One Week

We started my 40th week of pregnancy with some light contractions that I didn't think would lead to anything. We took the 40 weeks picture thinking I'd be writing the post to go with it by the end of the week. However, Pumpkin had other plans. Our sweet Emerson Jane joined us the next morning.

Our first week was both magical and a little rough. It was a little like a vacation in that it wasn't reality, no work schedule... no schedule at all, nothing to do but just soak up our new little blessing and learn our way around being parents.

The magical part was of course our sweet Emerson and our new roles as parents. I loved seeing Blake as a daddy and how great he is with Emerson. He was such an incredible support through all that our first week threw at us. We loved having the week with just the three of us (as hard as that was sometimes) to get to know Emerson and to work together to meet her needs.

The rough part was with nursing, jaundice and strep. Emerson had jaundice within her first twenty-four hours, which is a warning sign for pathological jaundice instead of the typical jaundice that many newborns get. We had to keep our eye on it, but as long as she was nursing well we should have been fine. Well, my milk came in on day two and then we had the Day of Tears. My poor little girl couldn't latch onto the bowling balls of milk and we didn't know how to help her. It totally rocked our world and turned it upside down. She cried, I cried and Blake cried. All. Day. Long. We saw a fantastic lactation consultant who came to our home that night and helped a ton. By the next feeding we were making headway and she's been doing better and better each time since. However, because of the Day of Tears, we were worried about her being dehydrated and her bilirubin levels not going down. Our midwife/doctor had us give Emerson activated charcoal through a syringe during her feeds in order to absorb the bilirubin and help her pass it quicker. This solution worked and eventually we noticed her yellow going down.

On top of this drama with nursing and jaundice... Blake got strep. He had a fever and a sore throat, which we had attributed to lack of sleep, lack of eating and lots of adrenaline. His fever didn't come back after a good nights' sleep but his throat was still sore. One day the white spots showed up and we called our midwife/doctor and she called in a prescription for some antibiotics and said we didn't want to mess around with strep when we had a new baby in the house. Having a sick husband and a new baby and a sore momma made for an interesting week. However, it was a total bonding experience and despite being sick, Blake was an incredible support through everything.

So we survived our first week! At our one week visit little miss Emerson had gained 6.5 ounces! Her jaundice was reducing nicely and she is feeding and sleeping well. Blake is feeling better and I'm recovering. Here are some moments from our first week.

She's always making the greatest facial expressions and doing funny things with her hands.

We had our first sponge bath

All clean!

Grandma Val came to visit.

And Grandma Janet came back to help out for the week. 

She has about 8000 pictures taken of her sleeping

"Oh mom, again with the pictures!?"

We also had our newborn photoshoot! Can't wait to see the rest of these pictures!