Babies are little heat machines. Just saying. Even in our semi-cool basement watching a movie, with her asleep on our laps we just start to sweat like crazy. Whoosh!<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
This anxiety is a weird, slippery thing. I have felt it sliding around in the background all day today, and it annoys me. I’m trying to probe it, to figure out where it’s coming from. And when I feel it tugging at my thoughts I try to acknowledge that it’s there, take a deep breath, and remind myself that it’s the hormones talking. I’m semi-successful.<\/p>\n
It’s like all my thoughts and worries pile up on top of each other, creating this stream-of-consciousness nattering away in my head. It’s everything at once: worrying about something happening to Kate, worrying that time is going too fast, thinking about the past, trying to plan the future… It’s like my brain decides to suddenly worry about everything at once. Each one individually really aren’t that bad, but everything together? Frustrating. And it’s stupid things, too. Like I get thinking about Den going back to work and returning to the old routine. Well the thought of Den not being home upsets me because I LIKE this new daily routine, I’m enjoying it so much. But then<\/i> I start thinking about how otherworldly this feels, and how it would be nice to return to some sort of familiar routine so that it starts feeling like my own life again, not some dream land. You see what I mean? It’s a lose-lose situation, these thoughts – and either way I’m spending time worrying about things that aren’t happening yet instead of just being fully present. I think that’s what’s frustrating me the most, my inability to just be present in the moment.<\/p>\n
Tonight we went down to the basement to watch a movie, and I worked hard on just letting the thoughts come and go. For some reason the basement has been triggering my anxiety in the evenings – which is not terribly surprising, since that room is a dark basement room and in the past has always tended to make my moods worse when I’m in a bad one. But I like spending time with my husband down there – it’s our family room, with the big TV for watching movies and the couch. So today I just went down there and took deep breaths and looked around taking it all in. I didn’t have another panic attack like the last two nights. I think we’re going to have to do something to the room itself – put up pictures, clean it up, something to make it feel different – but I’m glad that maybe every night won’t stress me out.<\/p>\n
I’m giving this all until Tuesday to start going away on its own. If it doesn’t I’ll be calling the Midwives to talk about maybe upping my dosage of anti-depressants. This may be just a temporary hormonal thing, but I just really don’t want to waste time with this anxiety if I don’t have to. I have more important things to do.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
This child sleeps like crazy. The first day in the hospital she slept 99% of the time. I had to keep waking her up to breastfeed, like they told me to, but she’d fall right back asleep on me. The second day she was hungry and my milk wasn’t in so she spent that entire day at the boob or sleeping. And then my milk came in. Now she gets milk! Ooooo, milky goodness. She eats…. eats… dozes off…. falls asleep at the boob…. and then sinks into what we call a “milk coma.” And generally she is out for 3 hours-ish. My boobies do not like it when she goes longer than 3 hours, and I know she should be feeding more frequently… but her periodic cluster-feeds make up for it. She certainly gets in enough feedings in a day, she pees and poops just fine, and she’s gaining weight. So the only one suffering is… me. Darn.<\/p>\n
But she can sleep through just about anything. The dog barking? No problem, used to that from in the womb. The TV? The vacuum cleaner? Being carried around? No problems. If she’s out, she’s out.<\/p>\n
Feeding is still going fine, though of course I feel like a terrible noob…. thank goodness for LC friends and can answer questions. We are trying to just take everything as it comes and follow her lead, but with breastfeeding it gets seemingly complicated… like trying to decide if I should do things or not: waking her up to feed; switching sides mid-feed; expressing milk to relieve engorgement; giving a pacifier. Something seems like a good idea, but then I fret if it will affect my supply – but then my supply seems to be crazy. My boobs get SO full and hard, it is quite painful. Add to that the sore nipples and my entire chest is like the center of my universe right now – one big throbbing center of discomfort. (Not always pain – but definitely not comfortable.) I am hoping like hell that the boobs will settle down next week.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
Funny thing: when we were deciding on names and I had my huge emotional freak-out about the name we had chosen and what her nickname would be I was dead set that her name had to be Kate. KATE. Other people could call her whatever, but I was going to call her Kate, end of story. And so of course now that she’s here I sing-song to her and talk to her all the time…. and I call her Katherine. Yes, I write Kate. But we definitely switch back and forth all the time. They both feel right. Guess people were right…. whatever name you give them, it just becomes a part of who they are.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
I think part of the anxiety about the future is that somehow I wouldn’t love her as much tomorrow as I do today. I know that sounds stupid – I know, I know. But when you look down at a little creature held in your arms and you cry because she’s just so beautiful and perfect it’s easy to think, how can I possibly love her any more than this? I mean, she’s perfect right now, just as she is. Then tomorrow comes, and the day after that. Little things have changed already: her face is a little different, her cries are a little different, her routine is a little different. and I look at her and think, oh my god, she’s even MORE beautiful. We’re trying to get video and pictures as much as we can so we can look back and remember – there is always something precious about every look, every day – but it looks like tomorrow is going to bring even more amazing things. I just need to remind myself of that, stop worrying, and just enjoy what I have today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Babies are little heat machines. Just saying. Even in our semi-cool basement watching a movie, with her asleep on our laps we just start to sweat like crazy. Whoosh! :: This anxiety is a weird, slippery thing. I have felt it sliding around in the background all day today, and it annoys me. I’m trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2982,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2981\/revisions\/2982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}