Body After Baby

First of all, thanks to everyone that's ever said to me in the past seven weeks, "You look great!  You don't even look like you've had a baby!"  It's the nicest thing that can be said to a new mom.  (Okay, maybe "He's beautiful!" is the nicest thing that can be said.)  The point is this: Regardless if the woman really looks great or not, it's a wonderful thing to hear.

I've got to admit that shedding thirty pounds in 2 weeks is an amazing feeling.  What's tough is getting the last 10 pounds of baby weight to go.  Weston is gaining weight faster than I can lose it.  It's like a race.  By the way, he's unofficially at 12 pounds and 9 ounces and over 24 inches long.

He's not really this huge--I think it's the camera angle

Anyway, I was very diligent about going on walks for the first 5 weeks with baby.  We walked about 20-30 minutes almost every day.  Now, I've graduated to the Couch to 5K running program.  I picked this under the advice from my sister, who's an avid runner.  So far, I like it.  It's no more than 3 days of running a week, and each session takes about 25 minutes.  It's very gradual, too.  I used to run quite a bit back in the day, but never ran during pregnancy.  I tried; it just felt weird and uncomfortable.  Now things feel *almost* normal.  However, let's just say that breastfeeding puts a whole new meaning on the word "support."  If I keep at this, in two months I should be ready for a 5K and perhaps a bit closer to my pre-baby weight.

The exhausted family 

Seven Weeks

Keeping up with the blog gets harder and harder!  There's a lot going on right now--we're getting ready to move this weekend and packing up with a baby around is pretty difficult.  Every time he goes down for a nap, I try to pack as much as I can.  I'm not sure if I'm going to continue the blog after we move...  There's nothing like a bad blogger. Besides, we'll no longer be in West Allis and I can't change the domain name of this blog.

One of my friends has three boys, the youngest of which is just over 2 years old.  She let me come over and take all 15 boxes of clothes for Weston!  He's set for the next couple years as far as clothes go.  It took us about two days to sort through everything and put the clothes in bags according to size, but I'm glad that we did it.

Note baby on top of the clothes pile

He's been smiling a ton lately.  I am anxiously awaiting his first laugh.  I'm also looking forward to another full night of sleep.  That last post about sleeping through the night was a total fluke.  He hasn't done that again, but that's okay.  He *usually* sleeps about 5 hours when he goes to bed.  Why are babies so unpredictable?  I still swaddle him when he goes to sleep, and I'm hoping for the best.

So true...so true

Sleeping and Swaddling

I can't believe this.  It's 6:40 am and I just put Weston back down to sleep after having put him down for bed at 10:30pm last night.  Is this a fluke?  Or the start of something awesome?  I'm wide awake having gotten nearly six hours of uninterrupted sleep myself--"a new lease on life."  I didn't go to bed until 11 or so, and I had to get up at 4:30 to hand express to relieve the discomfort of not having nursed for so long.  But I was able to fall back asleep for a little bit before he started stirring.  Even then, though, when I changed his diaper before feeding him, he wasn't really awake.  And when he fed, he didn't really open his eyes and promptly fell back asleep after he was done.

I'm not exactly sure what it was that led to this, but I'm really leaning toward the fact that I swaddled him after his bath and put him to sleep that way.  I don't usually do that for bedtime, but now I'm thinking that I will.  He also was awake quite a bit yesterday with two good naps and then several little cat naps including one in the Bjorn and one in the stroller for about an hour each.

Our little snoozing sailor

I don't know...I'm going to try it all again tonight and see what happens.  I keep reading about the importance of a bedtime routine.  I always get hung up on the fact that babies don't need a bath more than every other day (and even that can be too much), but if I want to make bath time part of the bedtime routine, then what to do?  I'm guessing that I can just draw up a tub of warm water and put him in there and not wash him.  He absolutely LOVES bath time, and it really calms him down.

Say Cheese!

Time flies when the baby is smiling!  Weston has been smiling regularly (read: consistently enough that we know it's not gas and not a fluke) for the past week.  It's so much fun to make him smile!  For whatever reason, he usually always loves it when we clap his hands together.  I, of course, think it's the most beautiful smile I've ever seen...

Nate's making him laugh while Grandma holds him

I also had the privilege of watching him throw up the entire contents of his dinner the other day.  There's nothing more horrible than watching my baby get sick!  He heaved three times--it even came out his nose.  Surprisingly, he didn't cry.  He just looked stunned.

Four Weeks Already?

Okay... so it's June.  Weird.  Something happened to my sense of time.  May 2011 never really existed in my life because I went through it in a sleep-deprived fog.  Happily, I'm coming out of the fog and finding my groove.  Actually, Weston and I are finding our groove together.  It's not easy trying to figure out what all the various cries mean and when he wants to nurse or when he's just tired and wants to sleep.

He still loves bath time and gets super quiet and calm when I give him one.  He especially likes getting his hair washed and rinsed.  We also go on frequent walks in his stroller, and he enjoys those as long as he's fed beforehand. It's super important that we keep moving, too!  It's bizarre how he can sense when we've stopped moving.  Weston's also a swaddler--if all else fails, swaddle him in a blanket or put him in the Bjorn or Moby Wrap, walk a few laps around the apartment, and he's asleep.  Check out this video of the Happiest Baby on the Block swaddling technique that we use:



It looks brutal, but it really works if it's done correctly.  The point in making it tight is to not let them kick or squirm out of the blanket, which happens every time if I do a crappy job swaddling.

Overall, we're pretty pleased with our creation...  He'll be smiling regularly soon--I've seen a few good ones already!

Getting ready to go on a walk--it was cold outside!

Four weeks old