Mariko is five weeks old today. I can't believe it. It has gone by so fast! On Wednesday we did a one month photo shoot including picking out what our monthly photo will be - I bought the month stickers and we have white onesies and we are sitting her next to this small stuffed monkey. I also wanted to put her next to the giant monkey but that didn't work out quite as planned. Anyway, it will be fun to see how she grows each month. Right now she's not much bigger than the monkey!
What a five weeks it has been!
The NICU, home, me with mastitis, the issues with breast feeding and finally giving up, pumping and bottle feeding all the time (thank goodness Toshi can help! I think this will spoil me assuming that the next time around that breast feeding works), then I got thrush. Thank goodness Mariko didn't get it but I took her to the doctor just to be sure. That was Monday of last week - the only week since we brought her home that we weren't supposed to need to go to the doctor. However, they did weigh her and she's at 6lbs 6oz so she's still gaining weight like a champ! On Tuesday we have her one month visit (a bit late since we had been the first three weeks we brought her home and they told us we could wait another week). Tuesday, also, Toshi's mom comes to visit for two weeks. I know that Toshi is excited to have her here and it will be nice to have Mariko visit with her Obaasama (spelling?). She'll be here just under two weeks and then we'll have another break before Jeffrey and possibly Lindsay come to visit.
We have gotten in to a pretty good rhythm and Mariko is starting to be awake more now which is great - not a lot but she usually has one or two good chunks of awake time during the day. She often still falls asleep right after eating but I think that preemies tend to sleep even more than full-term newborns and she's eating and gaining so I'm not worried (although I'm still not used to having her go 4 hours without eating!) She's been letting us sleep at night - up to four hours usually once or twice - so that's good. Toshi and I take turns. He usually does feedings until 2am and then I take over. We have her in her room (since we had a hard time sleeping with her in our room) and at 2 am the monitor gets passed off to me. The hard thing is getting up to pump once in the night. I either end up getting once when Toshi gets up to feed her or I'm up for twice as long when I get up to feed her so I can feed her and pump. Haven't quite figured that out yet and I'm not yet comfortable going more than 5 hours without pumping. I hope that at some point (when she's sleeping longer) that I can go longer too and not need to get up the extra time.
I guess that's about all. It's been an interesting 4 weeks since we brought her home. I can't believe it's already been that long! Also, it is now only 3.5 months until we move home. It's getting closer and I can't wait!
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