On Eating and Sleeping

Here's what goes on after Evie gets fed; she needs to stay upright for about 20 minutes and then at a 15-20 degree angle for another 40 minutes, to prevent her from spitting up her meal. Usually we hold her (as J is doing here) for 20 minutes and then prop her moses basket up with a pillow (she's almost always fast asleep after her last burp). But this morning I didn't get going fast enough and was running behind (J's mom was coming and we were headed out shopping, and J was back at work for a half day), so I resorted to this for the first 20 minutes after her 8:30 feeding:Deanna asked (re: my last post) about the moses basket and why I chose it over a bassinet. It came about due to a combination of factors. First, while I was researching baby paraphernalia before Lucy's birth, I came across some reviewers/commenters on Am@zon.com who said that this was their favorite baby item. I asked my mom about it and she said it was something she'd always wanted but could never afford when my brother and I were babies. I kept it in the back of my mind, and then one day was at Babies 'R' Expensive, strolling down the clearance aisles at the back of the store (J and his mom have turned me into quite the bargain shopper) and saw our moses basket marked down 30% off, plus there was a sign up advertising "an extra 30% off on clearance merchandise!" I snatched it up pronto. It was easy to figure out that it would be the perfect newborn bed, but we have a queen bed at home and the basket won't fit easily along with J and I (and Apollo!), so I ordered a rocking moses basket stand from Restor@tion Hardware Baby and put it together myself. I'll get a picture of the whole setup once we're home. I was a little worried at first that Evie wouldn't like it, because she HATED the plastic hospital bassinet (Lucy did too), but she has taken to it wonderfully and the only issue we have had so far was last night when she was fussy for an hour from 3:30 to 4:30 AM and finally we ended up with her like this, so that we could get some sleep:
I'm praying this isn't a trend and she'll go right back to enjoying the moses basket tonight and in the nights to come. By the way, the prefold she's sleeping on is to catch spit-up and the "wahoowa" is a U.Va. thing. So far, the thing I like about the moses basket is how convenient it is for our particular situation of staying a week in a hotel, but I'm sure there will be more reasons to love it in the weeks ahead. I'm particularly looking forward to its portability, but I may end up carrying Evie in a sling or wrap more than in the basket, once we're home. When she's wrapped, she sleeps like she does when she's swaddled:

Notice that I don't have a burp cloth between Evie and my chest in this pic? Yep, it took two washings to get out the spit-up stains from that shirt (thanks to J's mom for being our washer woman this week!).

Speaking of spitting up, she's still doing it some, but it isn't nearly as bad as it was in the hospital. She also seems to enjoy the powdered formula more (she sucks more eagerly). Today, while we were out shopping (I love being able to get out of the room and go anywhere in Kansas, plus she's very portable at this age since she sleeps so much), I put a couple of the ready-to-drink formula bottles in the diaper bag since it just seemed easier. She ate just fine while we were out, but then had an enormous spit-up incident in her car seat on the way home. It was so bad that I had to send the car seat cover and straps home with J's mom to get washed! Plus, the spit-up was yellow with stomach acid this time, whereas the spit-up with the powdered formula has been white. So, no more hospital formula! In fact, now that our lives are settling down a bit, I've had a chance to contact our breast milk donors and we'll try to start feeding her that as much as possible starting when we get home (hopefully tomorrow afternoon, more likely Friday).

Tomorrow morning is Evie's one week doctor's visit, which we'll do with the pediatrician here in Kansas who saw her in the hospital. It will be fun to find out how much she weighs now! After we go home we have a local pediatrician lined up to take over Evie-care.