November 22nd, 2009: 2 weeks down!!

Scarlett is 2 weeks old today! She had a busy week. Simon was in town Monday - Friday and Paul's sister, Trish, got here on Thursday night and left this morning. Yesterday we made the trip to Baltimore and Scarlett met her great grandmother, Aunts Cathy and Bonnie, and her cousins Ashley, Dan, and Michelle. Before Saturday, Scarlett's longest drive was about 10 miles, and the longest she had been out of the house was about an hour when we went to her first checkup. Saturday, we embarked on a 150 mile round trip lasting more than 8 hours. Scarlett spent most of her time in a deep sleep. I guess she figured her job was to simply be quite and look cute. She fussed a couple of times, but on both occasions she fed for 10 minutes and passed out. Scarlett has now been to two restaurants -- Zaytinya and Crush. We've gone during off hours so they were pretty empty and she stayed in her Ergo Baby carrier to keep her a bit more protected. My friend Cindy was in town from Orlando this week and also came by to see her on Thursday.

Scarlett's schedule is definitely unpredictable at this point. A few nights this week she stayed up most of the night until, for example, 7 AM, and then slept until 10 or 1130. A few other nights she slept most of the night except for a feeding break or two in between 4 hour naps. Yesterday she slept most of the day despite our best efforts to keep her up. We were sure that she would be up all night as a result. So sure that Paul stayed upstairs so that he would be able to get some sleep and get up in time to leave at 6:45 AM to take Trish to the airport. I stayed in the living room with Scarlett but she ended up sleeping almost all night! She woke up at 1245 (until 1:45), 245 (until 3:30), and finally around 5:30 AM to feed. Paul came down around 6:30 and took her with him to the airport and took the next shift while I went upstairs to sleep. I didn't get up until 11:30 AM but apparently Scarlett was up the whole time! She basically hasn't been to sleep for more than a half an hour since.

As you can see, we are definitely at the mercy of Scarlett's schedule for the day and it is very difficult to plan around it. Yesterday I was begging her to eat and today I've been begging her to finally be full. It has been very helpful for Paul and I to be able to tag team. I can take the night shift when he has meetings or appointments the next day and he gives me a break to get some sleep when I start getting frazzled.

Other than visitors and sleeping schedules, the big thing this week was beef jerky watch 2009... We were waiting for her umbilical cord to fall off! They say 7-10 days and at day 10 it was still hanging on. We were very anxious for it to fall off. In addition to not being very pleasant to look at, they are just a pain to work around. You have to be careful not to hit them during dressing and diaper changes. During one of Scarlett's fits on Friday night, she decided to pull on it. That resulted in it swelling and bleeding and me being unable to look at it. Finally, on Saturday Paul and Trish were changing her diaper and there was no beef jerky! Trish finally found it in the foot of her outfit (yuck). It appears that she will have an innie! I'm still a little grossed out by her belly because there is some rawness and a little blood but it is definitely getting better. I know it doesn't hurt her but since it looks like it does, I can't look at it!

Scarlett has reached a few milestones and has passed many tests over the two weeks- latching and eating, hearing, 2 oz weight gain 2 days after weighing in at 6lb 13oz, ability to follow movement with her eyes, quickly passing her meconium, umbilical cord falling off... so now we are anxiously awaiting the results of her next test- consistent weight gain. She has her 2 week checkup tomorrow (Monday), and our original goal was for her to weigh 7lb 8 oz (1oz/day wt gain and she was 6-15 on Saturday Nov 14th). Now we are just hoping for half of that gain! She seems to have a high metabolism, and can eat half the day away without appearing to put on weight. We are a little nervous about tomorrow's weigh-in because we want her to be healthy, and REALLY do not want to supplement, or be forced to wake up every 2 hrs to feed! We enjoy our stretch of sleep at night (or early morning :). We will spend Sunday plumping her up as much as possible and hope for a great result. Cross your fingers for her to weigh 7lb 8 oz or at least 7-4!!!