But anyway, one month down, and it's been great! SOOOO full of lessons learned which I can't wait to share with you all, and already so many wonderful memories.
Abby is very healthy and already interacts with us! We don't see the pediatrician again til the first week of October, but we weigh her on our scale at home and she is almost 10 pounds! And she's definitely longer but I'm not attempting to measure her. Changing her diaper and keeping her legs straight for longer than 2 seconds is already enough of a challenge! But I can tell as she is already outgrown some of her newborn sleep sacks as she is too tall now! Developmental wise she is trying really hard to turn on her side but isn't quite there yet. She gets her thighs going to turn but can't quite find the power to turn herself over yet. I give it to month 2 and she will get it. I want to say I think she's smiling at us and there has been one or two times so far that I really think she did smile socially. The rest are probably poop smiles but I will take them anyway! Abby also LOVES music. If she is crying, almost 9 times out of 10 we can get her to stop if we play some music. She especially loves 3 particular songs from the Broadway musical "Newsies". No joke. "Carrying the banner" almost makes her stop crying every single time. It started out as a joke because we saw the musical while I was pregnant and she was kicking SO MUCH during the songs that we joked that she must love it. And when she came out and was crying we tried playing it as a joke and....silence. So our kid loves music. And Newsies. I'll take it!
So first I will start out with the lessons we have so graciously learned since our first week. Again, some are in humor but some are totally serious and I hope they help other parents!
1. When going out, pack more than one pacifier! Ignorant me was all like, yeah this one pacifier should be fine. I even had a nice case for it like a rock star first time parent. That pacifier was on the floor in about 2 minutes. No more pacifier. Pack more pacifiers. Like, five.
2. Don't rely on pacifiers. I am exclusively breastfeeding, so they told us to wait 4 weeks to offer it to her. Well, 2.5 weeks in and I was pretty desperate. Especially at night when she was going through a phase where she just wanted the boob for comfort. I researched options for pacifiers that are okay for exclusively breast fed babies and found the Soothie Pacifier and one also made by our bottle company, Nanobebe. YES! So I got it and I kept it as my secret weapon. It gave me comfort for awhile thinking that oh yes, you wanna cry? Yeah keep crying because I have a secret weapon in my pocket, this almighty pacifier! I was so confident that when I had to use it, it would be this magical thing. Nope. One night It got down to having to offer it (about 3 weeks), and low and behold....she kept it in for maybe 30 seconds. So I'm like oh here let me put it back in. Back out. Repeat 100 times. So turns out we don't have a pacifier kid. No secret weapon. When I put it in she literally looks at me like, Mom this is BS theres nothing coming out of here, who do you think you're kidding? Do I look dumb?? So lesson learned here? I don't know. I don't even know. I guess just don't rely on that as your back up secret weapon. She is up to maybe keeping it in for 5 minutes tops but often will spit it out and cry again, or fall asleep (yay!).
3. Baby WILL poop within 5-10 minutes after changing the diaper. It will happen. Multiple, multiple times. I just laugh at that point. One time I literally picked her up off the changing table and there was a very loud audible shart. Please tell me other parents have had times where they go through 3 diapers in 10 minutes???
4. You will get every body fluid on you. Accept it. So many code browns, code yellows, code spit ups I have lost count. Each code brown we have I try and learn what went wrong and what I can do to avoid it next time (see #5). The worst code brown yet, I was changing her diaper and it was only pee! So I'm just humming along there like no big deal, and all the sudden the ground shook and this ginormous fart came out of her little bum, accompanied by liquid gold that literally just shot out. In just a second it was on my hand(s), the wipe container, the diaper bag, the wall, the FLOOR (I'm not joking!), and probably other things I haven't found yet. I literally stood there frozen like WTF just happened for about 5 seconds before I jumped into action. Its times like those you don't even know what to clean first! Do you clean the baby but then risk baby getting poop on again from the dirty changing table?? Or do you clean the walls and the FLOOR (still enamored by this) first? I haven't figured that answer out yet.
5. Preventing code browns/ Code brown clean up:
a. DID YOU KNOW that Onesies pull DOWN? Yes. It's true. Turns out those weird shoulder flaps aren't just meaningless decoration, they are meant to roll down the arm! Yes! So no more trying to roll a very poopy onesie all the way up the back and over the head! It rolls down right off the bum!
b. DID YOU KNOW that diapers are supposed to be turned inside out first to "exercise" the flaps that come in it to prevent leakage? The first 3 weeks of her life we just opened the diapers and put it on. Oh no. Thanks to youtube, I found that if you turn the diaper inside out and arch out all those flaps, then turn the diaper right side in again, place it under bum, you have a much higher success chance of it holding in all that liquid gold. It's amazing. The things they don't tell you in the $30 newborn care class we took.......geez.
6. We will never be on time again anywhere ever. Or at least it feels that way. Need to be somewhere at 6? Okay we should leave our house at 5:30 (time we used to leave). HAHA NOPE. More like Abby has a code yellow/code brown at 5:35 and needs to be fed and we end up leaving at 6. This has happened many, many times. So we are trying to adjust our "need to leave by" times to accommodate, but we still end up being late, a lot.
7. Gone are the days where you could just get out of the car and go into a store. It is now like expedition Everest. It is a journey. Now its park the car. Get out of car. Go to trunk and get stroller base, unfold stroller, go get baby in car seat, place car seat in stroller. Get diaper bag on shoulder. Walk into store with more equipment on you than if you were hiking up Mount Everest. Or skip the stroller and hold the car seat which is almost unrealistic. Turns out there is no way to easily hold a baby in a car seat. It's heavy as all h*ll and I feel like a walking zombie with trying to walk and not letting it hit any other objects, my legs or just holding it in my arms. I have a bruise on my arm from the first time I held it in my arm because I am a wimp. Its just awkward no matter what. We now go to wegmans and have one cart for the car seat and one cart for the groceries. Like I said, its an expedition.
8. You suddenly reach a new level of tired where telepathy becomes a real thing with you and your spouse. Well, sort of. There has been so many times where we are both up in the middle of the night or in the early morning, and I am sitting in my chair breastfeeding and I'm staring at my husband thinking of all the things I want to say, I'm literally imagining myself saying them but I am too tired to open my mouth. So then later I think I said them and turns out I never did. I think also at times we are both so tired that we just stare at each other and have a conversation without saying anything... You will also reach a new level of tired and find yourself with severe mommy brain and messing simple things up and making mistakes (like trying to breast pump the air, I did that this morning), leaving random things in random places that they don't belong, forgetting to lock doors, close car doors, etc.
9. There will be days where you feel like a total rock star mom/parent and there will be days where every second you are like WTF IS GOING ON. The other day Abby and I had a great day, she took her naps like a champ, ate like a champ, we had a great day, I made dinner like a rock star while Abby slept in her swing and hubby came home and it was like a perfect family all happy and I was like YEAH THIS IS GREAT, PARENTING IS FUN! And then, there are days like the other day where every move you attempt goes against you, baby is crying for no reason at all, you have every body fluid on you, its one of those days where they poop right after you change them, you are dropping everything (literally why do we drop everything when we are already having a bad day??), and it feels like Ashton Kutcher is going to pop out of your pantry and be like PUNK'd!, and you'd all have a great laugh. That same night we decided to go to the mall in a moment of weakness because we were determined to have cookie dough (craving). Oh the road is closed we take to get to the mall? No worries, because, well, cookie dough. Lets find another way that takes us 20 extra minutes. Get to the mall and Abby is crying bloody murder because she's hungry. Feed baby in backseat of our car because, cookie dough. Get the stroller out and expedition ready in the rain because, cookie dough. Get inside the mall and bend down to put diaper bag under stroller and literally ALL THE MILK that I collected from my leaky breast and forgot about was now all over my shirt, my jeans and my FLIP FLOP. WHO KNEW you could get breast milk in your FLIP FLOP. Guys, it was literally SQUISHY. It was that moment I no longer felt like a rock star parent and I wanted to sit on the floor, in the mall and cry. But, I walked around the mall with a wet shirt, wet jeans and wet flip flops because well, cookie dough. Cravings, they don't stop when you are no longer pregnant!
10. Stranger negativity (remember how annoyed I got about it in my first post about how strangers feel the need to tell you how hard newborn hood will be when you are pregnant?) Oh yeah, it doesn't stop! I'm telling you, random people we see are like "Aw, cute baby! Just wait til they start walking". Or "ohh wait til the 6 week mark, they no longer sleep", or "wait til they start talking", or "these are the easy days", etc. Why do people feel the need to resort to negativity as a conversation starter? Compliment how cute the baby is and keep walking. Do you think new parents really need to hear that? I'm literally just taking it one day at a time I don't need to hear about what negative experiences may be in store for us.
Anyway, those are the 10 lessons of the month. Overall I can honestly say we have a good baby. There has been lots of learning experiences and challenging moments but overall little Abby is good to us. She is in a pattern now where she is sleeping approximately 12 am -6 am and we are very thankful. She is eating well and breastfeeding is going excellent. I am trying so hard to savor each and every moment with her this small and soak it all in. I love spending all day with her and the thought of going back to work kills me (in 6 weeks). My favorite moments with her are usually right after breastfeeding we snuggle. Or she likes to play what I call froggie time and we hold her and sit her up and bounce her and she loves that, usually we get a few smiles. The other night she made me laugh out loud, I was breastfeeding and in the quiet of the night she farted very loudly and we just made eye contact and both raised our eyebrows. I know it was likely just a reflex on her part but it was hilarious to me at 3 am.
As for my health, I mostly feel back to normal! We try and get out and walk with Abby in the carrier or the stroller and I am up to almost a 3 mile tolerance. So physically doing great. Mentally doing pretty good, too. Anxiety is still high at times as I fear that I am still going to miss something wrong with her or I will do something wrong, but I am trying to manage that. The hospital I delivered with offers a great support group for new moms that I went to and that helped a lot. It was myself and two other moms and we all had 3 week olds and could all relate and were having the same experiences. It helped validate a lot of my feelings and anxiety and showed me its okay to feel this way. For the first 3 weeks or so I was also concerned with myself that I no longer had any interest in doing any of my art. I am very artistic and love to paint, draw, cross stitch, whatever but since her birth I either was too tired, felt like I should be with Abby instead of doing art stuff, or I simply didn't want to do it, which was making me sad. Then one day I picked up my cross stitch piece which is almost done and even though I didn't want to, I forced myself to keep going and that sparked my light again thank goodness. Now I do it almost every day again during Abby's naps, and even got back to painting. Abby sits right next to me as I paint and we listen to music together. It's the best and for me, its a mental health lifesaver. Without my art now I would literally go crazy alone in this house just watching TV all day. No way!
Here are some of my favorite moments in pictures:
Post feeding smile/snuggles:
Painting with Abby!
Thank you every one for reading!!!
Love, the NewMotherboard <3
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