Lilly’s Second Week

Week 1 was spent snuggling & adoring our baby. Week 2 was spent in a very similar way, though we did manage to leave the house twice – once to go visit the lactation consultant and once for an epic let’s-find-mom-some-clothing-that-fits-her-postpartum-body trip.

{our first ever photo of the three of us}

I had a slight I am a horrible mom moment early in the week. After sleeping for a few hours at a time most of week 1, Lilly decided to start week 2 of life by waking up every hour on the hour and eating for 20 minutes before falling asleep. Somewhere around the 3:30-4am mark, I totally lost it. She was crying, I was crying, it was a mess. She was hungry, I was frustrated with feeding her (which is still quite painful), and I was so so tired… and then I felt even more frustrated with myself for getting upset with my girl when all she really wanted was food. That’s been the low point so far. Things got better after that feeding-wise, and I made an appointment with the lactation consultant at the hospital.

At our appointment, the consultant told us that we were crazy for setting an alarm and waking up every 2-3 hours to feed our baby bird through the night. Since she’s back up to her birth weight, they’ve told us that waking her to eat isn’t quite as crucial as it was in the first week when she was losing weight. So, since then, we’ve been letting Lilly wake us when she’s hungry… and guess what – she’s not too hungry at night! We’ve had 5-6 hour stretches of sleep, and have even had a night of 8 straight hours of sleep (we actually woke her to eat at that point). I hope I’m not jinxing myself by typing that.

{Lilly, asleep in her baby straight jacket}

We can’t stop adoring our baby girl. She’s so amazing, and quite possibly the best baby in the world. And I’m only a little biased. 🙂

This week I’ve been crying over the same things as last week: I love her too much, she’s growing already, daddy’s going back to work too soon and I’m going to miss him while he’s there. Also add in crying to those stupid Pampers commercials and the Subaru commercials where the little girl is sitting in the drivers seat talking to the dad and then all of a sudden she’s 16. Please tell me you know the one. (Jason just looked over at me and said, “really? you’re crying at a Subaru commercial?” Guilty as charged.) The hormones seem to be normalizing, though, and as the week has gone on, I’m no longer crying as easily. Thank goodness.

I also cried (happy tears!) when my BFF showed up at the door this week. She came ALL THE WAY FROM NYC — FOR THE DAY! — in the midst of her own wedding-planning AND moving adventures — to visit and meet Lilly! Oh my goodness. There are no words for such an awesome surprise. No. words. (But I’m quite happy that she adores Lilly as much as J & I do!)

{Lilly meets my BFF. They adore each other.}

I have slight frustration that I’m not physically back to normal, but then Jason reminds me she’s only 2 weeks old. I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks – in so many ways, it seems like she’s been a part of our family all along. Also? I dislike how I look in about 90% of the pictures of Lilly and I. I spent some time these past two weeks avoiding photos, more time contemplating deleting the photos that have been taken, and even more time just embracing it. So here I am: unshowered, without doing much to my hair, makeupless, and feeling jiggly and exhausted. Not photos I’d normally be psyched about sharing on the internets (and let’s be honest, the REALLY bad ones will live only on my hard drive), but this is our life. Our jiggly, tired, makeupless life. Someday, when I can shower without imagining the cries of a hungry baby or have time/energy to put on make up, I’m sure that I’ll look back fondly at these times, and I’ll be glad that Lil has pictures of how our first days together were spent. Even if I have crazy dark circles under my eyes and am wearing the same 3 shirts because nothing else in my closet fits. 🙂

{Reading to my girl. Which, in the case of this book, involves describing the colors & patterns of the hearts and stars on each page. As you can see, she is fascinated.}

My favorite thing this week is that she’s giving us so many more facial expressions. I love her little smiles (even if she’s sleeping or just gassy when she’s giving them to us) — I can’t wait until she gives us smiles in response to something that we’ve done! She’s moving around more, stretching her arms and legs, and I can tell her neck muscles are getting stronger. We have a few picture books with black & white objects in them, and when we hold them up in front of her, her eyes get bigger and she just stares at them. It’s really cool to see her taking it all in.