Sammy is 6 weeks old!

Sammy is 6 weeks old!  I took her to the doctor yesterday for a regular checkup and her statistics are so funny:

Height:  23 inches - 92nd percentile
Weight:  9 pounds 14.3 ounces - 51st percentile
Head Circumference:  36.8 cm - 24th percentile

I guess I gave my long and skinny child my small head!!  She weighs less than my son did at this point.  He was 11 pounds 11 ounces at 6 weeks.  Then again, she started out much smaller because she was born early.

Here are some pictures we took while waiting for the doctor to come see us:

Sammy continues to be a super awesome baby.  She has gotten fussier between the hours of 5 pm and 8 pm, but overall, is very calm and happy during the day.  She hasn't been too consistent at nighttime, but the last couple of nights were fantastic.  She slept for 5 hours each night in her pack n' play and then after a diaper change and feeding, slept another 3 hours.  AWESOME for us.  I'm much much much less sleep deprived overall than I was with Ian.

I had my own 6-week checkup and am now free to do whatever I want to do.  While I cannot diet because I'm breastfeeding, I am going to increase my exercise levels.  I currently weigh 152 pounds, which leaves me with 9.5 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight.  I think that should be manageable over the next 2 months.  Hopefully, when I start back at work at the beginning of August, I will be able to fit into my regular clothing again.  I just need to stop eating dessert!

The doctor asked me what I was planning to do for birth control.  I laughed and said my infant was birth control!  And then she said, "No, seriously.  My daughters are 13 month apart in age."  As it turns out, she had a son and then a daughter by IVF.  Then, 4 months after giving birth to her second child, she got pregnant naturally!  I can't believe I heard this story from my own doctor.  I'm not expecting that we will be able to get pregnant naturally, but I don't want to risk it either.  We are very happy with our family of four.  So I agreed to start taking a progesterone-only birth control pill (Cam.ila) (a.k.a. the minipill), which is safe for breastfeeding mothers.  I also got information about two different types of IUDs and we may go that route too.

And I leave you with the following images:

I asked my husband to take some pictures after I got my hair cut and highlighted.  I wanted to capture the prettiness before I went and got sweaty mowing the lawn!

And here is Ian, lovingly nursing Elmo on his mini-boppy pillow just like Momma nurses Sammy: