Biggest Challenges:
The Schedule: Or rather, the almost complete lack of one. This child is totally unpredictable. He almost never sleeps for the same amount of time at night and gets hungry and different times from day to day. Some nights we'll get 3 hours of sleep in between, some nights 5, and some nights barely 1. I find myself being jarred from sleep when I least expect it or waking up and looking over to find him soundly asleep. It makes it hard to schedule things like pumping, especially when I have to stop halfway through a session to feed him a bottle. We've definitely had to stay very organized. Charlie has developed his own brand of OCD and has come up with an organizational system for the bottle drying rack. Blew my mind.
Breastfeeding: I'd like to give breastfeeding a big F U. Not in general, just for me personally. I never in a million years thought that this would be something that I'd have trouble with. I'm currently only producing half of what Jamie needs per day. It was taking him over an hour of nursing to get an ounce. We met with lactation consultants, did weighed feedings, and everything else we could think of to boost my supply. I settled for pumping what I could and mixing a little breastmilk in with each bottle. I can't keep up this schedule for long because I basically don't have enough time to leave the house and do anything between pumping sessions. I've even pumped in the car several times while Charlie drives. My goal with this is four months, but we'll see if I can last that long. It is brutal.
The Most Helpful:
The Swing: Jamie practically lives in that thing right now. He also likes it when we turn the music setting on. It drives me nuts because one of the songs is Pachelbel's Canon and I can hardly listen to that anymore after playing it at so many weddings. Totally worth it, though.
Help Cleaning: My mother-in-law gave us the gift of a maid for a couple months. She has been great and I have been able to unclench a little and not stress over the state of the house. I might cry when our time with her is done.
The NoseFrida: I hate to say it, but that thing freaking works. I threw up the first time I read about how it works, but I have been able to use it without gagging and it's cleared my poor congested baby out like nothing else.
The Kick&Play: A play mat that has a piano at the end of it. Jamie can't really grasp things on purpose yet, but he can kick. He will play with that thing for 2 hours straight.
The Most Surprising:
Smiles: Nothing gets me quite like his little smiles. I love figuring out ways to get one. Currently he will respond to tickling his cheek or rubbing his belly. The best though is when he smiles just because he sees me.
Laughing: Right now he only laughs in his sleep but it is adorable. I can't wait to get him to laugh while he is awake!
Cloth Diapers: Not as hard as I thought. We are using prefolds and covers for the newborn stage. We have spray hoses on one toilet downstairs and one upstairs to spray off poop. We bought a Lofti to hang anything on that needs to be line-dried. It is on a pulley and we can hoist it up to the ceiling in the laundry room so it's not in the way. We've got this system down.
Shots: James got his first shots in front of me at his one month check up. I didn't think anything of it before they did it. Never anticipated my reaction. He cried so hard he went red in the face and didn't make any noise for a few minutes. Silent screaming. Broke my heart and I burst into tears. I'm a wimp.
I'm sure as we get better at this whole parenting thing we won't feel quite so overwhelmed. It has taken a while to get our "systems" down for how we do things, but each week gets better and better and all those baby snuggles make up for any lack of sleep. My goal is to appreciate each stage of his infancy for what it is, difficulties and all, because it already seems like it's going by too fast!
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