Sept. 30, 2007 Six weeks old

She's six weeks tomorrow (Monday) and weighs nine pounds. She eats like crazy!haha. I'm having issues breastfeeding recently. My nipples are SOOOO painful that I had to pump and feed Isabella from the bottle. I give her a supplement of formula too, so she's used to the bottle. This happened to me in the beginning and then a couple of weeks ago, but not both breasts at the same time. I'm going to call the hospital that I delivered at and ask to speak with a lactation consultants. I hoping someone can observe me breastfeeding to see where I'm going wrong and if there's nothing wrong with the way I do it, then I'll probably have to get checked out by a doc and have the baby checked too. Sometimes the mom can have mastisis or the baby can have thrust. Hopefully, it's just a matter of positioning and it can be corrected. I know that Isabella is aggressive when she latches on and she likes to yank or pull back on my nipple. It kills!

Kieran and I are loving being parents. It was overwhelming in the beginning, but now we're getting more comfortable with everything. I'm not as sleep deprived as I was at the start, but I'm still tired and drained. Isabella usually sleeps 2 three hour periods in the early morning hours, but two days ago she slept right through the night!!!!! She slept seven hours straight and we were thrilled. It felt great to get sleep, although I did wake up to pump. We had hoped she would do it again last night, but she woke up after 4.5 hours..not that bad, but it's still broken sleep.

I enjoy staying at home with her. It's nice to get out of the house and go for a walk. I definitely have to get out or else I'll go crazy..haha. I have several friends who'll go for walks with me, so it's nice. Kieran enjoys his time with her when he gets home and on the weekends he helps out a lot. He'll take over a feeding at night so I can get sleep, which is so needed.

Well, parenthood is definitely a big change, but it's worth it. Isabella is so cute and we love her to pieces. She's been smiling a lot for the last few weeks or so and now she's holding up her head. She can recognize us and she'll smile so big when she sees us. She likes to kick and fling her arms everywhere. She also makes little cooing sounds and I taught her how to stick out her little itsy bitsy tongue!haha. It's too funny!