"It gets better."I heard that so much those first few months of caring for a newborn. I hoped that it would be true. At one point I think my mother told me that January was the month when it would start to get better (Baby Girl turned 3 months old in January). Somewhere along the line I latched onto that promise. There were some nights when I felt like I hadn't slept at all where I would sit there holding my baby counting down the weeks until January. Those first few months are so overwhelming. You feel like you can't get anything done. You feel like your baby will never sleep on her own. You feel like every minute of your baby's life they need your attention.
Those first few months are also so incredibly special, even though they are hard. If you are lucky, you don't have to work for much of that time, and you do get to spend so much of your day holding your baby. Having a baby changes everything about your life, how you view your family, how you view the world. It is truly a blessing and an amazing experience. By no means would I give up those first few months, no matter how hard they were! But that doesn't mean they were any easier just because they were also wonderful.
Well, everyone was right. It does get better. I think we are in the "easy phase" right now. Our daughter can entertain herself quite happily with her toys for a while now, sometimes for almost an hour at a time! And she hasn't started to crawl just yet, so she's still relatively easy to contain. She has started moving around using other methods and her own sneaky combinations of rolling, scooting, and pulling herself, but so far the official "crawling" hasn't started.
Honestly, the past two months at least she has been very easygoing and happy. I have been staying at home with her and we even have a sleep routine now. Wake up at 6:30ish, nap for an hour around 9:30-10, nap for two hours between 1 and 4 somewhere, and go to bed at 8. The variance on this routine is about an hour, give or take, but that's pretty good! And all of this without any sleep training. (I have still refused to sleep train her, so usually she falls asleep while nursing. But since her schedule is so predictable, this doesn't bother me in the least, hence my lack of motivation to change it.) I can tell that she is old enough to sleep train though. I know that if I let her cry she would be emotionally okay. She definitely has a "fussy" cry now that isn't scared at all, just tired. So that might be in the future for us, but I'm not going to rush it. If we need to do it down the road, so be it.
So yes, it gets better! Having a 7-month-old really is the best ever.
I used to have to snarf down my food in between nursing sessions and it was a near certainty that if I had hot food in front of me Baby Girl would start crying. Now, she joins us for dinner, sits in her high chair, and enjoys the time with us!
I used to hold her when she slept because I couldn't set her down or she would wake up. Now she naps and sleeps on her own... most of the time anyway. She naps during the day by herself, which, (see routine above) gives me at least two hours to do something productive.
I used to have to entertain her constantly or be always right next to her when she was awake (or at least it felt like I had to do that). Now, she plays so happily by herself and even when I sit down with her she acts like she doesn't care if I'm there or not.
I used to spend three or four hours in the evening with her while she did cluster feeding and tried to go to sleep. Finally she would go down for "the big sleep" around midnight and I would crawl into bed exhausted and pray she slept until 4 or 5. (And that was after the eating-every-2-hours-no-matter-what phase was over!) Now I have my evenings back. I have a few hours with my husband every night after our daughter is asleep. He's good company! I forgot what an evening at home could be like when you're not fighting the sleep fight all night long.
I was able to work extra hours from home the past few weeks because we bought a car and needed the extra income, and guess what? I pulled it off! Last week I worked 20 hours while staying home with my little girl full time! Of course, this involved not cooking quite as much as I would like and a few other things slid a bit, but you know what? I did it. And I would never have been able to do that back in the newborn days.
Now, I fully expect that when she starts crawling, which, for all I know, could be today when she wakes up from her nap, "the easy phase" will probably be over. I know that the toddler years are ahead of me. And while I know I'll miss the newborn, cuddly phase and the cute, playful, but stationary phase, I also can't wait! Little Lady has such a cute, spunky personality already, that I can't wait for her to start talking so I can hear what she has to say! I can't wait for her to be able to walk and run around. I can't wait to watch her grow. What a privilege to get to go through each special phase with my little girl.
No comments:
Post a Comment