2 Months With Everly Austin + Her Newborn Photos

Everly is 2 and a half months and my little heart can hardly even stand it!! These first two months have been full of the greatest joys I’ve ever known, coupled with some of the greatest challenges I’ve ever been faced with, but every day since Everly Austin Green came into our lives has truly been a blessing and has brought a happiness and sense of purpose unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I can’t remember who said it, but I do remember someone once telling me that the best years of your life aren’t in your early twenties or college days when you don’t have a care in the world, but in your thirties when you start a family and get to watch your babies grow. Well, Cole and I may have started a little bit before our thirties, but on July 31, 2018, I understood how true this statement was. From the second I laid eyes on Everly, a part of my heart I never knew existed opened up and I experienced a love greater than anything I could have imagined. From that moment on, my life has been better and more happier than ever before (yes…even with those dreadful sleepless nights!) Following in the path of my bumpdate blog posts, I’m going to share a week-by-week synopsis of all the things I’ve experienced and learned through mamahood, once again to share real stories with my fellow mama’s and mama’s-to-be, and also selfishly to document this whole experience so I can go back and remember it and share with Everly one day.

Click on the read more button below to  read all about weeks 1 through 8 with our sweet Evie girl.

PS – our newborn photos are by Kathleen Lindemann photography. She’s based in Archer City (just a 1 1/2 hour drive outside of DFW) and she is AMAZING!! All of the props, shots and ideas came from her incredible creative vision and she was absolutely amazing with Everly from start to finish. Everly was 4 weeks old when these photos were taken.

2 Months With Everly Austin

WEIGHT: 12 pounds, 13 ounces (90th percentile)

HEIGHT: 23 inches (60th percentile)

HEAD CIRCUMFERENCE: 14 3/4 inches (90th percentile)

EYE COLOR: light blue

HAIR COLOR: nearly bald, but what she has is light brown.

BIRTHMARKS: baby girl has a round dime-size strawberry hemangioma right on the center of her scalp.

SLEEPING PATTERNS: sleeps through the night, waking only once.

EATING HABITS: eats well over 30 ounces of breast milk a day.

MILESTONES & MEMORIES: baby girl socially smiles, can lift her head by herself, will turn her head towards a familiar voice, is mesmerized by moving objects like ceiling fans or flickering lights.

FAVORITES: Everly loves to be held and cuddled, being sung to, bath time, story time, going on walks in her stroller or rides in the car, loves her face and tummy being gently rubbed.

Weeks 1-2

I was forewarned that the first couple of weeks would be the hardest, but to be honest, that wasn’t necessarily the case with Everly. In the first week or so after taking her home, as exhausted as I was (if you can remember, I didn’t get any sleep the night before she was born and the nights at the hospital were pretty sleepless too because I was so obsessed with staring at her through the night), I felt this surge of energy/adrenaline that made waking up every two hours in the night with her sort of easy. It was about a week and a half after she was born that I woke up on a Saturday morning and felt like a train had hit me as all the exhaustion finally set in. Luckily, my mama was staying with us at the time, so she took over for a few hours while I slept in a bit. The first two weeks were filled with such excitement as I discovered the joys of being a mama, along with the worry of being responsible for such a tiny, beautiful little baby. One of the first things we did when we arrived home was to buy an Owlet monitor since Everly had a bit of a scare with her heart at the hospital (which I talked about in her birth story). That definitely gave us some peace of mind to be able to sleep at night. We were lucky that Everly was a very happy baby from the start…she hardly ever cried, and easily set her own eat, sleep, repeat schedule. Weeks 3 – 4

Weeks 3-4 were a bit more challenging as my exhaustion caught up with me, but Everly was still as happy and easy as ever. Week 3 was the first week that Cole and I were on our own with baby girl since my mama had stayed for the first two weeks (which I totally recommend!), so we were starting to get into a little bit of a routine. She was still waking up every 2-3 hours to eat, but having her sleep in her Halo Bassinet (we put her Dockatot inside it to make it extra comfy!) right by our bed made it a little easier. It was sometime during week 3 that I ended up with a blocked milk duct, which led to mastitis. Luckily, I had also been forewarned about this common infection in breastfeeding mama’s, so I immediately called my doctor to get an antibiotic prescription. I tried breastfeeding Everly through the infection, but I was literally in tears and cringing in pain as she fed. I decided it would be a good time to give myself a little “booby break” and introduce a bottle with breastmilk. She immediately took to the bottle, but when I tried to breastfeed her again a few days later, she refused to latch. After several days of trying, I decided to exclusively pump, which I’ve been doing ever since. Having both a regular hospital-grade pump and my Willow Wearable Breast Pumps has made it super easy to keep up with pumping (more on that in another post!)

Weeks 5 – 6

 Week 5 was exciting because Everly started staying awake for longer than just to eat during the day, so we got a chance to start interacting with her more, singing her songs, reading her books and making funny faces at her to see her reactions. When she giggled and smiled for the first time, I literally cried. It’s those little moments that make mamahood so magical and all the trying times well worth it. It was also around this time that I started to get Everly into a little bit of a schedule with her naps and eating times. I started out by just tracking when and how long she napped and when and how much she ate in a little notebook for a few days. Then, to make it easier, I created a PDF template that I printed out to fill in so I could keep tracking the time and amounts/lengths she ate and napped everyday and tried my best to implement and stick to the schedule recommended in the Mom’s On Call book. What I found was that Everly was actually already on a near-identical schedule on her own, so it was easy to keep up with. It was around week 6; however, that our usually happy, easy-going baby had her first nighttime melt down. This, in my opinion, is when mamahood suddenly got difficult. There’s nothing worse than hearing and seeing your baby cry as if in pain for hours without being able to soothe him or her. It’s a whole new kind of heartbreak! After she cried for an hour straight, I loaded her into my car at midnight and we went on an hour-long drive until she finally dozed off. The next day I went into panic mode, Googling every ailment it possibly could be, switching her bottles, and eventually taking her to the doctor where we found out she had reflux and they sent us home with a Zantac prescription. Eventually, and with the help of wisdom from The Wonder Weeks book on baby development (it’s the BEST) we realized she was most likely going through a leap at that time because within a week, our happy baby was back, although we did keep taking the Zantac for her reflux.

Weeks 7-8

By week 8, Everly had nearly doubled her weight and was much more awake and alert during the day, which I loved. From this point on, she was only waking 1 time during the night to eat, was taking 4-5 two hour naps a day and ate around 30 ounces a day (and sometimes even more!) I was shocked to learn her weight was in the 90th percentile at her two month appointment, even though she’d been born two weeks early (our girl is a little chunkers!!) During these weeks, Everly began turning towards my voice whenever she heard it. She won’t go to sleep at night until I’m lying next to her (she still sleeps in her Dockatot either on the bed, on my side or in the Dockatot placed in the Halo Bassinest) and she still sometimes has fussy evenings. She regularly coos and giggles when she’s awake and has become more attached to her pacifier while sleeping. We grow more and more in love with her with every passing day and are so thankful for this incredible blessing that God has given us.

 

Stay tuned for my post on newborn items I’ve used and loved most since Everly was born and updates on our next two months with the little love of our lives.

Fairwell xx,

-photography by Kathleen Lindemann.