This pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving Day!
Life Is Never Dull!
Life has been full here!
But, of course, first things first. I took this picture of Caroline this afternoon. That smile just warms the cockles of my heart. I can honestly say that I will remember motherhood becoming fun when she was six and a half weeks old. Of course, I loved Caroline and enjoyed her before this. But there is something about being able to interact with her now and seeing her respond to me with smiles that completely changed everything for me. 🙂
Every day I think I’m going to find the time to sit down and blog, but we’ve had some extra things going on that have taken more time. I started physical therapy a couple of weeks ago so I’ve been going twice a week to that. The good news is that it isn’t my old problem, but a newer, pregnancy-related problem that isn’t chronic and is very correctable. Praise God! I’m working with the same physical therapist, a really nice Christian man who has done a great job for me in the past.
We’ve also been catching up on other doctor’s appointments that got put off while I was pregnant. David has had extra meetings to attend the past two weeks. And we’ve been rearranging things in our house to make them more compatible with our “new ” life with Caroline and all her “stuff” (swing, pack and play, etc.). I’ve been rethinking my routines and deciding how I can make them work better with our new flow of life and where I need to be in the house at certain times of the day. And we have, of course, been thinking about the holidays coming up and starting to do small things related to them.
Caroline has been starting to go longer between night feedings to which we say – HOORAY!!! When she hit her six week growth spurt she was eating every hour and a half during the day. YEESH. That was a bit much. We’re getting back to the two and a half to three hours cycle which is much better. She’s also started growing out of her first group of clothes to which her Mama says – not already! It’s too soon! But, yes, I’ve started putting her into some of her next step up clothes. They are big on her, but we’ll be able to enjoy them for a while. People aren’t kidding when they say that it all passes so quickly. It is true in just the seven and a half weeks we’ve had Caroline. We keep our camera and video camera out in the living room so we are more apt to take pictures and video footage. I highly recommend it.
Something else I highly recommend to any of the ladies who have left comments that they are also expecting… Someone (?) had recommended hanging a baby calendar in the nursery and writing down little things every day. I took that advice and am so glad I did. I don’t have something on every day, but I do on the vast majority of them. It will make a great keepsake just on its own merits, but it will also make it really easy to date and order things when I start scrapbooking all of the baby stuff.
Something I didn’t do, but have thought of since having Caroline… If I had it to do over again, I would have made a list of everything I wanted to do the first couple of months and put it on the refrigerator. There have been things I meant to do with her/related to her and forgot because the time is so intense and packed with so many things to do. But a written reminder on the refrigerator will tell you – cut a lock of hair, get a picture of the baby in such and such place, spend time with her doing X, etc. It may sound like overkill do write it all down, but sleep deprivation doesn’t make for a good memory.
I have one more baby shower coming up. My church is giving us a shower so I am looking forward to that and getting to know more of the ladies at church during that time. So many people at church have been so wonderfully excited about Caroline and it has been fun to “share” her with so many great folks. We haven’t scheduled her dedication yet, but plan on doing that sometime soon.
Have a great day! 🙂
Our Sweetheart At Six Weeks
Like any mama, I have pictures to share!
Caroline takes her eating and burping very seriously. How does someone so small make sounds that are so big?
Caroline really enjoys her swing. In the past week or so she has learned to watch the fish as they go around.
All sacked out for some well-deserved rest (for Caroline and Mama!). 🙂
The First Six Weeks Postpartum: Realities You Might Not Read About Elsewhere
Caroline was six weeks old on Thursday. According to the pregnancy books, my postpartum period has ended. I’ve experienced a lot during these recent weeks. Of everything I’ve read about the postpartum period, the most helpful article came from the most unexpected place.
About two weeks after she was born, I was given a Lamaze Parents 2006 magazine by the visiting nurse. Most of it was, naturally, about childbirth. I almost didn’t even bother looking through it, but I did – just in case there was something really good. There was an article entitled “Straight Talk for New Parents” by Kathryn McGrath about the first six weeks postpartum. I’ve tried to find the article online, but with no success. The magazine is put out by www.ivillage.com. I am hoping they won’t mind if I quote extensively here since it is such a good article.
Six Weeks Postpartum – Realistically
I think what I appreciated the most is that it was a realistic look at the postpartum period. They said things that you don’t usually find mentioned elsewhere. In fact, if you read enough pregnancy websites, you start to realize how much they all plagiarize each other. There is very little unique content from site to site – they all say pretty much the same thing.
So here are a few truths I experienced during my postpartum period. I put them on my website in hopes that they might be a timely word for another new mom sometime in the future. As the article says:
Research shows that parents who anticipate the changes realistically fare much better than those who don’t.
In random order…
Recovering from childbirth takes longer than six weeks.
A four- to six-week recovery period is unrealistic for the majority of women. The truth is, your physical and emotional recovery should be thought of in terms of months rather than weeks.
Thank you very much! I’m a little tired of these “I felt great and went to Walmart eight hours after my twins were born” stories I see. Thank you for a more realistic approach to the reality of what many women face.
Your baby’s birth is not the end of your pregnancy experience.
And you thought it was over in nine months. Actually, some of your most important work takes place after childbirth – mulling it over in your mind, making sense of what happened and matching what you felt on the inside with what other people saw on the outside. The greater the discrepancy between what you expected and what you got, the tougher this task will be.
It’s very important that you have supportive people around you (starting with your partner) who will listen to your birth story nonjudgementally – as many times as you need to tell it. By reviewing the experience with someone else, you can better understand it yourself and successfully move on to other issues of mothering.
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, especially our planned c-section birth story, I think it should be fairly obvious why that section meant a lot to me.
With change, there is loss.
We’re all aware of the indescribably wonderful joys that come with having a new baby: There’s nothing quite like the feeling of having a sweet-smelling newborn nuzzle into your neck. But the birth of a baby also brings some necessary losses – your lifestyle, freedom and income. The appropriate reaction to loss is grief, and the only way to get to the other side of it is to move through it. Our culture tends to shun new parents who express any sadness. We tell parents they should feel only joy and gratitude, but this doesn’t make any sense. Having a baby is no doubt the biggest life adjustment you will every make; it’s only natural that you’ll feel emotions from both ends of the spectrum. Instead, be honest with yourself and acknowledge the losses, ambivalence and moments of regret. It’s part of letting go and moving on.
This was one of the most helpful things I read. Not because I didn’t know it was true, but because it was just helpful to see it written down in print. Somehow seeing things written down makes them more real. Not to go all psychological here, but it validates what you feel. I’ve had a lot of people make comments to me about how happy we must be, how thrilled we must be to have Caroline, etc. And they are all right. We are happy. We are thrilled. We’re very grateful. But we’ve also been going through this grieving process as well.
Ironically, it has been some of the small things that have hit me the hardest. We knew about the “big” adjustments and had prepared as best we could for those. What I wasn’t prepared for was doing the dishes during my fifth week postpartum and starting to sob as though my heart was breaking. David (who was feeding Caroline at the time in the other room) heard me and came to ask me what was wrong. And what was wrong? I missed doing the dishes with David. I wash and he dries. We’ve done this pretty much every night since we were dating and he would come over after work for dinner. Ten years of that has been disrupted and it was hard to adjust to. I missed talking with him and doing this daily activity together.
I think it is also hard to be honest about any sadness you feel because a lot of people will write it off as hormonal or they will think you are awfully ungrateful to have received a baby from God and not be just totally and completely grateful and happy. Kind of the equivalent to “eat your peas because there are children starving in Africa” only in this case it is “don’t you know there are thousands of women who would chop off their right arm to have a baby like you have so don’t you dare express any unhappiness”. I know this is the case because when I wrote my birth story someone left a comment telling me how insensitive, ungrateful and self-absorbed I am. (Yes, I deleted it.)
Anyway, I appreciated someone else saying that no matter how very happy you may be with your new baby, you can also be grieving for other things lost in the process and it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you normal. So those are some of the things I’ve experienced. I’m grateful whenever God leads me to something helpful, usually in writing. We love Caroline to pieces and are so thankful for her. But we also continue to make adjustments in life – sometimes easily and sometimes with difficulty. And I know we’ll be continuing to do that until… well, forever.
