Dear Baby William,
You are 3 weeks old tomorrow! Holy Cow! That was the shortest, and longest 3 weeks ever! Luckily we have a VERY good baby. It was a bit of a rough transition to parenthood but we made it. After spending 4 days in the hospital (due to c-section) we came home and had 3 days before Jason had to head back to work. 🙁 My wonderful mother-in-law came up to the house on Jason’s first day back at work and CLEANED MY ENTIRE BASEMENT GUEST AREA!!! She’s amazing. She did all the cleaning I couldn’t do since I was still healing. She even IRONED the basement curtains and made us dinner. Thank goodness for family! The next day my parents showed up for a week-long visit so I still had more-or-less 2 weeks of help getting started. Having them here was WONDERFUL and I didn’t want them to leave.
They got to spend some quality time with the little munchkin. After the hormones settled down (goodbye night-sweats and itching), and the crying subsided (thanks again hormones and sleep deprivation) we’re finally in the swing of things (we literally picked up a used swing from the classifieds today). Will is currently rocking in it mostly in peace…unless he looses his binky and wakes up enough to discover it’s missing. Will has given us upwards of 4-5 hours of sleep at a time mostly in the overnight hours, and after our initial rough start at the hospital has turned out to be a pretty good eater…alternating between breastfeeding and a bottle and breast milk or formula. This allows all of us some freedom and lets Jason do some feeding. I can also pack some formula in the diaper bag and not worry too much about nursing during shopping trips. I’m still getting up the courage to have Jason do an entire night-feeding on his own. Unfortunately this mama knows she’d end up laying awake thinking about how she should be up feeding or pumping instead of sleeping as she should.
Last week Will and I both had Dr. follow-up appointments. Will is back up to his birthweight and I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight (although deceiving, as a lot of my weight has simply ‘redistributed’ if you will). I am currently looking forward to more of my regular clothes fitting again as my pudgy tummy gets smaller. All the more reason to keep on breastfeeding! Will’s Dr. appointment was also our first car ride alone together. It was right after dropping my parents off at the airport and I was so thankful he was a quiet (mostly sleepy) trooper. I need all the positive reinforcement I can get right now as I get my courage up a bit.
We’ve tried out various nicknames over the past 3 weeks. Some days he’s Will, some days he’s buddy-bear, the little dictator, the commander in chief, munchkin, or just buddy. He’s already getting bigger, which scares me to death as he outgrows newborn clothes. Even in the first few weeks he’s gone from wanting to be swaddled up tight, to discovering he’s got arms and hands and he wants them available at all times (even if they are uncoordinated and don’t behave). I have a picasa web-album for pictures I’m posting, if you’re reading this and would like the link please send me an email. I’m not planning on posting a million pictures on Facebook or my blog…but a few selected favorites will show up.
Looks like the swing is about finished working its magic. A feeding and bedtime awaits.
Goodnight from the 3 of us!