Jordan: 1 Month Old

Our sweet girl is already 1 month old! In the last month we have been your typical newborn parents. Our lives revolve around feeding times, when this little person wakes up, when she's going to need a diaper change and if we can grab a quick 30 minute nap before she wakes up again. 

From what we hear from others, Jordan is a pretty easy baby and for that we are so thankful! She sleeps pretty well at night and we are starting to be able to distinguish her different cries and what she is trying to tell us. If you can't tell by her little chubby rolls, she also is extremely healthy and eats very well! :)

Most of all...we think she's pretty cute! Here are a few pictures of Jordan around this 1 month time frame:

 

Like everyone will tell you. "Sleep when the baby sleeps". We try to grab a nap whenever we can...especially when daddy gets home from work after not sleeping well at night.

We keep watching Jordan's eyes to see if they are going to start turning darker, but they keep getting a lighter shade of blue, so we're starting to think we'll have a little blue eyed girl. 

We took our first visit to Gamma and Poppy's house and Jordan's cousin Barrett came to visit. He is already such a good big cousin. He kept checking on "Bby Jodn" to make sure she was ok.

  
We also took a quick trip to Fort Worth to celebrate Uncle Kyle's 30th birthday and took a few family pictures while we were all dolled up.

What we don't want to forget:

- How proud we are when she lifts her head during tummy time

- The way she can follow objects and people with her eyes

- Her sweet chubby cheeks

- The 8 dirty diapers we change every day (maybe we do want to forget this)

- The way she grabs our fingers

- Stares at lights and patterns. Trying to figure out this big ole world

Jordan One Day New and other pictures

 We were so lucky to have our friend Laura from laurahollanderphoto.com come to the hospital to take some One Day New Photos of sweet Jordan. Here are a few of our favorites from the session.

Below are a few more random pictures from our first 2 weeks at home that I just thought were cute and wanted to remember!

Our friends came to celebrate America and Jordan's one week birthday!

Jordan's 'Just Born' picture. Didn't turn out too great, maybe we'll get better at capturing her as the months go on.

Just a couple sweet pictures of our girl at home.

 

Our First 2 Weeks

We spent Jordan's first 2 days in the hospital and came home Saturday afternoon on June 29th. We were surrounded by so many friends and family members that already love Jordan so much. We are so happy to share our little gift with everyone in our life. 

The first two weeks have consisted of lots of sleeping, eating and diaper changes, which was expected. We are all adjusting to the 'feed the baby every 3 hours' thing. One person says to never wake a sleeping baby, and another says, DON'T FORGET TO FEED IT!! It is 2013 after all, so you can imagine most of our parenting choices are fueled by google and the first link that comes up typically wins the battle! 

Things we've learned over the first 2 weeks: Feed every 3 hours, wash her face every day but her body once every 3 days, don't touch the umbilical cord stump, let her sleep 16 hours a day, make sure she has alert awake time, why is she breathing so loud, why does she keep putting her hands in her face, and the list. goes. on.

Below are only a few pictures from the hospital and our first week at home. I wish I could post them all, but as most parents do, we took way too many!

I'll give credit to my sister for this, but on her blog she put a list of things she didn't want to forget about my nephew at that stage of his life. I am going to steal it because I think it's a cute idea for us to remember what Jordan is doing now so we can look back and remember the development of our little one! I'm aware that at 2 weeks she doesn't do a lot but sleep and eat, so this is probably a pretty short list for now! 

 - Her hands are ALWAYS on her face
- This means a new scratch on her face every day

- She raises her eyebrows and puckers her lips when she's hungry

- Her neck is stronger than we would have thought. She throws her head around like crazy.

- Her eyes change colors every day
 - We can see her focus on our faces when we hold her

Welcome Jordan Elizabeth

She's here! Jordan Elizabeth Mudge was born on June 27, 2013 at 3:24 pm at 8 lbs 6 oz and 20 inches long.

Due to a little bit of high blood pressure, the doctor gave us the go ahead to induce labor on Thursday, June 27th. We checked into the hospital at 5am and started pitocin about 6. I started having a few contractions, but nothing like when my doctor came in to break my water. From the time she broke my water to the time I received my epidural was, what I thought at the time, the longest hour of my life. After the epidural, I had painless contractions for about 4 hours and then was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. 

After 2 hours of pushing, which I now know were the longest hours of my life, we finally got Jordan close enough to make her entrance. We had a few moments when Jordan had a decreased heart rate, and we thought we may need to do a C section. I was going to do anything to not have to have surgery after all of that work for 2 hours, so was happy when we were able to avoid it. Those final few pushes were probably not the most pleasant experiences of my life, but it shortly became all worth it. 

Chris was a wonderful coach through the entire 2 hours. We had all sorts of delivery room rules like.."don't tell me I'm doing great", "don't touch my foot", "don't tell me I'm almost there", along with a few others that all went out the window the second I realized that I needed all of those things. After his 2 hours of semi-hard work, the look on his face when Jordan made her entrance was priceless. 

That moment when the doctor showed us our little girl and put her on my chest is something I hope Chris and I will never forget. I'll be a little sentimental here, just in case I think about forgetting it, I can come read this and capture that moment again. Plus, it's my blog...I'll do what I want. Anyway...she was perfect and absolutely the most beautful thing I've ever seen. Even though I had a relatively easy pregnancy, the 9 months of carrying her around, substituting water for my nightly glass of wine, not sleeping, discomfort, carrying around 40 extra pounds, and then the pain of childbirth all became so insignificant at that moment. She is a little miracle that God has given to us and entrusted us to raise His precious little girl, we could not feel more blessed and honored to be her parents. Ok. I'm done :)

Welcome to this world Jordan Elizabeth. Your daddy and I love you so much and cannot wait to start this adventure of life together as our little family of 3!