I am so thankful to have a healthy little baby girl. She is beautiful and so laid back. She appears to be on the same track as her brother with being strong and bright. She is holding her head up well and is very alert. She isn't colicky like her brother was, which is a real relief. I was so afraid of the hours of crying. She has her fussy times, but it's usually because she can't get to sleep or she's overstimulated. Perhaps, I'm just more attuned to what a baby needs from experience, I don't know. I do know that it feels about 100 times easier this time. Nursing was a little rough to start out with, but I didn't need shields this time. Now it's just fine most of the time. I only have issues at night when she's sleepy. Speaking of sleep, she sleeps decently. Perhaps my expectations were low this time around, but she seems to sleep in 3 hour stretches at night with a couple 4 hour ones. I don't expect that to change much anytime soon though.
She's smiling already and the first person she smiled at was… her brother! Dexter can't get enough of his little sister. He always wants to pat her head, turn on the music and vibration on her bouncer, rock her, or hold her hands. He's starting to show some jealousy now that he is starting to realize that she's here to stay.
The biggest issues I've been having is that Dexter gets into trouble whenever his sister gets fussy and cries for a bit or I'm nursing her. I understand the crying thing. It's stressful to hear a baby cry. For me, having a baby cry and then a toddler throwing a tantrum or purposely trying to make just as much noise, is just so overboard that it generally turns into a comedic moment. Take all that noise and add a chihuahua barking and I just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. As for his misbehavior while I'm nursing, that is the biggest irritation I have with the whole situation. He knows I can't go chasing after him. I can only sit there and tell him "no", "stop that", "please don't" to the point that I feel like a coach yelling from the sidelines. He is in his "I'm not listening to you or even acknowledging you exist" phase which makes it particularly maddening. I've started stomping my foot at him when he really gets me angry, and I can't do anything else about it. I have to be pretty silly looking sitting down, stomping my foot, telling him "no" while nursing his sister.
I took one solid week off from work - last week. I'm back on a very limited schedule, but working from home when I can. Mr. Cobra has taken over all but one of the projects at work. We launched 3 major sites in the last week, so everyone is taking a breath. There is already more work starting up. It's odd to be out of the loop at work again. I had finally gotten back in a groove last year, but I don't anticipate this leave to be as drastic as the last.
I'm healing well, not as fast as last time. I think that's because I can't sit back and relax. I'm regularly picking up my 30+lb toddler and taking care of him means a lot of running around and temptation to do things I shouldn't - like jumping around. I don't really feel like I went through the major traumatic physical event aka child birth, just a little more tired than usual. That's probably mostly due to sleep deprivation. I've been taking naps every other day to help with that since I have been experiencing some baby blues when I don't get sleep. It's pretty normal to have some weepy days. Mr. Cobra has helped out a lot, and made sure that I was getting all the extra help I needed since I was starting to put unnecessary pressure on myself by trying to watch Dex and Brix more than I should have. It's times like this when I wonder why I moved so far away from family. One kid - easy, two is a juggling act. Thankfully, number two has been such a breeze… so far!
