January 27, 2016

Surviving.

Marlowe is almost 4 weeks old now and we are so in love with her. Jenson loves her so much too and loves kissing her and holding her. Since we’ve done this before, having a newborn isn’t as scary, but it’s more complicated with a newborn and a toddler. But we are surviving.

When Jenson was a newborn, Lo had 6 weeks off of work, and we had no other responsibilities other than feeding ourselves and Boof, and taking care of Jenson. We slept and napped in shifts, watched tons of TV, watched him breathe…and we just stared at him for hours. And even those mindless tasks were hard enough – because it was all new. It was nice when family was there to help us out, but for the most part, we were okay.

This time I know we are also okay, but it’s a lot harder and having help in the first few weeks was critical. As a matter of fact, I think we’ve had family staying with us for all but about 7 days. It allowed us to get back in the groove of having a newborn, and kept Jenson entertained – which was our biggest worry. Lo’s mom stayed the first few nights, my parents came two days after we were home. We had visits from Lo’s grandparents and brother and girlfriend. Lo’s mom came back the next weekend and painted the trim on our new windows, and his sister’s family visited for a few hours. The next weekend my sister’s family flew in from Vegas, my parents, 3 more sisters, and a few nieces and a nephew drove down for a long weekend. Lo started back to work last Tuesday, Summer and Max stayed through Thursday, and my mom stayed until Friday. Mom and Summer painted our upstairs bathroom that is off of the nursery, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll actually get a nursery set up sometime soon. Once Lo went back to work, my mom was getting up with Jenson and I was able to get a little extra sleep since Marlowe didn’t usually get up until 8 or 9 a.m. for the day.

In the meantime, Jenson and Lo both got sick with ear infections (double for Jenson) and some sort of throat infection, so Lo helped as much as he could with Jenson over the weekend (which was enough that allowed me to sleep in with Marlowe), but it was a little overwhelming because Jenson being sick meant Jenson was not himself….as in Lo’s words – it was like an alien took over. He was super whiny, not listening very well, whiny again, had crying jags for no reason, and otherwise, sort of a terror. It explained why he’d been waking in the night crying really hard for no reason. I didn’t feel great for a few days, but it never fully hit me (not that I would have had a choice to just deal with everything if it had). I was nervous about being on my own this week because I hadn’t been able to get Marlowe to sleep for the night until midnight, and was feeding her twice in the night for about an hour each between feeding, burping, diaper changes, and getting her back to sleep before she pooped again. That meant if I had to get up with Jenson between 6-7 a.m., I was only going to get 4 hours of sleep. Not cool. Not that Lo wasn’t willing to help, but when he was really sick, he wasn’t really able to – he needed to sleep (and had been getting up with Jenson in the night).

Lo stayed home from work on Monday (which was supposed to be my first day “alone”) because he was still pretty sick and had just started antibiotics (and was probably still contagious). We took Jenson back to the Dr. because he still wasn’t right and the Dr. said to bring him back if he didn’t get better over the weekend. His one ear was still pretty infected, so she switched his antibiotic and told us to keep giving him Motrin if he was still whiny. And yes, we took him to the Dr. with his hair looking like this. Lo’s looked much the same, just shorter.

We made a plan for how to make sure I got enough sleep – basically, if we couldn’t get Marlowe to bed early enough, Lo would stay up with her so I could sleep, and he would wait to leave for work until 7 so he could get Jenson up when he woke up. Luckily it worked out that she nursed and fell asleep around 10 and we were all in bed within an hour. Jenson woke around 615 and Lo brought him downstairs, dressed him, and put on Curious George for him.

So Tuesday was my first day alone. And you know what? It was fine – they even both napped at the same time (for a bit) and I was able to start dinner in the slow cooker, do the dishes, and finish up this post. I even ate breakfast and lunch (kind of). It’s going to be a juggling challenge at times, but I’ll figure it out – like millions of other parents have. Hell, my mom stayed home with 6 kids, each two years apart, and we all survived. I’m sure I’ll have terrible days, but hopefully I’ll have many more great days, and I know I won’t regret staying home with our babies. Now I just have to figure out how/when to keep up with writing for my blogs and get all of the pictures edited that I’ve been taking.