Two months with Adlee

STATS: 11.5 lbs | 21" long


AJ,

Two months already?! Time is just flying by. You are quite the sweetie pie at 8 weeks old as you begin to become more alert & respond with smiles and coos to what we say to you. You are happiest in the mornings so I enjoy laying in bed talking with you for as long as you'll let me. I'm trying to soak up every second I can with you just cuddling, reading, going on walks in the neighborhood & rocking you on the front porch and in your room. You finally cracked a big ol grin that was directed just for me and I may have melted into a big ol puddle right then and there. I was able to get you to do a few more and captured one on camera in the hotel room you were grinning in while we were en route to Myrtle Beach! Adorable.

You are such a good traveler & Daddy and I said over and over how proud we were of you. We had a 10 hour drive each way, the hottest week in history there & were in a beach house with three other basketball families (8 kids total) and you were a breeze! Better than you are at home actually ;) Dad and I decided to sell the house and buy an RV, just because you seemed so happy with life on the road. Ha! I hope you continue to enjoy it because we don't plan to slow down anytime soon. I'm starting to get all weepy about leaving you with a Nanny (whom we've yet to hire) so I'm hoping once we decide on who will be watching you, next to your Grandma Albright twice a week, that I'll begin to feel better. As much as I would like to stare at you all day every day in a Mama induced love spell, I also happen to make a good living at what I do and am unable to leave. I hope that in growing up watching a hard working career Mama it will also inspire you to work hard at getting a good education, so you too can be a contributor to your family income, should you like to one day. I grew up watching my mom work two jobs sometimes just to help Dad out with my large monthly gymnastics expenses & we never went without what we wanted/needed to thrive in life. Mom enjoyed working, but I'm sure that there were times where she had Mama guilt for leaving us with someone else or not being able to be there for every event (although I can't really think of much she missed). Change is never easy, but I hope once I get back into the swing of work it will make me a better Mama to you in the long run. Thinking of you being sad or lonely for me if I'm not there or upset if I have to miss something because of work makes my heart break right in two. Who knew my heart would become so weak once I gave birth to you!?! :)

I hope you always know how much you mean to me and that every thing I do I do with your best interest in mind. Love you oh so much! 

Xoxo, 

Mom

Cluster feeding & growth spurts! Gas/Colic or just the need to paci? Lots of trial & error. Figuring this out as we go....

Before I was a Mom I always wondered why women would say they "haven't read a book in YEARS since the baby", or why some days it was "all they could do to even shower". Even shower I'd think to myself?! Ok, that's ridiculous. It cannot be THAT hard to manage a 10lb tiny human. I knew that there was lots to manage of course but I didn't realize that before you knew it it was 4pm and all you had accomplished was everything to keep a baby alive and quiet/happy & nothing for yourself. The amount of times I've now had to use the jon while baby is still connected to my boob so I didn't pee myself is well... Embarrassing! Too many to count. ESPECIALLY since she had a ridiculous growth spurt a week or so back where I completed an entire Netflix season while she cluster fed for two days (I will admit though that was a bit nice to just hunker down and mentally check out while she ramped up my milk supply). I've been lucky to have 0 nipple discomfort so really is was a nice break. Before being a mom, if someone told me sitting in front of Netflix for two days while having a baby on your teet 24/7 whilst squatting on your toilet + newborn attached was a "break", I would have shook my head in disbelief. THE HORROR! ha! Boy have things changed!

Last I wrote we were having a terrible time getting her to lay flat and sleep & so many people said to use the Rock N Play to which I finally tried & they were all right. It's a heaven send! She began to sleep 3-4 hours or so in it and just when we could see some sleep for us on the horizon, we began to deal with the next hurdle: her gassy stomach. We didn't know if it was gas + witching hour and or colic and there were way too many nights to count (always beginning at 7p on the dot) of 4+ hours of non stop shrilling. We swaddled, we shushed, bounced, swayed, tried every toy & paci's we had to distract. Nada. We loaded her up and did car rides, stroller walks... absolutely NOTHING would stop the crying, next to my boob that is. For a solid two weeks I was a nerve wracked zombie floating around in distress all day just waiting for the inconsolable wailing to begin at 7p where she'd wail & wail before I caved & latched her on. I was convinced my milk was poison thus leading to her gas and that I MUST also be over feeding her (she went from 6.3 to 10.5 lbs in 6 weeks)! But turns out you can't over feed a breast fed baby, so I would finally concede to using the boob to soothe her  like she wanted. It was frustrating for Blair to know this would solve it for her but that I didn't always want to use this method to soothe, & frustrating for me to feed/pacify so many hours of the day getting nothing else accomplished (even though feeding & soothing her was my first focus & quite a big accomplishment). This whole battle/process would then kick off the 0 sleep at night process as she would be so gassy to follow feeds & seemingly in pain (fists clenched, legs bent to belly, back arched). It was hellacious & the anxiety was all consuming. My mom was kind enough to tell me I looked like hell & had "bags for days". Thanks Ma! She was a formula/bottle Mom so although her journey wasn't a breeze to feed us, she was getting 4+ hours of sleep with us from day 1. She doesn't quite understand how EBF works which has been frusterating at times to explain, but more on that later. 

One min she'd get herself settled down...

and once off the boob she will shrill again....mehhhhh

We finally took Adlee to her Peds after trying everything (gripe water, gas drops, bicycling legs, stomach laying, etc) who diagnosed her with what we were hoping most that she didn't have. "It looks like you've got yourselves a colicky, gassy, high maintenance little girl here. Just take turns with her to give eachother breaks until it passes around 3 months. It's harder on you two than it is her". BEHHHHH!! Since not much is known about or why babies are colicky and nothing would work to calm her we felt pretty hopeless. We left making a pact to be more patient with her and eachother & that we were just going to have to get through these next 2 sleepless months alive. 

she obviously likes this pose-- ironically--so did I as a baby

MEN! sigh

A few days later I cleaned out her drawer to box up her NB clothes to replace them with 0-3 (hold me!) & found a few different pacis that we hadn't tried. The one she didn't spit out right away was a MAM paci that my mother in law gave us from a bag of Josie's items she never used (Adlee's baby cousin that's in heaven). So I kept it handy for her next colic breakdown that evening & it was an immediate silencer. She LOVES it & its soothed her ever since, praise G! Since discovering this paci we've made a massive turn around. She's calmed almost immediately & we think all she needed was something to distract & soothe during her fussy phases in the evening. I'm now not convinced she really has colic or is overly fussy at all.  She's been an absolute dream! With the assist if this paci, I think she just was communicating her boredom or need to wind down from stimulation and soothe & she was using my breast for this. I would like to find the inventors of the MAM & hug each and every one of them. She's now sleeping 5-6 hours a night & is stretching her feeds to every 3-4 hours or so during the day. She's still a gassy little thing but the paci helps to put her focus on it & less on her discomfort. While I'm thankful she's in less distress, her schedule lengthening & these progressions show me she's growing up which makes me sad that she's needing me less and less. Blair assures me that she still & will always need me very much.

Next on the horizon, as I am soon to reach 8w of maternity leave, is to line up childcare for AJ. I return at 12w. Agh! I didn't realize how hard all of these steps would be for me! I always thought I'd be ready to get back in the groove of work & have zero problems with all of the baby maturation's, but as I start to pump and begin to give her a bottle or two a week, it's making me sad to miss that bond time with her. I didn't realize how much I would love exclusively breast feeding her & watching all of her baby milestones first hand. A lot of these milestones will be witnessed by another caregiver & relayed to me & it tugs at my Mama heart strings. I don't desire to leave work or stay at home so I'm sure as anything else, I'll begin to adjust to the new norm soon enough. Stay tuned for what we decide on for childcare & also how Adlee did on her first road trip to Myrtle Beach!!

Until then.....

Xo, 

Andi