2 Month Update

I cannot believe my little Darcy Ray is 2 months old, cue tears. I love her at this age she lets me cuddle her all day, she smells so good and she is like my own little personal hot water bottle ideal for these chillier months.

Feeding

Darcy loves milk more than I think she loves Baby Daddy and I. She drinks 7 ounces every 4-5 hours; she has set herself a very good routine. Darcy’s first milk of the day is her night feed which happens between 3:30-4:30am the next is breakfast at 8am, then lunch at 12pm, dinner at 5pm, bedtime feed at 10:30pm then the cycle starts again. Darcy is very good at telling me if she has finished, if after 5oz she is full she will push the bottle out with her tongue then shuts her mouth like a stubborn baby and won’t let the bottle back in so I know she is done. If you want to know more about Darcy’s food journey read my previous blog post.

Sleeping

I am not going to brag but I think I have the best baby in the world, okay so I did brag! Darcy goes to bed after her bedtime feed at 10:30pm and sleeps until her night feed between 3:30-4:30am goes back to sleep until 6-7am I told you I had the best baby. Before Darcy graced us with her presence every single person told me to be prepared with how tired we were going to feel but in reality Baby Daddy and I are doing okay (touch wood) and this is all down to how Darcy sleeps at night. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t feel tired by mid-day as I am not used to going to bed at 11am and waking up at 6am but in time I am sure I will feel more awake. When Darcy was only days old she started sucking the back of her hand or her thumb we didn’t want her to get into this habit as it would be a lot harder to stop her from sucking her thumb than it would be to take away a dummy. We only give her the dummy when she is going to sleep as it really calms her down she soon spits it out once she is asleep, the challenge is to not give her the dummy when she is just being groggy.

Likes & Dislikes

Without a doubt Darcy’s favourite thing in her little world is bath time she splashes and smiles, it’s lovely to see. As much as bath time is her favourite thing getting out of the bath is her least favourite thing she screams the house down when we get her out for about 10 minutes. I love that she is a water baby just like Daddy and we cannot wait to take her swimming it is going to blow her tiny mind. Darcy has grown very fond of the Teletubbies she watches them in awe at 7 in the morning I think they may steal her first giggle from me. Other than getting out of the bath another thing that always makes Darcy groan is pausing feeding to burp she is one greedy baby who loves her milk.

 

Personality

For the few weeks of her life I told myself all those gas smiles were real smiles but lets face it they were not but then one day while we were singing there it was her first real smile! It made my heart explode, forget the seven wonders her little smile is my favourite thing to see in the whole wide world. Darcy has a funny little personality she loves being sung and talked to loves to stick her tongue out at you. Darcy gets daily facetimes with Nana, Pop and Auntie Abbi and does not take her eyes off of them the whole time they are talking to her. I love seeing how much she loves them and they love her.  

Achievements      

Already in her little life Darcy has achieved loads she can hold her head up not the whole time she has big cheeks they must get heavy. She has no problem with her eyes she loves watching the television, looking out the window and following you around the room. From day 1 Darcy has had the strongest grip, the other day she actually left nail marks in my hand whilst squeezing out a number 2. I cannot wait to see the big milestones that month three has to offer.

Is breast best?

Every doctor and midwife you see along the journey asks the big question “are you going to breastfeed your baby?” The amount of pressure put on an expected mother about breastfeeding in my opinion ridiculous. I knew I wanted to attempt breastfeeding but I wasn’t going to allow someone to make me feel guilty about thinking about bottle-feeding either.

After Baby Daddy and I discussed feeding we decided to try breast-feeding, Darcy took to the breast really quickly; this may have something to do with her being a heffalump, it was very reassuring. A few weeks before Darcy was born I started to leak so I knew that Darcy was getting something when she was feeding. The first couple of days were going really well Darcy was feeding every 3-4 hours for 20-30 minutes, I was exhausted for these few days as I was only sleeping for about 2.5 hours before she wanted more. 

 

On our day 3 check with the midwife she noticed that Darcy was slightly, shall we say? “sun kissed”. Darcy had jaundice which isn’t worrying unless she gets to day 10 and still is showing signs, the midwife did explain it is very common and larger babies find it slightly harder to break it down. There are a few things that can help breakdown jaundice one of these being vitamin D, otherwise known as sunlight but seeing as Darcy arrived in the cold, cloudy months of December there was a lack of sunlight. The other way to help breakdown jaundice is passing urine as this gets rid of all the stuff your body doesn’t want, to make a baby pass urine they have to feed, so the midwife suggested that we definitely feed Darcy every 3 hours instead of letting her get to 4. This caused quite a lot of stress for me as I felt a lot of pressure to make sure Darcy fed every 3 hours, this meant sometimes I had to wake her up which she did not appreciate and most of the time she was falling asleep on the breast. To help make sure Darcy was getting enough milk the midwife lent us a breast pump at first I was slightly nervous about using it but once you do it for the first time you realise it feels just like the baby. They gave us a tiny cup to use to feed Darcy, as they do not suggest using a bottle, this felt very unnatural and was actually really difficult to use and more of the milk was running down her chin than going in her mouth.

 

I was managing to pump 3 ounces in 20 minutes per breast which by the midwifes opinion was impressive, it was very reassuring as it meant that I knew Darcy was getting roughly the same amount when feeding. When Darcy was a week old she started to latch on and off the breast this caused very sore nipples. Midwifes and Doctors saying breast-feeding doesn’t hurt in my opinion once the baby is latched on it doesn’t hurt, what does hurt is the actual nipple itself. Due to Darcy latching on and off my nipple they started to crack and bleed and I know I have just gone through labour but sore cracked nipples takes 2^nd place on the pain scale. Because my nipples kept leaking it meant that they never had time to dry and heal so they were constantly sore and bloody. Every time Darcy was feeding I would flinch due to the pain, which caused her to get tense, this was the first step into considering bottle-feeding. 

 

By day 10 my nipples could not handle it anymore they were so sore! I decided to keep using the pump as my nipples could handle it and feed Darcy my breast milk direct from a bottle. Thankfully again Darcy took to the bottle really well and by using the bottle we knew she was definitely drinking 3-4 ounces instead of guessing when she was feeding from the breast. They say the more you pump the more milk you produce for me this was the opposite the more I pumped the less milk I produced, this became tricky as Darcy was needing minimum 3 ounces every 3-4 hours and I just wasn’t producing enough plus my nipples still were not healing. After a long discussion we decided to move Darcy to formula milk, I couldn’t keep up with her needs and my nipples were crying for me to stop. Due to Darcy enjoying her food just like her father she unsurprisingly took to formula milk very well. Now at 7 weeks Darcy drinks 6-7 ounces every 5 hours and is in a very regular routine.

Positives:

1. Protects your baby from diseases 

2. You build a bond with your baby

3. Its free!

4. No prepping needed you just need to shall we say whip it out

Negatives:

1. You don't know how much your baby is drinking

2. Daddy doesn't get as much intimate time

3. Sore nipples!

4. Due to the position Darcy and I breastfed (lying down) it was hard to be out of the house for the first few weeks.