6 Weeks In…

So we are officially 6 weeks into this parenting gig (or will be tomorrow), and I gotta say… it is one of the craziest experiences of my life.  It is very surreal to make the transition from pregnancy to birth to infancy.  One minute she is poking you in the ribs and constricting your bladder and the next she is a new person in the world, breathing and experiencing everything for the first time.  There are so many things about our first 6 weeks that I don’t want to forget! I blogged about a few of them in her one month update, so this one will focus more on the parenting side of things rather than the baby side of things.

1. Sleep deprivation is no joke. There is a reason they use sleep deprivation as a torture device.  The first few weeks you get virtually no sleep.  I am breastfeeding, so we were told to wake her up every 3 hours to feed (and sometimes she decided it needed to be every 2 hours), and since feeding usually took between 30-45 minutes, and another 30ish minutes to get her to sleep again, you are really looking at getting an hour, maybe an hour and a half, of sleep at a time.  Before baby I needed anywhere from 8-10 hours of sleep a night… and to switch to 4 or 5 one hour stretches at night? Miserable.  Especially because several times when I would lay down to sleep I couldn’t fall asleep!! As a brand new (and totally inexperienced) mom, you are constantly concerned about whether they are breathing, are they sleeping in the right thing, am I doing this right?!!? One of my sorority sisters wrote a piece for the huffington post on the thought process of a new mom… and it is spot on… read it here. I laughed out loud when I read it because I constantly have the thoughts warring in my head between: “look how precious she is… I just love her, I could sit like this forever” and “No No No No… GO BACK TO SLEEP” At 6 weeks she is now sleeping 4-5 hour stretches at night, which feels like HEAVEN (except for the moments where I wake up before her and go… WAIT… she didn’t wake up… is she BREATHING?!!?  Yes… okay, great, now I can go back to sleep… just as soon as this adrenaline rush I just self inflicted passes)

2. Hormones are not your friend. For the first few weeks (okay maybe the first month-ish) you cry uncontrollably for no apparent reason and for good reasons, and for every reason in between.  I was feeling good during pregnancy for not being a crazy emotional person.  I mean… other than crying at a few commercials… I felt pretty steady through most of pregnancy.  Postpartum however?! Different story.  I remember sitting on the couch ugly crying and my sweet husband coming in going… what is wrong? what happened? And I told him exactly the truth… absolutely nothing. I just needed to cry the estrogen out (yes I know… not so medically sound, but that’s what it felt like!). And there was an evening in the hospital where she had lost more weight than they wanted her to and she was getting dehydrated; she wasn’t getting enough milk or colostrum or whatever I was producing.  She was also jaundiced and needed to spend the night under the blue billi lights.  And because she was dehydrated we needed to supplement her food either with donor milk or formula.  And what I heard in all of that information was: You aren’t able to provide for your daughter, so we are going to let someone else provide for her. Rationally I knew that jaundice is a fairly common problem, (which my brothers and I all had) and that the donor milk/formula was a short term solution and what was best for Taylor, but hormones (and sleep deprivation… see #1) prevent you from reacting rationally, so I had a total meltdown in the hospital that included me crying, the nurses tiptoeing around the crazy crying patient.  But after a night of being under the lights, a little bit of donor milk and one thing of formula, I was able to get back to feeding her and she was good to go! (See the picture below to see her stylin’ glasses she had to wear under the billi lights.) The good news? Those even out after not very long and the random crying spurts happen farther and farther apart.

3. Breastfeeding is HARD.  The hospital we gave birth in has a breastfeeding support group every week, and after attending for several weeks I have come to a few conclusions.  1. at the beginning EVERYONE has a hard time breastfeeding–see the above story.  What I didn’t mention in that one was that despite excruciating pain, I was feeding Taylor (or trying to) every hour up until that point… but to no avail, she still wasn’t getting enough.  Fast forward a few weeks and I am having no problem producing more than enough to feed her (and put some away for when I go back to work) as evidenced by the fact that for the last two weeks she has gained 11 and 12 ounces per week (and only needs to be gaining 5-7 ounces).  But in the hospital I had several lactation people tell me “It isn’t supposed to hurt”.  Well my unscientific research of me and most of my friends says… it hurts like crazy for the first little while, but then once your milk comes in and you and the baby get the hang of it… it doesn’t hurt (as much). But those first few days? I had cuts and bruises and scabs from my little milk monster. I want to go back and tell myself on day two that it is TOTALLY worth it, and just to hang in there (and I kind of want to punch the nurse who told me it should never hurt).

The other piece of breastfeeding is that I am hungry ALL THE TIME.  My poor husband, every time he goes to get something from the pantry? I’ve already eaten it. I have a serious case of the munchies!!

4. She is precious. One of the things I love most is watching her sleep.  She is peaceful and makes crazy facial expressions in her sleep.  She reminds me all at the same time how fragile life is, and how resilient we are.  One of the funnier things in the hospital was her first visit by the pediatrician.  He came to do her first checkup when she was about a day old and he picks her up and checks her out, and kind of tosses her around as he does it.  He pushed on her stomach and put his hands in her mouth, and gave her a thorough exam. But he also did it in a way that intentionally showed us as new and timid parents that she wouldn’t break.

I love how much like a tiny little human she is (I know… you are thinking: she IS a tiny little human).  But it is incredible that we all start out that small and are able to grow into the adult size humans we are. It is sort of amazing.  We got some great photos taken by our friend Alicia and I love how they capture how precious she is! (I’ll post more of them later, but here is one of my favorites

5. They start to have a fun personality: As she gets older I get to see glimpses of her personality emerge.  Her smile is this sort of crooked grin that I can already picture her at age 3 giving us when she does something she isn’t supposed to do.  And much like her mama, I put a super frilly dress on her one day (it was super cute!) and she fussed the whole time, I took it off and put on some comfy clothes and she quieted down! And did I mention she likes to eat? A Lot?!  She gets that from both her parents! But she already likes to play by herself on her play mat and loves to go outside! It will be fun to see if those personality traits stick and what she will be like as she grows up! Plus right now she has blue eyes and light brown hair… but she won’t necessarily get to keep those, so I’m anxious to see what she looks like as she grows up.

Okay, enough new parent rambling.  Needless to say, its true, parenting is simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding thing!