Yesterday Joey hit the six week milepost. I weighed him last night – he was 11 lb. 11 oz. He was 8 lb. even at birth and they are supposed to double their weight by six months. I think he’s well on his way…
Six weeks is when many women return to work. All I have to say is that in order to do that, you would have to have a completely different mindframe. To be quite honest, I couldn’t even fathom it. He’s so little yet. We haven’t even fallen into a routine yet (though I’ve decided to start writing down when he eats, sleeps and is awake to see if there is any pattern to it yet). And a bottle? I haven’t even tried that yet, though I do want him to take a bottle at some point so I can leave him occasionally for three or four hours. Right now he is sitting on my lap grunting as I type.
I did get some knitting done yesterday, though I cannot say what it is because it was an item on my Christmas gift list. Joey took a four-hour nap in the afternoon, after taking a few short naps in the morning. I’m thinking the afternoons are going to be my time for rest and reflection and knitting. In the morning I will be busy accomplishing as many things as I can. Then I will rest in the afternoon and then be busy in the evening again, if I can.
I went to Milkworks breastfeeding support group last night and Joey was perfectly behaved the entire time. No colic, no crying. Then I got home and took my coat off and the screaming began. Swaddling doesn’t even help. I just hold him and rock him. He’ll scream for two minutes and sleep for one…over and over and over again. Finally we went to bed around 10:00. I always have to swaddle him to get him to go to sleep at night. Swaddling and the darkness and being half-held as he lays beside me seems to be enough to calm him down so he can sleep.
I’d like to start going back to “work” myself and do some Mary Kay. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving Joey in the evenings yet considering all the crying. And I’m not sure that taking him along, even if I wear him in the sling, is the answer either. I think we’ll do some dry runs by going to my weekly Mary Kay meeting and such so I can see how he does. I also need to find someone to give him a bottle for me. Babies don’t generally take a bottle from mommy because they prefer the real thing fresh from the source. Steve wasn’t able to get Ben to take a bottle so I don’t think he’s the person to do the bottle thing this time either. Once Ben had accepted a bottle, Steve was okay. It was just the first time that didn’t work. Steve’s graduate classes will resume in mid-January so he won’t have time necessarily to deal with a newborn either. So I don’t know what I’m going to do except that I will not be sitting home in the evenings holding a baby on my lap.
Now that I’ve reached the six-week milepost I will be requiring certain things of myself every day rather than just doing what I can, as I have done for the past six weeks. I do feel pretty good, so I should be able to pull it off. I also plan to ease back into a routine with my goal being to have it well established by three months postpartum. The holidays are here. I need to put up the Christmas tree, finish getting Christmas gifts gathered and distributed, and I need to make some cookies. Oh, and I tried working with Ben on potty-training yesterday. More of the same today, I think. It’s supposed to be 50 degrees today and 25 tomorrow so we may be running some errands which will put a hamper on that. I am dressed and I do have makeup on. We’ll see where the day goes from here.