Isla’s First Month

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How can we possibly already be at one month old!! It hardly seems possible. Honestly it hardly seems possible that our house is filled with the joy of a newborn again. It’s surreal, amazingly, wonderfully, surreal!! When Jonathan was a newborn I documented his first year of life through a series of monthly blog posts. And while I might have been the only one who cared enough to read them, it was a joy for me to remember that fast first year and document all the change he underwent. I knew that I wanted to do the same thing for our baby girl and here I am today, ready to share the first post!!

This time has gone by so fast – so, so fast. I remember the night before my scheduled c-section Dave and I sat together and through tears I cried that I wished it was a week from today. I was terribly afraid of what lay ahead and now here we are five weeks later. Having a scheduled c-section this go around felt much different than my experience with our son Jonathan (who was an emergency c-section after nearly two days of labor.) Walking into the OR room first thing in the morning was a strange experience. I found that surgery this go around was a bit more traumatic then I was expecting, recovery has been much slower than last time and the entire experience was much different. BUT our darling daughter has been the gleaming light through it all and has made whatever experience we had so entirely worth it!!

Ms. Isla Rose — many people have asked us how we chose her name. The short answer is we liked it 🙂 After our 10th anniversary trip to Scotland in 2016 we fell in love and so on a whim we decided to look into Scottish names. I stumbled upon Isla one day and it just kind of clicked. Dave liked the name Rose and together it seemed to be the perfect fit for our baby girl!!

Some highlights this first month of life for Ms. Isla Rose :

Isla’s birth experience felt entirely different than Jonathan. Instead of being a week late like J, she was a week early. Instead of an emergency surgery, her’s was schedule for first thing in the morning. Instead of bouncing back like I did with J, my recovery took time.
Isla is also a very different newborn than Jonathan. She was very jaundice and sleepy the first three or so weeks of life. Feeding wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been with Jonathan and it took a lot of work for me and her to find a groove. I think at week 5 we are JUST starting to find it but we’ve got a long way to go.
Because of the jaundice and feeding issues Isla lost a bit of weight by the time she left the hospital and we’ve been playing catch up ever since. She’s never looked unhealthy or too skinny, but the scale let us know that she needed to gain a LOT more weight and quickly.
Isla LOVES her big brother, probably more than anyone else. She coos and smiles at him any time he’s around her and he of course LOVES that!! He’s equally infatuated with her and it makes us beyond happy. Jonathan has been an amazing big brother so far and we are so grateful!!
We celebrated two Christmas’ and New Years with Isla (she liked to party at night in case you’re wondering ;)), and spent most of the first weeks of her life cooped up in home due to the insanely cold weather (-20 degrees anyone?!), sickness and recovery. Not much traveling or outdoor activities have been had aside from heading to the doctors office.
The times that Jonathan wasn’t on a snow day or on vacation, Dave and I enjoyed visiting our favorite coffee shops while he was on paternity leave. Kaffmandu, Honeycomb and Mystic Coffee Roaster just to name a few 🙂
Isla usually wakes up around 2-3 times a night, woof, a little different than Jonathan. We’ll definitely be excited for the day when she makes it to 4-5 hour stretches!!
Isla feels like a different baby than Jonathan in so many ways – She HATES the pacifier!! And being swaddled!! And being on her back!! And being cold!! What she does love is sleeping on your chest. And while that makes getting anything done near impossible – with her curled up next to your chest, well there really isn’t anything better in the world!!