"she's so alert!"

In the first few months of life, Soluna got that a lot. "She's so alert!" Actually, she still gets it every once in awhile. It was/is hard for us to keep her in a little cradle hold. Instead, she is content in looking out at the world. I think she had/has good eye sight. They say breastfed babies do have better eyes. But in the first month or so, as my dad carried her in his lap, she followed me across the room. It was well before the books said that she could do such a thing.

She was a very quiet baby, at first. She slept a lot in our arms, in her little bassinet and sometimes in her carseat. Mostly, she was in somebody's arms. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles took turns carrying her when Ben and I got tired. And since I was breastfeeding around the clock, she was in my arms at least every 2 hours... usually more.

After Soluna was born, she had jaundice. She didn't eat one night. I was scared and called the advice nurse at Kaiser to find out what to do. She scolded me, "She's crying because she's starving." Why would anyone say that to a new mom? It was only a few days after Soluna's birth. I was tired, hormonal, scared. I cried and cried. I went in for several appointments with a lactation consultant. Soluna slipped well below her birth weight. I was determined to do things right. I was a mama obsessed. I pushed through horrible breastfeeding pain. Soluna got back to her birth weight in a few days and was well on her way to growing beautiful round cheeks. But I kept wondering if I was breastfeeding right, if she was eating enough, if I was doing something wrong... It took me quite a while to have more confidence in feeding her. It also didn't help that some days Soluna was REALLY hungry and other days she seemed to eat for only a few minutes at a time. I hadn't yet learned to trust her cues and my ability to read them.