The Patterson Family: First week with the girls

Its been a week now with just me and the girls, except for the weekend of course, and its gone really well. I am a busy body and feel like I'm being efficient at balancing this new life. I don't know how I will have time to work when the time comes to go back. I fill the days with playing and reading to Brooke, going for walks (4 in the last week) and then coming home and doing about an hour of yard work while Skylar continues to sleep and Brooke plays in the yard, house cleaning and laundry (a load almost every day with spit up, leaky diapers, regular laundry and sheets and towels from guests), the occasional nap while both girls nap, a little reading, keeping up with thank you cards, scheduling misc. appointments, baths and of course feeding and changing diapers. With all of this to fill each day the days fly by which is why I've been slacking on the blog and taking photos and videos.

I have a really hard time slowing down and since I'm home all day I can't stand seeing piles of laundry and dirty floors. I am okay with being busy and have really been enjoying this time, more than I enjoyed maternity leave with Brooke because a sleepy baby is kinda boring compared to a 2 year old! Brooke has been so fun that I know it will be hard to go back to work. Jason has asked if I want to stay home but honesty I know I would get tired of this because pretty much every day I would only see my immediate family and not have a reason to get dressed up and get out of the house to interact with other adults and professionals. I need to have a purpose thats just my own and hope that it will only be 20 hours/week for a long time, but my work load will dictate if I need to work 30 hours. I definitely will not go back full time...hopefully ever!

The update on Skylar is she has been great except for the evenings. Over the past week and a half or so she gets really fussy between 7 and 10 pm. She is really gassy so I figured that was the problem but her unhappiness seemed to be getting worse so I read through the Happiest Baby on the Block book again to find a strategy. The book makes a good point about babies being gassy all day so why do they get fussy only at night. I guess its over stimulation from the day. So I've been implementing the 5 S's with the first one being swaddling. As I mentioned before I stopped swaddling after day 5 when Skylar slept better unswaddled. Well last night swaddling worked great and she was a lot less fussy! So I kept her swaddled at bedtime thinking she'd sleep longer but that back fired and she woke up sooner so tonight she is unswaddled again. I guess she just needs swaddling when fussy.

She is pretty well on track with the 3 hour eat, wake, sleep schedule from the Babywise book. I am using the same times I used with Brooke, give or take a half hour. They are 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm, 10 pm and the middle of the night feeding is whenever she wakes up, usually around 3:30 am except for last night we had 2 middle of the night feedings.

Today I moved Skylar out of our bedroom and into her own so we can sleep better. Fortunately she still doesn't cry when she wakes up but instead is very noisy with grunts that start before she is fully awake. So after a few grunts I usually get her up to nurse so she doesn't wake Jason up and also because I am already awake. I want her to start sleeping longer to eventually sleep through the night so I'm hoping with her in her own room and the baby monitor on noise activate I'll only hear her when she is fully awake and ready to nurse.

We have a new adventure tomorrow and that will be me taking the girls to the children's museum. I'm confident that all will go well. I plan to nurse Skylar in the car when we get there and then attach her to my chest with the Baby Bjorn and put a few necessary items into a backpack so my hands are free to manage Brooke. I'll try to get pictures of us and will post more later! This will by my first outing, except walks, by myself with them.