Friday, January 23, 2015

The Night of Three Times

Life with a newborn is constantly changing. You get few days in a row of sameness, and and you let your guard down. You think to yourself, "Hey! If this is how it's going to be, this isn't so bad." And then, things change again and throw everyone (your newborn included!) for a loop.

Lucy gave us 4 days in a row of good sleep. She'd go down between 10pm-11pm after a couple of hours of fussing and cluster feeding, stay down until around 3 or 4 am, have a quick feeding and be back down until around 7. A really great schedule that made perfect sense, allowing me to feed her until she fell back asleep and letting me get up and ready for the day. I've even learned to start loving the middle of the night feeding  now that I'm back at work, where we get to just cuddle quietly together without anything else to do.

Of course, everything changed last night. She did her cluster feeding a bit earlier than usual, and fell asleep an hour earlier than usual, at 9pm. So, I went with it. Put her down for the night and headed back downstairs for a full hour of hands free, boob free time! "Maybe we are inching towards getting our post-bedtime evenings back," I thought to myself, like the fool that I am.

All was well, even an hour later when B and I came up to sleep. She stayed asleep in her bassinet, breathing heavily. B and I fell asleep at 10, also perfectly contentedly. Of course, OF COURSE, Mia chose this night, this beautiful night, to start screaming at midnight. For absolutely no obvious reason once B went to investigate. And of course, OF COURSE, said screaming also woke our perfectly sleeping baby, messing the whole schedule up.

We may have gotten an hour of freedom, but we certainly paid for it in the middle of the night. Because Lucy's middle of the night wake up was so much earlier than usual, she woke up a second time at 5am, and this time, screamed every time I put her down, which meant we  dozed while she was in my arms for 2 hours (I couldn't even put her down next to me until 7am!).

Thank goodness it's Friday. It certainly makes these prickly eyes easier to bear.

Friday, January 16, 2015

The first week back

B left Wednesday for a work-training in Salt Lake City. It's been planned for a while, and I've been dreading it all that time. Every single time he brought it up in the past few weeks, I'd tell him to please shut his mouth on the subject, as I continue to pretend it is not happening until I absolutely must think about it. Anyway, things went quite well for the first night! Lest you think that I am superwoman, please remember that my Mom is still with us. Though to be fair, I was completely on my own for Lucy's bedtime and overnight care. Really, not that bad. The second night wasn't bad, she wasn't particularly fussy or resistant, but she stayed awake overnight for a good two hours. For the first hour, I didn't see the time go by. I'd look down at her little face and be so happy to have this time to hang out with her, but by the hour and half mark, when there were only 2 hours left before my alarm went off, the niceness of it had worn off. Every time she'd start dozing off, she'd need a diaper change, or the second time, she'd spit up all over herself and needed a full clothing and blanket change... so of course, she'd be wide awake after all the commotion. I'm adjusting to the lack of sleep, but by the end of the day, I'm totally wiped.

Closing out the first week of being back at work, and I am completely exhausted despite not being terribly busy. I'd been working from home the week before, on something that was quite a big deal and took a lot of time but was completely finished last Friday at 4:50pm, so that really made coming back in this week much much easier. I'm not sure where the exhaustion comes in, because physically, it feels like I'm able to rest more here, at my desk, in front of a computer, rather than at home, trying to juggle a baby, laundry, mealtimes, etc.

The thing about being back at work, and not being terribly busy, is that I've been completely focused and borderline obsessing about pumping. By the time I manage to get myself into the office (this should get better by the time B gets back next week), it's already been a couple of hours since the last feeding, so it's time to pump. And while I'm pumping, I try my darndest not to stare at the little bottles filling up ever so slowly. Once I'm managed to squeeze the last possible drops out of myself, I'll clean up, store the milk in those tiny little zip-lock bags I love so much, put them  in the little cooler I love so much, and rinse out my parts. Then, as soon as I get back to my desk, I'll do the math about how many more ounces I need to pump at the next session (and the one after that) to replenish the amount she ate the previous day. It's an obsession. I really hope I can start to relax about it soon, because I honestly don't think about much else during the day. It's exhausting! Mothers who go back to work and manage to do this for an entire year... serious kudos to you.

Today is Friday, and I've never been more excited about it!

Monday, January 12, 2015

Back to Reality


Lucy is 6 weeks old! Or at least, she will be tomorrow. But I am back at work, while Lucy stays at home with my Mom for the remainder of her visit. She leaves January 28th, and I will resume my experiment in "parenting from work" where little Lucy will tag along with me, be worn around my office as I try to get things done in between diaper changes, feedings and keeping her happy. This ended up working relatively well with Mia, at least until she got a bit too big to be content strapped to my chest. I'm hoping Lucy will give us a good 6 months -- once she starts to crawl and be mobile, it'll have to be full time daycare.



But, a bit about my seemingly short break. Lucy's birth was good, as I described in my last post. She's doing very well, feeding well, gaining weight well, no issues of any kind. She's a lovely baby, who is unhappy unless she's held while awake, but will sleep on her own without too much trouble. She was born at 7lbs, 2oz, and now weighs 9lbs, 4oz, so everything is going well there. I'm still breastfeeding, and hopefully everything goes alright with me pumping while I'm away from her.


But somehow, my recovery went a bit off track after the first couple of weeks. First, I had an allergic reaction to the pads I was using for postpartum bleeding - this was very painful and unpleasant, on an area that is already messed from birthing a human baby. The Doctor prescribed some steroids, things got better (though only after an EXTREMELY painful examination on my lady parts, that were already, as mentioned, messed up from birthing a human baby). But then, they got worse again, and evidently the allergic reaction then triggered an infection, which meant another trip to the Doctor. After a less painful examination but multiple viewings by multiple Doctors in the practice which, I have to tell you, did not reassure me that things were going to get any better if they kept on debating what the hell was happening to my angry lady parts, they finally came to an agreement, sent me off with some cream and things did get better. So that will have to do to explain my lack of energy for anything but feeding my baby, giving attention to my 3 year old, and managing the out of town visitors we had.