One month ago I published my post detailing my 39th week of pregnancy and lamenting that I would surely see forty weeks pregnant for the first time, unless something drastic happened later that day.

That drastic something did happen at approximately 8:50 p.m. with my water breaking while eating chocolate chip cookies and watching Princess Mononoke with the kids.

Flannery was born two hours and fourteen minutes later.

Now she is one month old.

I have her birth story typed up but unedited and unpublished (it’s far too long) as Miss Flansie has been somewhat demanding (as is her prerogative as a newborn.)

No, Flannery has had a personal issue with sleeping during daylight hours. If the sun was up, her eyes were open. Thankfully this meant that if it was night, her eyes were shut. She slept beautifully at night–too well, actually–sometimes snoozing for seven or eight hours. Attempts to wake and feed her were useless.

Now, I have written in many one-month-updates that a baby was fussy, or out of their “sleepy-newborn-phase”, or that they had a particular time of day where they would not sleep. This wasn’t quite like that. Flannery was awake all day. She’d start in the morning before I’d had coffee, so I knew that wasn’t a problem. She was just busy taking life in, I suppose. Who has time for sleep when there’s a whole new world to see? (Even if it is all a bit blurry.)

The funniest thing, though, was that during these sleepless days, she would not cry if I was holding her. She would cry if I tried to put her down to sleep, and if I held her she would still not sleep, but she wouldn’t cry. She would just look around with her great big googly eyes and be awake.

But here we are at one month, and for the past week she seems to have made her peace with the sun and has consented to nap during the day. Sometimes. And she has traded her daytime sleep for her nighttime sleep, sticking to 3-4 hour cycles rather than 7-8 overnight. So we’re essentially back at a somewhat “normal” newborn M.O., which is lovely.

She is one Blondie Blonde, a fact that surprised us so when we first saw her! Her little eyelashes are so fair you can barely tell they’re there. Her eyes are still quite blue at the present, something which (I have said before and will say again) means nothing yet, but I record such things in case I want to refer to them later.

She was 7 lbs 4 oz at birth, which was something considering she was (supposedly) two weeks “older” than the other kids. We are still assuming that dates were off, and we weren’t quite as far along as we thought. My doctor mentioned when she was born that the amount of vernix she had indicated to him that she was probably earlier than practically 40 weeks. (She missed her due date by fifty-six minutes.)

She was slow gaining weight in the first couple of weeks. I don’t know how much of her weird sleep habits were due to it (in the case of daytime sleep or lack thereof) or exacerbated it (in the case of too much nighttime sleep). Honestly, the two considered jointly say to me that neither case is true, and she was just following her own curve. And really, with her too-beautiful night sleep, as well as all evidence in her diapers and her demeanor, she gave absolutely no indication that she was not getting everything she needed. If I hadn’t had to go to the doctor and weigh her constantly I wouldn’t have noticed anything (and I would have been a lot less worried.)

At 12 days she was gaining enough to be excused from further extra weigh-ins. Since then she has become adept at busting through the bottom of her swaddles (long leggies) and had to size up on diapers, so I think we are doing just fine.

Also, speaking of diapers, she is a somewhat stealthy poop-ambusher. I don’t think I’ve ever been pooped on so many times by a newborn. Not even as a rookie first-timer!

She is a good nurser. She likes to be double swaddled–tightly. Her sleep is better when she’s swaddled like that. She likes MAM pacifiers, not the super cute natural rubber ones I used for Beatrice and Aurick. She has started to smile and to look towards sounds. She enjoys looking at lights and bright patterns.

Everyone loves her, but Beatrice is the most smitten. She loves to hold Flannery, and she does a good job, too, considering her age.

We call her Flansie, sometimes, but Flannery most of the time, and we sing “Flannery, Flannery, Flan-ner-y” to the jingle of those Liberty Mutual commercials. She seems OK with this habit.

I feel like we have lived a lifetime in the past month. Who knows what the next month will bring?

other updates
ephraim + clive + anselm + elvie + eldore + beatrice + aurick