Visit with Grandma B.

This weekend Grandma B. came to visit Elsa and I while Bob was out of town for a firm retreat. And we're very glad she came! Not only did it give me a much-needed diversion from the endless cycle of feeding, pumping, and cleaning bottles, Mom also was very helpful and gave me lots of excellent advice. Such as: In order to stretch out the amount of time between Elsa's feedings, it may be necessary to give her more to eat each time. (Duh.) I don't know why I needed somebody to point out the obvious like that. I guess since I'm pumping and bottle feeding, it's made me paranoid about wasting breastmilk or going through it too quickly, so I resisted upping her amount per feeding too soon. But obviously that shouldn't be the primary concern, and it wasn't really working anyway, because she was just eating more often. (And getting fussier, since she wasn't getting her fill at each meal. Poor thing!)

So since the weekend, Elsa's been going much longer between feedings—anywhere from 3 to 5 hours depending on how much of a sleepyhead she's being at the moment. And I'm loving it. Grandma B. also convinced me that it might be a good idea to have Elsa start sleeping in her crib in the nursery, since that would also be helpful in getting her on a regular schedule. So I started that on Saturday night and she's doing just fine with it.

Thanks for the visit, Grandma! We don't know what we'd do without you.

Tomorrow Elsa is four weeks old. I can hardly believe it. We're going to celebrate by taking our first trip to the mall. Woo hoo! I never knew how thrilling a simple shopping trip could be.