Hi everyone! So, here we are. Elise is now 18 days old and while I’m far from an expert in any way, shape or form I’d like to think that I’ve learned a few things about parenting so far. These are my little gems of parenting advice and observations garnered over the last couple of weeks.
1. Your bedroom floor is a completely acceptable place for dirty diapers at 2am … as long as they are sealed up.
2. Brushing your teeth by 4:30pm is indeed a feat and should be celebrated each day. Along those same lines … NOT brushing your teeth before you go to bed is ok too. I mean, c’mon. You just brushed them a few hours ago.
3. Losing your pregnancy weight isn’t nearly as hard as everyone makes it out to be. This is mainly because you will never have time to eat again once you bring the baby home. This is something no one bothers to tell you before you have the baby. Had I known this, I would have made a more conscious effort of packing on the pounds and eating all the glorious, bad-for-you-food that I was avoiding at the end of my pregnancy. Yay for the “I have a newborn” starvation diet. As it is, I have lost 30 of the 40 pounds I gained while pregnant. YAY!!
4. Breastfeeding the newborn at the dinner table with one hand while eating your dinner with the other hand suddenly seems like the only way you will ever eat and no longer seems like such a stretch. Although it does take some finesse. This will come with time.
5. The dressing room and/or the front seat of the car in a parking lot are completely acceptable places to nurse a screaming infant that takes you by complete surprise when you mistakenly thought you had another hour or two of nap time ahead of you.
6. Umbilical cords are disgusting. I don’t care if that is a completely non-maternal thing to say. They are foul. They look gross. And they smell gross. And there is NOT a pretty belly button underneath the umbilical cord. I naively thought that was what I would find once Elise’s cord fell off… but no. Underneath there is a nasty, yellow/green goop that still requires 2-3 days of cleaning with alcohol. Also, nurse or not, this is hard to do without dry heaving. Elise’s umbilical cord fell off on Saturday when she was 16 days old. Well, “fell off” is really a stretch. It was hanging by a thread of goop and Daddy Ben finally manned up and cut it off. It may not have been as gross and may have actually fallen off and much earlier too had both of us not been completely disgusted by cleaning it. We are horrible parents. But everyone has their limits and this is mine.
In other news, Elise is doing great. She is starting to settle down into more of a newborn schedule where she sleeps for 2-3 hours at a time then wakes up to nurse and look around for an hour or so before going back to sleep. She still has meltdowns at night, but they aren’t as severe and have been more manageable. She seems to be very sensitive to light and noise at night so I’ve been making an effort to turn down the lights and TV around 8pm when she is gearing up for the big show. She has gained back her birth weight and even tacked on a few ounces. As of our last follow up appointment a few days ago she was weighing in at a very healthy 8 pounds, 12.5 ounces. Go mama juice!!
A new picture: The first meeting of the cousins (Elise on the left, Keegan on the right). First meeting, and there they are hoppin into bed together.
Next up is our trip to Indiana on Thursday. Elise’s first plane trip, at 3 weeks old. What a jet-setter!! Our plane leaves at 7am. Have I mentioned it’ll just be me and Elise flying? Ben is in Vegas this week and will meet us there… that may prove to be an entertaining post. Stay tuned!
