The Eberhard Family

Over the period of a week, from last Monday till today, she's grown 360g! She was 3500g last Monday and today she's 3860g. Must be all those extra feeding that she's got!! :P Speaking of which, she's waking up again now.. Sally

After over a week or two of battling feeding her on breasts (more) and still... formula... the feed time has became over an hour to almost two hours at times from the start till finish (ie. put her back to bed)... Today midwife said, that is way too long, only give her 15 mins max on each breasts should be fine, as she would have drained most of the milk out within that time. (Which I think is quite true, if I can express 80 ml after 35mins, she should have gotten over 150-160mls after 30 mins of good sucking on the breasts)... She's been really hard to settle last night and today... eventually mum said, as baby gets older, they have to learn how to fall asleep by themselves, she's tired but doesn't know how to get to sleep... so she gets upset. That explains why when I hold her, she's still wiggling and crying and unhappy.... and she refuses to take the dummy or the finger... but you leave her in your arms long enough, then the next thing you know... she's sleepin...

Our little Emma is definitely growing bigger... we think. Two of her little 0000 (newborn) stretch and grow clothes are basically... getting rather tight... length-wise. She's still skinny apart from around the tummy but slowly getting more chubby as we feed her more each day. She's a big greedy gut when it comes to food anyway! To think that she's only just over 3 weeks and before long, the newborn clothes won't fit her anymore.... the 000 (3 months) ones are fitting her better and better... I suspect before 3 months, she'd need to be on 00 (6months) ones! Wow! Just as well I didn't buy too many of thee 0000 clothes! :P Sally

A whole night sleep is a thing of the past... that is something that people tell you... once you have the baby... It'd be a long time before you can taste the whole night sleep again... and of course every now and then that would be interrupted as well, depending on the baby. I think we've been luckier in that front so far. I started off with only needing a 2-3 hour block of sleep at night and another 1-2 hour block... that would last me through the day, still tired though. Now, we are getting 3-4 hour block of sleep, sometimes 5 hours! Wow that's like heaven! I used to have really regular schedules for sleeping, 9-10pm till 5-6am. So it's amazing how little sleep I can use now and still keep me going... till usually after dinner. I should probably go for nap while this little one is still happily sleeping... Speaking of that, I've also found, sleeping in the same room with the baby also affects your quality of sleep... coz this little one makes a lot of noises even...

Today I've noticed something... when I was holding her up, she as usual was looking around. But at the same time, she's trying to hold her head up still for a longer period now.... Sort of like practicing.... It's quite interesting watching her try do different things... Also didn't scream when I was trying to change her nappy earlier... it was a VERY wet nappy! Good old disposable nappies... if it were cloth nappies, had to change her earlier. But having said that I'm still keen to try the cloth one sometime... :) Sally

Wow, little Emma is 3 weeks old today. We started her on some routine from last night... feed, change, play/cuddle then bed (burping in between :P)... Speaking of feeding... after the last feed last night, she had drained both of the breasts well after 20 mins on each side; and was still hungry. Had anopther 60ml of formula.... that is when I realised... all day I've been trying to keep her on the breast milk only and she was starving! That's why she was unsettled! Silly me. Sometimes insisting on BM only, is it really good for the baby? Or just good for mum's own guilt? I guess she will take whatever she needs to take to grow! So by my estimation, she would have had close to 200ml in the last feed... went to bed around 11:20pm and didn't wake up till 3:30 am. Normal 3 week old don't drink 200mls, they drink 100ml!! The 3:30am feed... after putting her down for 20 mins, she was hungry and took another 25-30mls of formula. So I think she is just growing a lot more an...

It is a rather strange day today, because last night, she wanted to be fed a lot... so from 5pm, 7pm, 9pm, 10pm... eventually gave her more at 11pm... and she slept through till almost 4 this morning. But the 4am feed, she spilled a lot and didn't have a lot but eventually went back to bed. 6:30am feed, again, she spilled a lot, didn't drink that much but seemed to have drained the breasts almost empty anyway.... and slept till 9:30am.. Didn't start feeding her again till almost 10am.... but she definitely is staying on the breasts for shorter time than the last 2-3 days. So what I figured is, as long as she's had around 40-50 mins ish, she had enough. So I put her back to bed almost within the hour of start of the feed! Yah! and she stayed awake, making funny noises but seem happy enough. Then I decided, she needs a nappy change, so I put her onto the changing table, changed her and put her back to bed... no crying at all. She's still happily staying awake playing ...

It is also the first time, mum and dad both left Emma at home and went out to the kitchen place for around an hour. Left Emma with granddad. He offered. Apparently she has been crying while we were gone as she was hungry... which granddad didn't know what to do. But yeah, just had to keep holding her and comforting her. Mum got on the job of feeding her soon after arriving home.... I must say, I was rather anxious leaving her at home with my dad. Just never had done this before, we've always been around her. But I must say... it's good to have the options to do so. And this is also the 2nd night that we found, if we top her up with some formula before bed (last feed of 10pm ish) then she sleeps for a good 4-5 hours before waking up again. I only woke her at 3am this morning to feed again, eventually finished feeding her and put her to bed at 4:30am, yes, took a while.... But she's been sleeping since then till 8:30am and this time, only on breask milk. I think the mum i...

Yesterday morning at the 3-4am feed, I've noticed that I can see her eye brows! Normally you can't, as the colour is so light... but today, I could. It's turning darker. It'd be interesting to see what her hair colour and eye colour would be eventually... I suspect it'd be darkish :P Also, I guess I better start a fund for paying for some sort of laser hair removal for the future, knowing that I'm hairy and the dad is, too... not much luck for her not to be unfortunately ^^;; :P Sally

Last night, around 6pm, it's dinner time, at the same time, Emma was rather hard to settle... So I thought I will put her to the sling and let her sit with us while we eat... In my first attempt of trying to put her in the sling, and trying to tighten the sling up, she slided out of the sling and fell on the floor. It happened so fast, I quickly grab her off the floor and of course, there were lots of crying... I gave up on the sling and held her in my arms instead...for comforting her... I kept wondering if there's any damages done to her, and I told my parents as well.. they said if there's something wrong, she'd be crying a lot more and won't be settled by cuddling and dummy. But we will keep an eye out on her... Man that was a rather horrible feeling and luckly she didn't hit anything else on her way down... Emma, I'm sorry, mummy won't do this again.... Sally

After this afternoon's feed... my 3rd attempt to put her on only breast milk... (long story).. the dad ran off to work before I finished feeding, so can't really rely on the dad to put her to sleep like I normally do. After she's finally all settled down and I've been watching her for over 30 mins... doh! she needed nappy change, then was a bit unsettled after that... as I was putting her to bed, I got right up and close and was staring at her. She stopped for a bit then was watching me. I tilted my head to the left slowly, and watched her eyes moved towards the left, then I slowly tilted it to the right and she followed! Yes, you can see mummy! Just to be sure, I tried a few times and then stopped to see if she was just looking around back and forth.... but no, when I stopped moving, she stopped, too. Now she's been on the dummy, hopefully will fall asleep soon... almost an hour after feeding... fingers crossed :) Well, she had a few big yawns, having one now as we...

It's been a long two weeks, yet it's like wow, it's been 2 weeks already. I've went from pregnant to be a mum, even though even now... I still don't really feel like I'm a mum yet. Sometimes it all seems like a dream and I think slowly it is becoming more real now. There's lots of things I'd like to blog about but maybe later. Online time is rather limited at this stage :P Emma has gone through a lot in the two weeks, from being too yellow, having to go through blood test and lots of lying under the sun when there wasn't any sun! Otherwise she may have to be sent into hospital for two days to be under bright lights, which got me really worried. Then she was losing too much weight and was being starved.... but after topping her up with some formula did the trick. Now she's all better and looking more white now... and got a big tummy, too. Of course she wanted more food, too! Mum is still working on getting more milk supply though... but she's ...

I've created an account on Flickr where I will be uploading all my photos from now on. You can view it here . More photos will be added as I get a chance! Hopefully by this weekend.

A few observations we've made: Her hair is getting lighter. It seemed to be quite dark when she was born but is now getting a bit lighter. She has started to really enjoy her baths. I think the key to that is hotter water. She has stopped screaming when you change her nappy when its really dirty! I think she's realised that we are helping her out. I think she has blue eyes, but it may be too early to be sure.

Our darling little daughter Emma was born on the 4th of July 2007.