A quick update

I know I've been slacking a bit on the blog front lately, and for that, I apologize. I have a post started about a visit from my mom and youngest brother, and I've been taking more pictures, but they're really been "different outfit, different day" kinds of photos, and the bottom line is that time to blog has been scarce and fallen to the bottom of the priority list, but I thought I'd write a quick post about our first 3.5 weeks with Elle. In short, it is a blur - a blur of our daughter changing slightly every day, a blur of watching for little hints of the person she's becoming to peak out, a blur of diapers, feedings, spit up, feedings, burps, naps, feedings and diapers.

We've been blessed with a very good eater (that's my girl!). But she is young, has no schedule and is cluster feeding as she grows, which means that I'm often feeding her every hour. It is frustrating, especially at night, when she falls asleep while eating, or acts ravenous and then is "full" within five minutes and then wakes again an hour later, wanting to eat again. I feed her on demand, but as she gets older and starts to settle in to a pattern, I sincerely hope that she stops "snacking" and uses me only for "full meals."

She's had some nasty episodes of spit up, too, and isn't the world's best burper, so after she eats, I have to keep her upright for 10-15 minutes and try to coax a burp out of her. Since I'm breastfeeding, Tim isn't able to take over feedings (although I've recently started pumping, so he will be able to soon), and although he has gotten up to change some diapers during the night, I usually try to let him sleep. I figure if I have to be up to feed her, anyway, I might as well change the diapers, too. So we get lots of quality time together, and in the morning, Tim changes her diaper before work so I can get a few extra minutes of shut-eye before she eats again.

Elle and I spend our days napping (well, mostly she naps - she seems to have an alarm that goes off if I try to join her), feeding/eating and trying to get a few things done around the condo (laundry is always high on the list, thanks for the previously mentioned spit up and diapers). Her sleep patterns depends largely on her eating patterns, and she sleeps best at night when swaddled - this is a doubled-edged sword, though, because she hates being swaddled. If she is dead to the world when we put her down, she'll stay asleep for 90 minutes to 2.5 hours, when she wakes to eat. But if she wakes before that and realizes that she's swaddled, she gets very angry and fights to break out of the swaddle, which completely wakes her up. She usually ends up in the bouncy seat, unswaddled, after her second feeding of the night, just because I don't have the energy to fight her anymore. But we're working on a few different ways to swaddle her and put her to sleep, so hopefully soon we'll find a magic fix.

In the last two weeks, she's started making some very interesting noises in her sleep. She grunts a lot, but she also makes noises like a little puppy and sighs a lot. She is a super gassy little chica, and she often startles herself with her farts.

Elle has been quite the traveler in her first few weeks, too, although there are some days I just can't muster the energy or focus to time simple errands around her erratic and demanding feeding schedule. I have been caught many times already in a grocery store or on the way home from Target with a screaming child who has suddenly decided she needs to eat and she needs to eat five minutes ago. Unless I am confident that we'll make the trip without a serious meltdown, we often just don't run errands that day. We did venture out to my favorite aquarium while my mom and Doug were here, and Elle is no stranger to grocery shopping. We went to the beach this weekend for the first time - not for an extended stay, but we ate lunch at a cafe on the beach and walked Elle down to feel the gulf for the first time. (Photo of her unimpressed reaction is at the top of post.) We've been attending a mommy/baby group at our hospital, too, and I hope to continue to be active in that, as well as a breastfeeding support group and baby-wearing group that I'm hoping to attend in the next few weeks.

For my sanity, we have been taking frequent walks at the park - I think the fresh air and activity have helped us both. We both love it on the nights that Tim is able to join us, but on the nights that is just me and baby girl, we go as late as possible to avoid the heat, and we walk slowly and only as long as either of us can take it.

The weekends have been much better for me sleep-wise, as Tim takes Elle for a few hours around midnight and I head to bed, getting a few extra hours of precious sleep before she needs to eat, and then I sleep in as much as possible.

Every night when he gets home from work, Tim takes over the diaper changing and holds Elle as much as he can - basically, whenever I'm not feeding her. It is great for them to have bonding time (I think her first words will be along the lines of "Brandon Phillips" or "Votto"), and I appreciate a little break to be able to type two-handed, tidy up around the condo or just collapse on the couch. Life is very different now for me - there are many days where I don't get anything done, or items on my to-do list that get transferred over from week to week to week. Phone calls are made whenever Elle is soundly sleeping. Dinner is made - or sometimes, eaten - after Elle eats. But I remind myself that we'll never have these days back, and there are many things in my life that can just wait. That e-mail can be written tomorrow, the photos can be uploaded this weekend, that trip to the library is unnecessary.

Soon this chaos that is life with a newborn will be a distant memory (much like the woes of pregnancy already feel like they were years ago), and while I miss the simultaneous structure and flexibility of life before baby, I have a new appreciation for life that revolves around the structure of Elle's life, however unstructured that may be. I'm grateful that I'm able to stay home with her for several weeks as we start this new journey, and while I fear how things will go when we transition back in to "two parents working full-time and raising a baby", I know that the three of us will figure out a way to make it all work, and I'm just going to soak up this transition before I worry too much about that one.