Fabulous Friday

Happy Fabulous Friday to you. I cannot believe we are at Friday again already. It seems my life has entered warp speed since becoming a mother. Time is flashing before me which is also a good thing. It's actually a fabulous thing because come Sunday, I've been doing this mother gig for 3 weeks and I'm finally starting to feel confident in what I'm doing.

This week has been a big one. It's the first week I've felt back to my normal self since the operation. I still have some occasional pain but it's seldom and it no longer stops me from doing things. I've also gotten use to the lack of sleep so it looks like those years of being an insomniac have finally served a purpose!

I've also managed to get out and about this week. We visited the obstetrician and went to the shops and out for coffee. On both occasions I had to sit in the back seat of the car with Sticky and give her a bottle because she was starving. It was all fine but it did make me wonder how I would do that when I'm driving again and it's just the two of us. I suppose I just have to get use to the screaming!

Going out for coffee was a great confidence booster. While my husband was with me and able to help with her, I did feel like I could manage it by myself when the time comes. Being able to get out and about is really important to me and I had been worried about how to fit it in with her eating times. Now I know I can just take a bottle with me and she'll feed and sleep through the whole thing. That was an enormous weight off my shoulder.

I can also see she is starting to bulk up a bit. She now weighs 3.05 kilos so has put on 600 grams since we left hospital. It doesn't sound like much but it's enough to fill the hollows in her cheeks, make her thighs a little rounder and just seem more robust. It's also enough to make her a bit more alert. I've noticed that she's started to follow me with her eyes if I walk away from her and I must admit I'm pretty chuffed about that!

We have had one challenge this week which is her starting to cluster feed. She's now awake and unsettled from about 4pm to 9pm. This makes things like having dinner difficult but, on the bright side, it means she sleeps from about 9:30 to 2:30am so I'm getting a little more sleep. Cluster feeding is pretty draining so I go to bed exhausted and I'll write more about surviving cluster feeding next week.

Now that we know she's thriving and growing, we decided we need to get hard core and get her into better self settling habits. Because of the exhaustion, we had got into the habit of patting her to sleep straight after her feed. This is bad for 2 reasons - 1 it teaches her to associate feeing with sleep and 2 it teaches her that patting is a sleeping aid. We don't want her to have these associations so we have to keep her awake after a feed and put her bed alert but ready to sleep so she goes to sleep herself. It's likely to be a tough weekend as we instill this new approach so I'll give you an update on that next week.

But, perhaps the biggest achievement of this week is I haven't cried! Not once! Yay me! I'm sure it's due to my hormones settling down, feeling normal again and getting use to the lack of sleep. Feeling more confident as a mother has probably helped too. But I'm very proud of achieving this milestone because I feel like some balance is finally starting to come into my life and it helps me realise I can handle this motherhood gig after all!