting in her bouncy seat wherever we are.  We try to do tummy time but she is still not a big fan.  She is just starting to push her head up when she is on her tummy, but quickly gets tired and goes back to rubbing her face on the floor.  She loves being naked.  I will put her on a big blanket naked and she moves all over the place.  She also seems to liked tummy time better when she is naked.

Here are some pictures of our sweet girl.

Our sweet baby girl is 2 months old!  I can’t believe how fast it is going.  I felt like the first 3 months of Ethan’s life were so slow (mainly because I saw about 20 hours of every day).  But these days just fly by and before I know it Jason is home from work and another week has passed.  The days are hard, but I am loving it.  Most days are completely spent feeding, diapering, and napping children, with dishes and laundry in between.  I was making a cleaning schedule recently and figured out I do at least 14 loads of laundry a week!  We are thankful that Noelle is such a good baby.  She is a perfect addition to our family.

Noelle is still eating very well.  She still eats every 2 hours during the day and nurses for about 10 minutes.  Lately she seems to be more of a comfort nurses and gets sleepy.  We had been struggling with her to take a bottle but she seems to have finally figured it out.  We have been going to breastfeeding support group every week and she is gaining between 4 and 8 oz every week and takes about 2-3 oz at each feeding.  She is starting to get more chunky but seems to be longer than Ethan was at this age.  She currently weighs 10 lbs 14 oz.

Noelle is also still a great sleeper!  She went through a stage around 6 weeks where she really fought bedtime and it took us 2-3 hours to get her down at night.  It takes much less than that now but bedtime is still somewhat unpredictable.  Sometimes she will go right to sleep (tonight she fell asleep on her own!) and sometimes we are in and out for an hour.  She does not want to be rocked to sleep (or she will wake up as soon as we put her down).  We usually put her down, give her her pacifier, leave, wait until she cries, go back in, repeat.  Picking her up makes her more angry.  She will eventually be tired enough that she will fall asleep.  She still wakes up twice at night to eat (2-3 and 5-6).  After she eats at night I can put her down awake and most of the time she will go back to sleep on her own.  We did start unswaddling her a few days ago because she was fighting it so much, and she is still sleeping well without it.  She still catnaps during the day.  She usually sleeps well in her swing and carseat, but lately seems to prefer napping in her room.

Noelle is so sweet when she is awake.  She smiles and coos, kicks her legs and waves her arms around.  She is really starting to discover her hands lately.  She holds her arms up straight in the air and stares at her hands.  She also has started sucking on them.  She has a sweet little voice and likes to “sing” a lot.

Here are some pictures of our little lady.

Since Noelle is the neglected second child, it has taken me a while to post another update on her!  It has obviously been difficult to find the time to sit down and write.  Surprisingly I don’t spend nearly as much time sitting on the couch as I did with Ethan!

Noelle had a great 1 month check up.  She weighs 9lbs 8oz (53%), is 21 inches (38%) and her head circumference is 36.7 cm (50%).  She is still having problems with a blocked tear duct so we are going to try a different antibiotic to try to get it cleared up.  We also found out that a small rash on her neck is a strawberry hemangioma.  It is very small and not raised, so we don’t need to do anything about it right now.  She did great during her exam but of course was very displeased with her one shot.  Ethan also did very well during the appointment and proved to Dr. Wheeler that he was a great big brother.  He insisted on standing next to the exam table and watching her exam to make sure she was ok.

Eating – Noelle is still a great eater.  She still only nurses for about 10 minutes every 2 hours during the day.  She is gaining weight well and we aren’t really having any issues.  She does eat really fast and suck in a lot of air sometimes so I have to make sure and burp her well.  Unlike her brother, she is usually wide awake the entire time she is nursing.  If she does fall asleep it is usually just for a few minutes.

Awake time – Noelle has lots of happy awake time during the day.  She is in a nice eat/awake/sleep routine during the day which is very nice.  She loves to stare at us with her big blue eyes.  She also likes to focus on things intently, such as a light or her mobile in the swing or pack n play.  She does like to be held when she is awake but lately seems to enjoy being down when she is awake.  She will start to get fussy when she is tired.

Sleeping – Noelle is still proving to be a better sleeper than her brother.  She is now sleeping swaddled in her rock n play sleeper in her room.  Most nights she goes down around 9 or 10 and wakes up twice, once around 2 or 3, and again around 5 or 6, then sleeps until 8 or 9.  Of course we have some good nights (only waking up once!) and bad nights (taking a while to settle down at night, waking up several times after her 5 or 6 feeding, etc).  She also seems to have the common “witching hour” in the evening before bed where she will be quite fussy and not want to settle down.  Thankfully, Jason and I are now both baby calming experts and have learned how to get her to sleep.  During the day she is all over the place with sleeping.  Most naps are pretty short.  Some days she prefers to be held, others in her pack n play or rock n play, and lately she is liking her swing.  She will fall asleep in her carseat when we are out and about but usually wakes up as soon as the car stops or I have to get her out.

Ethan is doing great with his little sister.  He absolutely loves her and constantly wants to touch her.  He has to find out where she when he wakes up in the morning.  He loves to point to all of her body parts “Noelle’s eyes! Noelle’s nose! Noelle’s feet!”  He will hold her and say “she’s a sweet girl.”  Sometimes he drives me crazy because he won’t leave her alone, especially when she is sleeping.  He can’t stand it when she cries and says “Uh oh baby Noelle!  Noelle crying mommy!” and will try to shove her pacifier in her mouth or rock her.  We are still working on some things (being quiet when she’s asleep, not standing close to her head when I’m changing her diaper) but overall he has accepted her into our family.

Noelle has been such a joy to have home the past week.  We are adjusting well to a family of four despite the normal challenges of sleep deprivation, sibling adjustments, lots of diaper changes and more laundry than I can keep up with!

Noelle is pretty easy going so far.  She really only cries when she is hungry, needs a new diaper, or has a belly ache.  She is a much better sleeper than Ethan was and has a calm disposition.  During the day, she enjoys sleeping in her pack n play.  We joked the first day we were home that she had already slept in it longer than Ethan ever did!  She struggles a bit more at night.  As it gets later in the evening, she wants to be cuddled and nurse frequently.  We have a harder time getting her to sleep longer stretches on her own at night (even though we have a cosleeper right next to the bed) and she stirs frequently.  The nights are pretty inconsistent but she has gone 2-5 hours between feeds.  She always goes right back to sleep but will get mad when I put her back in her bed!

Noelle is nursing great and growing well!  Since she was in the NICU she got some extra follow up appointments at the pediatrician’s office.  Monday she weighed 7lbs 3oz and Friday she was up to 7lbs 8oz.  Her birth weight was 7lbs 2oz so she is gaining plenty of weight.  I was a little worried because she is a very fast nurser and cannot be convinced to eat anymore once she decides she is done.  Thankfully we know she is getting plenty of milk and is just an efficient nurser.  Her stats were 41% for weight, 43% for length and 54% for head circumference.  We also found out that one of her eyes has a blocked tear duct, so we are working to clear it out.

Ethan has been such a great big brother.  He doesn’t have any obvious jealousy issues, but it is apparent that he misses is one on one time with mommy.  He is very sweet with Noelle.  He wants to hold her and hug and kiss her.  He is very interested in whatever she is doing.  He has had a few episodes where he is acting out in unusual ways, which we think is his own way of adjusting.  He has also woke up in the middle of the night or won’t go to sleep at night because he wants mommy.  I am trying to spend special time with him during the day so he doesn’t feel abandoned.  Thankfully, Jason still has another week off work and he has been a huge help keeping him entertained.  We are trying to balance normal discipline with giving him extra love and attention during this time.  Overall, we are very proud of how well he is done.

I know we will have days ahead that will make me crazy but I am enjoying her tinyness and sweet personality.  We feel overwhelmingly blessed to have two sweet, healthy children and we are trying to enjoy every second!

This is part 2 of Noelle’s birth story. You should read part 1 first if you haven’t already.

Jason went with Noelle to the NICU while I waited to be transferred.  After what seemed like an eternity, Jason and the neonatologist came back to my room to tell me that the chest x-ray showed that Noelle had a spontaneous pneumothorax.  She explained that sometimes when newborns take their first breath the pressure can cause a small hole in the lung that causes some air to escape.  She said that they would put her under an oxygen tent (to provide a high oxygen environment) for 4 hours in hopes that the hole would seal itself off and the air outside her lung would go away.  Since she had to be under the oxygen tent, I wouldn’t be able to nurse her and they would start IV fluids.  After 4 hours, they would do another chest x-ray and see how she was doing.  The good news was her pulse oximetry, blood gas, and several other tests were all perfect.

Once I was discharged from labor and delivery, I was able to go see Noelle in the NICU before I went to my post-partum room.  She was under her oxygen tent, which was very hard for me to see, but she was sleeping and looked very comfortable.  I was able to spend about 20 minutes with her before they took me to my post-partum room where Jason and I tried to rest for a while.

Around 5:00 pm the neonatologist came up to my room to let us know that Noelle’s chest x-ray was much better and they were going to take her off the oxygen tent.  They would monitor her for about 2 hours off the oxygen to make sure she still looked good, and then I would be able to nurse her.  When we went to see her, she was wide awake and looked very ready to eat!  She nursed very well and didn’t have any changes on her monitors while she was nursing.

The rest of the evening and night went well.  The difficult part was that I had to go down to the NICU from my room every 3 hours to feed her and also make sure I was getting my checks and vitals from my nurse.  My nurse was great; she even came up to the NICU to take my vitals so I didn’t have to go back down.  As an added bonus, Jason got to sleep the whole night that night since there wasn’t a crying baby in our room!

The next day was a little more difficult.  We anticipated that Noelle would be discharged from the NICU the next morning and would spend the rest of the time in our post-partum room until we went home.  But her x-ray Thursday morning wasn’t quite as good as they had hoped, and since she would be in the hospital one more day anyway, they decided to keep her there.  They also wanted to do some additional testing because she appeared to still have some fluid in her lungs, which could be due to infection.  They also wanted to do a kidney ultrasound because sometimes babies that have a spontaneous pneumothorax at birth have kidney disease.  She also did not pass her hearing test, which made them more worried about kidney problems for some reason.  We found out later in the evening that her kidney ultrasound was normal.

She also had an incident that evening where she choked on some spit up and her heart rate dropped, which could have kept her in the NICU for another day, but the neonatologist looked at the monitor records and wasn’t concerned about it.  When I went up at 3am to feed her, her nurse said that she had vomited her entire last feeding and her belly was very hard and distended, so they did an x-ray and she had lots of gas in her belly.  They thought about restarting her IV fluids and putting a tube in her stomach to suck out some of the air, but thankfully they just watched her hoping it wouldn’t happen again.  Thankfully after her next feed she kept everything down and her belly stayed soft.  I made Jason come down to the NICU and hold her upright and get lots of burps out of her after that feeding!

I went down to the NICU around 9:00 am to wait for her to wake up to eat.  I was very nervous that her x-ray would still show air outside her lungs or that due to her other issues they would make her stay another day.  The neonatologist came in shortly after and said that her chest x-ray was much better and that she could go home!  They weren’t worried about her vomiting issue since it just happened once.  She also said we would see an audiologist to check on her hearing, but the doctor felt like she responded to sound appropriately for a newborn and wasn’t too worried about it.

Later in the morning we packed up all our stuff, I got discharged, and then we waited for 11:17 am so she could have her 48 hour newborn screen and we could go home!  We were so excited for her to meet Ethan since he wasn’t allowed in the NICU, and we were glad that we would all be home together as a family.  It was pretty heart breaking for Ethan to show up to the hospital in his big brother shirt and say “go see baby Noelle!” only to tell him he couldn’t see her yet.

So far, Noelle is a very good baby.  She is nursing well, pooping and peeing well, and even likes to sleep in her pack ‘n play.  She is actually sleeping better during the day than she is at night!  She has some good happy awake time during the day and also loves being snuggled.  Ethan is in love with her and wants to hold her, kiss her, and hug her a lot.  He doesn’t seem to be too jealous (yet), and is very interested in whatever she is doing.  Even though her first 2 days weren’t ideal, we are so happy to be at home and adjust to our new life together.

I also have to mention how great everyone was at the hospital: my nurses, Noelle’s nurses, the neonatogists and nurse practitioner, and my doctors who came to check on me up in the NICU.  It made a hard situation a little easier!

Noelle’s birth didn’t go quite as we had planned, but we are thrilled that God has blessed us with a sweet—and now healthy—little girl!  I was scheduled to be induced at 6:00 am on December 26th.  We had a great Christmas morning together, and Jason and I were getting packed up and ready for bed when my water broke!  We were a bit relieved, first because we could get to the hospital before the blizzard hit, and second because I really wanted her to come on her own time.  We got to the hospital around 10:00 and the doctor on call (Dr. Fried) was already there with another patient so she was able to check me in.  I was only 2 cm dilated and not having any contractions, so we decided to take some time to walk around.

After a few hours, I was still not having any contractions so we decided to start Pitocin around 2am.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, so I figured we might as well get things started.  For some reason the Pitocin made me very sleepy and I was actually able to doze off a few times between then and 7:00 am.  Around 7:00, my doctor (Dr. Ball) came to check me and I was still only 2 cm.  I wasn’t surprised, since I still wasn’t really having any contractions.  She thought that the baby was face up which may have prevented me from progressing much, so she had me lay on my side to try to get the baby to turn.  She also mentioned that since I was planning to get an epidural, I might want to go ahead and get it once my Pitocin got to a certain rate, which might relax me and get her to flip.  Between flipping from side to side and my Pitocin being pretty high at that point, I started having some pretty uncomfortable contractions and asked for my epidural around 9:00 am.

By the time the anesthesiologist came in, I was very happy to see him!  I got great relief from the epidural and once I was settled my nurse checked me and I was 8 cm.  We were quite surprised that I progressed so quickly after such a slow night.  After another 30 minutes or so I starting feeling pressure and I was 10 cm and ready to push.  Dr. Fried and Dr. Ball were both in surgery together so Dr. Fried came up to deliver me.  She is a new physician to my practice, but I had seen her for several appointments recently so I was happy to have her deliver me.  Once everything was set up, I pushed through 3 contractions and she was out!  I immediately saw that she looked just like Ethan did when he was born.  They put her on my chest, and I was able to snuggle her for a while before they examined her.

The nurse examining her noticed that Noelle was showing some signs of respiratory distress, so she called the NICU to come examine her.  The neonatologist explained that some babies have a hard time transitioning to breathing on their own, but they wanted to take her to the NICU for a chest x-ray and to put her on monitors to make sure there wasn’t anything more going on.  She was hopeful that by the time I was transferred to my post-partum room she would be breathing fine and I would be able to nurse her.

This is part 1 of Noelle’s birth story. Continue to part 2