The first week - random thoughts

 
I definitely never intended to write a "mommy blog" (and back when I started blogging, kids weren't even remotely on the horizon and I would have never guessed I'd keep it up so long! TWSS). Hopeful it won't stay a mommy blog forever, but right now, that's kind of all that I have. I'm on maternity leave, recovering from surgery, and caring for a newborn. I guess I could blog about current events or something, but let's be honest, the rest of the world is much less interesting to me right now.

Kind of all I care about currently.

We came home from the hospital on Saturday, when Dalton was four days old.

Getting ready for his world début!

 

We were in the hospital an extra hour waiting for a wheelchair. That I had to walk over and get in to. Policy, I guess.

 

The hospital was pretty sweet, but I was weirdly excited to “introduce” him to his home. Because he totally knew the difference.

 

Welcome home! See how psyched he is?

He got to meet 4/5 of his grandparents right away! My dad is coming this weekend to complete things.

 

 

My mom and stepfather stayed with us until Tuesday, and it was amazing. I basically did nothing but cuddle with and feed Dalton, and they cooked us gourmet level meals and cleaned the kitchen. Actually, even after the sad goodbye, we're still on that plan because they left us plenty of extras. 

 
We are now on day 9 of his life, and have spent one full day caring for him all by ourselves (so expert level now, obviously). Here’s a random collection of thoughts about it.

 

1. Anyone who knows me knows that next to needles, there's nothing I hate more than hugs and inspirational, cheesy quotes and clichés. That said, it turns out that all that crap about motherhood being a love like you've never known and being instantly infatuated with your kid is true. Who knew?

 

Home in time to cheer the Ravens to victory.

2. Obviously a week or so is nothing and my feelings can change at any moment (especially on all these hormones), but I would rate the past week as approximately the best of my whole life. I'm excluding the day in labor since he was actually in my life for less than 45 minutes of that day, and the next day of nothing but a drug filled haze.It's up there with our honeymoon. Clearly in a different way, the honeymoon was great in more of a relaxing, fruity tropical drink filled way, but in terms of pure happiness, they're pretty comparable.

3. My stomach is so soft and squishy. I don't know if that's what normal stomachs feel like and I just got used to it being super hard because a baby butt was pressing out, or if that's just part of the healing process. What non-pregnant women feel like letting me feel their bellies to compare?

4. I painted my toenails! It didn't even hurt or cause me to breathe like I was winning the 100 yard dash! It turns out that a lot of the things that you look forward to when not pregnant (rolling over in bed, going from sitting to standing, and picking things up off the floor without all of the above being an ordeal, mainly) aren't in place right away when recovering from a c section. So the toenails were a huge victory. How about instead of a gross foot pic, we enjoy another adorable baby shot?

He's a "first bath by inept new parents" survivor.

5. I finally get why people say it's hard to lose the baby weight. Because people bring you delicious food. Just yesterday we had three sets of visitors. One brought a gift card for takeout, one brought an awesome toy, and the last brought delicious macaroni and cheese for dinner. I have a giant stack of candy on my dining room table that people have brought me, including five large bags of M&Ms (candy corn, peanut butter, and pumpkin spice, in case you were curious). On a scale of 1-10, I'm upset about this -5. My philosophy has always been that many, many things taste better than skinny feels. One of them is macaroni and cheese.

6. Two things that I thought were hyperbolic descriptions.

• That scene on Friends after Rachel has her baby when she's looking at her sleeping and is like "I actually miss her right now".
• People telling me that you will lose so much self consciousness in the hospital that you can be breastfeeding and tell the janitor to come on in.

Turns out neither one of these is an exaggeration. Both 100% accurate.

7. We had our first outing yesterday, to the pediatrician. Dalton has surpassed his birth weight, and gained even more than the recommended amount. I was super excited over this, which means I've officially entered lame mom territory. Even more exciting, that means we don't have to wake him every two hours to eat anymore. Something I didn't realize is that "every two hours" isn't really two hours, because it's start of feeding to start of next feeding. So if he eats at 1am -1:30 am, and goes back to sleep at 1:45am, you need to wake him back up to eat at 3am. Again, I don't mean that as a complaint, because I was honestly just so happy that he was eating well. But it's exciting to let him call the shots now!

8. We were only a slight mess leaving the house. One lesson I learned was that you are supposed to apply deodorant under your sleeve. It doesn't work on top of clothing.

Eric insisted that picture make the blog

Lesson #2: It takes a little longer to prepare to leave the house with a baby. I thought I had enough time to get ready and get both of us fed. No. I barely had time to feed him and incorrectly apply that deodorant.

We got the baby in the car, pulled out, and then I realized "hey, we have a baby now! We're supposed to bring the diaper bag with us!". Luckily we hadn't gone far and could go back and get it and still be on time. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be extremely necessary.

9. We started watching The Strain. Creepy vampire violence. You can't go wrong.

Best week of your life. Go.