12 weeks

This week was better than last, although Sunday was pretty rough. It's good thing we were both home to trade back and forth that day. I'm not sure what exactly the problem was. We got off to a bad start by keeping her awake too long in the morning. After that she was just a mess all day. She would only sleep for a few minutes at a time and when she was awake, she was screaming. The next morning when I was changing her clothes, I realized that the leggings she had on were digging into her little thighs. Maybe that was part of the problem too. Either way, we survived, but it was a hard day. Since then she's been doing better. It's still not perfect, but I feel like we're moving in the right direction.

Ella's been finding her voice. She's pretty shy about it, but she's added lots of new sounds to her "vocabulary". It's so cute when she gets going. She also finds herself hilarious, she's constantly giggling while she's talking. She's especially talkative when she's supposed to be going to sleep. She'll chatter away even after her eyes have closed and her head has dropped. So far she's really only "talked" to Jeff and me, like I said, she's kind of shy. But it's getting more and more frequent so I don't think it'll be long before she's babbling to everyone.

We finally took her to get her hearing tested. We knew she could hear, but we wanted to do the official test just to be on the safe side. This test is usually done in the hospital after birth, but since she was born in a birthing center, she didn't have it done. I called all of the audiologists in Mansfield and Arlington who took Ella's insurance, but none did the newborn screening. So then I called all the local hospitals and could never get a straight answer or anyone to call me back. Finally, when I went back to see Betty (our midwife) for the last time, I told her my predicament and she gave me the card for an audiologist in Fort Worth. They didn't take Ella's insurance, but at this point we were just happy to find someone who does the test at all. So anyway, it's done, and now we know for sure she can hear just fine.