4 weeks

Annika: 9 days old

 Annika is 4 weeks old today. She's still tiny, of course. She'll be weighed tomorrow. She's breastfeeding and ... it's going fine. I'm a bit surprised. At this point with Nina, I was pretty desperate. There was one day that she fed for 10 hours, with only short breaks; Ted was here and we sat around, and talked .. and talked ... and talked. Part of it with Nina was that she slept on the breast, feeding slowly. Part of it was that she was pretty skinny and really hungry. And part of it was that we didn't put her down - that was partly us, and partly because she was so hungry. We ended up topping her up with a bit of formula, and we were all much happier.
    But Annika's different - she goes to sleep in the carrycot thing, or in her little rocking chair. She doesn't constantly need to eat and takes some 2 and 3 hour gaps. Last night she slept for 4+ hours (AWESOME). Sometimes she gets burps stuck, or gas, and cries and needs to be rocked, but otherwise she's mellow, she feeds, she naps, she looks alertly around. She opens her little eyes really wide and they look gorgeous on her tiny tiny face. She raises her tiny eyebrows, wrinkling her tiny pensive forehead. She kicks off her little tiny pants, exposing her long and very narrow little feet. She poos. She smiles. She won't be a newborn for long. 
  And that's the paradox, I think. At the same time, you want them to do the next thing soon: to really smile, to sleep for 5+ hours, then 6+, 7, 8 hours, to hold their cute little head up. But then, I want this time to last, to really last, in a way that I know it never can. I want never to forget the feel of her tiny nose on my cheek, the way her little shoulder feels between my fingers as I massage her to help her not fall asleep at the breast, the way her long little fingers stretch out and grasp mine, her gorgeous unthinking smile, and the way it feels to hold her body upright, against me, in the bed -- and how funny it is when someone so dainty then does an enormous burp. I want to have her perfect tiny face this fresh in my mind forever. But I want her to grow up, too. 

Nina loves her new sister.

Ok, it's upside down. Blogspot doesn't let you
rotate a photo .. Check out the eyelashes.