3 Weeks!

I know that doesn’t sound very old but my baby girl is growing so fast. The day after her one week birthday I noticed all of her features were bigger! Her little tiny nose (still little and tiny) was bigger! Her tiny mouth and tiny ears (still little and tiny) were bigger too! We went to see the Pediatrician for her 2 week appointment and I was sure she was either going to be back to her birth weight or heavier. Either way that is good news, but also sad…babies don’t stay babies long enough! She was heavier than her birth weight – 5lbs. 14oz. Two ounces heavier than at birth. She also grew an inch and a half! She is now 19 inches long! I am sure she is over 6lbs. now. STOP GROWING!

She has pretty much slept through the night for three nights, two of those nights were in a row. Some people think we should be waking her up to feed her if she doesn’t wake us up but, the pediatrician said that wasn’t necessary at night…during the day, yes, we need to wake her up at LEAST every 5 hours, but at night, it’s ok. During the day though, she is pretty consistently hungry every 2 and a half to three hours.

She makes the funniest faces. Usually while she is falling asleep. She rolls her eyes back in her head and it freaks us out. She smiles (involuntarily still) and one time even seemed to laugh in her sleep. She makes her mouth into a tight tiny pucker but, her mouth is still barely open. It is hilarious.

When she is wakeful she looks around so curious. And sometimes she just stares and stares. There are times when we are totally baffled as to what she is looking at. I like to think that she can see angels and they are watching over her and amusing her as she adjusts to earth life.

Now, this is a catch up on posting and especially posting pictures. I still need to download the MOST recent pictures but, here are a bunch. Stay tuned for more. I promise to be better about posting more consistently.

This is the day we brought her home from the hospital. She's trying out her first set of wheels. Doesn't she look cozy!
This is Marlayna trying out her next set of wheels. Well, this is the bassinet/baby bed in our room. It only has wheels so that it is easy to move...not really for transportation purposes. Again, doesn't she look so cozy! Don't worry, she doesn't sleep with all these blankets in her bed.
This is her first bath (sponge bath). Nathan is such a great dad! The nasty part of her belly button fell off last Sunday so, now we give her baby baths. Nathan gave her, her first baby bath too (pictures will be posted in the near future). We have to take turns giving her a bath. She gets a bath everyday, because nobody likes a dirty baby.

Getting dressed.


Clean mommy and clean baby!







This is Mara's first bottle. It's still produced by Mommy but, this time fed from Daddy.

This one is kinda hard to see...but so cute!
Sometimes she holds onto her pacifier. She doesn't know that's what she is doing...she doesn't even know that she has hands yet, let alone how to work them but, it's so cute!

Mara had jaundice or was jaundice (not sure how to say that properly) so we had to put her under special lights. Besides actually giving labor to her, it was the hardest thing we have gone through with her, so far.

Praxair dropped the special light box off at our house around 9:30pm on the 24th of April. Late huh! I fed her and we got her into the box around 10pm. We had to keep her under the lights for 2 and a half hours out of ever 3 hours, so pretty much we just had to keep her in the box all the time and only take her out to feed her. It was kind of a nightmare. It's not like we could just throw her in there and then go to bed. We had to make sure the drape stayed over her face and make sure she didn't look at the lights. We were also instructed to not look at the lights, which was very hard.

Needless to say, Mara did not like being in the box. It had a very thin pad in the bottom of it and it was otherwise an over sized industrial plastic suitcase. She wiggled and squirmed and cried for over an hour before she kinda calmed down and went to sleep. To keep her calm we took turns holding both of her hands, the only comforting touch we could offer her. Even then she wasn't restful and would cry and fuss pretty often. Everytime we took her out to feed her, she was so content and then when we put her back it took awhile to calm her down again.

Also, she could only have a diaper on so we had a space heater on to keep her warm which made us completely HOT!

O, I forgot to mention that for the first hour we had to take her temperature every 15 minutes to make sure she was okay under the lights. That was hard too. With a squirming baby it's hard to take an armpit temperature. If we kept her out of the box for more than 45 mintues we had to repeat that hour of checking her temperature every 15 minutes again.

We stayed up all night in a HOT room with an unhappy baby. It was hard...but, we can do hard things.

The next morning we took Mara back to the hospital and repeated the same lab test we had done the three previous days. The nurse stabs her heal and drips her blood into a test tube. We got her back home and put her back into the light box, took her temperature every 15 minutes for an hour. By this time she was sleeping better in the box. We could at least just sit next to her and read a book and if her arms moved the draper we could just fix it and go back to reading. We were very tired though.

Around 3:00pm the peditrician office called and let us know that her lab results were within the safe range for us to stop administering the lights. We were so releived we didn't have to stay up with her another night. That was our greatest fear at that point, but she didn't even have to be in there for 24 hours. What a blessing! Here are some pictures.

Totally upset.
More calm.
Sleeping...kind of.
DON'T LOOK AT THE LIGHTS!!!!

So, cute! She's holding her binky!
Unky Skunky came in to keep mom and dad company for an hour or so in the middle of the night. He finishes work around 1am. And he has a really hard time looking normal in pictures.
That's it for the Biliruben ligths.

Here is a picture of the first time Grandpa Alger held Mara. He came to visit us both nights we were in the hospital but, I think he didn't want to take time away from others holding her.

What a proud Grandpa.

Bouncy Chair! I wish they made adult sized bouncy chairs!

She often only opens one eyes and looks around.

Mara and daddy laying on the bed.

The many faces of Mara.

Sleeping with her tonge poking out. Her cousin Sam did this a lot when he was a baby. Cute!