Week two

Life has been a whirlwind of baby holding, diaper changes, breastfeeding and middle of the night wakefulness. I have the best of intentions of posting pictures but life is exhausting right now and the days are flying by. Baby Eleanor is getting big and filling out more every day. She is still a great eater and things are going really smoothly with nursing. We currently have no schedule.....every day our sleeping habits are unknown, some nights Ellie goes to bed at 10:30 and some nights no one goes to sleep until 1:00 in the morning. Yesterday we went to the fair and the baby literally slept ALL DAY long! She was maybe awake a total of one hour over the entire day. Today on the other hand she has been awake a good deal and generally pretty happy! We've had some gas issues the biggest one involving copious amounts of garlic, but we bought some Mylicon drops and they seem to be keeping the gas in check. There is nothing worse than listening to a baby hollering because of gas!! The big girls are doing really well.....it feels like we are starting to find a new normal, although my mom is currently here visiting and my dad will be arriving in a couple days and staying for a week, so we'll have to adjust for real after they both leave. But they are being good to Eleanor, loving on her and taking a big interest in taking care of her. Charlotte is currently giving Eleanor kisses and hugs while she's in her swing and then running over to me and telling me, "I kissed her and hugged her.....I'm a big sister now!" It's pretty cute! I don't feel like we are dealing with any rivalry at this point although we may in the future, and my girls don't appear to feel neglected by my taking care of the baby, although that may be an issue in the future as well. For right now we're doing the best we can in our exhausted state to take care of everyone's needs and make sure that all our girls feel loved. I'm looking forward to Eleanor starting to sleep for longer intervals in the future (fingers crossed it happens soon!) and for us to get on some type of schedule. I'm not looking forward to my mom leaving, but I'm not going to think about that right now.....we still have 8 days.

In most of these pictures Eleanor is doing
what she does the most, and the best.....
sleeping!

Baby toes

She likes her swing

Can you tell that she has siblings?!? lol

Wool diaper pants!

Don't you just want to smooch those cheeks?

Week one

These are just some random pictures I have from Eleanor's first week. We're closing in on week two here, so I'm a bit behind but time is currently at a premium. I feel like I'm not capturing enough pictures and have to remind myself to pick up my camera every day. The days are just flying by and before I know it, it's evening and the lighting is bad and I haven't taken any pictures. I can't get these days back and I don't want to miss anything so I'm going to try harder to remember to photograph my sweet little baby!

I can already see physical changes in Eleanor.....she is filling out and getting more butterball-ish. At one point a couple days after birth she was 7 pounds 14 oz. and she felt so light to me, but she is now weighing quite a bit more. I'm curious to see what her stats are at the doctor on Thursday. She is also changing in personality and temperament. She is awake more......usually for about an hour a couple times of day and really mellow during these times. She'll just sit and look around. She still does a crazy lot of sleeping though! She has also gotten a bit crankier.....when she wakes up and is hungry she goes from zero to hollering very quickly where before she would just kind of fuss. She is still an excellent baby, sleeping well, eating well, pooping well and she really has a lot of patience with her overly loving sisters. It is amazing that Eleanor is already almost 2 weeks old.......time goes by too quickly!

She doesn't take a paci very often,
but this is the one she likes

MAD! Can you say hungry?

Such a sweet little face

This is my life all day long. Charlotte is constantly in Eleanor's face lovin' on her!

The doting sisters

Rub and dub dub

I gave Eleanor her first bath a couple days ago. Her belly button stump has not fallen off yet so it was a sponge bath. The baby does not like to be naked so needless to say she did not enjoy her first bathing experience. This first bath reminded me of when we brought Maddie home from the hospital and I was faced with bathing a newborn for the very first time. I was so nervous about it that I made my mom do it so I could watch and learn how not to break my newborn infant! I'm pretty comfortable with the whole process at this point so it went smoothly but it's generally not a very enjoyable experience for new babies. Eleanor has the most hair of any of my babies (I guarantee she will lose it and be bald soon enough) and it was fun to wash it and have sweet smelling baby hair. Once the water part was done Ellie was calm as can be and didn't seem to mind being dried and lotioned. Freshly washed little babies are lovely!

sweet

Eleanor is such a sweet baby! It amazes me how my heart expands with each baby and I fall head over heels in love all over again. Her cuteness is ridiculous.....seriously, SO cute!

Bringing home baby

We were able to leave the hospital and take Eleanor home on Saturday. There was worry that her bilirubin levels were too high and that she was going to need some treatment for jaundice, but Eleanor proved to be an excellent nurser and there were no problems. Both Dan and I were SO ready to leave the hospital and get back to the comfort of home and to our big girls. There is nothing relaxing or calm about the hospital when someone is sticking their head in your room every hour to make sure mama and baby are ok. The only thing that made me sad about leaving the hospital was saying goodbye to their awesome ice! I chomped on their ice the entire time I was there and it was really good ice.

The girls were really excited to have baby Eleanor home and Charlotte was super stoked to meet the baby for the first time......she was sick while we were in the hospital and not able to visit us. So far Maddie has been semi interested in the baby, she wants to hold her, but only for about 2 minutes before she is finished and ready to move on to something else. Charlotte on the other hand is pretty obsessed. She wants to hold Eleanor all the time and we are in the midst of dealing with teaching her what the boundaries are. She tends to be a bit too rough and overly enthusiastic which typically makes the baby cry and makes me really nervous. I'm so incredibly happy though that both my girls love Eleanor and are interested in her.....I'd rather that than them ignoring her or being mean to her. It's all a learning process and I'm sure in no time everything will be running smoothly.

So far Eleanor is a dream baby! She hardly ever cries, she has been sleeping a lot, nursing beautifully and pooping like a champ. I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and for her to start crying non stop, but I'm praying that she just has a mellow personality. She is such a sweet baby and I'm so happy to finally have her here!!

Eleanor Irene

I'm sure that this is old news for most people since I was pretty good with Facebook updates, but Eleanor Irene Schultz was born on Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 4:48 pm. She weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces and was 21 inches long. Dan and I checked into the hospital on Wednesday afternoon and that evening my doctor did a procedure called a Foley bulb to help open my cervix. We spent the night at the hospital (although I did not get much sleep) and Thursday morning at 8:00 am I was hooked up to pitocin and labor began......I was already 3-4 cm thanks to the Foley bulb. My contractions were pretty mild until around 1:00 when my doctor showed up and broke my water. That sent me into some serious labor and by 3:30 I was in transition. By 4:30 I was hurtin' big time and kept asking the nurse if she had called my doctor because this baby was coming! I ended up pushing Eleanor out in 2 pushes....literally 3 minutes and she entered the world before my doctor even arrived.

We chose the name Eleanor because we both think it's a beautiful and classic name, we also like the nickname possibilities. Her middle name Irene is in honor of my grandma who passed away this past January. My grandma was a very special woman and I wish she was here to meet her newest great grand daughter. Baby Eleanor is a very sweet and mellow baby and we are very very happy to finally have her here!!