Our sleep: co-bedding and beyond

When dealing with the eating issues at the very beginning Nick and I literally got no sleep for the first couple days. She would get to sleep, we would lay down and just as we would drift off she would start screaming. 


After we got over the feeding issues our sleep went from 0 to 3 hour stretches. I was getting far more sleep than I ever thought I would and it only got better. For every "bad night" where she was up every 1-2 hours, she had a "good night" where she'd sleep for 5-9 hours straight. You read that correctly. Now just because she was sleeping 9 hours straight doesn't mean I was... at about 4 hours straight my brain is going, "Oh my God, she's dead... go check to make sure she's breathing!"

The common belief is that if you keep your child awake during the day, they will sleep at night. This is simply not true. I noticed she was sleeping longer at night when I was letting her sleep during the day.

Colic

It seems to just be one thing after another in our house these days.

Between a poor latch, thrush, an umbilical hernia that caused quite a scare, and now a colicky baby; Nick and I are losing our minds.

Source

Dealing with thrush

After I wrote this post about overcoming our breastfeeding issues and having everything going so well, the universe decided I was being too cocky and hit both Annaliese and I with a pretty bad case of thrush.

Due to her poor latch at birth, she got blisters on the inside of her mouth - which I was assured was normal. So when it looked like she had some spit up residue on some of the blisters I didn't think anything of it. About a week and a half passed and I noticed it wasn't getting any better and her breath smelled really sour. I tried brushing the inside of her cheeks with an infant gum brush and when the white spots wouldn't brush away I realized what it was. At this point it had already spread to my nipples - explaining the pain I just thought was due to a latch regression.

Cloth Diaper Snob

I'm not afraid to admit it, I've become a cloth diaper snob. I haven't used a disposable in over a week and I'm loving it. Perhaps the newness will wear off, but I doubt it.

I promised you a post detailing exactly what kind of diapers I'm using, so here's the break down.

Breastfeeding is hard

LOL

Every mammal does it, in fact that's where the word mammal comes from - the mammary gland is what produces the milk for the offspring. After the first few days of breastfeeding I had Nick go pick up The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding by the LLLI. In the chapter titled "Latching and Attaching" a sentence reads, "Babies need to choose their own timing. We used to be told to 'latch the baby on' when her mouth was open wide. But mammal mothers never take that much control over a feeding, and babies don't expect it." Now, if you've followed my blog for any amount of time or even read my birth story, you probably know how gung-ho I am about doing things the "natural" way. So if it's so natural and supposed to come so easy... why isn't it?

The Bradley Method & Me

You might remember this post where I basically dismissed the Bradley method as a bunch of cow poop but had spent the money for the class so figured I might as well finish what I'd started. After all, it couldn't hurt, right?

Well, I'm going to have to take back everything bad I said about it. All of the coping methods I used during my labor and delivery were learned from the Bradley classes we took. I never would have thought of vocalization had it not been for that class. I never would have thought to explore the positions I did throughout labor had it not been for that class. I probably would have been begging for drugs.

Our Birth Story

It's taken a while to process exactly what happened surrounding Annaliese's birth. Everything happened so fast, I'm not sure exactly where to begin. If you ask my husband when labor began he would probably joke that I had been in labor for the entire last half of the month of September.

But the exciting stuff started to happen Saturday, October 8th. I woke up around 9 to find I had lost my mucus plug, I texted my doula and waited for Nick to wake up so I could share the news with him. I went to doctor google asking questions like, "how long after you lose the mucus plug do you go into labor?" I got excited with answers like "half an hour" and disappointed with the other answers like "2 weeks." We took Saturday to visit with family and attend another couple's baby shower - trying to keep ourselves preoccupied with something other than kick starting labor. I went to bed Saturday content and mentally prepared to be pregnant for another 2 weeks. 

I woke up at 10:15 on Sunday morning, disappointed I had slept so late since I was going to have to get up early for work the next day. I had been having contractions all weekend so the ones I felt all day were nothing that hinted to the start of labor. I spent the day in bed, watching 30 Rock on Netflix and at about 6 o'clock Nick and I made a trip to the Urgent Care Center because Nick had a pretty bad cough and was running a fever. He had some x-rays done and was prescribed medicine for Bronchitis and we went on our way. Nick went to bed at 9 but baby girl was so active I couldn't sleep. She kept me up until almost 1am with non-stop powerful kicks and rolls. Dr Google told me that movement slows down as labor approaches, so labor was the last thing on my mind. I fell asleep thinking about what I was going to wear to work.