Another two weeks has sailed by, and here we are almost at the end of January! Austin is growing and changing so much every week, it is truly magnificent to watch. January feels like it’s been a busy month, with lots of people to see and things to do. There are lots of family birthdays this month, so we’ve been eating lots of cake and celebrating lots of milestones! Little Austin has been along for the ride with all of it, and loving every minute 🙂

Feeding

Honestly, not a lot to report  here, because everything is going so, so well! Austin is eating like a champ, and I can’t believe how solid he is getting! You really have to think twice when you go to pick him up now, you can’t just scoop him up without thinking about it anymore!

We haven’t had him weighed since December 15th (he was 12 lbs at that appointment), and I think that he’s probably somewhere between 14 and 15 lbs now (if I had to guess – I would say closer to 15, but you never know!). The next time that we weigh him will probably be at his specialist appointment for his vaccinations on February 20th, and by then I hope he will be over 15 lbs! Wahoo!

I’ve been pumping 4 times a day, and that gives us more than enough milk to keep afloat. My supply was getting a little bit low last week, but then I made some lactation cookies for my cousin (who just had her super sweet little babe last Tuesday by the way!) and got munching on them myself…..holy catfish did that ever boost my supply! It’s reassuring to know that if I ever do start to decline before we’re ready to stop, that I can make these cookies for a quick boost. We still breastfeed for his first early morning feed of the day (normally he wakes up for this feed sometime between 6am – 7:30am), and that is going perfectly as well. It’s pretty unbelievable to me how much we used to struggle with feeding Austin, and how effortless it is now. I’m so relieved that we’ve settled into a rhythm that works really well for us, and he seems to be thriving on it.

I don’t typically do a whole lot during the day aside from visiting at my parents house sometimes, so it hasn’t been a big deal to pump every 4 hours. I know that this could  be challenging as the weeks and months carry on though, and we start to do more and more things outside the house, or even as we go away on trips etc. I’m trying not to worry too much about it, and just go week by week.

Sleep

We’ve made some significant progress in our sleep habits this past two weeks! Towards the end of week 13, I went to get Austin from his bassinet in the morning and was horrified to see that my little nibsy had wriggled himself down to the bottom end of the bassinet and was sleeping with his little knees up around his belly because there wasn’t room for his legs. Poor sweet baby, it just broke my heart. I knew that the time had come; my little babe had outgrown his bassinet.

I’ve been dreading moving Austin to his crib and his own bedroom for a while now because frankly the thought of him being a wall away from us terrifies me, but we took the bull by the horns and kind of just went for it one night, putting him down in his crib instead of in his bassinet (we didn’t even put him in there for a nap or anything first – just threw the poor guy right to the wolves LOL). Our little champion sleeper went down right away and slept the whole night through, no issues whatsoever! HOW did we get so lucky!?

While Austin has managed the transition to his big boy crib like a boss, it’s been his lunatic mommy that has been having a hard time. I’ve been waking up between 10 – 15 times a night in an absolute panic, stumbling out of bed like crazy and sprinting into his room to check on him, checking the baby monitor 30 times a night, laying awake and trying to hear him breathing on the monitor……it’s been wearing on me quite a bit to be honest. I always knew that I was a pretty anxious person, but I never foresaw how anxious I would be or become when it comes to Austin. It’s something that I really need to work on, for all of our health; it isn’t doing anyone any favours to have me so stressed out all the time.

My Recovery

God, what a roller coaster this all has been. I’ve been working my way back into exercise SLOWLY over the past few weeks. I started with some brisk walking on our treadmill, and even a little three minute jog, then layered on a 30 minute CX class down in our basement, and have even done a couple of low impact Step workouts with our BodyStep team.

When I first started all of this, I felt like I had set myself back a bit for sure afterwards, and was experiencing more pain and other symptoms for sure. My physiotherapist reassured me that I hadn’t done any damage to anything, that I was just exploring what my body was and wasn’t ready to do, and that I had probably just done a little too much too soon. As frustrated and upset as I was, I grudgingly agreed to dial it back and started doing simple squats every day; starting with 5. I did 5 squats a day for a couple of days, then increased to 10, then to 15, then to 2 sets of 15 etc etc….and I have to admit that it felt much better this way. Since then, I’m back to doing CXWORX now, and even team taught my very first class back at the gym yesterday at 15 weeks postpartum!

Although it is really great news that I’ve been feeling a little better, I do still have a lot of complications to deal with. I saw the OB that delivered Austin earlier this week, and she had some concerns about how things are looking / healing, and decided to refer me to a different specialist to take a look and do some more tests to determine if further surgery may be required. I’m hoping and praying that this isn’t the case, and that things keep moving in the right direction, but we will just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I’m taking returning to CX as a victory, and my sights are set on returning to BodyPump next. High impact classes like BodyStep and BodyAttack will take a little longer for sure.

Milestones

Austin is using his hands like a champ now and his favourite toys are probably his multi-coloured rings which he loves to grab and shake around, and most importantly, shove in his mouth at every possible opportunity.

OMG this little baby is so funny, every single thing goes straight into his mouth, but his very favourite things to stuff in his mouth are his own hands LOL….if he had a third hand, he would be very pleased to try and stuff that one in there too…..

His head and neck strength is really great and we don’t even hold onto his upper back anymore when we pick him up! He also rolled over from his back to his front this week (week 15), but we haven’t been able to get him to do this again since earlier in the week. I know he is so close to rolling from his front to his back, he’s working so hard at it whenever we put him on his belly (we are guilty of probably not doing enough tummy time in a day to be honest)! He is also so babbly and talkative now, and absolutely loves when people pay attention to him and play games like peekaboo, or airplane (basically holding him horizontal under the chest and “flying him” around the house while making airplane noises LOL).

He is becoming more and more fun every day – and I just love seeing little bits and pieces of his little personality come to light.

Trips

Eeeeeks, we are just about a month away from our trip to Mexico, and I’m starting to panic a bit and wonder what I was thinking when I booked this trip lol…..I’m super stressed about things like the water cleanliness and bug bites in Mexico, and just don’t know how we’re going to manage to sterilize our bottles and keep to our system that is working so well while we’re away for an entire week.

I’m thinking that this week I’m going to start a list of everything that we’ll need to bring with us, and I’d also like to take Austin back to our doctor for his four month check-up before we leave (four month check-up…..whaaaaat the heck is happening…..). We have our specialist appointment to test him for negative reactions to the regular vaccines on the 20th of February, and we are due to leave for Mexico on the 27th of February, so it looks like there is a good chance that we will not get the vaccines before we go away, unless by some miracle everything happens on the 20th, or very shortly afterwards, and we can sneak in for the shots a couple of days before the 27th. This all makes me super uneasy, and has been weighing on my mind a lot, but I guess at this point all we can do is our very best to keep him healthy, and to work through the process to make sure that it will be safe to give him the vaccines.

Thoughts on Motherhood and on Life 

I’ve realized more and more as the weeks go on the stark reality that is motherhood, and life really. Without getting too deep and emotional: this is hard. All of it is hard. Whether you had a natural birth and tore to hell, or a c-section birth, or a smooth and easy birth, whether your baby sleeps 12 hours at night or 12 minutes at night, whether you breast feed, or bottle feed, or your baby rolls over or doesn’t roll over, or gets his vaccines or doesn’t get his vaccines. It’s hard; so is life.

That being said, motherhood has also been the most wonderful roller coaster that I’ve ever been on, and there are so many glowing moments that make the hard parts worth it, and that truly overshadow the struggles. I’m working harder these days to really drink in those wonderful moments and not take them for granted, not just when it comes to Austin, but in general. Moments together with our family, or quiet moments alone, happy times and celebrations, and mundane conversations and day to day life. Some of the health struggles that we’ve been facing lately have really brought all of this into sharp focus for me, and made me realize that life is too short to focus on the hard parts. Just some food for thought I guess, sorry to go all Oprah on you 😉

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Well, I guess that’s it from us for now! Today is actually Matt’s birthday, so we are celebrating him today and the quiet giant that he is for our family. We would be up the creek without a paddle without him, that’s for sure!

Chat soon!

-Sara xo

I guess I could really start every one of these posts with some kind of exclamation of how fast time is going, but that would get old real quick 😉

I’m writing this post right at the tail end of our 12th week and things are pretty much just a constant mad house over here! I can’t even begin to imagine how crazy things are going to get once Austin starts to move around on his own or *gasp* when there are more kids to contend with!

A lot has happened in our lives since I last posted before Christmas. Unfortunately, it was a pretty difficult holiday season for us and our family. My dad has been sick for quite some time now, and he finally ended up being admitted to the hospital on December 22nd with extreme nausea, weight loss, jaundicing, wonky bloodwork and many other symptoms. The next day, we were given a tentative diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which was completely devastating, as I’m sure you can imagine.

As luck, fate, God, the universe or whatever other higher power you believe in would have it, the doctors had spoken a little bit prematurely when they told us their suspicions, and some more scans / tests in the next few days actually suggested that it was most likely not pancreatic cancer, but rather some kind of autoimmune disorder attacking the pancreas. Although that in itself still isn’t great news, we were all overjoyed that it wasn’t cancer, and that this disorder can most likely be treated and will clear up well for my dad. We all felt like we had dodged a pretty devastating bullet!

In and amongst all of this stress and heartache was Austin’s very first Christmas. My dad was such a trooper and actually checked out of the hospital on a day pass on Christmas Day so that he could go home for the day to be there for presents etc, and even with the difficult circumstances, I think that we salvaged a pretty wonderful first Christmas for Austin.

Matt’s dad was here with us the week leading up to Christmas, and his brother Scott was actually here for Christmas as well! We spent our very first Christmas Eve at our house (normally Matt and I go over to stay at my parents on Christmas Eve but now that we have Austin we wanted to stay at our own house for stockings etc), and Austin was an angel for presents and stockings being opened, looking especially cute for all of the pictures that we snapped (I think I took about 173,000).  I hope that we did his first Christmas justice!

Sleep

We’re still doing really well in terms of long stretches overnight, but there have been a few nights over the break where Austin would wake up randomly at 2am or 3am upset. We quickly figured out that he was just looking for his soother, and once we gave it back to him, he was out like a light again. He’s been waking up a little bit earlier too (somewhere between 5am – 6am) for a quick feed, before going back down for another 2 – 3 hours. He normally gets up for the day sometime between 9:30am – 10:00am. All in all – not too bad at all for a wee little guy! We had a hard time keeping his bedtime and nighttime routine consistent with all of the get togethers / things to do in the evenings, so I think he did really well sleep-wise all things considered.

We do have some rough waters ahead in terms of sleep. We have to transition Austin into his crib soon, as he’s outgrown his bassinet completely! Poor little guy can hardly straighten out his legs anymore, and the classic “roller coaster” pose isn’t working out for him in the bassinet anymore either. He’s a long one!! Combine this with the dreaded four month sleep regression, and I’m terrified that these long stretches overnight are going to go out the window. Here’s hoping that we can hold onto them!

One thing that I do need to get better at is finding a way to control my crazy anxiety about him while he’s sleeping. There have been a couple of really funny nights where I wake up in a PANIC, throwing blankets and pillows all over the place, tumbling out of our bed and into the wall, half sprinting – half crawling across our bedroom floor to frantically get to his bassinet….only to find him sleeping away like a little angel … I’m a nut job you guys, a total and complete nut job. The best one was when I woke up savagely HITTING Matt in our bed to wake up, wake up, wake up because I thought something was wrong with Austin for some reason….LOL….poor Matt….

I’m not really sure why this is happening, it seems to be whenever I wake up without him crying or making noise, I’m waking up in a total panic that something is wrong or that he’s slept too long or something like that. I need to get it together because I’m pretty sure every panicked wake-up takes a year off of my life…

Feeding

Feeding has been going so well since we made the transition over to 95% bottle-feeds. He eats about every 2 hours during the day, sometimes stretching to 3, and consistently will eat 140mL per feed. I can’t believe we used to struggle so much to get 80mL into him!!

Pumping every 4 hours is a lot of work for me – but I’m happy to do it for the trade-off of a happy, well-fed baby, and smooth feeds 6+ times a day. It’s been such a gigantic relief of stress to not fight with Austin about feeds all day long. My milk supply has taken a hit for sure, so now my only worry is being able to keep up with his demands for the next few months. We’re lucky to have a huge stash of milk in our freezer from the early days when I was pumping after every single feed (*shudder* those were tough days!!), and pretty soon I think we’ll have to start dipping into that, but for now, I’m keeping up just by the skin of our teeth!

Austin is getting so much bigger and heavier now, and I’m actually excited to weigh him now (whereas I used to be absolutely terrified)! I know that he’s gaining weight well, and can’t believe how solid he is!

My Recovery

As per usual, there isn’t much positive to report on the recovery front. I wrote last update that I was starting to feel a lot better, which I was, but I’ve taken a significant step backwards since starting to introduce a tiny bit of exercise.

I’ve done three workouts in total in the past 7 days, and none of them have felt very good, and all of them have set my recovery back so that I’m in pain again most of the time. My very first “workout” was just 20 minutes of fast walking on our treadmill, with 3 minutes of very slow jogging at the end (the same pace that I was walking at). I did a 30 minute CXWORX workout in our basement as well, and then went to participate in a friend’s BodyStep assessment video at the gym (100% low-impact).

I’m really lost as to what is happening with my body in terms of my recovery. I’m at the point now where I don’t think that time is the issue, and I’m sure that there is something not healing properly based on how I’m feeling. I have an appointment with the OB that delivered Austin on January 22nd, and that day can’t come soon enough because I am so done with all of this. I just can’t wait for this to be behind me, but I’m not convinced that that day will ever come at this rate. We seem to only be standing still, or moving backwards.

Like I wrote last update, I’m just tired when it comes to this whole topic. Even thinking about it exhausts me. I just want it all to be over.

Milestones

Austin has been changing so much every week, the biggest change in him in the past 2 weeks is that he seems to have discovered that he has control over his hands. He’s learned how to take his soother out of his mouth and hold it in his hand, which makes us laugh and roll our eyes at the same time because the little monkey will take his soother out, and then cry because he wants his soother back in his mouth but hasn’t figured out how to put it back in!

I know that he is super close to being able to roll over from his tummy to his back, we’ve been practicing on our bed and I can tell by the way he’s moving and squirming that he can do it, he just needs to get the mechanics down! He hates tummy time on hard surfaces (can’t blame the guy – I wouldn’t like laying on my tummy on hardwood floors either!), but doesn’t mind it at all on our soft beds! He also loves to play airplane where we hold him under the chest and “fly” him around our house making airplane noises haha (apparently babies at this age like to see the world from this perspective – the airplane noises are just to amuse Matt and I hehe).

My very favourite thing that Austin has started doing in the last few weeks is really laughing! We have a total giggle-monster on our hands! He had let out the odd giggle here or there a couple of weeks ago, but now we have full-on laughing fits when he gets into the right giggly mood! Matt is still more funny than me apparently, but I’ve gotten a couple of good giggles out of him! I also get lots and lots of smiles, so that’s good enough for me 🙂

Our Days

Austin and I have been spending a lot of time at home on our own during the days. It’s been brutally cold here, and I get kind of stressed out driving him with alone in the backseat (I need to get over that – I know), so it’s just easier on all fronts for us to hang out at home.

I do find it a bit lonely sometimes, but love hanging out with Austin, and he’s been really good for me during the days as well, very few stage 5 freak outs to report! We sing a lot of songs during the day, walk around while listening to music, play with his rings or his “tortuga” (fun fact – Matt and I thought that this little turtle that he got from Christmas was named “Tortuga” because that was on the box, but it turns out that “Tortuga” is actually “Turtle”in Spanish, HA), do a bit of tummy time or nap. I’m anxious for the weather to turn a bit nicer and to start getting out of the house to take advantage of some of the programs at the library and for mom & baby. We start a group at the library called “Tickles & Tales” in February, and I’m hoping that Austin is old enough to have some fun and enjoy it! We are also planning to start mom & baby swimming lessons in April!

Trips

Eeeeeeeeeks, we have our first plane ride coming up with Austin at the end of February and I am S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D (surprised? Me neither!).

We are on our way down to Mexico for a family destination wedding and I have no hot clue how we’re going to survive a trek through the airport and a 3 hour flight!! I have a huge phobia of flying myself, so this may actually be good for me because I’m sure I won’t have a second to be freaked out myself on the plane with Austin to look after!! I also really don’t want to pass this fear on to any of my babies as they get older, so I really need to keep it together.

More to come on this topic – but it’s on my mind lots already!

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I think that’s about it for our 11 / 12 week update! One of my cousins is due to deliver her baby anytime now in January, and chatting with her about the upcoming delivery is bringing me such nostalgia (can you have nostalgia for something that was only 13 weeks ago? Ha) for those pre-delivery and early newborn days. Although they were hard, no question about it, it is sad in a way to think that they are gone now.

I’ll have to come back to this post when we have babies # 2 – 4 and am ready to pull my hair out from sleep deprivation 😉

Chat soon!

-Sara xo