Caitlyn is now 3 weeks old. Time sure does fly, but I can’t say that I don’t want it too! I really want the first milestones to come… especially that first smile. It’s so tough to be holding your baby and cuddling her, only for her to give you that look that says, “Who the hell are you?!” I want her to smile at me already!
Honestly, i’ve never been a fan of newborn babies… I love it when they get older, and by older I mean, at least sitting up, holding their own bottles, responding to you. This is that period when you are working your hardest with them, so it makes that first real smile extra special.
Overall, she is a good baby. Not nearly as bad as Andrew was, but not nearly as good as Chris was. She only cries when she’s hungry pretty much. She was going every 4 hours between feedings, but this week for some reason she is down to every 3 hours. I am working on a routine for her… it will help when she’s ready to sleep through the night. Matt is a super duper husband of course, he volunteers to get up for her 2 feedings at night, which is great, and I think every husband should be like that. Of course, he doesn’t actually “go” to work every day… unless you call walking down the stairs going somewhere! He still did this though when he had a full-time job for Toyota in Ann Arbor (when Andrew was born), where he’d have to leave at 6a.m. daily. I am not a night person. 9 times out of 10 though, I’m still up with him. I have severe anxiety regarding the baby and it has caused me many sleepless nights so far. We have a baby monitor next to the bed that Matt keeps on full blast, and I can hear every little noise she makes, and it keeps me up just wondering when she’ll start crying.
Every night we have to make our baby burrito. When she was a couple days old we realized that she was keeping herself up by smacking herself in the face, and flailing her arms around. We have a security camera at the end of your pack and play (add to our paranoia)… and we watched her as she did it. So we went to Babies R Us and picked up a swaddling blanket. So far that has made our nights a bit more peaceful. She does on occasion escape it. Matt calls it her straight jacket, he he.
I get frustrated when I feed her… for me, she’ll only take 2.5 ounces… for Matt she’ll down the entire 4oz bottle I make. Either way she doesn’t sleep any less or any longer. I wish her cord would just fall off too. Chris and Andrew lost theirs way before the 3 week mark, but hers for some reason is extra short and doesn’t want to come off to easily, despite me alcoholing it daily. For now I can only give her a sponge bath because of it. I’d love to see what she’s like in a full bath. She only cried for her first sponge bath, but now she likes them. She absolutely HATES getting out because she gets cold and will scream her head off. I hate it too, like most of us do!
The baby blues have backed down a bit thankfully. I still have my moments, but not like the first week when I would just break down and cry in the middle of Walmart for no reason. I started taking my old prescription of Wellbutrin XL the day I came home from the hospital to get a head start on the baby blues. Nobody can understand what that is unless you’ve had it. It’s the worst feelings you could ever have after a birth… I had a week of regrets, “what have I gotten myself into”, and “how can I do this” moods. It’s very rough, but you have to keep it in check, otherwise you’ll end up with post-partum depression. They say if it lasts longer than 3 weeks, it’s PPD, otherwise it’s just the “Baby Blues”. Well, I think i’m over it for the most part.
My c-section wound healed in like one week’s time. I have had no pain whatsoever from the c-section and my recovery was nearly miraculous. I set myself up to come home in pain, and have a painful recovery, as c-sections usually are. It’s weird because I was up and out of bed the night of my c-section, home 2 days later, and not once have I really been bothered by pain, and that is without pain meds. It’s just sooooo strange. I think they cut a nerve or something though because now I have a burning sensation on my abdomen, but it feels numb beneath the skin. I was told this could actually last up to 2 years!
On a really super duper note… I’m down 30lbs in the last 3 weeks. I gained a total of 10lbs with this pregnancy…. so i’m 20lbs less than my pre-pregnancy weight, which makes me really happy. It helps that i’ve had no appetite since being home though. I can’t wait to get back to the Y to work out though. I have lost all muscle tone and I am so freaking flabby it’s disgusting. At some point i’m going to have to have some plastic surgery done to fix allt his. My arms are horrible, and those are first to get done, hopefully this fall or winter. Someday i’ll consider my abdomen, but I’ll have to weigh whether or not I want to be in that much pain.
Not much else is going on around here…. I haven’t really left my house at all. I’ve become a germ-o-phobe and I really don’t want Caitlyn to get sick, so I stay home. Matt goes to the grocery store for me too. Plus, it’s been extremely cold out, and if I feel it horribly, then I can’t imagine her microscopic extremities being exposed.
My grandma is back in the hospital with pneumonia. It sucks because she loves to hold the baby and feed her. She was fine the other day, then boom. She gets sick soooo often it sucks. She was just in the hospital a few days after Caitlyn was born.
Andrew is loving his new little sister. He constantly refers to her as “my baby” (his baby). He helps “sugar” her butt, which means he puts the powder on when we do diaper changes. He’ll frequently walk over and offer to hold the bottle when I’m feeding her too. He’ll make a good dad someday for sure! Chris on the other hand, could care less and complains when she cries. He rarely helps me out aside from getting me a diaper every now and then. I think he’s a typical boy though!
Well, time for another feeding……