Azra's third week

Azra is now 18 days old. She is slowly filling out. We weighed her a couple of days ago and although she wouldn't stay still long enough to get an accurate reading she seems to be around 3.6 kg. The last couple of days have been easier. Before that she was crying quite a bit but now that I think about it I think it might be related to my bean consumption and that she just suffers from gas problems. Maybe I should wait for her digestive system to mature a little bit before indulging in my love of beans! Of course it could be just being a baby and be not at all related to this. She still does have times when she gets a bit cranky and these are usually around 1-3 pm if she has not had a sleep since the morning. Unfortunately a lot of the time she will only go to sleep when she is breasfeeding and laying next to me. If I get up and put her elsewhere to sleep she usually wakes up 10-20 minutes later. Let's hope this is just related to her being a newborn and just out of the womb! However she will sleep in her bassinet at night, providing she has fallen asleep after breastfeeding. The other time is at night. We are still trying to keep her up from 7-10pm. Probably later when we get ourselves organised we will try to make these hours earlier. Around 9 she starts crying a bit. We then give her a bath and that calms her down. She loves the bath but she doesn't like getting dressed afterwards! Is it because of being taken out of the water? Then I feed her, put her to bed, she usually wakes up 20 minutes later. I feed her once more, sometimes twice and then she is usually in bed by 11pm sometimes as late as 12pm, depending on how much she cries. Last night she was truly asleep by 11 and then she woke up at 5.30am. People are saying that I should wake her up every 4 hours to feed her but I figure if she were hungry she would wake me up. Plus I tried this when we were in hospital and she would not feed, so twice I put her back to bed without feeding. I don't try this anymore! Plus it is not as if she is not getting enough milk during the day. The only disadvantage may be one for me where I am literally exploding with milk when she finally does wake up.
Talking about her crying she has a very loud impassioned cry. I think when she is older she will be a very passionate person and she will let people know what she wants and what she doesn't want. Maybe I am reading to much into the behaviour I am seeing now but it certainly seems like this. I sometimes wonder what the neighbours are thinking sometimes, when she is literally howling and we can't console her!!! I don't know why I should care though! We had some visitors the other day and when she started crying I tied to stop her and the really nice thing was that they said let her cry. That was refreshing. I think that babies just need to cry sometimes, I think they are trying to express something, missing the womb or something (we can't understand). She is also smiling a bit more nowadays. Yesterday she smiled just as I lay her down on her cushion getting ready to breastfeed her. The smile wasn't directed at me this time but it still made me happy! I see her every now and then smiling, sometimes she is sleeping! Nice dreams???? Physically, apart from filling out a bit, getting chubbier cheeks and liking to lift her head up and swing it around (especially when she is on your shoulder), there is not much of a change. When people come over if they make an observation that she looks like me, Husnu says very confidently ' yes, but she will change to look more like someone from the Black sea'- let's see! Below is her photo at 18 days. Maybe in the next entries I will make more of an effort to take photos with us in them as well. By the way the cat,who was a little scared of Azra when we first brought her home from the hospital, has become used to her and now even comes into the bedroom when we are in there with her and now even jumps onto our bed when she is there. A big advance! I guess he got sick of not getting an affection!