Sierras 2 week report card

Baby Sierra is two weeks old. Its been the longest two weeks of my life. I am fortunate that I still have several weeks off for maternity leave, and Robin was able to take the previous two weeks off to help baby adjust to home life, and me adjust to motherhood.  My mom was also here to support extra chores that would have fallen by the wayside while our attention rapidly shifted towards keeping this new dependent entity alive. Still when reflecting on the start of our fourth trimester I can say that some things went well, and some things went not so well. Here is my assessment on the state of affairs at our newborn enriched household.

Baby’s well being A+ 

Baby is gaining weight like its her full time job (it is). She was weighed twice at the doctors office three days apart and gained 6 full oz. She is right on her growth curve and gaining weight at twice the speed as average from that small sample size. I briefly considered if we are feeding her too much, but apparently there is no such thing for newborns getting breast milk.

 Daddy’s well being B 

I didn’t consult with him on this grade, but Robin is positively glowing. Fatherhood looks good on him. I didn’t think he looked half bad before, either. He is supporting me by taking some of the middle-of-the-night shifts, and both of us are getting at least 1 five hour block of sleep a night. Both of us are getting around 7 hours total. Its less than normal, but relatively stellar for a new baby around. I subtract half a grade because the change in sleep schedule is wearing on him, especially now that he has to go back to work to his full time job.

My love for him is growing so much. Our relationship is changing in mature new ways. It’s a scary and new direction in our lives.  

Mama’s well being - C+

I am doing ok. My mom visited to help me out during this time, and despite the additional stress of hosting visitors, I think it made a difference in my overall wellbeing. My mom pitched in immensely with dishes, food, and laundry. We weren’t able to necessarily get more sleep, but at least we were able to get some semblance of normalcy back.

I had a personal win when I was able to wash my hair and blow dry it once these past two weeks. I also was able to squeeze 2 or 3 peloton workouts while baby slept after I pumped.

I give it a low score because of worry. I got caught up by worry several times these two weeks. My breasts were in pain over improper latching and I put Neosporin in them to help with the wound. I forgot to wipe it off before a pre-dawn feeding and only realized the next day. I freaked out. Did I accidentally poison my precious angel? Episodes like this kept occurring, leading to hours long crying jags. I was worried about RSV, heatstroke, heat rash, and sunburn. We ended up at the doctors office to check out her weird breathing. The doctor could tell I was stressed, and suggested I do something to get more sleep. It underlined how brittle I felt. They must see this all the time.  

Gigis wellbeing - B

Our fur baby is flourishing in her new role as a big sister. She is getting less attention than normal, and her walks are shorter now that we are always rushing home to get to the baby. However, she is imbued with a new sense of purpose now that she feels that she has to protect the baby. Her newly embraced duties include running around and finding everyone everytime the baby monitor peeps, waking up and sitting with the baby in the middle of the night for wee hour feedings, and being extra vociferous about growling at delivery vans.

Breastfeeding - B

I did not expect breastfeeding to be so hard. The difficulty was likely coupled with how exhausted I was after labor/delivery. I thought I would have some time to rest, but apparently the marathon had just started. It felt like the baby was hungry all the time. I did not know that the first few  weeks (and months?) would be essentially constant feeding. The pressure to breastfeed from the midwives, nurses, and my own husband were high. In this way, my husband and I were misaligned. I thought that if the baby was losing weight, I would be allowed to give the baby formula to bring her weight back up.  The midwives disagreed.  

The nurses advised that I needed to struggle through breast feeding now because my supply would suffer if I supplemented too early. The advice was to power through it. The baby lost 5% of her body weight the first day and her feet were purple due to lack of nutrition and oxidization. I was a poor advocate for myself because I was so tired. I slurred my words due to exhaustion. The baby was learning to latch at the same time I was learning how to breastfeed. We both messed up. She gnawed on my breast and affected a wound on my right nipple.

The stress was high. I cried while breastfeeding consistently for the first week. My husband was even resistant against me pumping to try to cover evening feedings while I got some sleep. He just didn’t know the potential impact, and was willing to let me suffer with what we knew best while we waited for the pediatrician appointment. I resent how I could not stick up for myself during this time.

 Its tough, and I was ill prepared for the lack of autonomy I would have during this time. I wanted to quit so bad. This is one way that motherhood has rocked me.  The personality trait I was most proud of in the past used to be my rock hard independence. Now I need so much. It takes more than one person to take care of this child, and I don’t know how to lean on other people. I needed help advocating for myself during this breast feeding journey, and I didn’t have it. My mental health suffered.

On the other hand, being gaslighted to continue breastfeeding has yielded successful breastfeeding. Baby Sierra is being nursed 100% by breast milk, although about 50% of her feedings are from expressed milk in bottles. Modern pumps are a godsend. I am so happy that we got our hands on the nice pump. I would have given up if it weren’t for the ease of use of our pump.

Cloth diapers – A-

I have the hippy flower child ambition to use cloth diapers. From the comfort of early pregnancy I knew that I was uncomfortable throwing diapers into landfills, and liked the tactile cozy idea of using cloth ones. This is like the baby equivalent of period underwear, which I fully embraced back when that was something that happened to me (a year ago or so at this point). With the hubbub and exhaustion of recovering from labor, the idea of cloth diapers did not even pass through my mind for the first week. My mom’s visit during the second week did the trick to start using the diapers in earnest. We had her help doing the daily load of laundry needed to operationalize the diapers. I really got to experience the  difference cloth diapers makes. Frankly, changing her diapers is less gross. She doesn’t get the angry red abrasion that comes from a wet plastic diaper rubbing against baby skin (even if the diaper is on only for a few minutes). A wet cloth diaper is not as saturated. The whole thing feels more breathable. Washing the daily load also is more palatable than I would have originally thought. I also do not have the heavy feeling I get when I put anything plastic in the trash.  

Now that we know we like cloth diapers, we decided to pull the trigger and purchase additional prefolds so we can stretch the laundry loads to every other day instead of every day. This would theoretically add only two additional loads of laundry per week. It sounds doable now, but time will tell if we are able to keep this up once my mom goes home.  

 Sierra looks different than she did even a week ago. She is growing so fast. She is growing faster than I can work to preserve the memories. Every articulated thought I have has been expressed before. Motherhood is turning out to be a universal joy that I had to experience to appreciate. I’m looking forward to see which version of motherhood I inhabit