Hey friends! Just dropping in to say a big THANK YOU. I was overwhelmed with "Happy First Mother's Day" e-mails, Facebook posts, texts, and phone calls. It truly made my day.
Lilly and I were in Charlotte for the weekend for my cousin's wedding. Unfortunately, Dan had to stay behind for a commitment here in Raleigh - we missed him dearly. I woke up to some beautiful flowers from my sweet Daddy (and a happy and well-rested baby girl!). We spent most of the day in Charlotte, and timed our drive back to Raleigh to coincide with the afternoon nap. When we got here, Dan surprised me with a wonderful and extremely thoughtful gift: he and Jon plotted together and got both Steph and I a bestie spa day at the Umstead! To say I am excited would be a huge understatement. Sweet, sweet husbands. Dan and Lilly spoiled me for the rest of our relaxing evening, and it was lovely. AND Lilly went to bed at 8:00p and slept until 7:30a, which meant I got to nurse her this morning when I got home from the gym (after my shower of course) instead of having to pump. Double bonus!
This mother's day I reflected on all of the wonderful mothers in my life. I hope I can be half the Mom to Lilly that my Mom was (and still is!) to me. I'm so lucky to be surrounded by amazing women who are incredible mothers. So to my Mom, Mother-in-law, Aunts (both real and chosen!), Granny, Sister-in-law, bestie and all of my Mommy friends: thank you for being incredible and for inspiring me to be the best mother that I can be. I hope you all had a wonderful mother's day!
Here are just a few pictures from the weekend to tide you over until I am not too tired for a decent post:
Trying to get L to cooperate for a picture with Mommy!
She did much better in the professional photos - draped her arm over her head like she was bored, ha!
Couldn't resist this one just because she's so cute during tummy time!
I am in need of advice again, friends. For the past week, Lilly has not been herself. How so, you ask? She's been waking up in the middle of the night. GASP! I know, she hasn't done that in months. The reason she is waking up is because she is a total escape artist (Dan's words, not mine) and is somehow breaking out of her swaddle. The first night it happened - last Wednesday, I think?, Dan swaddled her before bed time so I assumed his swaddling skills just weren't as excellent as mine are. :-) The next night, I swaddled her so tight that my sister told me I was going to suffocate her, and Lord knows how but the little Houdini still got out! I just don't understand it. She starts out like this:
"Snug as a bug in a rug," as her namesake used to say.
And, inevitably, at least for the past week, she ends up like this:
Seriously. HOW is she getting out?! I guess I shouldn't complain, because it's not like she keeps me up all night. She normally is up, eats (for good measure) and is back down in literally 10 minutes. The problem is more that I never seem to be able to fall back asleep until my alarm is about to go off, and I'm exhausted the next day. Sigh.
At first, I thought it was the swaddle. We had been using the Summer Infant Swaddle Me blankets since shortly after we brought Lilly home from the hospital (we swaddled her the old fashioned way with a regular blanket for a few weeks until she got bigger), which I think I've blogged about before, and LOVED them:
The problem was that they started to get a little tight. Not sure whether you got the memo that I have a total chunkster on my hands. This did not stop us, and we kept using them until she absolutely outgrew them. They apparently make bigger sizes, but they're hard to find - I've not been able to find them in a store yet. I was close to ordering online when I remembered that we had a Halo brand swaddle to try. I have been referring to it as the "baby straight jacket":
It zips AND velcroes, and she is still getting out. How?!?! She gave us a break night before last, so I thought I had finally gotten over this hump, but then last night she escaped again.
The next thing I'm going to try is the miracle blanket, which my bestie let us borrow. I think it is more of a baby straight jacket than the halo, and we're going to give it a shot tomorrow night:
I'll report back on how it goes. Anyway, so now I'm wondering if this means it's time to stop swaddling? Upon considering it, I'm inclined to think that the fact that she's waking herself up when her arms are out means she's not ready to stop being swaddled. On the other hand, if she's breaking out of the swaddle, maybe it's time to stop. I'm not sure which theory I should go with.
My question to you is this: how old was your baby when you stopped swaddling? And how do you know when to stop? I have read several different opinions on this. Some people say by 4 months, others swaddled their children until 8 or 9 months. Our pediatrician said that there is no hard deadline, that we can try to stop whenever we feel brave enough but she definitely can't be swaddled anymore once she can roll over while in the swaddle, because it's dangerous. The problem is that when we've tried not swaddling L, she wakes herself up by jerking her arms.
Part deux of this question is: how do you go about weaning your child from the swaddle? Again, there is lots of information out there. The suggestions I've gotten, both from my research and word of mouth are:
Go cold turkey and let her sleep on her stomach. I am not sure I can do this. First, Lilly sort of hates tummy time unless she's propped up on something, like her boppy pillow, because she's nosey and likes to be able to see what's going on around her. There is a wedge in her crib, but I'm still not sure it would work. Second, I'm pretty sure I'd get even less sleep worrying that she'd suffocate.
One arm out. This is the most common method, I think. I'm just wary of it because her arms are the problem, and I'm afraid it will take a lot of getting used to for her and I will lose more sleep. Selfish, I know, it's just that she's spoiled me by sleeping through the night for so long!
A sleep sack similar to the Halo sleep sack above but without the swaddle part. So essentially her legs are in a bag looking thing but there are arm holes for her arms. See above - I'm not sure this will work because the arms are our problem to begin with!
One thing I did find on quite a few message boards as a transition between swaddle and non-swaddle is this nifty thing called the Zipadeezip. I guess a Mom invented it for her baby to help transition her out of a swaddle, and you wouldn't believe how many Moms on the internet rave about it:
Of all of the suggestions so far, this one seems like it has the most potential. I ordered one of those suckers yesterday, and will report back on how it goes. The reason I think it may work for Lilly is because of the arms. There is room in it for her to move her arms and get used to having them "free," but she can't jerk them and wake herself up trying to put them over her head. We'll see. Really I just hope it fits my sweet little fatty. Anyway, it's hard for me to be annoyed with her for waking me up because she seriously is just so dang cute, in my totally biased opinion:
Any suggestions on this dilemma that I haven't thought of? Feedback is much appreciated, as is voting. :-)
I want to thank you all for your kind words, texts, calls, e-mails, comments, etc. of encouragement after my first day back yesterday. It meant more than you know and truly made today that much easier! Today was slightly better than yesterday, at least in terms of tears - there were less today. I honestly think having Dan stay with Lilly yesterday and Mom with her today and most of tomorrow made the transition so much easier. While this week is kind of crazy in terms of childcare, knowing she's with someone familiar probably lessened my anxiety a little. Now if I could just figure out some sort of groove for the mornings, we'd be set! More on that later.
Quite a few of you have been asking me what we decided to do about childcare, so I thought I'd use this post to update you. I have blogged on this topic a few times before (here and here in my typical long-winded great detail), and the last time I blogged we had researched daycares, gone for visits and been put on several waiting lists. While we liked the idea of a nanny, we didn't feel like we could justify the cost, as it looked like it was going to be quite a bit more expensive. We did not originally anticipate needing childcare until the beginning of July. If Lilly had been born on or around her due date, my 16 weeks of leave would have gotten me into mid June, and then our Moms were going to help out for two more weeks. All of the daycares told us that this greatly increased our chances of getting in, as that is apparently the time of year when kids move up classes and things get rearranged. Because she wanted to make her grand entrance earlier than anticipated, in true Diva fashion, it's put us in a little bit of a childcare bind. Dan has been calling each of the daycares where we are on waiting lists every day for the past few weeks to see where we stand. What you have to understand is that we tried to be VERY prepared about this - we knew the best daycares were extremely hard to get into - and we have been on some of the lists for almost a year. As of last week, we had moved up to third on the list at our top choice. They told us this could mean two weeks or two months, there was no way to tell and we'd have to just wait it out. Great.
Luckily for us, my Mom said she would be able to help us until we worked something out. However, she thought my return to work was next week, and unfortunately this week she couldn't help us out the whole week. What that meant for us this week is: Dan took vacation on Monday and took care of L, Mom came this morning and kept her today and is keeping her part of the day tomorrow. I'm working from home after lunch tomorrow afternoon and Thursday to take care of her, and I have PTO on Friday for my cousin's wedding.
Sometime last week, a friend of ours got in touch with us and told us that someone he worked with who happened to live in our neighborhood currently has a nanny and was looking for a way to defer the cost/a possible nanny share. This news came at an excellent time, because we still hadn't figured out what we were going to do. In the interest of time/lengthiness, the short of it is this: this couple just so happens to live directly behind us. They have an 18-month old, Callie, whom this nanny has cared for since her mother had to go back to work 8 weeks postpartum. The nanny was hoping for a few more hours, and the couple was hoping for less of a financial burden. Callie is in a preschool (actually it's more of a mothers morning out program) at a local church three days per week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8:30a - 1:00p). The nanny keeps her the rest of the time.
We went to meet this couple last week and really hit it off, and we are really excited about this opportunity. The Lord truly does answer prayers, because the situation we've come up with is the best of both worlds for Dan and I (he wanted daycare, I wanted a nanny), and it literally fell into our laps at the perfect time since we were in a bit of a childcare bind. We've called and Lilly is first on the waiting list for the preschool, which runs the same as the school year: September - May. I have the best boss in the world, who generously agreed to let me work from home two days per week, on Mondays and Fridays (honestly, best boss I've ever had or will ever have, hands down). So, if this works out, for there rest of the summer, L will stay with Callie and the nanny Tuesday - Thursday, and I'll get to be at home with her on Monday and Friday. In September, she'll go to preschool for half a day M, W and F, so the nanny will have her for 2.5 days/week - all day Tuesday and Thursday, and Wednesday afternoon. This will also give me a little bit of a break if there's anything pressing that I need to do for work on Monday and Friday mornings while she's at school. She will have plenty of one-on-one attention from both the nanny and I, and will also be socialized with other children at daycare. It also doesn't hurt that this is going to save us a TON of money - as in at least a car payment - per month. Thank you, Jesus. We are going to meet with the nanny tomorrow afternoon, and pending anything crazy happening, we're doing a trial run on Thursday morning. I have to be in the office for a meeting, anyway, so we'll leave Lilly with the nanny (and Callie) until around lunch time on Thursday. If all goes well, we'll start her with the nanny next week.
I must mention here that Mom spoiled me today with REALLY cute picture text updates. I may have to ask the nanny to do the same. :-) Here are the photo updates I got, along with the messages my Mom sent with them:
Making a present for Grandmommy (her words not mine)
Nap time Mommy
Baby no. 1
Talking to Grandmommy after my 2.5 hour nap!
While the following pictures are unrelated, I thought they were too funny not to share:
After work walk with Mommy, Daddy and big sis Layla
Dan "teaching Lilly how to crawl." Fool.
Leaving Lilly has been one of the hardest things I've had to do so far, but I can't tell you how wonderful it is to know that she is in excellent hands and to come home to her sweet smiling face. It gives me something to look forward to, and I think it even maybe makes my days pass a little more quickly because I count down the minutes until I get to see her again.
Hope your Tuesday was fantastic! Have you voted today (both in the primaries here in NC and for our blog?!)? ;-)
Howdy, friends! It occurred to me today that I hadn't blogged in almost a week - a rarity, for me, since I always seem to have so much to say. We were the busiest we've been since Lilly was born last week getting the house ready for her big weekend. Both the weekend and her baptism were wonderful, and I can't wait to blog about them later in the week.
Today was a day I have been dreading and trying not to think about ever since I went out on maternity leave: my return to work. I can honestly say that I wasn't sure whether I'd ever want to stay at home with my children, but I loved spending getting to spend my days with sweet Lilly so much! I have loved hanging out with her, watching her grow and change every day. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've been trying to figure out ways not to go back to work for two weeks - I don't want to miss one second, and I feel like I'll miss so much during the days when I don't see her.
I didn't sleep at all last night, even though I was exhausted from our exciting weekend - my stomach was in knots. Lilly must have been tired, too, because she slept for almost 12 hours last night, yay L! I got up this morning and went to the gym and then came home and got ready for work, and she did not wake up until I was walking out the door at 8:15. I didn't get to nurse her and spend a lot of time with her before I left because I wanted to let her sleep as long as possible, and honestly it may have been better that way. I made it through most of the morning without any tears, but when she woke up the water works started. I snuggled her for a few minutes, and she and Dan walked me out to the car and I just sobbed the whole way. I managed to compose myself to walk into work, but indulged myself in a few short cries throughout the day. When I got to my desk, I was greeted with this sweet picture from my manny (man nanny aka Dan):
The morning flew by, I was so busy on several conference calls, getting settled and just generally getting back into the swing of things. I had a nice surprise at lunch time when Dan brought Lilly to see me. I'd brought my lunch so we had a picnic at my desk.
I cried again after she left, but I knew I didn't have much longer until I'd get to go home and love on Lilly and tell her how much I missed her all day. The afternoon, like the morning, went by pretty quickly, and before I knew it, it was 4:30 and time for me to head home to relieve Dan so that he could go to his meeting. The funniest part of the day was trying to coordinate a schedule for the pumping room with my two other co-workers who have babies close in age to L. I've been spoiled the past few weeks with Lilly nursing and I forgot how much I hate pumping.
Today was hard, as I'm sure tomorrow and the rest of the days of this week will be. Rumor has it that leaving Lilly every day will get easier. I think having Dan at home with her today and my Mom tomorrow and most of Wednesday will greatly help me in the transition. I'll report back in a later post on childcare. When I got home, Dan left to go to his meeting and L and I got to have a long talk about what she and Daddy did all day (sorry about the gross pooping at the very beginning!):
We hung out for the rest of the night and my bestie brought us dinner. That's why she's my bff, y'all. She brought dinner because she said that she wanted me to get to spend time with Lilly instead of having to worry about cooking dinner on my first day away from her. That's the definition of a best friend if I've ever heard it. And it was the best dinner ever - home made chicken & dumplings, green beans & yeast rolls. Can't wait to eat it again tomorrow for lunch. :-)
Hope you all had a great Monday! Here's to hoping the rest of the week gets easier by the day - and to making a conscious effort to find time to blog! Don't forget to vote for us today!
