I’ve been struggling with coming to this space to write lately, and not necessarily because of fatigue & exhaustion. I mean… I’m tired, but I’m not that tired. I’m feeling conflicted and afraid of coming across as too “gloaty” (which I know isn’t even a word) or as having it too easy. I know that’s silly, but it’s how I’ve been feeling. At any rate, here I am, about to write a few updates on life around our house lately with a newborn – aka, the eat/sleep/poop update.
Eat: Breastfeeding is going well (Harvey was just over his birth weight already at 6d old) with just one instance of a clogged duct or early mastitis or something last week. It was basically 12 hrs of misery and maybe 24 hours total of not feeling well and pain, but that’s it. Other than that, Harvey eats like a champ, he is super efficient (averaging 8 min / side and about 2:30-3:00 of nursing per day spread over 10 feeds), my supply seems to be fine, and I know that we are so blessed to be having a fairly easy go of this with breastfeeding again. I’ve just started pumping again as well so we can start him on bottles next week in preparation for me to go back to work. Boo.
Sleep: I was just reading back over my weekly Stella updates and it seems like her brother is following in her (sleeping) footsteps so far. Some nights we’ll get 3-4 hour stretches of sleep, and some nights he’s up wanting to eat every 1-2 hours. Either way, I’m just reminding myself that these sleepy middle of the night feedings don’t last forever, and he won’t cuddle up in my arms like this forever, so I’m doing my darndest to enjoy every minute of his newborn-ness. I functioned really well on broken up hours of sleep when Stella was young, and so far the same seems to be true this time. Granted we haven’t hit the witching hour stage yet (I think Stella cried/fussed for 4 hours straight every night for a few weeks!), but so far we’re doing pretty darn well in the sleep department.
Poop: Our newborn cloth diapers that my MIL’s friend gifted us are adorable and fit Harvey well, and between those and the box of newborn disposable diapers that Sarah sent me, we literally haven’t spent a penny on diapers yet. He had a little bit of a rash last week, but that’s cleared up now, and as long as I remind myself to change him every couple of hours, he’s a happy camper! He gets a little gassy from time to time, but nothing too bad yet.
I love my blue-eyed baby! I swear he is smiling socially already, and that little “O” face on the right makes my heart melt too – he just started doing that today, and Stella did it all the time for a couple of weeks as well!
With all of that being said, so far, I have to admit… this hasn’t been too hard. It helps that Stella has been fantastic with him, and even when she is being an opinionated 2 year old with me (nap time meltdowns anyone?), I feel grateful that she’s taking out her confusion and frustration on me and her dad and not her baby brother.
Of course I write that and immediately look towards the sky, afraid I’m about to be struck by lighting, because surely I just JINXED myself.
I think part of my current ease of transition is knowing that I only get 8 short weeks off with little man. We are currently trying to figure out if I can go back to work part time for a few additional weeks (Charlie’s Mom fell last week & is now needing shoulder surgery, so our free Thursday daycare is on hiatus and makes the decision to try to finagle part time a little more realistic), but either way, I’ll definitely be back at work in March sometime, and since it’s already February tomorrow, I’m trying really hard to not freak out about how quickly my maternity leave is flying by. I so wish I could stay home with my kids while they were little. I hate that this isn’t a choice for us but instead is a “I have to work so we can pay the bills” thing. And yes, I know we’re not alone in this struggle.
I’m also blessed to have amazing friends & family supporting us. My parents were here from last Wednesday afternoon – Sunday morning, my in-laws have taken Stella twice for her usual Wednesday night over night, and we’ve had friends left and right dropping by with food & drink for us. I’ve made a point of showering 19 out of the last 20 days (it really does improve my outlook on everything in the day!), and I had a phenomenally easy recovery physically speaking this time, so yeah… things are great here.
I hope this post isn’t too boastful, but I feel like it’s important to come here and record the good times as well as the bad. I’m sure I’ll be writing a sleep deprived, frustrated post sooner rather than later, and I want to be able to come back to this post and remember that things can and will be good again someday. So far being a family of 4 is pretty darn awesome.
