Our New Routine

Charlotte's school made a BIG deal about her becoming a big sister!

One of Charlotte's big sister presents: Elmo slippers! And excuse the fact I look like death warmed over. I was about 40 hours post partum here.

Thank goodness for the bouncer.

Charlotte helping Daddy give Lorelei a bath. She did SUCH a good job!

Oh, hello. Well, we're closing on our first week within our new routine. Chris went back to work, Charlotte is happily going to school each day, Lorelei is adapting to life outside the womb, and Mommy is adapting to being a (temporary) stay-at-home mum.

So, how are things going? Pretty good, I suppose. Let me edit that: as well as can be expected.

Charlotte continues to be super sister and has shown zero signs of jealousy or hatred or annoyance of her baby sister. The fact she goes to school each day helps, I'm sure, but the only glitch is that Charlotte thinks it's hilariously silly when I tell her Daddy is Lorelei's daddy too, or that I'm also Lorelei's mommy. "No!" she says with a grin, like I'm just being ridiculous. "He's MY daddy!" I'm sure Lorelei's parentage will eventually sink in. In the meantime, considering how rough, tough, and utterly ungraceful my goofy Charlotte is, I'm shocked at how sweetly gentle she is with Lorelei. As far as the sibling dynamic is so far, we couldn't ask for things to be going any better.

Chris is struggling to be coherent and alert at work while totally sleep deprived. Poor guy. Depending on Lorelei's awake/sleep/feeding schedule, he'll entirely handle Charlotte's morning routine, or I will. When trapped under a nursing infant during the morning, I try to delegate and let go of the details that mommies are better at, such as ensuring that Charlotte has brushed hair, clean back-up clothes and undies are sent to school for her cubby in case of accidents, and that she has a freaking sweater or jacket for chilly mornings---all of which were overlooked by a certain tired daddy this week. I hate feeling like I'm sending a child to school who looks like a ragamuffin orphan, but even when I set everything out for her by the lunch box, poor Chris just doesn't have it in him to remember it in the morning. The man needs sleep. I completely empathize with this. On the plus side, I'm maintaining high standards for her lunch, which I can control ahead of time, so at least her nutritional needs are being met with fresh, homemade foods. This matters greatly to me at the moment.

And Lorelei? As I mentioned before, Lorelei is significantly less fussy than Charlotte was as an infant, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have some struggles. Our biggest concern is that she HATES to sleep on her back. Thus, we can only get about 45 to 60 minutes of sleep out of her at night at a time in the crib, and that's only if we're lucky enough to get her to sleep on her back to begin with. The pediatrician said it was A-okay to use the bouncer at night--we can get her to sleep 2 to 3 hours in it sometimes--until she reaches a month old, at which point we need to train her to sleep in the crib. I kid you not, that bouncer is the one thing standing between me hanging onto my sanity and absolute exhaustion. Surprisingly, Charlotte never really liked the bouncer, and I only used it a few times with her---mainly when getting ready for work in the morning when she was 6 to 12 months old or so. Every kid is different, no?

The only other issue with Lorelei is that she's a gassy girl! Charlotte dealt with gastrointestinal issues by being as SEVERE spitter-upper. It was awful. Lorelei, however, has trouble getting those toots out, so the pediatrician recommended a scary-looking device called a "Windi," which you shove up your baby's arse and everything magically releases. I ordered one and it's due to arrive today. I'll let you know how it works, if I manage to work up the nerve to actually insert it. In the meantime, the most effective trick seems to be rubbing her tummy clockwise, which sometimes releases air. Even when it doesn't, it seems to calm and comfort Lorelei, so my gut (pun intended) says that maybe the motion is at least helping trapped air move along. At any rate, tummy issues understandably have to be entirely dealt with and fixed before our girl is comfortable enough to sleep. Once they're solved, she's as docile and sweet as can be.

Nursing has been going alright, I suppose. I'm so freaking sore and tired of being sore, but we're certainly doing better than at this point with Charlotte. Yesterday, I had a bizarre and baffling drop in supply, which led to a long, fussy day for my hungry Lorelei. Fortunately, I had a bit of frozen milk from my abundant early days, which I was able to use to fill up my girl during the early evening when I decided enough was enough, which boutght me some some time to generate more. Chris floated the idea of a single bottle of formula, and INEXPLICABLY and HYOPCRITICALLY, I burst into tears, crying that I had worked WAY too hard to "fail" at this point. You know, all those phrases and lines of thinking that I swore I'd avoid this time around. Breastfeeding is SUCH an emotionally loaded endeavor. Lordy. Were it not for the frozen stuff, we would've had to sneak in 2-ounce bottle of formula. Dumb luck that I had had extra a week ago, I guess. I hate obsessing over each feeding, supply, soreness, and so on. I long for the freedom of just making an effing bottle as needed. I'm hopeful today will go better.

Finally, I'm attempting to keep my mental health in check. The Kindle is a nursing mom's best friend, as I can read with one hand instead of staring obsessively at Lorelei's face or the clock, worrying whether she's eating enough. (Yes, there's TV, but I save that for 3:00 a.m., when I can't follow words on a screen or page. Besides, TV just isn't my favorite.) Beautiful autumn days in the high 70s (or 80s, at one point) have allowed me to take long walks with Lorelei to the post office or library, which gives me a sense of being productive as well as as providing sun, fresh air, and a wee bit of exercise and blood movement. (Charlotte was a dead-of-winter baby. Walks did not take place with her.) The best part of the week was Lorelei's weigh-in at the pediatrician's office on Wednesday, where he declared her weight gain (she now weighs well over 8 pounds) very good. I am taking 100% of the credit for it, by the way. Her weigh-in refinforced that I was doing okay at this exclusively breastfeeding thing, and my girl is, yesterday's supply issues notwithstanding, healthy and thriving.

The other good news is that although Charlotte had a gross cold over the weekend, which she predictably passed on to Chris, Mommy and Lorelei seemed to miraculously dodge it. I don't know if breastfeeding played a role or not--how those antibodies work via breastmilk is totally a mystery to me and I don't really get it--but I'm amazed that (so far) my weakened, sleep-deprived body and Lorelei's total lack of an immune system managed to avoid that bug. Phew.

That's it for now--my apologies for the long, rather stream-of-consciousness rambling here. Lorelei has been asleep on my chest as I've written this whole post, so I just sort of kept on typing. She's a sweet baby---we're very, very lucky to have her.