Meant Green: September 2016

We did it! Cody and I can now take care of a baby and not feel terrified every second of the day about it. We can even change diapers quickly.

Ira is two months old, and time has flown and dragged. That feeling is usually based on if Ira is having a good day or a bumpy day, which equals how tired we are.

I still look at Cody everyday and ask him if he can believe that our baby is really here. We used to say the same thing when we lived in Pennsylvania - "Can you believe we live here?" Especially when the seasons were changing. It's so good to stop along the way to observe those moments.

I'm still working on his birth story - and they are tall orders. The memories are more powerful than what I've been able to put into words so far. I want it to be encouraging, but honest about what I found with my own natural birth with Ira.

Here's to summing up the first several weeks with our good old boy, and it hardly captures all of it.

He's been gaining weight well, his birth weight was 7.9 and now it's 13.10 lbs! He's 24.25 inches long as of 9/22. This leads me to...

Breastfeeding - it's a learned behavior. Having never been around newborns or breastfeeding mamas, the first day I tried to hold Ira like I used to hold my dolls to give them bottles - on his back. The lactation nurse gently directed me to hold his belly tight against my own like "a frog on a window pane." Love the imagery.

Ira hurt me big time the first week and I dreaded feeding him. We took him to the lactation consultant at 2 weeks old, and he was diagnosed with a lip and tongue tie we had to resolve at a pediatric dentist office during week 3, but feeding has been MUCH better ever since. I'm so glad we caught it early.

Community helps so much! I found a great group of women and babies at our local hospital's breastfeeding group. We meet up there every week to just socialize, but we've gone out to eat, and even grab "cry baby" movies that have showings for just moms and babies so no one is bothered when a baby starts making noise.

Ira really changes by the week. We have no set schedule, rather we created a routine with him. I watch him for signs of sleepiness and hunger and try to catch them before he comes unglued.

He's sleeping in his basket pretty well! He eats at 10:30 p.m., 3 a.m., and 6:45 a.m., almost on the money every night. A few magical times he's done 10:30 to 5 a.m., praise the Lord.

I just learned about the Wonder Weeks. They are the weeks right before a big developmental milestone is reached and make babies harder than usual to console - like crying for three hours at bedtime. You'd think he's about to start spouting Shakespeare the way Ira has carried on during these times. He had his first this past week and we survived by swaddling Ira tightly and rocking him to sleep.

His smile is here! It's that open-mouthed newborn smile that's HUGE and lovely. And heart- melting. His eyes are not giving away their color yet! They're still that grayish-brownish funny newborn color that almost isn't a color - with a tiny light brown streak in the left eye.

I am a new mama, but I am also the same old me and I want to hold onto that. A little time everyday to shower or have Ann-time is key to what makes me tick. When Cody comes home, sweet Ira gets popped into his arms and I take an hour to do...whatever. It is good.