Well, my baby is now 2 months old and he’s snoozing in the carseat on the floor next to me (I’ve learned it’s not worth it to disrupt an infant’s sleep to move him) so it seems as good a time as any to update the ol’ blog.
I probably don’t have enough time to share a full birth story (#infantschedule) so stay tuned for a future post! The condensed version of the past 8 weeks:
After a discussion with my midwife, Alex and I made the decision to move forward with inducing labor on Friday, 1/11, a few days before my actual due date.
The first meds we tried, Cervidil, didn’t kickstart my body as we hoped so on Saturday morning, we started Pitocin and by Saturday afternoon, we met our son!
We stayed in the hospital for two nights and came home on a Monday afternoon. After a couple of days at home, we went BACK to the hospital because of some (er, a lot) of unexpected bleeding and we stayed overnight – in the same postpartum recovery room with the same nurses working as a few days prior which was nice it felt familiar but because of the sleep deprivation, also felt like maybe it was a dream and we’d never really left. (side note: If we were analyzing this story in a high school english class, you’d probably tell me this ‘groundhog day’ feeling would be strong foreshadowing for early days of maternity leave. You would be right.)
After being discharged again, we celebrated the peanut’s 1 week birthday and then welcomed family visitors for the next 4 weeks.
We’ve now had a few weeks with no visitors and have started to get into a little groove; it feels like we might be getting the hang of things a bit. And, truthfully, it helps that our baby has also been a LOT less fussy in recent days, too.
Maternity leave has been a strange transition – I went from being very busy at work, commuting downtown, seeing lots of people, having a routine, to spending my days mostly solo with an infant and very little free time. Sometimes, it does feel very redundant in what we do but at the same time, this baby is different every single day so it’s also new and fun. I wouldn’t trade this time for anything but it definitely has taken lots of adjusting, patience and resilience.
I am officially halfway through my leave and am excited about the next 2 months with this little guy; I feel like I’ve mostly got my head above water and am getting some life-giving air again. (That’s a little dramatic because we were fortunate enough to have several weeks of visitors and help but regardless, it’s still a major transition that makes it sometimes hard to breathe fully.) We have also recently figured out how to wear the Tula baby carrier which is opening so many new activities to us. Case in point, we went hiking earlier this week! So the next 2 months will be fun. 🙂