Some Thoughts

Just some random comments:

1. I have my postpartum checkup the other day and all is good. I can start doing sit ups now. :)
2. I ran 25 min on the treadmill the other day for a total of 2.5 miles. Yes that is 10 min miles. But running continuous for that long was impressive for me at this stage.
3. I have 8 more pounds to lose to pre pregnancy weight from the 34 that I gained. I feel very good about this.
4. I start back to work in 9 days. And while I am sure it will be hard to leave, I think it will be good for my mental state.
5. We still aren't on a sleeping schedule. Some nights she has slept as much at 5-6 hours (YEAH!!) and other nights it is every 3. There is no rhyme or reason.
6. I got my hair cut today and feel like a new person. I just got it trimmed as I am growing it out to donate but it felt good to have a little me time and feel pretty again.
7. Lance Armstrong is going to be the graduation speaker at HPU this year and I am super excited. I have already had conversations with EZ about what I should get signed (he said too bad we didn't just sell the yellow aerohelmet!)
8. As a perk at work, the president gave us Ipads. It is basically just a ginormous Itouch but I think it will be great to watch movies on when traveling.
9. I am planning on doing a 5K in the beginning of October. Just to have a base of where I am at. I then plan on doing a 7 mile trail race in December and a half marathon in March. That is all my running ideas at the moment.
10. I have good days and bad days (or rather good moments and bad moments) and I think it is sleep that triggers if I am have a little meltdown.
11. We started trying out the cloth diapers yesterday and haven't mastered down quite the right tightness so that they don't leak. Or maybe they don't quite fit yet.
12. I starting watching Glee on netflix and OMG it is fabulous. I have only seen the first 8 episodes so far but it is hysterical! Love it (and EZ likes it too!)
13. Last but not least, Piper has found a new nap position with me...the boppy:

Family's in Town

This past Thursday my dad and grandparents (my mom's parents) arrived at the house to meet Piper. Then Friday my sister and Amelia came back for a visit (really to go to my other grandma's 90th bday party). My sister and A left Monday, my dad left today and my grandparents are leaving Thursday. Got all that straight! :)

Here are a few photos of the family:

My dad and his two granddaughters:



My grandma wanted to hold Piper nonstop:



Papa with his newest greatgranddaughter:


My sister doing a little playtime:


Gigi with all her grandkids and greatgrandkids that came to the bday party:


And one last one of Piper sleeping away on my dad's lap:

On the Flip Side

Maybe Piper heard my cries that I needed sleep and needed it bad. A month of not really sleeping was finally getting the best of me. EZ told me he didn't know how I was functioning. Here are the last two nights:

Sunday night:
Feed at 8:15 down to sleep at 9.

Up at 11:30pm to feed, down by midnight.

EZ fed her at 2:20

I was up with her at 4:45am (so I got a continuous stretch of almost 5 hours). I was in heaven.

But then last night was just strange:
Fed her at 8:15-9pm but she struggled to go down to sleep. Finally asleep at 9:20.

At 1:45am I woke up EZ...she was still sleeping, it had been 4 1/2 hours and more almost 5 since she ate. This was a new record. Should I wake her up??? EZ said you might as well and feed her since you are awake. So I woke her up and fed her and changed her and pumped and was back in bed by 2:30am

She slept till 5:50am on the second go around, another almost 4 hours. EZ got up to feed her then. I slept until 6:35 and noticed he wasn't back in bed. He was just sitting with her since she didn't want to go back to sleep.

This was unbelievable. From the time I went to bed at 9:45 until practically 6am I only had to get up once. My goodness I feel like a million dollars today. If this trend continues I will definitely no longer just be in survivor mode!

Then we went for a hot and humid walk to try and get her tired, ate some more and snuggled in bed and napped some (even me). She likes to get crazy in her sleep:

PS

I realized I should have also said that there are good days too! It isn't every day that is like this, but I felt as though I needed to at least get off my chest that it isn't blissful either! I do think once I get a good sleep, things will start to get better...that is if I can actually fall asleep!

Reality

I got an email from a friend saying how it seems from my blog (and probably facebook status updates) that I love motherhood. I emailed her back with the truth about what is going on. Maybe it seems like I put up a good front on the blog, or maybe it is just that I only post a few times a week, with not much going on.

There are days when I cry all the time. Cry when she is feeding, cry because I am tired, cry just because (maybe it is the hormones). The first almost 4 weeks have been difficult. Or maybe more like the last two weeks by myself have been difficult, I don't know it is hard to distinguish. Having EZ at work all day and me at home all day seems great, right...I get to spend lots of time with her. But the reality is, there are some days that she doesn't nap (or hardly nap at all). On those days, I think I might go off the deep end. I am tired from not sleeping at night and then I don't get to nap. It is these days too that she wants to eat nonstop-I think because she doesn't know what else to do. This doesn't make me happy either.

I don't like breastfeeding. There, I said it. I actually googled "hate breastfeeding" to see if there were other people that felt the same way. Luckily there are. I think people paint this pretty picture of motherhood and breastfeeding and all that but maybe it just isn't me. I don't like leaking everywhere (especially when she is feeding on one side and the other side is just like a faucet). I don't like how much it hurts. I don't like pumping (although I will say that this is less painful than breastfeeding and takes half as long). I don't like having to walk around with my shirt practically off most of the day. I can never get comfortable when I am feeding her. My friend said something about comparing it to a cow and milking, and you know what, that is how I feel...like some cow that gets milked a dozen times a day.

I will say, now that we gave her a bottle, I feel a little better. But then this is how last night went:

10:00pm-I fed her. EZ was going to take the next feed so I could sleep for a good chunk of time.

Midnight- she was fussy (I was still awake)...I fixed her swaddle so her arms were out and she went back to sleep.

1:00am-EZ fed her.

3:00am she was fussy but not really awake (but I of course was listening to her)

4:00am-feeding time. I went in and she was all wet through her swaddle and nightgown. So I changed her which she didn't like. And fed her for 20+ min. Swaddled her back up and laid her down to which she woke back up and was all fussy again. I tried to soothe her and nothing...but I smelt that she had pooped and yup she had. So go to changed diaper number 2 and clean her up and she peed all over diaper 3 and herself as I am changing her. By now we are wide awake and it is 4:45am. So I feed her again. 20+ more min of eating a little then almost fall asleep then wake up. Finally I got up and pumped the other side while she fed off the one side because I was just leaking everywhere. Then she spit up everything she ate all over me. So I fed her a little more.

By the time all is said and done and I get her back in bed it is 5:30. Now when EZ was up with his feeding it was 15 min...me 1 1/2 hours. And I was actually awake then. What is wrong with this picture.

At 6:10am she was crying again. What the heck, it has only been 40 min child. I woke EZ up and told him to go try to calm her down because I couldn't do it.

By 7:30 she wanted to eat again and so I fed her again.

By 9:00 we had eaten a handful more times of like 10 min at a time and spit up everything about the same number of times.

At 9:30 I left for a run because I needed to get out of the house. :)

When I fed her again at 11:00 for 45 min and then she just yawns and yawns but doesn't want to sleep for 30 min, that is when I start to go crazy. I just laid her down and let her fuss for a while while I finally ate something and EZ went to calm her down (which took another 30 min).

These are the days that I want to crawl into a hole.

See, it isn't all hearts and cuddles and kisses and sweet motherhood (at least for me). On the flip side, everyone seems to tell me that at about 2 months everything gets better...breastfeeding, sleep, everything. So I guess I am halfway there.

OK...so enough of the bad news. Here are a few pictures from this week.

Here I am in my stylish golf attire:


I found my fingers to suck on one day during a nap:


Look I have a birthmark on my hand just like mommy:

Blogs

There are lots of blogs out there and my list of blogs I read on here are all (but 1) people I know. But of course there are lots of other types of blogs...blogs about food, about going green, hobbies, running, being a mom, cancer, all sorts of things. And there are a few blogs like those that I like to visit every now and then.

Well the other day a friend introduced me to another blog: Mila's Daydreams. This blog is from a woman on maternity leave from Finland that creates scenes of what her daughter could be dreaming about when she is sleeping and then photographs them. She uses just what she has around the house and the creativity is just beautiful. Here are two of my favorites on her blog:

Bookworm:


A Little Ray of Sunshine:

3 Weeks Old

Today miss APZ is 3 weeks old. I already think she is growing so fast. When I look at the photos taken those first couple days in the hospital to now, she looks different and bigger already! On Sunday we had a photographer come and take some pictures of her and us. She (Ashley Allen) does an amazing job and really took the time to work with us. And she gives you the rights to the photos, so when I get a disk with all the pictures on it, we can print as many or as few of whichever ones we want. We actually hired her to do a package deal of newborn, 6 month and 1 year photos. So there will be more great photos to come in the next year! I am mainly posting these here for the people that don't have a facebook account since you can see them there. Here are a few of what she already posted:

Getting Back into a Groove

I started working out not too many days after little miss Piper was born. My doctor said as long as I felt find to go ahead but not to push myself too hard. So I started with some walking, then added the elliptical and then last week added running. Now my running isn't fast at all, more of a jog...just trying to get my legs moving again. It is harder during the week since I have to go at night when EZ is home and it has been ridiculously hot so I have been going to the gym. But we had a crazy couple days of cool air and I ran outside for 15 min yesterday and today which has been nice.

On the weight side of things, I had gained 33 pounds during the pregnancy and after I came home from the hospital had lost 14 of those. Since then I have lost another 8 so we are down to only 11 pounds left to loose. I must say that the breastfeeding is just taking the pounds away as I am still eating my daily dose of dessert every night! :)

Alright, enough about me, here are some photos of APZ from this week.

Look how tiny my feet are:


I fell asleep in the swing one day with my feet crossed:


Typically I like to sleep on my side:


But on occasion I find myself saying touchdown!:


My umbilical cord finally fell off so we had our first real bath:


Then got all snuggled up afterwards: