Month 2

What a difference a month makes! I heard so many people say (even the nurses when we were at the hospital) if you can make it past the first 6 weeks you'll be fine. I think I do look back and those first 6 weeks were the hardest! I saw Dave White last night and he asked me what the hardest part of being a parent was so far and immediately I answered, "having to make decisions for Hadley". While our first month was flooded with trying to get the feeding down the second month has been plagued with making decisions. Conversely, Dave asked what the best part was and I replied, "just looking at her beautiful face" and adding to that, "knowing God has entrusted us with the cutest little girl".

So what decisions were facing us this month? (as if we weren't making decisions before this), How to help our little girl be happy. Sounds like an elusive job but we were starting to notice that she wasn't sleeping well and therefore becoming very fussy as would any of us! So I began thinking that she was becoming over-stimulated throughout the day and not being able to calm herself down to sleep. Much to my chagrin, I started making things quiet around the house during the day so she could get some much needed rest. I also started putting her on her stomach to sleep (gasp!!). We had started putting her to bed around 7 or 8 each night but I was not about to try a rigid schedule where she had to eat at certain times and sleep at certain times, that didn't seem logical to me. These tricks were helping but still not as much as we needed them to

After having days of lots of crying and little sleep (and no she isn't colicky) I begin to feel frustrated, confused, overwhelemed....and mad at myself for getting so worked up over this. Why couldn't I just relax and take it in stride? That was my nature pre-baby. I thought I should watch my diet, maybe I should force her to be on a schedule, maybe something is wrong physically with her and I was just missing it....I went on and on, read so many different things on the internet until finally I had over-exhausted myself mentally and emotionally and even laughed a little at how stressed out I had gotten, "this is ridiculous," I thought. I'm actually a little embarrased to share this because I really don't like to get so worked up and stressed out about things like this that are a natural part of life. What happened to my "mother's intution"?

I had read briefly about this parenting style called "baby wise" and how you should set up your child on an eat, play, sleep routine and at the moment our routine was eat, sleep, eat, sleep, cry, cry, cry...nothing routine about it. So Jon and I talked a little about it and though I haven't read the book and could possibly be sabotaging my own efforts I decided to give it a try at least it would create some kind of consistency. I figured it sounded easy enough even though I still have some questions. I started this past Wednesday and Hadley only took about 4 2o min naps, needless to say she was not liking falling asleep without eating. Thursday was about the same, but I did my best to stick with it, letting her do some crying before I'd go in and calm her down. Thursday seemed to go pretty well as far as she was crying herself to sleep fairly quickly but again not staying asleep for very long. I think after those two days she had exhausted herself because Friday I could hardly keep her awake!

Today has been a little rough, she still isn't sleeping real well during the day but I'm keeping to the routine, even if she only sleeps for 30 mins or plays for 15 min, we're sticking to the routine. I've also cut out a lot of dairy in my diet, which is super hard because I love milk!!! If things get better within this week I may try to start adding a little dairy back in to see how things go. Finally but certainly not least, I've been praying like crazy through this whole process just for some peace and confidence that something will help. I think God is teaching me to just calm down first of all, things will be fine no matter what routine we do but using a specific routine I think we'll be learning consistency early on because once we have to start in on the discipline we're going to need some consistency!! I can tell you already it's been easier to be consistent with my own child than it ever was with my students.

To sum things up, my stress level has decreased dramatically, I feel we have a goal we're working towards and I am seeing some positive results already. Praise God!! I love my little girl and am enjoying being a mom!