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)

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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.

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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

The first 6 weeks of motherhood  | www.amusingmj.com  http://aliciaskinnerphotography.com/

 

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!

DIY Carseat Cover

One of the things I knew I wanted to DIY for baby was the carseat cover.  I had found a ton of cute coral fabric at Fabric.com, some I used for the rocking chair cushions and some for the box valance for Taylor’s room.  The third coral fabric I found was this super cute arrow fabric and I knew I had to use it for something for her, so the car seat cover was the perfect thing!! This is a super simple project that includes your fabric, a second piece of soft fabric lining, and some iron on velcro.

Each car seat is a little bit different size, so measure yours to make sure it fits, but then cut your fabric into one large rectangle.  Mine is 41″x 33.5″ and that allows for a half inch seam allowance on all sides. Once you have cut your two pieces, put the right sides together and sew around the edges, leaving a small opening to turn it right side out (but before you do that, be sure to trim your corners off so that your corners are crisper).

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Once you have it right side out, topstitch around the entire piece.

For the next step cut two pieces of your fabric for your straps. Again, measure your handle and adjust the width and length accordingly, but mine is 6″x 9″.  You’ll also need some iron on velcro, you can see what mine looks like in the picture below.

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To make the straps, fold the fabric in half, with the right sides together. Stitch the long side and one short side together, leaving one short end open to turn your piece right side out (you’ll topstitch it closed in the next step. carseatcover4

Now turn it right side out and top stitch all the way around. Now follow the instructions on your iron on velcro and iron it on both ends, but on opposite sides of the strap (so that when you loop it into a circle the velcro sides meet.  I took this picture before I tested mine out, I actually needed to have one of my velcro pieces closer to the middle to make mine tight enough around the car seat handle, so I had to add a second velcro strip on mine, so test your strap on your individual car seat to make sure it is tight enough not to slide around all over the place.  My velcro instructions say to hold the iron on for 90 seconds until the glue melts and trust me… when that glue cools… it is on there GOOD.

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Now just mark out where you want your cover  straps to be (approximately halfway down the long side and mine are about 9″ in from each side… you can see in the picture below).

DIY Car Seat Cover |www.amusingmj.com

Then to secure them to the cover, just sew a square through all the layers in the middle of the strap, as you can see below.

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And that’s it, you are done! As you can see in the picture that is up a few, I went ahead and embroidered her name on it, but I thought I was going to publish this post before she was born so I put it on backwards so I wouldn’t show anyone her name before she was born.  (HA! 5+weeks later I am just getting around to it!) But the picture below shows really well what it looks like on her car seat!

DIY Car Seat Cover |www.amusingmj.com

I love the fabric and its been a great little protector for her from sun and light and I hope maybe it keeps a few germs out!

DIY Car Seat Cover |www.amusingmj.com

 

One Month

Little Miss Taylor turns one month old today, which is insane! The month of July has flown by! That phrase: the days are long, but the years are short, has never come into my mind so often! I love motherhood and am head over heels for my little nugget.  I haven’t ‘accomplished’ much this month other than lots of baby snuggles and getting the hang of this whole parenting thing, but I feel like that is exactly what the first month of motherhood should be like!

I loved doing my pregnancy updates, and getting to look back at how I changed over the 9 months, so I’m going to try to do that for Taylor as well! So far I’ve been taking weekly photos of her (mostly in her crib and mostly with her little lamb… consistency isn’t really my strong suit!) so that we can see her grow!

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weektwo

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Milestones: Taylor can almost hold her head up, she can focus on people’s faces and just barely started smiling at people.

Likes: Her playmat–especially the monkey, eating, sleeping, eating, being held, eating, going outside

Dislikes: getting her diaper changed, getting her foot pricked by the doctor/nurse, something over her eyes

Mom loves: her yawns and the many faces she makes (she has a pretty rockin’ grumpy face), how her hair curls at bath time,

I’ve got a whole lot more to say about mommy-hood and I’ll probably blog about it, but it is amazing to me how much they change EVERY DAY and how much like a little human she is! She has grown a LOT–including adding on 11 ounces in one week! (she’s supposed to gain between 5 and 7 each week) And weighs in at around 9 lbs right now.

I love all her little outfits and I’m definitely going to be sad to see her outgrow some of them! The one in her week four picture came all the way from Italy from some friends of ours and the week two outfit was handmade from one of my best friends (thanks Em!).  But I think I’m in trouble if I’m already getting nostalgic about her outfits.