Mia: Three Weeks

It seems like only yesterday that I started working on my first "Raspberry" post- and yet- here we are, three weeks out from her birth. Such is the nature of time, and having done this twice before I am all too familiar with the whirlwind nature of it all, but somehow I am blown away by it every time.

Though we had a fairly easy first week of nights (as nights with a newborn can go), we've continued to struggle through the second two. Mia is fairly good at going down in her Rock n' Play sleeper for the first shift, in which she can usually manage three to five hours. However, getting her down for the night has gotten a bit harder lately, and has involved more frequent "false starts," and putting her back down after waking for a feed has become nearly impossible. She's ended up spending the majority of most nights in the bed with me, where she is happy to be snuggled up close by, and I am benefiting at perhaps a 40% level of sleep, nervous as I am to have her there.

I attribute a lot of our difficulties to the persistent nasal congestion she's had since week two, and I keep praying that it will clear up soon, for both of our sakes.

Though I've managed to coax an independent nap or two out of her, she generally needs to be up-close-and-personal with a warm body to sleep throughout the day, and she continues to stubbornly refuse my attempts at offering a pacifier. We've tried three brands (Soothies, MAM, and Nuk), but she prefers to nibble all day, even with a full tummy, spit up whatever she couldn't keep down, and resume nibbling again. It can get messy, and frustrating, at times, but it's what I'm here for, I suppose.

Otherwise, things are going fairly well. Mia still sleeps for a good 20 hours a day, but she's beginning to work in more wakeful periods, like the one she had this evening just after dinner. She even combined being awake with being in a good mood, which allowed me to attempt a few poses I'd been wanting to try.

As it turns out, I'm pretty terrible at taking pictures of newborns; I recognize that newborns look rather awkward, in general, but Mia is so much prettier than my photos give her credit for. Also, somehow professional shots always manage to convey just how tiny their subjects are. I haven't a clue how I would go about getting my shots to do the same. Mia looks larger-than-life in all of these.

It was an interesting exercise, nonetheless.

Of course, it still seems to me that her face is subtly changing on an almost-daily basis, anyway.

Sometimes, she appears to look so much like her sister did at a similar age...

Abigail, 3.5 weeks

Abigail, 4 weeks

... and other times, it's their differences that are much more apparent. Mia is dark-haired where Abby was virtually blond. Mia has a pretty thick head of hair and defined brows and lashes; Abby's hair was sparse and reluctant to grow, her brows and lashes virtually nonexistent. Abby's face was wider, and her cheeks chubbier. Their eyes, mouths, and noses are shaped differently.

You'll probably have to take my (biased) word for all this, since I couldn't find any similarly-posed pictures to offer a good comparison, but I think that the similarities appear in the expressions. I'll be interested to see just how alike they look as they both continue to grow and change over time.

I can say that Mia is proving equally as strong as her siblings were, already making daily attempts to claw her way up my chest. When placed on her belly, she can push up onto her elbows and lift her head fairly high in the air to look around.

She's already begun tracking faces with her eyes, and her cry is changing; gaining in strength and confidence.

I've already made several failed attempts to capture her unique hands, with their long, slender fingers and perfectly shaped nails (perhaps she'll be a pianist), so I focused on her little feet instead. Perhaps it was the lens that I was using, but I had the hardest time getting them in focus.

This was my most successful attempt, and in it, I only got one good foot. Go figure.

Mia appears to have inherited my narrow feet, where Abby's are wide, like her father's, and always have been, even from the day of her birth.

We'll have to wait and see just whose smile she ended up with, but I did get lucky enough to catch a little one from her at the very end.

I still can't believe that it's been three weeks. I'll never believe that, when it comes to Abby, it's been nearly three years.

Is that how the time gets away from me, as I linger in staunch denial?