Willa's Bath and Breastfeeding

I think this was Willa's first bath.
At Ballard Swedish they wiped her clean after birth but did not bath her since there was trauma and
she needed to be transported right away. At First Hill they did not bath her maybe
because they did not think about it and assumed she already had a bath
or maybe because of all her wires it is more work so they delay it, or maybe she just wasn't too stinky yet.
But I decided to ask about it tonight and the nurse looked at the clock and said she could do it in half an hour and started to pull out all the bath supplies. She had to go searching for a bigger tub because usually they do more sponge-bath style and usually they are washing much smaller babies :)
Her hair looked lighter and curlier post-bath!

This was the only picture of her getting weighed that I was able to snap. But the scale had switched to grams. Oops! She was 9lbs 13oz so she lost a few ounces since birth.
But we intend to help her put the weight back on through a special diet known as "Momma's high-fat breastmilk"! I have been pumping at the hospital and we have a good supply of milk for her stored there. This afternoon they followed through on reducing her IV amount. So now we are hoping she will actually get hungry and want milk. She has latched a few times to nurse yesterday and today. Tonight after the traumatic event known as a bath, she nursed for almost 20 minutes! We did not weigh her after to see how much she drank, but she was sucking and swallowing well. Hurray! So hopefully she does good with milk from a bottle over night and keeps nursing well during the day so we can get rid of the IV altogether.
Then we can get her home!!!

Neither of my other girls ever took to binkies, but Willa seems to like hers occasionally.
Neither of my girls bottle-fed well at all either.
I pumped and Matt attempted bottles but my girls stubbornly held out until I returned.
But due to Miss Willa's hospital stay and early introduction to bottles,
she may proved herself the exception on that as well.
If so, as much as I do not enjoy pumping I will continue to anyways.
Because being able to leave her with Matt for more than 3 hours and
knowing she is getting her milk needs met sounds pretty nice.
What sounds really nice as well is the idea of Matt being able to give her a bottle overnight
instead of my nursing each time she wakes up hungry.
So although I wish she never had to have this extended hospital stay,
there might be a few unintended perks :)