week two

Lydia turned two-weeks old yesterday. Week two was a doozy of a week.

To celebrate the two week mark, I got to drive to PDO to pick up Eden (she started screaming with excitement and running around when I told her in the morning). Graham met us at PDO to stay with Lydia in the parking lot while I went in to get E, and then we all went to Whole Foods to get ice cream after E requested a family outing. It felt so nice to be out of the house all together and to actually drive like a normal person. We hung out outside on the patio at Whole Foods since we still aren't taking Lydia places around lots of people. Lydia also celebrated being two weeks old by having her umbilical cord fall off while we were doing a diaper change in the Whole Foods parking lot.

The previous part of week two was hard. Thankfully, it was made a lot easier by having Eden's CC here all week. Eden was able to go back to PDO for the week and then spent the afternoons playing around town with CC. Lydia decided to go through a 48-hour period where she would hardly wake up to eat. I spent many two-hour sessions just trying everything I could think of to get her to wake and nurse. It was hard, and I was worried. I was also thinking of all of the grading that I needed to be doing at the same time. Thankfully, after two days she started to wake more on her own and got back to her 2-3 hour nursing routine. We also have a new sleeper-incline chair that Lydia's granddaddy picked up for her, so the nighttime sleeping has been going better as well.

At our second doctor's check-up on Monday, we learned Lydia had gained weight over the week and is now up to 5 lbs 5 oz - closing in on her birth weight of 5 lbs 6.6 oz! I was so relieved given the difficulty of nursing over the week. She is definitely longer than E was at this stage and is pushing on any premie outfits that have pants. We may be moving on to newborn clothes sooner than expected.

Over the weekend, I finally got all of the projects and exams graded for the semester and turned in final grades on Sunday. This week, E is going to PDO, and we are starting to figure out our new normal. We can already tell a difference in Eden as she sees me able to do more. More posts to come with memories of the past few weeks.

- ashley