Slept Through the Night!

Ok, Ok, I know that it's just a fluke and will probably not happen again for a while, but Emery officially slept through the night last night!!

She had her last feeding at 8:45, I put her down to sleep around 9:30 and she slept right through until 6AM! The best part is that I went to bed at 10:30 and didn't wake up again until about 4:15, so I got a good almost-six hours of sleep. I honestly don't think I have had that much uninterrupted sleep since the night before I was induced. I feel GREAT today! Of course I woke in a panic at 4:15 because I hadn't heard a peep from her and the room was completely silent (she is normally a very noisy sleeper - grunting and squirming constantly). However, she was sleeping peacefully and didn't seem to be even close to waking up. So I took the opportunity to pump since it had been over 8 hours since she had last eaten and I was incredibly uncomfortable. If she keeps doing this, I'll have a nice freezer stash stored up for when we start leaving her more!

This past Friday and Saturday nights she also had some nice long stretches of sleep - about five and six hours during that first leg of the night. I was hoping it would continue, but she blew that trend out of the water on Sunday night when she was up again every 3 hours. I guess we'll start to have some nights that are fabulous and then we'll have nights that just aren't. I never thought I would celebrate getting to "sleep in" until 6AM, but considering I have mostly been sleeping at 2-to-4 hour intervals since she was born, I am absolutely ecstatic.

The last few days have been really good - Emery has seemed to be in a good mood for most of the day, just getting a little fussy in the evenings. She is definitely smiling at us, and is starting to coo and "talk" to us more. One of her favorite spots is, ironically, the changing table - she'll just stare at us and smile & talk to us as we're changing her. I say that it's ironic because in the beginning she would scream at the top of her lungs the second we'd lay her down on the changing table! I think some of that had to do with her reflux - even though we have the pad at an incline, she was probably experiencing some reflux when we laid her down and it was painful.

Emery will be six weeks old on Thursday. I have really seen now what it means to bond with a baby - people told me when I was pregnant how important it was, but I remember thinking that it was something that happened instantly; the baby is born and she automatically knows who we are and that we'll take care of her. I've come to realize that it's really something that happens over time, and that she needed to learn who we are and trust us to address her needs and love her. It's amazing that now I can tell the difference between her pain cry, her hunger cry, her dirty diaper cry and (this one happens often) her I'm-overstimulated-and-tired cry. I really feel that spending almost every minute with her over the last six weeks has solidified our relationship and I know that the bond gets even stronger as time goes on. We love her more and more every day.

Adam and I have started spending a little more time together without her, which has been nice too. Saturday afternoon we left her with Grandma (my mom) for about an hour and went for a 2-mile run - my first run since becoming pregnant!! I did pretty well, and we're going to go again this evening as long as the weather continues to be nice. I'm trying to get this last bit of baby weight off, I have about 8 lbs to go and it seems to be the hardest to get rid of. I still can't get my wedding rings on and that is the most depressing part! I have resigned myself that I will probably have to go buy some new clothes before going back to work - since I am breastfeeding all my tops are quite snug now, and I don't think that'll change even if I do end up losing the weight!

I'll be sure to update soon and let everyone know if this sleeping through the night thing continues...I'm not getting my hopes up! Have a great week!
-Michelle