Today is the fifth.  Lily is a whole month old today and I just can't believe it.  How could an entire month have flown by that quickly?  Why couldn't time fly that quickly when I was pregnant?  In the last month she's had plenty of milestones met.  She's rolled over, started to coo and make verbal sounds, learned to recognize Mommy visually and by the sound of my voice and so much more.  She's gained some weight and an inch of height too.  Today at the WIC office she was weighed and measured... Up to 7 pounds 13 ounces and a whole 20.5 inches.  That's more than a pound gained since birth and exactly one inch. 

Our latest adventure started last night when she was given a bottle of breast milk for the first time.  During this 4 week growth spurt she's been eating nonstop and especially yesterday she hate for 5 hours constantly and I began to worry that she wasn't getting enough milk, or that my milk supply was not enough to satisfy her.  After going into WIC today to talk to the nurse about her weight gain, feeding habits, and fussyness we decided that she needs to be supplemented with some formula.  Not a lot, but in order to ensure she's getting enough to eat without killing Mommy by eating 24/7 nonstop.  So far she's still taking to breast feeding after having the bottle with breast milk and she had 2 ounces of formula in between her last feeding and now when she acted like she still wasn't satisfied after 40 minutes of feeding.  So, in the next hour she should be waking up to eat again and we'll see if she still takes to the breast of if she's going to refuse.  I hope that she will continue to breast feed while being supplemented with formula too.  I know that breast milk has tons of great stuff for her and is made especially for her so I want to continue to breast feed as long as possible while still making sure she is properly nourished with the supplement of formula.  We will see what happens over the next couple of days.  I'm prepared for the possibility of her refusing the breast and only wanting to eat formula so we may have to switch but I'm hoping not. 

After a couple of weeks with the breast pump I've encountered numerous problems.  I have anxiety issues to begin with and I just can't mentally relax enough to allow a steady flow of milk production during pumping sessions.  I've tried dimming the lights, soft music, hand expression, manual pumps, electric pumps, pumping on one side while she's feeding on the other and I've not been able to pump more than 1.5 ounces out of both breasts combined.  I am going to continue to pump as much as I can, but I don't suspect I'll be able to create a big enough stockpile to last very long once I go back to work.  I've begun to prepare myself for the day we have to switch to solely formula feeding.  I'm not exactly sure why it's having such an emotional effect on me but it is.  Makes me feel like I've failed her in some way because my body can't create the food she needs.  Consciously I know that's not true and that I can't help my inability to create enough milk supply but I can't seem to shake this feeling of failure.  I have and will continue to tell myself she's done great so far and got the most important part, the colustrum, the first few days of life.  She's also had an entire month so far and hopefully a few more weeks at least to get all the nutrients she can from me. 

In relation to food, kind of, her poop has been making some pretty crazy changes.  We've gone from seedy, watery, mustard to creamy paste like mustard.  After a couple days of not pooping I began to worry but she finally pooped today and it was awful.  I've changed a million babies diapers, of all different ages, in my life but I never realized just how much their poop changes with them as they grow.  I can only imagine what it's going to be like tomorrow when we see how this formula introduction affects her. 

For pictures today I must explain.  Grandma and tried to get a good picture for her baby book page entitled "One month milestones"  where I got to write all the things she's done, discovered, and experienced in her first month of life as well as glue in a picture of her today.  The thing about taking pictures of babies is that you've got to take 5 million shots before you get the perfect one.  So, today, you get to see all the shots we took along with the final result, a good picture.  Best advice I've got for baby pictures is to let a person be the prop.  Hide under a blanket or beneath/behind a backdrop to hold the baby in place.  If you angle the shot just right you'll be out of the picture and you'll be able to accomplish better poses that way too. 

The shot we kept for her baby book...

And the following are a few of the shots we had to take to get to the perfect one. :)

If you'll notice some of the pictures have my polka dotted shirt in them...  We had a blanket dropped behind her across my legs and belly.  She is sitting between my legs and leaning back against me.  She was content being right beside Mom and that made it easier to accomplish the perfect shot. :)

Upcoming news... We're going to Warrensburg this weekend.  She's going to get to meet everybody she didn't get to see the last time.  ALSO going to meet her other grandma for the first time.  I'm excited and nervous about that all at the same time. I've never met her dad's mom, I've only talked to her on the phone throughout my pregnancy.  As far as I know she'll be getting to meet her grandma, great aunt, great grandma, and her aunt on Saturday!  I'm so very glad that I have the ability to be in contact with and have the support of the other half of her family even without the involvement of her dad.  It's incredibly important to know each and every bit of family she has so that she has some idea of where she comes from and who she is in that sense.  I hope that she appreciates it someday too.