2 Months with Ellie

2 Months have gone by! Wowzer

Sleep
Sleep has improved dramatically from 1 month, but it is still far from predictable.  Most nights she is going from 10 pm until 3:30 am and then up for good at 7 am.  Some nights she doesn't get to sleep until 11 pm and may sleep until 4 or even 5 am, then go back to sleep until maybe 7:30/8 am.  A couple of times she has slept until 6 am - I think maybe twice.  

Feeding
Breastfeeding has been going well.  I am trying different things to stretch out her feedings a bit since during the day she might want to eat every 1/1.5 hours at some points, which seems really frequent for 2 months.  I think part of it might be that she isn't always hungry, rather she might be tired, etc and I am misinterpreting her signals.  I am trying different things (see book review below).  

She nurses fine during the day, but at around 5 pm she starts getting really fussy and it gets very hard to breastfeed her.  She eats for a minute then pops off my breast crying.  She does this over and over again.  What we have been doing is bottle feeding her breast milk at night and this seems to be helping.  I will give her a 2/2.5 oz bottle at 6ish then Brian will give her a bottle around 8:30ish and this also helps to get more milk into her to help her sleep longer (I think). 

Body
I have been feeling pretty good lately now that I am usually only getting up once per night, which is a very manageable schedule for me (we shall see how this feels when I start back with work).  I am down about 10lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight and I am actually fitting into clothes that didn't fit me before I got pregnant - who would have thunk it? My body has changed a bit though, my stomach is smaller than before, but is looser - the skin doesn't really sag in my mid section, but definitely feels looser and Brian said the same thing. I think that with some exercise I will be able to tone it up a bit, at least I hope so. 

 I have not really done much exercise since I have been cleared to do so at 6 weeks because I seem to be loosing weight without it and I don't want to exhaust my body too much at this point. I am looking forward to taking a lot of walks with Ellie and Winnie once the weather gets nicer (although it is currently like 10 degrees here now, so the nice weather seems very far away!).

Brian and I gave the "bed dance" another go around, but unfortunately I had to stop because it hurt too much.  I am still feeling a lot of pinching down there when we do it and I am not sure if this is something we need to work out together or will be resolved with more time and healing.  I also spotted a bit again this time. It is a bit frustrating not to be back to normal yet and to have to restrict things, hopefully it will resolve soon.

Developments
I was getting nervous because in all of the baby books I was reading they would say that the baby would start to "socially smile" around 6 weeks, but I hadn't seen a "real smile" from Ellie at this point. We had only seen gas smiles or poop smiles at this point.  Around 7 weeks I am happy to report that she found her smile and it is the best thing!  Now we can smile at her and most of the time (if she is in a good mood) she smiles back. 

Her neck is also getting much stronger - she can't fully support it yet, but she can pick it up higher and for longer periods of time when she does tummy time. Her vision has also changed a lot too - she used to just stare out into the distance and look a bit cross eyed, but now she can focus on things and is beginning to follow items with her eyes.   

Field Trip
I am still on maternity leave until February 17th, but I took Ellie in to work so everyone could see her.  I work in the finance department at work and every month we have "cake day" to celebrate the birthdays of the month.  I figured this would be a nice opportunity to stop by and get to see everyone at once.  One of the women I manage had a baby the week before I did so I coordinated with her so that she would also bring her baby to work that day.  

It felt a little odd to be driving to work and even more odd doing it with a baby.  It felt good to see my coworkers and I am glad they got to meet Ellie and I got the chance to meet my coworkers baby.  

Book review
My cousin lent me the book "The 90 Minute Baby Sleep Program" and I am trying it out this week.  It talks about how babies (and adults) have 90 minute sleep rhythms and that babies will have 90 minutes of awake time then will probably need a nap.  I will report back on how it works out!

 
Feelings/Thoughts
Sometimes people ask me if anything has surprised me about being a mother.  One of the biggest things is a feeling of not being complete when I am out without Ellie.  I think it is because since she was born I haven't spent more than 3 hours away from her and when I am out without her I am constantly looking around for her!  It is like I go from wanting some time to myself, but then when I get it I immediately want to go and pick her up again!

Also I had no real idea of how hard it would be to get things done with a baby.  My cousin had told me that things take so much longer, but until living it I didn't really understand why.  It is like a constant carousel of feeding, changing, rocking, etc that seems to make the day get away from me!  I try to say to myself things like "wow you did 2 loads of laundry today" to make myself feel better ;)

Brian and I were commenting the other day how we probably end up kissing Ellie on her head about 100 times a day (each) she is just so snuggleable right now that is hard not to.