Newborn Pictures

They took some pictures of Gracie in the hospital. I just realized that I could save them to my computer.
Here they are!

Gracie snuggles

Again, Gracie is so completely our daughter. She loves to snuggle. And while I am not very surprised that she likes to cuddle, as both her parents love a good snuggle, I still melt every time that she whines just because she wants to be loved on.

One day I had put her in the baby swing, which she also seems to enjoy, and she started to get whiney. She had a clean diaper, a full belly, and seemed comfortable enough. I picked her up, she smelled me a bit and nestled into my arms, gave me a big smile and then just laid contentedly in my arms.

Words cannot express how much I love this little girl. She is truly an angel, and she reminds me of that every day. I am so grateful that I get to be her mom.

100 points goes to Gracie Faye de Jong for being the most absolutely, undeniably perfect baby.

Gracie smiles

Gracie has the best smile! I haven't been able to catch a picture of her yet, but I will as I think I've figured out that she almost always smiles right after she eats. She gives me a big grin, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my 27 years of life.

Gracie is most definitely Skylar's and my daughter, as she is the only baby I have ever known or even heard of who actually laughs in her sleep. As I an often known for my laugh, Gracie must have learned it while in the womb. It's adorable. Again, I wish I had a video of it, but that one I can't predict as well.

Perfect baby, 10 more points given.

Gracie sleeps

At two and a half weeks, I think I probably can't complain much about our sleeping situation. Gracie wakes up probably only twice a night, and we're up for about 30 minutes to 1 hour each time she wakes. So all in all, I'm only missing two hours of sleep at night, then we make up for it together during the day (sometimes).

Of course, when I'm actually in the middle of feeding Gracie at 4:00 am, and she's fussing for 5 or 10 minutes, I feel like we've been up all night and I catch myself feeling bad for myself and a little frustrated that she won't just close her eyes and zip it (rude, I know). So I mostly have to write this to remind myself that Gracie is still the perfect baby, and being up for a little time to give her some food and love is really the least I can do to reward her.

Hurray for the perfect baby. 5 points given.

Gracie eats

When we were in the hospital and I only had colostrum, Gracie had a hard time eating. While in the belly, she developed a habit of sucking on her tongue, which prevented her from latching on correctly and persuading the food to come out of mommy. She also bites, and she bites hard.

We had to see the lactation specialist a coupe times and she taught us how we can train our baby to suck correctly by having her suck on our finger and pushing her tongue down when she sucked badly, and giving her a reward when she sucked correctly. Since most of the time she was not sucking right, she wasn't getting much food from me, so the lactation specialist set up an eating plan that I had to try to breastfeed for at least 15 minutes, then pump for 15 minutes, then feed her from a bottle whatever I pumped, plus formula, if I didn't pump enough. The whole ordeal actually took a lot longer than it sounds, and by the time I was done feeding her, it'd be time to start over again almost right when I was finished. Needless to say, I was a very frustrated new mommy.

The good news though is that my milk did start flowing in an abundant supply. Gracie still bites, but she's learned to suck and definitely gets her fill, we can tell from all of her lovely yellow poops that she's practically floating in.

I'm still trying to figure out how to teach her not to bite me, I'm really just hoping that she quits before she gets any teeth, otherwise we'll probably have to stop the nursing sooner than I would like to.

All in all though, Gracie is a great eater. Two more points toward the perfect baby.

Gracie poops

My little Gracie has very loose bowels, she also seems to have a great sense of humor. Almost never fails, at least once a day, she waits for her diaper to be off before she lets the poop loose and gets it all over her changing pad, and her mom or dad. We've also discovered that she likes to poop after she eats. Skylar held her over the toilet one day after her feeding, and just as we predicted, she pooped. So, she's already practically potty trained! (jk)

Ever since my milk came in, and Gracie started to eat well, I don't think I've ever changed a diaper that was just wet, they're always poopy.

I'm grateful that Gracie doesn't have problems with her bowel movements, I think it makes her a more content baby.

Go Gracie! One more point towards you being the perfect baby!!