Ingenue Mom

I forgot to post about our Centering class reunion the other day!! It was so great to see everyone!! There were two baby boys and four baby girls! The boys were Malachi and Zion! The girls were Isis, Olivia, Tilda and Shelby! All the moms & dads seemed to be doing well after their deliveries! There were two cesarean section deliveries, one delivery with an epidural and forceps and three natural deliveries with no medication. Everyone had fun sharing their different experiences! It is so interesting to see how the experience is for each individual person. I now have so much respect for the female body. It's incredible! Here are some pictures from the night! I'm not going to post names with the pictures to protect their privacy on the internet!

Now that I'm over the baby blues, I've been stepping my game up. I've made a schedule for us and I'm working to keep Isis on it. I'm not being crazy strict or anything, just trying to get her on about an every 3 hour feeding schedule with a consistent bedtime and get-up time. It's going pretty well so far - with the exception of a growth spurt she had the other day when she wanted to eat like every hour or so!! But the rest of the time, it lets me & Isis know what to expect throughout the day. I can also get some stuff done now when she's napping because she's doing a little better at night, so I can sleep a little more and don't have to take like 3 naps during the day. Today I organized her bedroom and her bathroom, did a load of laundry and now I'm blogging! It's very exciting! She's starting to make these little noises like she's found her voice. She's only made a couple of them, but it's exciting every time! I'm su...

We've been trying to put Isis on her tummy for a little while everyday to see if she can start trying to lift her head up. This is her a couple of days ago! She had the hiccups, too!

So I finally feel over the baby blues. I have felt like myself the last few days & I haven't cried in several days! I've been fixing my hair & putting on makeup & getting out of the house a little bit with Isis. Things haven't necessarily gotten easier with sleep & routine & things with Isis, but I'm definitely much more prepared for everything! I can handle it now. Lewis is having a hard time at night with her being up & crying & things like that. It's so hard because he has to work. So we both agreed that it was about time for her to sleep in her own room. I thought that I would leave her in our room for the first several months, but it turns out we are not the parents who can handle that. She makes all these little sleep noises right now, which is totally normal, but it really keeps us up a lot. We know now that she's okay and we know what to listen for, so we have decided to just use the monitor in her room and let her sleep there...

One more surprising thing... 5 - I miss being in the hospital!!! In the hospital, I got 3 meals a day prepared for me. I had constant help from nurses if I needed it. There was always someone who could answer my questions. I didn't freak out about anything because I had so much help. I love love loved my nurse in the mother/baby unit! I just felt safe. I miss being there! Although, I didn't like the shower and I missed my DVR. Either way, I keep thinking about how I miss being in the hospital! haha!

I knew that there would be all kinds of things that would be different than I expected, but it's interesting what things stick out to me. Let's make a list... 1 - Breastfeeding is messy!! I'm so happy to be nursing Isis. It was something that was really important to me & Lewis. Luckily it's gone fairly well so far. I know several people who really wanted to nurse their children and for whatever reason weren't able to or it didn't work out well after a little while. So I'm hoping things continue to go okay. But can we just talk about how the "let-down" thing is just crazy! I went to dinner the other night to say goodbye to my friend Katisha who is student teaching in Australia and while at dinner, I started leaking! By the time I got home, it was literally all over the left side of my body. There was nothing I could do about it but hide it with my scarf and coat. And then even when I'm at home, I'll wake up from a nap and my shirt will b...

Yesterday was the first day since Isis was born that I didn't cry at all! I was so relieved! Maybe the hormone changes really aren't permanent! haha I feel like nothing will ever be the same again - not with the baby, I mean obviously that changed everything - but with MY emotions. But I went to bed last night so relieved because Isis had eaten really good all day & she had slept well during naps and everything had gone fairly smooth! It was a great day! Well, then came the night. Our nights have been great the past couple of days - I mean, all things considered. She had gotten up to feed about 3 times in the middle of the night each night, but had done pretty good at going back to sleep. She hadn't cried much if at all, just made her "I'm hungry" noises to let us know she wanted to eat! Well, last night, she ate around 7pm and we ended up waking her up at 10:30pm to eat. We couldn't get her to go to sleep until around midnight. We put her in the cradl...

We came home from the hospital on Monday. Diana met us at our house when we got home and helped out with a few things as we got settled in. Lewis' mom came over that night and brought us food and helped us give Isis a bath. That night, we went to bed ready for several feedings & very little sleep. It was a little worse than we expected... Monday night, we went to bed like normal - turned all the lights off and put Isis in her little newborn bassinet thing that's on the top of her pack 'n play. That night, she woke up screaming several times. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. She fed several times and would sleep if I was holding her, but other than that, she was just having none of sleeping on her own. I ended up holding her and trying not to fall asleep for several hours at the end of the night. Thank goodness Diana came over at 9:30 that morning to take care of Isis for a couple of hours so that Lewis and I could sleep a little. I spent the entire day Tu...

She's here!!!! As this blog will serve in a lot of ways as my personal record of my life with Isis, I'm going to tell you my story! First of all, I knew on New Year's Eve that something was going to happen soon. I just had a feeling. After we got home from dinner with some friends for New Year's, I took a bath and shaved my legs, did laundry and cleaned a little. I also slowly & carefully painted my toenails - it was not easy. haha Good thing, too, because I woke up at 9:00am on January 1 with contractions. They were painful and kept coming the whole hour, so around 9:45 I started timing them. They were about 6 minutes apart at that point. I stayed in bed with Lewis just relaxing and watching TV until about 11:00. By noon, my contractions were about 4 minutes apart and were getting stronger to where I had to focus a little more to breathe through them. They still weren't too bad, though and I just tried to relax for the next few hours. I took a bath and watched ...