Adjusting to Motherhood

I've now had over 6 weeks of being a mother! Many people have asked me how things are going and the only thing I can say is that it has its ups and downs.

Well it turns out I have a very fussy baby. She is still my little angel, but the bouts of inconsolable crying can be quite frustrating. The crying seems to be one of three things - reflux, pain of some sort, and tiredness. As I'm told this is "normal" and a frequent experience for new mothers that doesn't make it any easier. Naturally, my first plan of attack was to see what I could do to fix the issue. In the first few weeks I prayed constantly and felt that if I couldn't do anything I just had to accept it and help her get through the crying the best I could. I realised that if millions of children survived with long bouts of crying then mine could to. Nevertheless, I have found some solutions such as using Biohawk (Biohawk.com.au) products with my meals and before breastfeeding to minimise reflux, cranial osteopathy from my doctor to help with pains and reflux, and I've read a book called the No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley which has helped me be able to get her to sleep better. Over the last week I have finally had "happy" awake time and her naps can sometimes last a couple of hours. I still struggle to get her to sleep for long periods prior to midnight, but the last two days she fell asleep around 10pm. One night she even slept for 5 hours straight! Typically I'm happy with 3-4 hour gaps between feeds during the night. For the most part I'm getting 7+ hours of sleep total a night so I can't complain too much. Fussy days are just hard to go out or get anything done.

A local friend of mine and I have been getting together nearly every week with our bubs. Sahara is 4 weeks older than Sakura, but it is amazing how similar they are in size! Our play dates are fun as we both spend half the time trying to calm our babies. It's good to see the differences as well because as a first time mom I have no idea what other babies do or don't do so sometimes I just assume all babies must be like mine. I'm excited to see these two as they get older and become more aware of each other. They are going to be besties for sure! (Pictures are in order from oldest to newest)

Church has been a bit of an adjustment for me. It's hard to have a fussy baby be calm for 3 hours straight. Most of the time she can make it through sacrament, but the other two hours I tend to spend in and out of the mother's room. I was really bummed when I missed all of relief society once, but as a wise Charles Whitaker told me - once you have a family your spiritual nourishment happens more within your own home (paraphrased). The last couple of weeks have been better though where I have brought a bottle of expressed milk and Matt has been able to take her the whole time. It works out because he doesn't mind missing classes (and likely loves the excuse). Since Matt works 6 days a week Sunday is also the only full day he has with her.

Expressing milk in bottles can be a bit of a chore. It's hard to dedicate time to it and because I have been trying to save bottles for Matt to feed her a lot of milk gets wasted. Some days Matt is so busy he doesn't get to interact with or hold her because she is asleep. So because I haven't been regularly giving her a bottle a day she often refuses to drink from it. The ideal conditions to do it is when she is calm and really hungry which doesn't happen often. I need to get better at trying it every day because if I ever want to use a babysitter I want her to be able to take a bottle. Additionally, it will make it less stressful for me when I am out and about.

That's about it as far as updates go. It's hard to remember things at the moment and even more difficult to find time to dedicate to the blog - so in the future I expect these to be shorter with more pictures.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your holidays are spectacular!