Day 1: happy due date day

Today is this little lady's due date.

However, instead of still gestating inside me, she is nearly a month old!

I am always super thankful for each and every pregnancy, and the new life they bring. Yet I enjoy my babies in my arms way more then when they are nestled under my uterus!!

I should mention I have (so far) been blessed with super easy babies. They eat  and sleep like champs, and cry very little. 

The second newborn experience has been so similar to our first go around with a newborn, yet so different.

With Quinn, I realize not only just how quickly the newborn flies by (even though during those 3 am feedings I could swear we are trapped in eternity) but also how rare and priceless my few alone moments are with her.

When Ellie Faith was born, it was just the two of us most of the day. We had little else to do but cuddle, snuggle, eat, and sleep. My mom told me, soon after she had me, she had heard you couldn't spoil a baby in the first 6 weeks, so she held me constantly. 

I figured I turned ok, so I would use the same method.:) A friend's mom also told me her #1 piece of advice for young moms was for them to sit and watch the baby's eyelashes grow.

I concur!

Quiet, alone time snuggles with my little Quinn Collins are so precious that it gets me out of bed early in the morning, before her big sister wakes up. I can sleep when my babies are no longer babies. It makes me attempt to turn a blind eye to the messy state our house is most often in. I spent too many days longing for babies to mess up our house to waste these messy days by cleaning and not snuggling. It's what keeps us pretty sequestered inside our home those first weeks. My friends are very important to me, but they aren't changing daily at the rate my tiny newborn is.

I am so glad Quinn is my second baby. Even though I have had years of taking care of critically ill babies, bringing home your own 4 lb 11oz tiny human is a wee bit scary, no matter what your professional experience is.

 I learned things with Ellie Faith that prepared me for taking care of Quinn. Things that I truly believe kept her out of the NICU.

Things like using a supplemental nursing system with formula within the first two hours she was born. Both my babies have been born so early (not too early, just right under full term) it takes my milk days to come in. Feedings needed to happen every 2-3 hrs while in the hospital to satisfy the medical staff. This also kept her blood sugars up.

The importance of a good swaddle!! This combined with lots of skin to skin contact  in the first 24 hrs keeps their body temperature up. The swaddle practice I keep up for the first 4-6 weeks. They were still supposed to be cocooned inside me, so I try to mimic that environment as much as possible, to ease their poor little processing systems.

And last, but definitely not least, they don't need to be put on a routine or schedule right out of the womb. A few nights of bed sharing doesn't mean you will have a 5 year old still battling to sleep between mommy and daddy.

A few off schedule feedings here and there will not ruin their sleeping and eating habits forever.

My teeny tiny little rockstar, as Quinn came to be known by our medical staff, needed a little bit extra TLC. I had the book knowledge years ago to care for her, but I didn't have the "mommy-ness" that I now have. I would have stressed, worried, regimented, cried, etc... 

Instead God knew I needed time and training before becoming her mommy. 

And I am so thankful His timing is always perfect. 

Quinn Collins, our little "Quality Control Baby" as we jokingly called you during my pregnancy - you are such a little gift from God and we fall more in love with you every moment of every day!