Life updates

The baby is sleeping on my lap, so I thought I’d write a quick blog post!

Life is going well. The big kids went back to school a week ago, and the 4-year-old started on Monday. So we’re semi back to routine. Our during-the-week nanny takes the baby in the morning and I’ve been doing some work and any administrative things I have to take care of during that time. Then I take the baby around noon when  she picks up the 4-year-old, and they go out and do stuff during the afternoon. They come back around 3-ish, at which point I might take a nap before the big kids get home. Today is a little different and I have the baby now but that’s been working so far.

I have left the house briefly for a few things: a teacher meeting about one of the big kids, a short middle school choir concert last night, a walk. The baby hasn’t actually needed to eat during any of these yet, so I don’t know how the bottle-feeding will go, but I plan to try that in the next week. I’ve built up quite a freezer stash of milk already so I can do slightly longer excursions.

Speaking of excursions…I’m not running yet. The running streak ended with delivery! But I’d like to try in the next week or so. I’ve signed up for the Frostbite 5-miler in late February, which I think could be a reasonable target based on recovery rates. My first few days were pretty rough (even though it was a relatively easy birth). My abdominal muscles just weren’t working right, but then at roughly day 8-9 they put themselves back together, and now I can move normally again.

We’ve had the night nurse service for 2 nights so far. They’ve been very flexible about starting approximately 3 weeks earlier than expected, but that means we take what nights someone is available. The person brings the baby to me to eat for two overnight feedings, usually around 12:30/1 and 3:30/4. Some nights he’s pretty sleepy other than that but I could see the notes from another night where he took an hour to settle post-feeding, so I was glad to have slept through that. On nights we don’t have the service, my husband takes the baby from 10-12:30 p.m. and I make sure to sleep during that first stretch. I usually get a 2-hour sleeping stretch in the middle and at least an hour in the morning. If I take a 30-60 minute nap in the afternoon it’s doable.

We’re taking family photos/newborn pictures this weekend. And it’s supposed to hit 60 degrees here, so we may attempt a newborn excursion — we shall see! It was 17 degrees last night and wow. I’m trying to picture how people dealt with newborns in the winter in cold climates. Lots of blankets, I guess…