Six Weeks with Shiloh

Shiloh turned six weeks old last Thursday! Hard to believe but it has been six weeks since we welcomed our sweet Shiloh! What a busy six weeks it has been! 

























First some updates and developments on sweet Shiloh…

• She grew out of her newborn clothes several weeks ago and is in 3 month clothes filling them out nicely. Very hard for mommy to fold up and put the newborn clothes away :(
• No official stats from the doctor (she goes in about a week or so) but we believe she is right around 10 lbs based off of our very accurate weighing using Wii Fit. 
• She smiled for the first time just after five weeks and is smiling more and more! Probably the best fuel for a sleep deprived mommy! She smiled the other day for Peyton and it was great to see Peyton's excitement over it. 
• She is following Baby Wise pretty well and we are on a pretty consistent eat, play, sleep schedule during the day with her eating every three hours. Her "play" time is getting longer and she is more alert during the day. She is in the more alert stage of development and is watching people, looking around more and taking everything in. 
• She is sleeping from 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM and then again until 7:00 AM consistently which has been great! She started this schedule around four weeks on her own and it is working great!
• Shiloh is a very gassy and fussy baby. During the day you can tell she is gassy and she recently started spitting up and having bad hiccups but at night it is rough. We started giving her gas drops before her late afternoon feeding which helps get everything to start passing but she is still fussy. I have cut out dairy, have only a cup of half caffeinated coffee a day and cut out most other foods and it doesn't help, she is just a gassy baby. We are just waiting for time to pass and for this phase to pass. But in the meantime we have a very fussy baby from 7-10 PM. If she hasn't settled by 10 PM she is up pretty much all night and miserable which has been rough. Thankfully we have only had three or four of those nights. I am not sure if this fussy/witching hour, is worse than the other two kids because looking back they were fussy during those times but it feels worse only because when you have two other ones you are so much more exhausted.
• Thankfully as fussy as she can be from 7-10 PM she is super happy and easy going during the day. She follows her schedule pretty easily and will fall asleep relatively easily. She fell asleep on her play mat the other day! She is overall a happy baby. It will be interesting to see her personality develop in these coming weeks once we are out of the five-six week fussy stage.

Check out her cute leg warmers! So much fun!

• She has only slept in her crib (and her mattress is raised at an angle) once and sleeps instead in her rock and play bassinet thing that keeps her at angle. She falls asleep pretty easily after you swaddle her on her own but with her reflux and gas pains she likes the angle of the bassinet. Occasionally we still have time to get to have cuddles and she sleeps on mommy! 

• Shiloh loves her pacifier….just like her sister….and uses it often!
• Shiloh has taken a bottle of breast milk a couple of times and did great, we are trying to be better about giving her a daily bottle (but I can't find the time to pump) so we don't have any issues later on and so everyone can be involved in feeding her

• She is starting to "coo" and grunt back to you and in response to you which is always such a sweet sound
• Shiloh is such a loud sleeper! She grunts and moans and stretches so much in her sleep! I keep thinking she is awake and when I check on her she is sound asleep but just making noises. I thought Peyton grunted a bunch but Shiloh has her beat. She is so loud! She also loves to stretch and stretch when she wakes up….it is very amusing. 

As for me and my recovery, it has gone really well when I consider that this was my third c-section and I had two other kids to care for even if I had the best of intentions to rest and take it easy. I do feel like my incision is much more tender than it was the other two times which is different. I do feel better physically than I did with Graham probably because I was much more intentional about taking it easy and letting things go. Thankfully at six weeks I am physically able to do everything around the house in regards to house work, taking care of kids and am up and moving easily. I am exercising some by walking and doing light upper body workouts. I tried some more cardio based/plyometric/leg workouts and quickly realized it would be too much for me and so as much as I would like to do leg workouts and more intense cardio, I know it is best in the long run for me to stop and be slow in resuming exercise. And I am looking forward to being in Washington where we can do more walks/hikes! Thankfully I have lost a good amount of the pregnancy weight already which I very much attribute to me gaining much less weight this pregnancy (better food choices and chasing other kids around), breast feeding, making deliberate food choices post pregnancy and caring for the big kids!

All dressed for the day!

As for adjusting to having three kids…it has been a little overwhelming at times…sometimes easier than I expected and then often times harder. Mostly what has helped is living in the moment, focusing on the current day and not getting overwhelmed or consumed about future events or how far we have to go to get back to "normal." I am finding the days are flying by and often times I have no idea where the time went. Just meeting everyone's basic needs of getting clothed, fed, diapers changed/help on the potty, naps, referring playtime…fills my day. I feel like I go from one kid to the next meeting a need and then continue to cycle through. It is busy! I have also been much more overwhelmed than I thought I would about going places with her and with all three kids, even to a friends house and just the change in adjusting back to having a baby to care for instead of just two independent kids has been an adjustment. But after six weeks I feel like we are finding more of a grove and things do get easier each and every day. Our house isn't completely trashed although we did have to have a marathon laundry day of ten loads over the weekend and I am starting to make dinners at times (so thankful for our freezer meal stash) and we are getting back into a groove….we still have a long way to go though! But I am thankful for the ability to just sit back and enjoy this moment and this day and know that it will too quickly pass. 

Other big news for Shiloh was the arrival of her passport and other documents she needed to leave and enter Saudi! It was a pretty intensive process of getting a declaration of birth, then a Saudi birth certificate and then a translated birth certificate and then the passport and then applying for an iqama (residency visa) and then applying for a multiple entry/exit visa BUT six weeks later it all arrived and she is ready to travel! Such a huge praise that it all worked out and came in time for our flight back to the States in just a couple of weeks!

Shiloh has her passport and is ready to travel!

I will say that one of the biggest stresses and hardest things to not be in the moment about is our flight back to Washington in a couple of weeks. I have no idea why but the idea of flying with Shiloh overwhelms me so much! I would fly anywhere in the world by myself with the two older kids but the addition of a baby freaks me out even knowing that John will be with me. Part of it I think is that I have never flown with a lap child. And just the whole vacation/leaving comfort of home with a baby overwhelms me. I think I worry about it being hard like it was when we flew with Graham at ten weeks and moved here, although the flight wasn't hard the transition to being here was hard BUT I take deep breathes and remind myself that this is a vacation and we are not moving across the world with a ten week old baby like with Graham…this is a very different situation!

Our sweet Shiloh

It will be interesting for sure to see what these next six weeks bring and to watch Shiloh grow and develop! We will be in Washington for most of it and we are all looking forward to being able to go for walks and runs…..we will be ordering a new running stroller…a BOB….and it will be waiting for me when we get to Washington, hikes, the farmers market and enjoying beautiful weather and family time with our sweet little girl!