This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

I’m not exactly sure when it happened – I think it might still be a work in progress. But somehow, sometime along the way, a new normal came along. This idea of normal is consistently evolving and is definitely nothing like the normal we used to live before Logan came along. This new normal involves a lot more running around, playing, supervising an emerging toddler, changing diapers, giving baths, waking up early, sleeping early, waking up at night, budgeting free time and soothing an emotional new human.

It is a lot more hectic and active, involves a lot less sleep, occasional frustration and less time, but it is so much more fulfilled and fun than the old normal used to be. But sometime over the course of the last year, we learned to just accept things as they happen and go with the flow. Night with little sleep? Tough luck, next one might be better. I think it’s really important to understand that not everything is in our control anymore and that you have to make the best of things – I have a feeling this will be infinitely more true when we add another little person in our lives (no plans as of right now, but one day!).

Sometimes, even when bordering on zombie state in the morning, it’s important to just enjoy the pretty sunrise you can catch thanks to a certain early bird:

And now that things are fairly predictable, we have time to do stuff like bake birthday cupcakes for a very special person:

And birthday cakes to celebrate that very special person’s birthday with extended family:

Life may not be perfect, but it is fun. So much more fun than it ever used to be. Thank you for my new normal, little boy. I love you.

After our long road trip to Yellowstone, Logan is not getting much of a break. In October he and I are off to – gasp – Germany to visit Logan’s grandparents (my parents)! And yes, it’s only going to be Logan and me. Daddy is staying at home to work. I have truly mixed feelings about this.

For one, I’m going to miss him like mad. We’ve hardly been apart in the last few years – at most two days when he flew out to a job interview in California – and now I’m going to be gone for sixteen days. Sixteen! I’m mad. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I suppose?

Also, I’m going to have two 14-hour travels with an 11-month old baby boy. An almost-toddler that hates sitting still or being confined to his seat, and of course everyone hates children on flights. Let alone 10-hour flights. I hope all goes well. I think I have been preparing as well as I possibly can given the circumstances, but a large part of how the travel goes is up to Logan and his mood at the time of take-off.

Here’s what I’ve done so far (or is on the travel preparation to-do list):

- Infants under 2 years old usually travel for a small fee on a parent’s lap. Some airlines let you purchase a seat for your infant if you bring a car seat, which is always recommended for safety and comfort reasons. Alas, we didn’t have the money for that this time.

- I’ve done research on airlines and found one that not only flies straight to Germany (with a layover in Frankfurt, but hey, I’m going to be in the right country after just one flight at least), but also has bassinets available for babies up to a weight of 14kg and 83cm, which Logan is under. He’ll be 11 months old, but they don’t have an age limit. Many airlines do!

- I did want to get a night flight, but sadly there was no 6pm+ flight available with the airline I picked out. Instead, we leave in the middle of the day, which should span one nap and a considerable amount of night sleep (4+h).

- I will sleep in on the day we leave, so I won’t get tired on the flight(s). Ideally I want to stay awake the whole time to supervise Logan and make sure he’s ok.

- I called the airline to reserve a bulkhead seat. Infant bassinets attach to these, and they have extra legroom, which means Logan can play on the floor.

- I will buy a completely new set of toys for the flight, and introduce them at about a rate of one per hour.

- I will take his bottle and sippy cup and let him drink during take-off and landing to make pressure acclimation as painless as possible.

- I bought an umbrella stroller to make getting around the airports easier. The stroller can come on board, but flight personnel will take it and stow it away until we depart the airplane.

- I made sure we have an adequate amount of time on our layover (2 hours).

- We have applied for an expedited passport for him. Not all places that normally take passport photos will take infant passport photos. I didn’t know that before!

- I will take two outfit changes for Logan and perhaps an extra shirt for me. Just in case something happens. I will also take infant tylenol and perhaps even nose drops for air pressure equalization in case he’s congested. Ear planes for me. Lifesavers.

- I will take his favorite snacks, lovie and blanket.

I think that’s all I can think of right now. It’s going to be an adventure, and I’m scared. I’m already scared of planes – in fact, most of my worst nightmares involve planes – this is going to add a whole new level. We’ll get through it though, and it’s worth it to have my parents see their grandson. In case of my father, for the first time!

I think this will be the last postpartum update. It took 9 months to bake a kid, and it took 9 months to get (mostly) back to normal. I might do a 12-month one, provided my body changes more, but it’s unlikely.

I weighed in this month at 129.4lbs, which means I lost about 4lbs since my 7-month update. I really had to crack down and adjust my diet to see continued results, so 2lbs/month is pretty good in my book. I would like to lose another 4, but I fit into most of my old clothes (minus some jeans) and I don’t think I look too bad. I’ve upped my exercise/strength training routines and things are definitely falling into place.

I still get the random agonizing backaches that I never had prior to giving birth. I definitely relate them to either my body being stretched out of whack during pregnancy or the epidural I received in the hospital. I haven’t seen a doctor for it though, as the frequency has dramatically reduced.

It always amazes me that at the hospital I thought my 8-pound baby was heavy to pick up and carry around and – in my Percocet-induced awkward state of mind – wondered how I would manage to always, always hold and carry him if it makes my arms hurt so much. He’s now weighing in at 23lbs and while I objectively know that he’s pretty heavy, he doesn’t really feel that heavy to me. Definite mommy guns at work, there!

This is me at 9 months postpartum. Not the best pictures, but it’s been a busy month – we took Logan to Yellowstone! (next post will be about that) – and you get the idea.

Logan has been sleeping elevated since he was a newborn. Back then, he seemed to sleep the best (and longest) in his rock’n'play sleeper, so we just kind of.. stuck with it. We’ve made several attempts to get him into his crib since, but they always failed. I think several factors played into that. For one, the crib was in his own bedroom, but he wasn’t really used to his bedroom. We’d go in there when he was already asleep or close to asleep, and he never got a chance to get comfy with it. Obviously, the elevation change takes a lot of getting used to as well. So, previous attempts to get him into his crib ultimately ended in hours and hours of crying sessions. We got a 40-minute stretch of sleep out of him, once.

So, through a combination of laziness and busy life, Logan’s been sleeping in his rock’n'play that he has long outgrown. I’ve been thinking that some of his sleep issues have to do with him no longer liking to sleep in it. Two nights ago, little man started wailing loudly out of the blue at about 8pm. I went upstairs just to find him on his tummy. In the rock’n'play. Not good. Not comfy for him, either. Or safe, for that matter.

That was the last straw. We set up the crib the day after, and last night was Logan’s first night in his crib. I want to say it went.. better than expected. I put two blankets under his mattress to help with the elevation change. At 7:40pm, after giving him his bottle, he pulled his lovie over his face and just kind of passed out without further complaint.

At 9pm, he woke up. Not unhappily at first, but eventually disoriented and unhappy about his change in circumstances. I was there to help him, giving him a little more milk, rubbing his tummy, but to no avail. Then, out of the blue, he figured out he can roll on his tummy. Cue instant sleep.

Dumbfounded, I went back downstairs. He slept until 12:30am (!), which is much longer than usual. However, at about 12:30am we hit a rough stretch where Logan was pretty convinced that it was in fact play time and not sleep time. He fell asleep once but woke back up quickly, and we did the whole spiel again. The whole thing lasted til about 3:30am. But, what baffles me is that he was not actually upset, he was just exploring.

He then continued to sleep til 5:20am.

On the whole, I was expecting much worse. I obviously was not happy about the 3-hour awake stretch, but I’m sure that once he really gets used to the crib, that won’t be an issue anymore. I am happy we finally took the plunge, since it’s been something I’ve put off for too long.

On an unrelated note, we also have… teeth! The two bottom front teeth came in, and little guy now has an actual chomp. He’s pretty fascinated by his new acquisitions, while I’m kind of scared of putting my fingers anywhere near his mouth now. Terrible picture – he doesn’t exactly let me get too close to them – but here you have ‘em.

Daytime is becoming really, really fun. Little guy has a blast exploring and playing and I only wish we had more nice summer days so we could go outside more. On the few occasions that it doesn’t rain, we’ve been making good use of the sun.

We’ll be moving into our dream rental unit by the middle of May, hopefully our last rental until we buy. It has the most amazing kitchen and view of the mountains on both sides of the house (along with sunset/sunrise, also over the mountains). We’re completely stoked!

Sadly, it meant saying goodbye to our little kitty, as the new place has a terrible pet policy on top of already being quite pricey. We found a good new family with 5 kids, a cat and two dogs, and their 8-year old daughter was completely in love with him at first sight… it makes me feel better, but I’ve been bawling a good part of today. At the very least he’ll have a lot of new friends that can pamper him all day long. He’s a very loving and family-friendly cat, so I think it’s for the better overall. Still. I loved that little guy.

Oof. Anyway, we’ll be busy with moving business things over the next few weeks, and Logan’s half-birthday is coming up too! We have a doctor’s appointment on the 1st, and I’ll do a formal 6-month update as well as some photos then.

Once we’re moved into the new place, I’ll take some pictures. It is SO pretty. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:

It seems like finding time for blogging is currently quite a tough thing. Like any stay at home mother, from the time I get up until the time I go to bed my life is dedicated to my son. Since he’s not mobile yet (though we’re working hard on sitting up), he’s mostly in some way attached to me, which makes getting any kind of work or play done hard.

When he naps, I usually try to help my husband with the business side of things or do stuff like, y’know, cooking, which leaves me all of an hour after I bring the baby to bed at 9:30pm. I try to find some time to read or take some photos outside to practice when the time allows, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.

For some reason, Logan used to nap a lot longer when my husband and I were still alternating sleep schedules and I had a lot more time to, well, do stuff. I kinda miss it, but having more time with my husband is definitely a nice trade-off and the overall better solution. Rarily, but at least sometimes, we have time to do things like these…:

…But with taxes due (we don’t get returns, we have to pay – a lot), and expanding the home business, things have been stressful to say the least. Oh well, things are getting better. We did have our 2-year wedding anniversary and picked up this little guy to celebrate!

We named him Nocturne (nerdy gaming reference) and Logan LOVES him. He’s a 10-week old bombay kitten. I also decided to finally give in and get a jumperoo and it has probably been the best baby purchase I’ve made to date. Logan loves to jump and jump and jump and play with the toys for up to half an hour at a time, and that’s HUGE for him. Normally he gets bored and wants to be picked up or otherwise entertained after 5-10 minutes.

Yep. Loves it.

Since the weather has been getting a lot nicer, I’m making an effort to take Logan out more, so he can discover the world. He hates bright sunlight in his eyes and he hates the cold, but he’s been pretty appreciative of spring so far.

So anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to. Times are busy, but the productive kind. I hope that the stressful phase will alleviate within the next few months, so we can enjoy Logan’s first summer to come!

Since my husband is up at night to get actual work done instead of getting distracted by a cute lil bugger all the time, I’m lucky enough to get 8 hours of sleep each night. If Logan wakes up at night, hubby gets him. The bean’s bedtime is still pretty late – about 10:30pm – so after I bring him to bed, I go upstairs to read and spend some time with my husband, and then hit lights out by midnight. I get up at around 8, and Logan’s usually awake by then.

When my husband hears me get up, he comes upstairs with the little guy and we hang out for a little. Sometime between 8:30am and 9am, my husband will go to bed and I’ll start my day with Logan. As mentioned before, once he wakes up for the day, he’ll be up for 2 hours and then take a nap, up until about 6pm, where he just stays up til bedtime.

I used to be really big on routine. I used to take a shower around 9pm every night. My husband and I got to bed at roughly the same time each night. We’d go to the gym usually every day (every second day in late pregnancy) at the same time. I thrive on routine and thankfully, Logan seems to do the same. However, since having him, MY routine has changed a lot. Adapting to someone else has not been easy, though every month it gets easier. We have this family thing pretty down at this point. In fact, we have it down well enough that we’ll actually attempt to have a little family getaway as soon as the weather gets better! I’m excited. Alas, I digress.

I’m not an altruistic person. I grew up as only child and if there was one thing I could count on, it’s that I always had time to myself that I could divide as I pleased – aside from school and work and appointments, of course. Now, I have the time that Logan allots me, which usually consists of sporadic naps and an hour before bedtime. I’m not actually meaning to whine about this; I’ve gotten used to it and absolutely love spending time with the little guy… but it WAS quite a process to get used to it.

There are a few things I need on a daily basis to feel “human”. A shower, getting dressed and putting on make-up. Yes, even if no one sees me and I’m not going anywhere. I want to look presentable because it makes ME feel good, not to impress my 4 1/2 month old.

Typically, Logan will take his first (and longest) nap around 10am. Once he’s out in his swing, I quickly sneak off upstairs to take a shower, dry my hair and get dressed. I then sneak back downstairs, make a coffee and throw together a quick breakfast. Once that’s done, I read blogs/news while munching on my breakfast and put on my make-up afterwards. If I’m unlucky, he’ll wake up right then. If I’m lucky, I get some time to relax.

I prefer to do my chores while Logan is awake and watching me, as even something fairly quiet like doing the dishes has a pretty good chance of waking him up.

His other naps are typically 40 minutes long and mostly taken up by me making food for myself and consuming it, and perhaps reading 10 minutes here and there. I’m interested to see how this will change as he gets older – I know that while he won’t be attached to me as much as he is now when he’s more mobile, I’ll need to keep a constant eye on him so he doesn’t get into trouble. I plan to do a good job at babyproofing for peace of mind.

Overall, I’m very excited for him to get older. As much as I love my little adorable baby, I think the kid stage is gonna be heaps of fun!

It’s been a tough week in our household. We had some money worries at the start of the month which I think are taken care of now, and my husband has been working on finishing up an e-book so he hasn’t had much time for us. On top of that, it seems we have actually hit that 4-month sleep regression in full swing. Things seem to be getting better now (*knock on wood*), but for the past week or two we’ve had at least one lengthy night waking and then a 5-6am up-for-the-day time.

While he did still nap roughly every 2 hours, they rarely lasted more than 30-40 minutes, which resulted in a completely overtired and grumpy baby. No fun. Also, it turns out that 30-40 minutes is not a lot of time to get anything done, especially since I’ve been helping the hubs with his e-book. Oof.

But, there’s an upside! Logan was out about 3 hours of sleep last night, but since it was Daylight Savings day, we figured we’d just skip a nap and then put him to bed an hour “earlier” to make up for the DST. I’m happy to report that the plan worked fabulously. We went grocery shopping at about 7:30pm, came home at 8:30pm, took a bath at 9pm and then hung out a bit until 10pm, where we started bedtime. He was out cold by 10:30pm! Even better, he actually slept right through the night until 6am. No night waking. Whoa. Here’s to hoping that trend continues.

The e-book is due to release today too, so hopefully we can spend a little more family time together soon. I think all of us need it.

Another month has passed, and there hasn’t been terribly much change – but some. I think I went from 147 to 142lbs this month and most of my postpartum pain is gone. I had some terrible sciatic nerve pain for about 2-3 months postpartum, and I’m glad to report that it’s gotten much better. Thank you, body. I appreciate it. There are still some days where I move in all the wrong ways and send some shooting pains all the way down my left leg, but that used to be EVERY day. *knock on wood*

I’m starting to feel pretty strong again. I can walk, I can run (though I run out of breath pretty more quickly than I used to), I can run errands, I can lift (WAY better than I used to… thank you, ~17lbs baby), I have some time to myself while baby naps, I’m emotionally stable, I’m completely in love with my family, I’m comfortable going out in public with baby… in short, things are going pretty well.

My postpartum depression peaked around 6 weeks and then got gradually better. Whether it has to do with the hormonal birth control, the supplements or just got better by itself, I’m very thankful for it. I was not doing well those first two months. Logan becoming more predictable helped a lot, and re-evaluating my expectations did too. Rather than yearning for some semblance of my old life, I accepted my new life and embraced how things are going to be from now on.

I learned to be ok with the fact that Logan now runs this place. I learned to plan my days differently and keeping an open mind as to the schedule. As Logan became more interactive and happy, I fell more and more in love with him. Mothering turned from a new, demanding job that I didn’t know how to feel about yet into something I look forward to every single day. Even the worst days become happy when my baby smiles at me.

We haven’t figured out how to get back into the gym yet, but since I’m still steadily losing weight and getting quite a lot of “unintentional” exercise anyway, we’re in no rush. I think the gym daycare here doesn’t accept infants under 6 months, anyway.

I’m starting to put more effort into myself again. When I go out, I do my hair and make up and dress up. I shower daily (though I’ve always done that, anyway. I was lucky enough to have people to watch the baby while I took 20 minutes off), I put on make up every morning (not for other people or social pressure, but because I want to) and I try to generally wear nice clothes that work on my current body.

My collar bones have resurfaced, as well as my hipbones. I’m kind of like a kid in a candy store with bones – I like touching them. Probably because I was overweight for most of my life. Of course, touching them limited to when I’m alone. I can do without looking like a freak in public, haha.

All in all, I’m happy. If I keep losing about 4lbs a month, I should feel like a champ at 6 months postpartum. At least, I truly hope so. My goal is to be back at my pre-pregnancy weight by the time Logan turns 9 months old – that gives me 5 months to lose about 17 lbs. Totally doable.

On March 2nd, I’ve scheduled a haircut appointment. This is my first haircut since August 2011, and I’m so glad I made it. I’ve been shedding like a dog lately, and getting a hair trim and layers will help a lot. Besides, I always feel like a new woman after getting a haircut.

So, there you have it. That’s me 4 months postpartum. In most aspects of my life I’m back to normal, and those few “wonky” months of my life were totally worth it for my baby boy.

Much to my surprise, I found something sharp in my routine gum inspection yesterday. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a toothie coming in. The upper left front tooth, to be precise. The little man is most certainly not a happy camper. His waking hours seem pretty miserable and he doesn’t seem to enjoy eating as much as he usually does. Still, he’s a trooper. Yesterday, we were out with him for a good 4 hours and he did not have a public meltdown despite his discomfort. He still slept through the night, too.

He has turned into a drool monster – as I’ve learned today, the drool acts as lubrication to take away some of the pain of teething – and I basically always need to carry several bibs and/or wipe cloths with us. I don’t foresee this getting much better until he’s got all his teeth. Apparently after they get their first few teeth, they’re able to ignore the teething better until they get their molars. Those, on account of being huge, are supposed to be a pain (quite literally). Poor baby. I just wish I could take his pain away. Alas; this is his trial. Proof of the drool:

Yesterday was sort of a blur, as my mother in law urgently had to go to the hospital (we – and her for that matter – didn’t know about it until we were at her place waiting for her to come home to babysit for our date night!), so we drove her there and then ended up going to eat with the baby in tow. Told ya, he’s a trooper. My husband stuffed the baby monitor into my room at 3am so he could go pick up his mother, and an hour later he was back and I got to sleep again.

The baby monitor and I have a problem. When it’s in my reach, I can’t help but turn it on and stare at my baby sleep. He was having an REM sleep phase and it was SO adorable. He did the biggest sleep grins, he slapped himself in the face (how it doesn’t wake him up, I have no idea), he did a few cute sounds and kicks and his eyes kept fluttering open. I was mesmerized. I need to figure out a way how to not stare at the monitor when I’m supposed to sleep. It’s not going to be easy.