The First Week

The first week is the scariest. The doctors and nurses are great in the hospital. So great that I did not want to leave. I felt like they just gave us M and said, “Good luck.” I wanted to run back in and tell them that we don’t know what we’re doing!! But my mother said that everything is learned and we’d be just fine on our own. Hands down, it is the scariest thing in my entire life.

When we came home from the hospital we had our first doctor’s visit. They informed us that we needed to have at least 30 minutes to an hour of tummy time and outside time each day. Most people think that the tummy time is for them to increase their neck muscles – which is true. But it’s mostly for them to rest on their tummies so that they won’t get soft spots on the back of their heads. Here are his stats:

Weight:

Length:

Head Circumference:

I was also really nervous because the number one thing that everyone was always telling me was “get your sleep because you’re not going to get any, etc.” It annoyed the crap out of me. And to tell you the truth, it was not as bad as everyone made it out to be. Yes, I was tired. But my husband and I made it work.

One thing they don’t tell you, none of your clothes fit. I have nothing to wear. I have maybe 3 things of my maternity clothes that fit and it doesn’t look like maternity clothes (sigh). BUT I am NOT going shopping because I have got to get rid of these extra pounds!!

I am so thankful for my husband. He has been SO awesome! He has done everything he could to help me. And it’s been hard because most of the time it’s only things that I can do. I feel kind of bad for the guys, because they want to help us out but there’s nothing they can do. They are really only needed when it comes down to changing a dirty diaper or watching over the baby when he’s sleeping. I am the one that has to nurse him. He really only eats and poops. And he usually eats and poops at the same time so 95% of watching him falls on me. But even at that, it really hasn’t been that bad.

The biggest problem that we’ve had is getting him to sleep in his crib at night. The doctor told us that the AAP suggests that the first 4 weeks the baby should sleep in the parent’s room. Not in the bed, but have his crib/bassinet in their room. Well, we did not like because we’ve agreed from Day 1 that he will be sleeping in his room. For us, we are establishing that this is his room and our room is “Mommy and Daddy domain.” However, every time that we put him down in his crib he screamed bloody murder. We would even try to let him scream it out but after 15-20 minutes he had worked himself up so much that he was not calming down and I would have to go in and pick him up. So the first two nights at home that we tried this M slept on my chest after screaming his head off for so long in his crib. After that we put his bassinet in our room so we could experiment. We tried everything: he liked his car seat so we put him in that in his bassinet, we swaddled, we let him have his arms out, we tucked the blanket across him on each side of the mattress, we put his bouncy in the bassinet, he liked sleeping on his stomach so we tried that, we put a towel in the sides of the bassinet, we did it ALL. He would not have it. So finally, after a few days for some reason it just clicked and he seemed to be okay with it. We swaddled him with his arms out and he has since been sleeping in his crib every night – SUCCESS IS OURS!!!

Here are a few pics of our week:

Thank you Aunt Sarah!! 

Granny & Papa

We were so glad Uncle Tracy was in town!!