Gemma at one month

Above (in pink) is Gemma on her one month birthday. Below (in black) is Gemma on her two week birthday.

Here's what Gemma was up to between her birth and one month birthday:

• Likes being in the carrier and bouncing on the exercise ball.
• Sometimes takes a binky.
• Has tiny little chicken legs (like all newborns).
• Is a very vocal baby. Not so much screaming (though she has her moments), but a pretty large spectrum of grunts, squeaks,  and sighs.
• Is loved on by older sisters Pippa and Roxy. They really are gentle with her and have yet to unintentionally or intentionally hurt her.
• Pippa and Roxy (Roxy especially) LOVE to rub her hair. Gemma's hair on top is platinum blonde, but it often looks darker than that because it gets greasy so fast from all the touching.
• Had a sticky belly button. The stump fell off but it was still sticky underneath so we couldn't give her a real bath for about three weeks. 
• Took her first vacation to Lake Tahoe.
• Nursing is... yeah. In the hospital, it seemed like she was the best nurser I've had. But then the day we came home from the hospital she spit up a lot of blood. I pumped and there wasn't any visible blood in the milk. The ask a nurse line sent us to the ER because Gemma was so brand new. The ER doctor (who thought this was our first baby and we just let him) told us that it was blood from me. And it was. Gemma tore me up pretty good. It hurt way too much to nurse so I pumped the next two feedings and both bottles were pink because there was so much blood. (Gemma took the bottles from T just fine.) The next time I nursed Gemma there was a lot of blood in the nipple shield. She spit up blood a few more times. Good news it that even though it's super alarming to us, it doesn't bother her. She's also had blood in her diapers from it. Anyway, I overnighted silverettes to help with the healing. After wearing them for 24 hours, I was doing SO much better. Silverettes are amazing! Overall nursing is going better. 
• Goes cross eyed easily. 
• Has a strong neck! Starting at like 2 weeks old Gemma could hold her head up off my shoulder when I put her over my shoulder to burp her. This is a photo of her doing it on her exact one month birthday.

• Co-sleeping a bit toward the end of the month. This is surprising to me. We didn't really do co-sleeping with the other girls because while baby and T would sleep, I wouldn't. I was too worried about suffocating baby to sleep. But for some reason this time around, I'm not so worried so baby has been sleeping usually one stretch in bed with us (usually the early morning hours) and she sleeps so much better in bed with us than in the crib. But co-sleeping does make me wish we had a king size bed!
• Doesn't like to nurse to sleep (what?!) and is a light sleeper. Getting her to sleep for the night is a 3 hour affair. 
• Is freaked out by her own gas. It would be funny if it didn't wake her and make her cry all the time. 
• Has little poops all the time. We change her diaper before a feeding, after a feeding, before sleep, after sleep, and in between times, too. Literally every diaper change there is some poop in her diaper. At night in the crib we will hear her poop. Change her. Ten minutes later repeat. Ten minutes after that repeat. 
• After Gemma was born T's mom came for a week to help out. It was fabulous.
• I adore the newborn stage. Even though nursing hasn't been easy (is it ever easy this early on?), I still love all the other newborn things - the cuddles, the sounds, the tinyness. The happy hormones even make me not feel tired (though I know that won't last!). Gemma is so sweet and beautiful.