Sorry that it has taken me so long to get this posted. It appears that having a baby not only limits your time, but also pulls into sharp focus what you really want to spend your free time doing :)
We spent two weeks in the NICU. She improved every day and we relished each little milestone until she was finally able to come home. I like many of the nurses and staff who treated her, but there were a couple bitches and I think that I may still like to strangle one in particular who was horrible, but overall my daughter was given good care and she is fully recovered.
She is 9 weeks old and doing great! She is sweet and happy and sleeps a lot! She had no issues establishing nursing once we got home from the hospital and she is very easily consoled on the rare occasions she gets upset.
I have spent the last 7 weeks (since we have been home) loving her and holding her and spending all my time with her. I think that since I had to wait a week after her birth before I was able to hold her, I wanted to make up for lost time!
She has not had a pacifier since we left the hospital and while I am not opposed to a pacifier when needed, like in the car maybe, I am really averse to using one when I am available to cater to her every need.
We have been cloth diapering and using cloth wipes too and I love it! I am such a convert now, it is great! The Bun Genius which are my favorite, are so absorbent, that I do not need to change her overnight. The only time that she has pooped so much as to leak up the back, up the front or out the legs has been while in a disposable, so I am totally sold on cloth, not to mention, have you seen the price on disposable diapers lately!?!?!?! I wash them about twice a week and since she is still totally on breast milk, the washing machine can handle the waste. Once she starts solids, we will have to dump the solids into the toilet, but there are these disposable inserts that are biodegradable, like toilet paper that you can place in the diaper and just flip the whole thing into the pot and be done with it. Also, there is a sprayer that you can get and hook up to the toilet to spray off the solids too, so it should be just as easy to keep it up for the long hall!
I am also a solid convert to baby wearing. I have a couple of wraps, a sleepy time wrap and a ring sling and I really like both. I love having her close and she normally falls asleep quickly and sleeps longer and I am able to go for a walk or hike, do stuff around the house and everything! It’s great!!
I am back to work now, just part time, but it will bring in a little income and since my husband and I can stagger our schedules, he will care for her in the mornings while I work and we will meet in the parking lot and exchange her and cars and then he will work while I take her home and spend the rest of my day with her. While there is a part of me that is happy to be back at work (I did work hard to get my education and I have been with the company for a long time), the larger part of me is pissed that our society does not allow a family to live on one income, or that our company fails to pay my husband what he is worth, or that they don’t offer work from home options.
I am grateful that we are able to work this way, which allows us to raise our daughter ourselves and still make a decent living, and we have worked hard to arrange our life so that we don’t have any unnecessary expenses (except for the cable and cutting that would not allow me to stay home or we would be without it right now!!). I am happy that Smug-Baby will have special time just with her dad and they will create their own relationship that most fathers don’t get with their kids. This is really about as perfect a situation as I could ask for, but it does require me to be away from my baby for about 4 ½ hours a day, 22 ½ hours a week and I really don’t like it. I love spending my day looking into her sweet face and holding her soft little body. I love when she wakes up and looks up at me and grinning her toothless grin.
I should be able to blog a bit more regularly now that I am back to work, and I am sure that I have a lot to say, but mostly, I am just happy to have her whole, home, healthy and happy!!
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