Saturday, May 30, 2015

Weekend's Here!

Happy Saturday morning, everyone! Now that I have a baby I appreciate the weekends more than I ever have. Daddy is working today and doesn't get off work until tomorrow morning so of course we are spending the day with Nana when she gets off work. Our Friday off was pretty wild and crazy... We went to get sno-cones, of course! 

Quick selfie to remind myself that this child looks so much like her daddy it's not even funny. 


To try to convince myself that she looked a little like me, I downloaded the "Like Parent" app and it rubbed it in my face even more. 


And did it one more time with even more defeat. 


Oh well...so after our sno-cone strolling trip C and Daddy played pretty hard. 


We tried for a few bumbo pics.. And got some pretty serious and funny faces. I'm sure she thinks I am nuts. 



And then we went to bed at 8... To wake up three or four times throughout the night. We ended up in the recliner since daddy had to work today and needed to rest. Without going into too much unnecessary detail and just being completely transparent,  I am coming out of a serious case of postpartum depression. I went through some serious sleep deprivation that went up to 50+ hours without sleep and working.... And about lost my marbles. It happens. Without my mama, Kyle, and God I do not know what I would have done. I am still not 100% better, but life is getting a little easier on not a lot of sleep. The one thing I have used to cope is perspective. Reading someone's infertility struggles at just the right time when I am feeling exhausted of rocking a crying baby.... Or just thinking about how we have a healthy three month old who isn't in the NICU or wearing oxygen or being diagnosed with cancer. We will pick reflux and gas over that any day. Anyway... I really hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoys the sunshine! I know we sure will. 

 

Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Quick One

Somebody made a shopping trip with mama and nana to Target and lunch at Five Guys. She was a perfect baby! 


And then visited mama at work the next day and got rocked to sleep. 


Nightly routine with daddy... Bath, lotion down, jammies and hair brushing.


It has been a pretty good week.. I am on standby tomorrow so it's kind of like a three day weekend (without getting to sleep in.) Hoping for some sleep! 

Saturday, May 23, 2015

3 Months Old


I am a little late posting (partially due to
my blogger app messing up) but Caroline is now three months old. Ironically, most people say that the time flies by so fast but Kyle and I feel like these past three months have went by very slowly. 

At three months old, C is quite the growing girl. She weighs 13 pounds and 5 ounces. She is filling out all of her 3-6 month clothes pretty nicely already. She is the absolute queen of inconsistency. Some days she will drink 4 ounces of formula every 3 hours. Other days she will refuse to drink any after 2 ounces and she might not drink but 2 ounces every 4 hours. Some days she will nap in her swing for 3 hours around lunchtime and some days she will take 20-30 minute naps all day (which has happened the past couple of days.) She generally is not much of a daytime napper though. We have kept the same routine for night time with bath time at 7:30 and bottle/swaddling at 8. She has been sleeping anywhere from 6-9 hours at night, which is great. If she only sleeps 6 hours, we try to rock her back to sleep and she usually takes a while to fall back to sleep and if she actually does she will squirm for a couple of hours and not get into a good sleep. A week ago she regressed to waking up 3-4 times a night after we laid her down. Mama and daddy lost lots of sleep but we still love our baby girl and it's worth it. 

The nine months that I was pregnant I read so many baby blogs. Of course I want to be able to lay Caroline down and her be able to fall asleep on her own. Around three weeks old she started to really change as a baby so I started trying to lay her down for naps and at night for her to fall asleep on her own with not a lot of success. After a few weeks (and sleepless nights) we started rocking her to sleep and therefore here we are now with our nursery rocker moved to the living room. :)

New things we are doing at three months old are fun, though! C love love loves her play mat. She will lay her on back and look at herself in the mirror and kick the piano mat at her feet for at least thirty minutes. She yells and smiles quite frequently. She also LOVES the television…a whole lot. I know that right now she cannot understand what she is watching but I have already started the baby Einstein videos and kid's shows on Netflix. Nana has also bought us a TV for the car that helps keep C entertained during car rides. She loves to sit in her vibrating seat and listen to me take a shower and dry my hair. She has found her hands and tongue.. And loves to put her hands in her mouth. 

I have been back at work for two weeks now and taking call for surgery again, which is quite hard. The first weekend of May was my first weekend on call and of course nana spent the weekend with us to help daddy when I got called in for emergency surgery. Work isn't getting any easier and ten hour shifts on my feet after usually being up at night and not falling back to sleep easily has been very difficult. To be honest most days I am barely hanging by a thread and have learned to not judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes! Never did I know that baby life was physically this difficult and I admire the mamas with several young children who make it look so easy. Or those mamas who always look like rock stars with their baby on their hip because that is definitely not me these days and thats okay with me. 

We have lots and lots of pictures from this month!



So tired of this already! 


C has changed so much already! Ready for her to start looking more like mama! 


Talking with Granny Martin before going to Uncle A's graduation. 


My brother's girlfriend is the best! We were actually friends before she was friends with my brother! And yeah I cut my hair off and saved myself 7-8 minutes of blowdrying! I feel like such a mom now. 


Went to church with nana and pop. Made it through the service wide awake.
😳




 
We visited Granny and Papa Martin's house after church. My mama is one of 8 so we have lots and lots of cousins and family on this side. Always makes for a fun time. Millie Kay loved giving Caroline kisses. Her daddy and I were buddies growing up and hopefully they will be, too.

 
Spending time with Uncle Bundy! 

  
Then we went to Aunt Pam's house to grill out and play with Cousin Molly Kate. She loves to hold her baby dolls and play "Caroline."



Visited mama at work a couple of times.. My co-workers used the recovery room glider to take turns rocking C! Thankful that they are so understanding of me being a new mama back at work. 


Daddy did so good bringing C to mama's work.. Even though he remembered the diaper bag, he forgot the bottle... And to change her out of her spit up clothes. But we will take him! ;) Thanks to the OB floor for lending us some formula. 


Nana brought her this day.. Wednesday's are the longest days ever and I have to be away from her a full ten hours. 



"Hi, mama!"


Libby loves Caroline very much.. So much that she follows her everywhere. 


We visited Big Daddy at his cabin he is building and C had a good time. In case you couldn't tell, she looks like her daddy and his daddy!


Visiting with Grandma Shelby.. She thinks  C is pretty special! 


Hanging out with daddy in her shades. Too cool to hang with mama. 


Evening strolls for that last nap of the day (before witching hour!) 

We met Polly, her mama Anna Beth, and Polly's Aunt Claire at the park and strolled for quite a while while catching up. Then these girls hung out watching the birds and the trees! So sweet. (C was 3 months old this day.)


We got brave on a Friday night and went with our friends Brooke & Ethan to eat in Fairview. Usually at this house we have a fussy britches on our hands but she stayed awake the entire time and was very content! She must have listened to me before we went it when I told her that mama wanted to enjoy her steak. :)


Then we took some silly snaps...




Yesterday for Memorial Day we went to Cousin Heath and Nicole's lake house. Although it was cloudy and rained most of the time, we still had fun. 



Most of the kids all playing together. It is so weird and awesome to think that their parents and I used to all play together and grew up together and now we are watching our kids do the same. 





 
C's first (and not last) river trip!





To sum up this post, this past months as been really fun and really hard. It is so easy for social media to portray our lives as "perfect" as if everything is peachy twenty-four seven, but I have had some issues going on and I am so thankful for a husband and mom who pushes me to get out and enjoy this time with Caroline. We can't wait to see what she will be doing at 4 months!