A post about the third week in the life of a daughter and new mama in honor of the forthcoming Julia Roberts film “Eat, Pray, Love.”

DAUGHTER

Eat

Penelope is eating like a horse. We hit what I believe was her first growth spurt this past Saturday night when she refused to go to bed until midnight and wanted to be fed nearly every hour at the top of the hour. Saturday and Sunday, for her, were a seven course meal at a fine French restaurant – not including the sorbet they give you between courses to cleanse your palate. For me it was a dairy cow’s worst nightmare.

During the day she is still eating about every hour and a half to two hours which gives me a whole new understanding of why new mothers get absolutely nothing accomplished. Sometimes I go three feedings holding my bladder because I just have not gotten a chance to pee yet.

Sleep

Since we came home from the hospital, Penny’s been sleeping in her Pack ‘N Play on Matt’s side of the bed. Our system so far has worked really well. When she would wake up at night, Matt would change her then hand her off to me for a feeding. Then I’d hand her back to be swaddled and put back down. This has worked great since Matt’s had all kinds of paternity leave, but since this is his final week off, we wanted to start a system that would involve him less for when he goes back to work.

Just to put it out there, I’m a big fan of most aspects of attachment parenting. I’m totally down with co-sleeping, and I’m really big into baby wearing, which Penny seems to truly enjoy. If I had it my way, I’d let my girl sleep curled up next to me all night long, but it’s not really practical for us. First of all, we realized right away that we couldn’t co-sleep since Matt is a very heavy sleeper and totally forgot she was there when we tried it during a nap. As for his involvement at night, we needed to start lessening that. Not that every person doesn’t have a very stressful day job and need a good night’s sleep, but Matt especially needs to be well-rested. Imagine spending your day with parents who are melting down in your arms while their children with developmental disabilities throw forks at your face repeatedly for hours. And then imagine doing that on four hours of interrupted sleep.

Last night we decided to give the new system a try and put her in her crib in her bedroom for the first time. She has slept a few naps in there all swaddled up, but this was her first overnight. I was pretty sad about her being in another room, but knew that if we could start this routine early we might have less trouble breaking old habits. We put her down in her crib, turned on the monitor and went to bed in our bedroom. I worried that I wouldn’t wake up for her since she wasn’t in the same room as me, but I slept as lightly as I have since the hospital and heard every grunt and squeak she made all night long. She’s a very noisy sleeper when she’s sleeping heavily, so I have learned to distinguish good noise from bad noise. And she didn’t wake me up with bad noise until SEVEN HOURS LATER. Then she went down for another four hours. Holy mackerel people.

I would be worried that she’s sleeping too much at night and getting too hungry, but this morning she has been eating particularly well and has been awake and alert for nearly four hours. If the rest of the day goes as well, I guess we’ll try it again tonight.

Poop

All in all, Penny’s a great baby. I would almost say low-maintenance, but she’s just as high-maintenance as any newborn. The difference is that she’s a great communicator. She lets us know when she has a dirty diaper or is hungry. Sometimes she’s irritable when she has to burp (she seems to be a bad and delayed burper), but otherwise is a quiet and lovely little girl. Only at night when she’s overtired and needs to go to bed does she fuss endlessly for no reason at all.

She hates having a dirty diaper and can do absolutely nothing, nor be pacified until the diaper is dealt with. While sometimes this can be annoying, like when we’re 15 minutes from home and she cries the whole way because she hates sitting in her dirty diaper, I’m seeing it as an overall positive trait. When we switch her to cloth dipes, she’ll likely be just as aware, if not more of her dirty diapers. And hopefully this will make her easier to potty train in the long run. Don’t you just LOVE my unbridled optimism?

MAMA

Eat

Eating? What? What is that? The woman who loves to eat more than any other pastime has completely forgotten about the joys of food. We have been so blessed to have been brought delicious dinners from people in our church over the past few weeks, none of which I have actually eaten at the intended temperature. When it’s time for me to make a meal I wind up shoving food and the grilling tongs to Matt who is becoming such a master griller he deserves his own Saturday afternoon PBS show.

Meals are not only eaten cold but are always interrupted by at least one feeding and nearly always two dirty diapers. Girl’s got perfect timing.

Sleep

I can’t quite get over this instinctual motherhood sleeping thing. I was such a deep sleeper before. As in regularly sleeping through alarm clocks going off. Sleeping through thunderstorms. That kind of deep sleeper. Now I hear her sounds all night long and just know when she needs something. It’s remarkable.

I feel like I’m getting plenty of sleep since I’ve always been good at napping during the day. But I haven’t quite been able to “sleep while the baby is sleeping” yet since there seems to be so many other things that need to be done. Not really housework, just social expectations that my small sliver of people-pleaser is having a hard time letting go of. I’m hoping we’ll slip into a routine with regular naps thereby allotting myself that sleeping time sooner than later.

Poop

I am pooping quite fine, thankyouverymuch. Ladies, the one upside to having a C-section is not dreading that first awful poop. Silver linings, people, silver linings.

And these are a few of our favorite things…

* I’ve noticed that Penny has just recently started to respond to my voice. If she’s in another room squawking she starts to calm down when I walk in the room and start talking to her. She also loves being held upright against my chest and neck which can often soothe her and put her to sleep. I have a new understanding of mothers – having your kid love being close to you is a huge ego boost.

* Two words: PRE-FOLD DIPES. I want to buy hundreds of these for every new mother I know. My mom gave me a whole bunch which I will be using for inserts when I switch to cloth dipes, but in the meantime they are AMAZING for a whole host of other things. We’ve got a major spitter upper on our hands, so pre-folds are strewn about our house like lit candles on the set of The Bachelorette. Matt curiously refers to them as “Tri-folds.” Which makes me think of three-corner hats. And the New England Patriots. And learning the song in German, “Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken,
Drei Ecken hat mein Hut.”

* The night-time routine which now includes a solid hour of Mama rocking Penny in her nursery while Dad sits on the floor with Berlin and plays mid-nineties rock songs on his acoustic guitar. Last night we enjoyed Collective Soul and Radiohead, the latter which caused our daughter to squeal in agony. Thom is an acquired taste, my dear.

* This post has been interrupted by two feedings, four dirty diapers, and one very intense burping session where the dog ran for cover.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Babies!, Little Friend, Opinionatrix, Penny, Stuff I Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.