Milestones

Though it has only been 18 days since Mallory's arrival, we've hit some milestones that put a huge smile on my face and I just had to share.

Milestone 1: Mallory is no longer constipated! When we realized that we were going to have to supplement with formula, we chose Enfamil ProSobee because it's more gentle on newborn tummy's. It was going fine until all of the sudden she wasn't having as many bowel movements. We could tell that she was fighting to push them out but nothing was happening. She went from having 3-5 a day to 0-1 and because of it she was super cranky. Though it was trying on us to have a constantly fussy baby, we couldn't blame her. Pooping is important. So after researching that soy-based formulas can actually cause constipation we switched to Gerber Good Start Gentle Plus a couple of days ago. Sure enough, she's back to pooping like normal and not nearly as fussy.

Milestone 2: Mallory no longer dislikes Jody! I'm still able to console her quicker than he can, but I think that's just because I'm mom. But the fact that he can hold and watch her without me in the room again without screaming her head off is awesome because now I can be relieved again. I don't think it was necessarily that she disliked him though; I think it was because she wasn't feeling good and so she just wanted her mommy. I know when I was a kid and wasn't feeling good all I wanted was my mom. Just the presence of mom makes you feel better.

Milestone 3: I could be jumping the gun on this one, but I'm still really excited about it - Mallory slept for more than three hours last night only waking up twice to be fed! Now I know that doesn't mean it's going to happen again tonight, but the fact that I was able to get more than two hours of sleep in a row was awesome. Both sleeping sessions were in her Travel Crib without me having to transfer her over to the swing so I'm also happy about that. Pretty soon we're going to need to shift her to her real crib so the less we have to use the swing at night, the easier that transition will be.

Milestone 4: We were successfully able to go grocery shopping yesterday! We were really hesitant to try a challenge so big so early in Mallory's life, but we sucked it up and decided it was at least worth a shot. I will say that I don't think we've ever grocery shopped so quickly before, and we did it without Mallory throwing a fit. We had two shopping carts; put Mallory in her car seat in one and the food in the other. There was a couple of times where if Jody stopped pushing Mallory's cart for too long she would wake up and start to get fussy so he just made sure to keep walking around with her while I focused on getting the items on our list. Talk about perfect timing though because as soon as we got home she was ready to be fed and she made sure to let out a big cry so we knew. It's nice to know that we're starting to get the hang of timing to be able to run important errands together as a family because having one person stay home all the time isn't convenient. Besides, I'll have to do it once Jody goes back to work so we might as well get the hang of it now.

Milestone 5: This next milestone is one for me - I've already lost 20 lbs! Today I decided to test out going to the gym to see what kind of workout my post-surgery body could handle. Of course I couldn't not be there without stepping onto the scale because I'm way too curious. I knew that I had lost weight but when I saw that it was 20 lbs I was stoked. The eight more pounds that I need to lose to get to my pre-pregnancy weight should be easy now that I'm back in the gym and getting stronger each day. And once I get clearance to run I might even lose more than eight pounds which would be even awesomer. So to celebrate my achievement I bought myself a new sweater at the Gap Outlet today.

It's nice to see milestones such as these occur. Especially on the harder days when things feel like impossibilities. I think it's important to celebrate the little and big milestones throughout this parenthood journey because they remind us to be thankful for the blessing that Mallory is in our life.