She is One Month Old!

I can't believe that a month has passed since God blessed our lives with little Calla. I am so thankful for this little life entrusted to us. God has made her so sweet, so easy, so adorable. It has been so easy to adjust to life with a newborn when she is that newborn. Here are some pictures of the past month. She has had a full little life, though she slept through most of it!

Grandpa meets Calla for the first time, at the airport. Calla sleeps through her first Dodgers game at the Texas Rangers Ballpark.
Her onesie says, "My first LA game." Daddy made it! Redeemer Church throws a baby shower that Calla gets to attend, since the first one was canceled the day she was born!

Calla visits the Stockyards. Yes, she sleeps through this too!

Calla is able to attend her first photo shoot with an amazing photographer, Ginger Ivey. Thank you, Ginger, for capturing the beauty of our little girl! She is 2 weeks old in these shots.

Baby's First Bath

We gave Calla her first bath on Wednesday after our outing to Central Market. She screamed the entire time, but was very quiet and alert afterwards. This was probably the highlight of my week!

We dressed Calla in her "Daddy's Girl" outfit to sleep in. Yes, she really is Daddy's Girl, he loves her so much!

Sometimes, Daddy has to go to extreme measures to wake Calla up. Here, he is playing her a song from his mandolin and bouncing her up and down. After this, he put her on the hard wood floor and she started to wake up. Poor baby!

We took Calla to her 2nd round of newborn screenings, meaning another blood draw from her little foot. This is her all peaceful and serene before the trauma!

You'd think being a Child Development Specialist, I would have started tummy time and play time earlier, but this is a pic from the first day. She surprised me with how she really scanned the play mat with her eyes and tried to lift her head when on her tummy to turn it to the other side. She accidentally kicked one of the toys and then kept trying to kick it again. Smart girl! We find now that after nursing her, then play time is a perfect way to keep her awake a little longer. We are deciding to go for some sort of routine, because she was up a lot last night due to sleeping too much in the day.

Trip to Central Market

I have been keeping a journal on Calla, so I don't forget some of our special moments later... Here is part of that entry from a few days ago: Calla is such a good, easy baby. We can always tell what she needs by her little sounds, and she remains pretty calm if it takes a while to meet that need. Calla was making some cooing sounds today. She didn’t spend very much time awake at all. I woke up, nursed her, and by the time I was showered and ready to go, she was hungry again. It took forever to gather all of her stuff to leave the house for our first family outing. Now I really understand why people with babies are late to everything! We got the diaper bag ready with diapers, wipes, cameras, a toy, burp cloth, onesie, blanket, etc. We put her in a very cute pink outfit with pink bow on her head. She was ready to eat, and rather than delay leaving another hour to nurse her, Nana gave her a bottle while we were in the car. We drove to Central Market. What a difference having a baby in the car with you as you drive a few miles. I found myself wanting Daddy to slow down and be extra careful driving over speed bumps and making left-hand turns. It is still hard for me to walk, so Nana and Daddy left me with Calla outside while they browsed for lunch. I used the time to hold her while she slept. I was singing in my head the song, “God is so good,” as I thought about my baby. I had tears in my eyes. I was thinking how amazing it is that she is here, so perfectly made right down to her fingernails and the little hairs on her shoulders. Her feet look like her Daddy’s, with the pinky toe curved inward. I love her fingernails that are pretty like mine. I love kissing her nose. I reluctantly let Daddy put her back in her carrier for lunch. I made him sanitize his hands first, thinking about germs all over the store!

The picture below shows that Calla really is like her Mommy!

Our baby is back!

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement to us while our baby was sick. We had a visit on Sunday from the home health nurse, who took her blood sample. We got a call a few hours later that her levels had basically been cut in half, and we can take her out from under the lights. I hung up the phone and ran to the light bed, turned it off, took the eye shields off and held my baby! Since then, she's gradually been more and more like a normal baby. No longer sleepy all day, she wakes when she's hungry and cries when she has tummy pains and keeps us up at night for no apparent reason! Yay!! Overall, she's a very easy baby. She is pretty easy to figure out. And I think we're figuring out this nursing thing, too! Here are some pictures of our little girl, in honor of her turning 1 week old yesterday.

Mommy reading Psalm 139 to Calla.

Calla's Tanning Bed

Please be in prayer for Calla. Her jaundice has become more severe, and the doctor has ordered a special "tanning bed" to keep at home to treat it. She will be under the lights 24 hours a day except feeding and diaper changes. Poor baby. And a nurse will come over every day to draw blood. As soon as the blood test comes back good, then she will be done with her therapy. The blood draw is very sad for us, as she has had 2 days in a row of this, which causes her to be hysterical and is very hard to watch. Our prayer is for little Calla's body to be healed with minimal treatment, that God will sustain her through this and help her to still feel loved and comforted despite minimal time we can hold her. We also pray for our own response to this trial, that we would honor the Lord as we give this situation over to Him, since He is the ultimate Healer and holds her little life in the power of His sovereignty.

On a happier note, Calla has gained weight since yesterday, and she did very well at her first doctor's appointment! The picture below is for Cousin Audrey, who wanted to see Calla with her eyes opened! I haven't even seen her eyes very much, especially since she's been sleeping so much! We included a few other pics to brag on our adorable baby!

WELCOME CALLA GRACE HUGHES
Born 3-weeks early and still weighing in at 8 lbs, 8 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long, we proudly announce the birth of the most beautiful and perfect little daughter we ever could have imagined! We named her Calla Grace (pronounced like a calla-lily), which means "beautiful grace." We named her after God's grace to us. We went in on Sunday the 17th due to ruptured membranes, and they induced me at about 3:00 pm. I was able to deliver her without a c-section even though she was so big! She was in a compound position with her arm up beside her head, which made it even more difficult. What an amazing feeling though, to meet her for the first time and what a privilege that God has blessed us with her.

She has spent most of the time sleeping, but has had some great nursing sessions. Karyn is starting to feel better and is able to get up and down more easily. It's so great just sitting in our hospital room getting to watch our beautiful girl and hold her...what a baby!

Thank you so much for all of the prayers that God has so bountifully answered by giving us such a strong, healthy, beautiful girl! Mommy loves her precious girl!

36 weeks now!

So here I am with just under 4 weeks to go until my due date. For those of you who don't know, there is a good chance that I'll be having her early, as she's already in position and I've started dilating! Yikes! We got that news on Wednesday, and that night I started having contractions that were 5 minutes apart. It turned out to be false labor, though, which I'm thankful for to buy us time to set up the nursery and do some final preparations.

I haven't been good at putting up pictures, so I will add some belly pics now. I don't know if I've actually grown too much more in the belly, but she has dropped. The above pic is from just yesterday, when I am at 36 weeks. Not my favorite picture, but I know several of you are dying to see what I look like now!

Above is Darby and I, when I was at 32 weeks.I think the picture above is about 34 weeks.This picture is at 35 weeks. This is me at about 351/2 weeks at my work baby shower. God truly blessed us through my sweet coworkers!

This is my adorable cake from my work shower. Pretty creative!