We wanted a more traditional, classy first name and had several favorites, but soon after we found out her gender, daddy quickly decided on "Amelia" because of his love for aviation. I wanted to meet her before we decided on the name and announced it, and sure enough, I took one look at her and couldn't imagine her as anything other than our little Amelia. We love all that the aviatrix Amelia Earhart represents for women - determination, confidence, independence, empowerment, adventure, a passion for life and exploration. Our hope that our Amelia will always chase after her dreams and have confidence in her ability to accomplish whatever she desires to achieve in life.
Her middle name is in line with her daddy, Poppi and Great Grandpa Gilstrap - Christopher Lee, Stuart Lee and Robert Lee. We wanted to continue the tradition and opted for the feminine spelling. We love that this is a special family name that she shares with three generations of Gilstraps.
I'll share her birth story in another post, but we wanted to let everyone know that she is very healthy and doing well. She passed her hearing test at the hospital and had great apgar scores. She had a little bit of jaundice and has struggled to keep her weight up, so we have been supplementing with a little formula until she is consistently gaining weight. We are breastfeeding and feeding her 1 ounce of formula at each nursing. The formula will help with weight gain and also helped with her jaundice because it contains extra Vitamin D. She is a champ at nursing and received lots of great compliments from nurses at the hospital!
I am feeling great and am thankful to have had a very easy recovery thus far. I've been pleasantly surprised through this whole process at how well my body has held up and how good I feel - it's such a testament to how incredible our bodies are! I am so thankful for how well delivery went and how recovery is going. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to be struggling with taking care of myself while taking care of a newborn.
Daddy is doing great as well and has been nothing short of our hero this first week. He has changed almost every diaper thus far, has mastered the art of hushing her to sleep, burps her like its his job, and has been spending a lot of time running around the house retrieving things for me while I am nursing - food/water/remote/phone/computer/heating pad :) Everything these days is a team effort, and I couldn't be more thankful that we are on the same team!
We were thrilled to have Julie, Stuart and my mom at the hospital to welcome Amelia! We are so thankful for these special visitors to be there during the first hours of her life and it means so much to us to have their unconditional love, support and encouragement while we begin this new chapter as parents. Our families mean the world to us and we were thrilled they were willing to make the trip to Colorado to be there to welcome Amelia Leigh into the world!
Here's a collection of photos from this first week:
Getting cleaned up and checking vitals.
The nurses made these adorable hats with a bow for her - I think it's a Pinterest thing!
Proud daddy - I love this photo.
My team from work sent over these beautiful flowers - beyond thankful for these women in my life.
Her first official photo taken by the hospital for permanent records - it's a bit of a mug shot!
Sleeping at the hospital - you can see Chris' phone propped up next to her. We downloaded a white noise app that she loves. It must sound just like the womb.
Heading home from the hospital - she screamed from the moment we put her in the carseat until the moment we pulled up at our house. Here's to hoping she'll come to enjoy the carseat in the weeks to come, moreso than her first (traumatizing) experience.
Getting ready to be transfered from the labor/delivery floor to the mom/baby recovery floor on Wednesday night.
Our first outfit for going home from the hospital - this is a 3 month size :) The pants were still pretty big, but the onesie was perfect in length. I think she has her mama's long torso! She was not very happy to have to be unwrapped from her cozy, warm swaddle - notice mom's hand on one side and dad's hand on the other. Everything is a team effort!
Proud Gigi!
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