Bébé Maybe

Little Magnolia has been rolling from tummy to back since she was 2.5 months old, and at 4.5 months she hit the big milestone of rolling from back to tummy! From the first day she learned this new skill, she now does it constantly every time she's put down. She's already getting better at adjusting herself, but at first she would get stuck all the time and need saving to help adjust her arms. It's been funny to watch her get grumpy when she's stuck, but then when we help her flip back over she immediately re-flips and gets grumpy again. After months of sending pictures and lots of video calls, this month Magnolia met her Mémé and Pépé for the first time. I think they'd agree that seeing her cute face in person was 100% worth making the trip across the ocean. The week before she turned 5 months old, Magnolia went on her first trip. She was a champion throughout the 2 hour drive to the airport, 2 hour flight, hot Texas weather, and long days of sightseeing. She didn...

This was such a big month for our precious little baby! She has grown to be 13 pounds and 25 inches long. That's 6 pounds and 4 inches in just 4 months. Magnolia continues to be tall and skinny- since birth she has been around the 90% for height and the 25% for weight. She wears 3-6  size clothes and there are already some that are starting to be too short. Over the last month, playtime has started to happen throughout the day (versus last month when there would usually only be one wake window when she was awake enough to play). It has become the norm to eat-play-sleep-repeat all day. No more sleepy "newborn potato phase" for Miss Magnolia!  This month Magnolia has started to love her play mat and batting at her hanging toys. In her first Easter basket she got a Linkimal penguin that lights up and sings to her and makes tummy time a lot more fun.  The biggest milestone she reached this month is being able to hold things! I was embarrassingly proud the first time she grabb...

At 3 months old, our precious little Magnolia is working hard on growing out of her 0-3 sized clothes. It seems like every day something else doesn't fit!  She continues to be more and more alert. We adore her smiles, and the fact that she's started babbling and will even have "conversations" back and forth with us. We're seeing a lot of signs that Magnolia is ready to leave the newborn stage behind- she is definitely starting to show more interest in playing. At around 9/10 weeks old, Magnolia finally started sleeping for longer stretches at night! She went straight from never sleeping more than 3 hours at a time to usually doing a 5 or 6 hour stretch every night. A 5 hour stretch doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes a huge difference and we all feel much more rested. I will probably say some cheesy variation of this every month, but Magnolia June is a perfect angel and we are so so lucky to have her.

It just keeps getting better! Watching her gradually become more alert is so fun. At 5 weeks old, she smiled at David for the first time. It was the first time he'd gone into the office since she was born. When he came home and went to say hi to her, she was happy to see him. :) At 6 weeks old, I got my first smile. It was after the 6am feeding. I put her down in the crib to go grab something. When I came back she smiled when she saw me. :) Both were heart melting moments. <3 She's still pretty sleepy but she's starting to smile more and more. It's usually around dinner time that she's the most awake. Sometimes she'll start getting wiggly and it seems like she wants to play/interact. I've started putting her on her play mat for tummy time when that happens and usually read her a book. I was expecting her to be eating more at this point, but she's still on the same schedule that she was at 1 month old. 3.5 ounces every 3 hours, like clockwork. I can te...

It's been one year since the worst days of our lives. I've already written about what happened, but it's therapeutic to keep writing about it and I wanted to include some more detail.  I saw someone else who'd lost a baby think of it this way- on their birthdays, don't think of it as another year without them. Think of it as one year closer to being with them again. That's what I'm holding onto. One year closer to being with my baby Christian David again someday. I don't know how I could get through this anniversary without having his 6 week old baby sister here in my arms. This year we have survived a lot of horrible things, gotten through the stress of another pregnancy, and have done a lot of healing. I pray that we can continue to heal from our great loss while at the same time find great joy in the miracle of our daughter. February 9th, 2021 PPROM I started feeling weird the night before. It was a pressure feeling. I thought it was either growing pa...

When my parents were over the other day, I was asking if I acted like Magnolia does as a newborn. But... shocker... that was a really long time ago and they don't really remember. So here's my attempt to document a little bit of what our first month with Magnolia has been like. We can't believe she's one month old! In general, I would say she is more chill than I expected. That might be because I tend to expect the worst, but for months I was researching what it's like to have a newborn and it seemed pretty common to expect a lot of crying and the baby not wanting to be put down. Well, in her first month, Magnolia has hardly cried and 95% of the time doesn't mind being put down anywhere, anytime. She squawks sometimes when we're changing her, and starts to make noises when she's hungry... but I think she's only actually cried maybe 3 times? And every time it stopped as soon as she was more comfortable. One of the biggest perks for me is that since Da...

After my first hospital visit at the beginning of December, my doctor thought it was best/safest to induce at 37 weeks.  I had some high blood pressure readings and with my history (taking so long/so much to get to that point), my doctor thought it was best to get baby here as soon as it was safe for her. I wholeheartedly agreed! I'm fairly surprised I made it to 37 weeks without going into labor naturally- especially after needing to get my cerclage out early due to bleeding/contractions at 32 and 34 weeks. But ultimately I'm happy I made it to 37, and that Magnolia had those extra few weeks to grow and develop. The date and time were set- December 29th. We spent the day relaxing, packing, and doing some last-minute preparations before checking into the hospital at 7pm. My first dose of induction medication (cytotec) was at 8:30pm. I started feeling contractions at 9:30, and by 11:00pm they started to get painful and were at least every 2 minutes. At some point they started pi...