Mom Life

I'm writing this kind of as a sequel to my Life with a Newborn post.  While a lot of my thoughts, tips + tricks from that post are still relevant, I wanted to give some updates on our life and my thoughts as a new mom - who has a whopping 15 weeks under her belt now. ;)

1.  Sleep gets better. SO much better. I guess this is a baby-by-baby thing, but in our case, a middle of the night feeding is usually about a 15-minute-and-right-back-down-to-sleep kind of thing. The, what felt like endless hours of pacing the house with a crying babe, have long since ended. While there are still frequently late nights over here, which can be tough on work nights, overall we get much more sleep.  Although, that's not too difficult when we were maxing out at maybe 3 hours a night for at least the first month or so.

2.  Nursing gets much better, too.  It's a rare occasion for me to want to give Ellie a bottle, or have Tyler give her one, unless we're going out somewhere.  You can read more about my breastfeeding experience here.

3.  It's SO nice when your baby starts to recognize you as her mom.  And, I'm not going to lie, it feels pretty good when you're the only one who can comfort her.  You are the one who has constantly been by her side for the past three months, after all! It feels like all the hard work and long hours are paying off.

4.  Multitasking becomes second nature.  Feeding a baby a bottle with one hand while eating a grinder with the other?  No problem.  I've also perfected my ability to use my toes as an extra set of fingers.  It comes in quite handy sometimes.

5.  Making some time every day for myself works wonders.  Even a half hour a day to do something I want to do feels so good - it can be something as simple as painting my nails, hanging out with my kitties, or writing a new blog post (or sometimes laundry or cleaning because  I know it will make me feel better to get it done).  Sometimes I do this early in the morning (depending on how our night went), or sometimes at night when Tyler's home from work - we're still kind of working on the whole nap time thing.  I plan on posting about our daily schedule (or lack thereof) next week since I get a surprising number of "so what do you two do all day?" questions.  It's thrilling, no doubt! ;)

6.  Take pictures! I take an embarrassing number of pictures, but I never regret it.  My sister jokes that I should make a book that has a picture of Ellie every day of her life, and I probably could.   Time certainly does fly - we look back at pictures all the time and can't believe where the time went. I love all of the memories I've captured so far.

7.  Making time for Tyler and I is important, and something we're kind of not doing so great with - yet.  Life can be a little crazy, but even if Ellie goes to bed earlier than us or if we get up earlier than her on the weekends, and we get just a small amount of time to hang out and talk, it feels good.  I'm confident that this will get better as we can into more (or really any type) of a schedule.

8.  As Ellie grows, I find myself thinking that every new age is the best age ever.  While she is only three and a half-ish months old, she changes all the time.  The more of a personality she gets, the better it seems to get - we can actually smile, laugh and have fun together!  Those newborn snuggles are pretty priceless, though.

9.  Don't give up on some of that baby gear that your baby was so not the biggest fan of at one point.  Ellie liked her swing and her bouncer in the very beginning (like the first two weeks, maybe), but then decided she hated them and would scream any time we'd put her in there.  Now, she (maybe almost) likes them?  She at least tolerates them for a little while, so I can put her in there and get something done.

10.  Baby fever does not go away (#givemeallthebabies?).   I thought it was just my crazy postpartum emotions taking over before when I immediately wanted another one on the way, but now I'm not sure. ;)  While I'm cherishing this time as a family of three (six), I can't help but look forward to adding more to our little fam.  Getting on the sappy train here, it honestly makes me feel like my heart is going to explode with happiness knowing that we get to keep Ellie forever and ever.  Sometimes I still can't believe she's ours.  I can't wait to see what the future holds for us! :)

Here's a sneak peek at what our daily life looks like - pjs, not showered, no make-up, and a whole lot of carrying around this little over sized load. ;)  It's certainly not glamorous but being Ellie's mama definitely is the best job ever!