[4 weeks]

I can’t believe my baby is a month old! It went so fast! 11 more of these and she’ll be a year old! Gah!

Not a great shot. I’m going to do another "shoot" tomorrow, this was just kind of a practice run. I’d much rather have natural light.

Adelaide has grown and changed so much in the last week it’s extraordinary. She has started cooing and "talking" a lot. She tries to sit up ALL the time. I’ve never seen a baby her age try to hard and get so mad about not being able to. A couple of times in the last week she has actually FINISHED nursing a couple of times and by that I mean she ended a nursing session by unlatching and wanting to sit up and look around. In the past she has always nursed until she fell asleep or I had to unlatch her to go do something. She’ll sit in her swing for 5-10 minutes now without fussing and a couple of times has even fallen asleep (HUGE because she’s only ever fallen asleep nursing or in her car seat). Today she finally took a pacifier for the first time. I started trying a week ago just so I could have 5 minutes to make lunch or whatever here and there and she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. But today she finally showed some interest, she has kind of a hard time with it because her tongue pushes it out but once she gets it she’ll suck for a while. Once today she sucked until it fell out and then she was unhappy, and the other time I tried it today she fell asleep. 

I always swore I’d never use a pacifier, but I didn’t anticipate a baby who will literally comfort nurse ALL day unless she’s sleeping. I don’t want it to replace feedings or even 90% of her comfort nursing, but seriously, I need a few minutes each day where there isn’t someone attached to my nipple. She also can’t/won’t suck her thumb or fingers even though I’ve tried to encourage her to so a paci it is. I definitely plan on taking it away by 6-8 months at the latest so she doesn’t form a huge attachment to it.

I’m starting to learn her routine which is helping a lot. I know now that starting at about 6-6:30 she just wants to eat, comfort nurse, and sleep against me. She’ll fall asleep around 8ish for a couple of hours, and then she wakes up and eats a bit and we go to bed.

I’m going to work for a while tomorrow. We have a huge rush because of the holidays and a ton of people on a wait list so I decided to go do a few dogs this week. We checked last night to make sure Adelaide will take a bottle of breast milk and she totally did just fine. 
 
 
 I’m so nervous about leaving her! I’ll be gone for like 2-4 hours…I’m going to try to come back at one point to nurse her if I can. I can’t imagine how much more nervous I’d be if I was leaving her with anyone but Jonathan.

Ok, I have to get us ready for bed. I’m going to try to go to a new mom’s group tomorrow but it means I need to get to bed earlier than normal.