Juliet 3 weeks old!

Juliet tuned 3 weeks old Sunday. The newborn phase such a conundrum. It simultaneously drags on and flies by. My life is a never-ending loop of nursing and trying to figure out the right formula to get this girl to sleep. She's been mostly a superstar at night but is definitely more finicky in the day. It's nearly impossible to keep her up during a nursing session and then I can either use my ninja skills to transfer her from the boob to the bassinet or else she wakes up and will likely remain awake until the next time she nurses. 

Our nanny can occasionally get her to nap in the swing by swaddling her like a mummy and rocking her while doing some sort of Burmese clicking chant. Whatever works! The worst is when I get her to fall asleep and within minutes she poops herself awake. It happens at least once a day! 

She has a witching hour from about 7-9:30 where she is either eating or fussing. The fussing generally escalates into full blown screaming until it's bedtime at which point I nurse her and she passes out within minutes. It's really interrupting my post-Forest bedtime Bachelor in Paradise watching. 

Another challenging thing is she seems to HATE baby-wearing. I kind of expected this to be my secret to parenting two kiddos at once- put her in the wrap or carrier while I attend to Forest, and voila- hands free baby mothering. Plus, wearing her is so much easier than navigating a stroller around Bangkok! She has other ideas and usually screams anytime I put her in the carrier, especially if I put her in the carrier and stop moving for 2 seconds. 

On the brighter side, she's giving us a social smile more often, holding her head up for up to a minute at time, and in general just very strong. Still rolling from tummy to back within seconds of being placed on her stomach and doing the newborn scoot to get all the way off of her activity mat. She started laughing/giggling in her sleep which is pretty adorable. Though she's a super noisy sleeper so I think homegirl might be moving to the nursery this week. 

She's weighing 6 lbs 4 oz. I'm nursing her about every 2.5-3 hours during the day and letting her sleep as long as she wants at night. She's most often giving a 6 hour stretch from 10-4, sometimes she wakes at 5 and sometimes she wakes at 2. Four to seven hours and only one middle of the night waking is pretty spectacular at this age. Knock on all the wood, y'all! 

I'm praying hard that this continues because I'm so much less crazy this time around and I owe it all to about 5 hours of consecutive sleep on a consistent basis. She's off to a great start! Forest didn't start with long stretches until he was about 6 weeks old and by 8 weeks he was sleeping 10-6 most nights. It was glorious. I'm hoping since baby girl has such a head start on her brother that she may reach the 8 hour stretch before 8 weeks, but I'm not complaining either way.