Today, my baby has turned a month!! Time is flying. So far it has been super crazy busy! So many things that I learned in past four weeks and I thought I knew a lot before! I was so preoccupied with the whole pregnancy, labor and delivery that totally forgot how it would be post birth! Caring for a newborn is HARD work. And more so, if that newborn seems to be a fussy cry baby for most of the waking time. However, things seem to be improving now.
First two weeks were SUPER HARD. It's one thing to care for a baby and completely another to care for a baby AND deal with post birth recovery AND deal with unexpected issue such as problem with breasfeeding. She was fed formula for the first two weeks as a "supplement". Though truly first one and a half week breast milk was more like a supplement and not formula. She had hard time with latching. So, I was pumping and pumping and slowly but surely turned her from formula fed to "Exclusively breastfed" baby! It's a lot of work but worth it!
Sleep. Where do I begin with sleep? I absolutely had no idea that newborn needs to be fed every two hours if breastfed or every three hours if formula fed. There were some nights when she was really following this schedule which meant very less sleep for me, if at all. I do feel just recently I came out of zombieland. And the ritual of feeding her was also very time consuming. Being new to motherhood and all there was one thing I didn't know how to do-breastfeed baby sidelaying in bed! I heard about it, I had seen it but I didn't know how to do it. I know, had I done that earlier my nightlife would have gotten much easier. But anyway. In the begining it was like...she would cry, I pick her up..get my boppy pillow (life saver!)..put her on that...spent time on getting her perfectly or at least in a workable position for feeding (when breastfed)...and then fed...she would drift to sleep..then pick her up in upright position for burping..(sometimes she wouldn't even burp!) and then put her down for more feeding and pick her up for burping and it went on till she finally would fall asleep. So whole thing could take from 45 mintutes to one and half hour. And when I would put her on bed, viola in 2 min would be up with eyes wide open and CRY! And do the whole shindig all over again, may be it would take a little less time than whole 45 min to one and half hour next round, but the ritual was performed as said manner all over again. Adding to that, when she was sleeping I would rush to pump milk for anywhere from 20 to 40 min...it was really BRUTAL. I was so happy when she was finally latching okay enough for me to not pump every.single.day.
And then of course the freaking pump had to go out of whack. It was really nerve wrecking for me. Whenever something happens related to breastfeeding, I freak out the most. Nothing else matter that much.
Anyway, so around three weeks she started to have night time fussy time, which lasted anywhere from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. During this time she would continuously cry, whimper, fuss....and nothing seemed to console her. It was such a hard hard time.
Overall, first month went by pretty fast now that I think about it. But then it felt like each night was never ending. I know time will pass us by before we know it. So, despite the hardship I want to enjoy and am enjoying every moment of it because this time will never come again.
Looking forward to future!
