My Long List of Excuses

I've been terrible at keeping up with blogging. At times, it's a nice break from this baby business, but at other times - those breaks are used for much needed sleep! I've even given up on washing the dishes everyday so that I can have that extra ten minutes of rest - believe me, it's worth it!

We've also been super busy lately with lots of visitors. In some ways it's easier to have a whole bunch of people visit over the course of one weekend, but in other ways it's ten times more hectic! We started off our busy weekend on a Wednesday night when we went into town to pick up Adam's sister from the airport. The very next day, a couple of our friends came to visit. Unfortunately for them, Ellie was having a particularly fussy night and she put on quite a screeching crying show for them! Thankfully though, we also got to visit with them the next morning when she was in a much better mood. Then on the Saturday my dad stopped by for an hour or so to show us his new sheep and to visit briefly with our other visitors that arrived that day - my brother and his family! It was great to see my nephews (they are growing up far too quickly!) and absolutely heart melting to see Ellie's Auntie & Uncle dote on her! By Monday evening, all our guests had departed and we were just plain exhausted!

That was over a week ago now and I'm still not sure if I've recovered. Now we have another super busy couple of weeks coming up. This week and next we have appointments on every one of Adam's days off. One of those is Ellie's first shots. I don't think I need to explain why I'm not looking forward to that day! We booked her appointment for the morning for a couple reasons. She's the least fussy in the mornings, so at least she won't already be screaming when we get there. Also, then if she has an adverse reaction to the shots, hopefully it would still be day time when it happens so we won't be heading into town in the middle of the night to go to the emergency room (why do I always think of the worst case scenario?!). And if she's just fussy and upset all day, hopefully it will subside by night time and we won't have a sleepless night as a result. Wishful thinking? Probably.

On top of all that, we have more visitors coming this weekend for a couple weeks - Ellie's grandparents from Ontario! She is their first grandchild, so they are very excited to finally meet her. Hopefully we have a minimal number of super fussy days while they're here, since we still seem to be getting those fairly often! Oh - and in a lovely turn of events - my mom (who was the biggest help in the world to me for a whole WEEK after Adam went back to work) will be back for one night at the end of the month! Oh how I wish I could keep her another week!

If anyone else is planning on visiting in the near future - bring coffee and lots of it. Or food, food is good! (Thank you sooo very much for the chili and bread Madeleine! Yum!!)

6 weeks and 2 days

In the spirit of honesty I have to admit that I thought this would be easier. Not that I thought having and caring for a baby would be easy necessarily, but I definitely thought it would be less challenging and stressful than I'm finding it to be. Not only that, but even when it was super hard for the first couple weeks, I still believed it would get much easier a lot faster than it is. Adam thinks I'm too hard on myself and that I'm doing a great job. It's nice to hear, and he might be right, but all I want is to feel like I'm doing a great job. And I want to stop thinking in terms of the future (ie. 'It'll be easier when she can sit up', or, 'In 2 weeks she's old enough to sleep 6 hours straight') because that only sets me up to be disappointed with the present and disappointed with that future when my expectations don't come true.

And dammit, I want some freakin' dairy products! Chocolate ice cream would do wonders on making me feel better at the moment.  :-(

The 3 P's

Pee, poop and puke. It's funny how your perspective of all these things drastically changes when you have a baby. Suddenly, a little pee is completely harmless. After all, it's pretty much colourless and odourless, so what's the big deal? Poop, still kinda gross but a lot less so now that you have to deal with it a dozen times a day. It doesn't even resemble real poop in any way, so I guess that helps! As for puke, well, it's harmless. I get puked on daily and Ellie pukes on herself daily. Neither of us gets a fresh change of clothes just because of a little puke. So long as it's not excessive, we just let it dry and move on!

I think with all these things there comes some moment when you realize how little they phase you. With me, the pee moment was today. I changed Ellie's diaper in the car and had her on a vinyl change pad to protect the seat of the car. Sadly, the seat of the car is not flat and she decided to pee. It poured down the mat and made a lovely little puddle on my seat. Yes, I then had to sit in it all the way home. I did put down a little blanket but only so that my butt wouldn't have a big wet spot when I went into the grocery store. Did I then clean the seat when I got home? Hell no. It'll dry ;)

As for my poop moment. I think it was a few days ago. Ellie often shoots poops across her change table and onto the wall while we're changing her. Messy, but not the end of the world. A few days ago I noticed that we had missed a few spots while cleaning up after one of these explosive poops. But that's all I did - I noticed it. Then I walked away and got on with my day. What's a little poop on the wall? I finally wiped it off today when I noticed that there were about a dozen little poop spots on the wall, not just that one!

And then there's puke. I've never been phased by baby puke, so I haven't really had a decisive moment with this one. However, I do remember a couple weeks ago when Adam would change his shirt everytime Ellie spit up on it. I thought this was the silliest concept and still do. I think he's gotten over it. ;)

1 month later...

Ellie is one month old!

I love these stickers! We had fun propping Ellie up in the corner of the couch with a fun fabric background (a quilt made for her by our friend's mom). We took a bunch of photos with her propped up like this and then some of her lying on her back. I think we'll do a combination of both styles of photos for a few months to see what works best for us. I can't wait until we have a few of these photos so we can start comparing them!

Musings of an exhausted mama...

It's 2am. Ellie's been awake for nearly 7 hours straight, crying and fussing loudly for about the last 3 or 4 hours. This can't be healthy for her. Every time we think we've calmed her down she jolts back to her fussy mood, often with a shrill cry that comes out of nowhere piercing your ears and making you want to cry too! The silver lining is that Adam has tomorrow off, so we can hopefully stay in bed for most of the day, if that's what it takes to recover from tonight. Oh the joys of being a mama!

Suggestions?

I've reached the point where I'm ready to have some 'me' time. It doesn't have to be terribly exciting and I don't want to go far or be away from Ellie for too long (since I'm breastfeeding and not yet ready to figure out pumping). So I'm looking for your suggestions of things I can do for a half hour or hour every other day or so. I don't yet have my doctor's okay to exercise, so sadly this means yoga or a quick jog are out of the question. Any ideas??

The Greatest Challenge

1 day old Ellie :)

  Well, I'm 3 weeks and 5 days into having a baby and although there have been many challenges so far (my own recovery, sleep deprivation, dealing with a crying infant, etc), by far the greatest challenge has been breastfeeding. I read a lot about breastfeeding when I was pregnant. I had no doubt in my mind that it was the best for the baby and that I would do anything to make sure I could provide this nourishing substance for my baby. Yet somehow I don't think all my reading managed to portray how incredibly difficult it would be.

You see, when Ellie was first born and we were still in the hospital, the challenge was in learning how to hold her properly (with an IV in the crook of my elbow - which *constantly* interfered with correct positioning) and how to get her latched on properly. Every bad latch resulted in major nipple pain during the next attempt. Speaking of nipple pain - holy crap!!! I could never have imagined how much it hurt. I think I may have even let out a little scream once or twice. Luckily, if you get the latch right, the pain goes away within about half a minute. If you get it wrong though, stop immediately because it will only get worse!

By the time we were leaving the hospital, I felt much better about breastfeeding. I went home thinking the hardest part was over. Ha! What a cruel joke nature plays. Clearly I had forgotten that I was only feeding her colostrum and I was yet to experience the joys (!!) of engorgement when my milk came in. Now, I'm already bigger chested, but wow - these puppies got HUGE and HARD and LUMPY and PAINFUL! I can't even describe it enough. Sleeping was awkward (on top of the fact that I couldn't sleep in many positions because of my healing incision). Feeding Ellie was painful too because I had to massage those painful, lumpy boobs while she fed. Finally though, a health nurse that visited us at home suggested putting cabbage leaves in my bra for 20 minutes after a feeding. Strange - but it worked with just one use!! Sweet relief!

Now the pain is seldom and the lumpy engorgement only seems to happen occasionally. The new challenge: leakage! Even with breast pads, I woke up to a nice little puddle on my sheets last night! My advice for anyone taking on the breastfeeding challenge: try a bunch of different breast pads. I have reusable ones in bamboo and cotton as well as 3 different brands of disposables. It definitely took trying all of these to discover that the Johnson & Johnson disposables are by far my favourite. But to each their own! I still use the reusable ones, but at least have another option for when they're in the laundry.

So those are my breastfeeding frustrations in a nutshell! Breastfeeding definitely has a STEEP learning curve, but at least it gets better fairly quickly!

Maybe next I'll post about some of those other challenges (or maybe something more upbeat??).

Disclaimer

I can't believe I'm already more than 3 weeks into mommyhood. This experience has been more than I could have ever expected. More amazing, more challenging, more frustrating, more of everything. In the spirit of being a realistic person, I intend to blog honestly about my experiences. This means that sometimes I will have blog posts about the cute sounds Ellie makes when she's hungry and rooting around for a nipple (seriously cute - she sounds like a hungry baby dinosaur!), and sometimes I will have blog posts about how frustrating it is to be tied to a baby 24/7, especially when the baby is upset for no reason at all and cries for hours in the middle of the night. So this post is my disclaimer. If you can't handle the honesty, don't read the blog! On the other hand, if you like realism - stay tuned for the realities of projectile poop, sore nipples, exhaustion and all the cute stuff too!

Introducing...

Ellie Justina

Born May 20th at 11:03am, weighing in at7lbs 12oz!

My Etsy Shopping Spree!

I've accumulated a nice little balance in my Paypal account thanks to Swagbucks, so I decided I deserved to buy something fun on Etsy.

I was super happy to come across these stickers. What you do is peel them off and stick them on your baby's onesie on their '1 month', '2 month', '3 month', etc birthdays and at the end of the year you've got a cool series of 12 photos showing how much your baby has changed! I've seen this done on a couple of my favourite blogs, both weekly and monthly, but wasn't feeling up to the challenge of either photoshopping it or sewing special onesies. Stickers sound much easier! I can't wait for them to arrive in the mail!