Introducing Emily

As you all know, our precious baby girl arrived a month early on July 14th. Big surprise! I was exactly 36 weeks along. She weighed in at 5 lb 9 oz and was 18 inches long. One day I will get all the details of what happened that day written here, but for now, I just want to tell you about Emily. :-)

Emily is a beautiful mix of sweetness and contentment with a spark of stubborness and strong opinions (that's my genes for sure) . She rarely cries unless you take too long to change her diaper (we are amateurs, so that happens a lot), try and get her tiny onesie off, or give her a bath. Otherwise, she is happy being held, being fed, or even sleeping in her pack and play. The feistiness has really come through during nursing. She knows what she wants, and that is not always what Mommy and Daddy have been told that she needs. Sometimes she'll nurse for 5 minutes, unlatch, purse her lips together and furrow her eyebrows. Other times she unlatches early and goes limp and asleep like a possum who plays dead. You know she can't possibly go from fierce nurser to deep sleep instantly, but that's what happens and there's no changing her mind after that. I wonder what 13 years old is going to look like. ;-) She has these wonderful, peaceful smiles that she shows when she is sleeping. Her favorite thing so far besides a good meal is discovering her hands. Even on the ultrasounds, she always had her hands by her face. That never changed. She loves to suck on her fingers when she is telling us that she is hungry. And when she gets excited, her hands both go up on her cheeks. It is so fun to watch her move around. I don't have other newborns to compare her to, but her little muscles seem so strong to me. She hates getting her diaper changed, and she locks her legs together so that you can't undo the diaper easily. I can't say that I blame her. A blast of a/c and a cold wipe don't sound like fun to me either. Right now she nurses every 2 - 2 1/2 hours so that we can pack a little weight on her. I never imagined how exhausting the schedule would be. I never imagined how guilty I would feel if a nursing session didn't go as long as the doctor said that it needed to go. I never imagined that my mothering instincts would make me bossy when others try to do things differently with her than I think best. It is a strange combination of feeling helplessly inadequate as a parent and yet fiercely opinionated about her care. That' s normal, right?

We are exhausted, at times unsure of our ability to do this, but we are loving getting to know our little peanut and getting to care for her. She is an absolutely beautiful, wonderful little girl. Praise the Lord for allowing her to be born healthy and strong despite my illness that led to an early birth for her.