My baby rolled!

He rolled from back to belly tonight! I am so not ready for this. 

I had a fever and some serious body aches so Ben came home to help care for Walker while I slept. During the hour I slept he rolled over! I MISSED IT. I'm not super upset because he has done it three times since, but come on kid. I better see your first steps!

Remember that post

where I said I was leaving Walker and Ben to go to a bachelorette party out of state? Well, that isn't happening anymore. 

I was having nightmares over leaving. The whole thought rocked my daily life. I would cry just talking about it. So, in the end I decided it would be best for my family if I opted out. Lets be honest, I wouldn't be any fun anyways.

When I finally worked up the courage to tell the bride, she was SO understanding. In retrospect, it was silly of me to be worried about telling her. She is a mom of two under 3. She gets it and she didn't want me to feel bad about not going. It really made me appreciate how amazing my friends are. 

This is the part where I am going to brag about them for a bit. I have two absolutely amazing friends. One is D and the other is C (they don't know this blog exists. I am a closet blogger so I don't feel its fair to share their real names without their permission). While they rarely agree with me in terms of parenting decisions, we support each other regardlessly. Between the three of us there are 4 kids, yes we are out numbered. I have been friends with both since high school and I am so thankful that I have them as a built in support system. I am seriously so lucky. 

I am so excited to be celebrating D's wedding in March.

You took your infant where?!

Yup folks. You heard it right. I took my 3 month old to the movie theater. 

In fact, we went to see Frozen. TWICE. 

So not only did I take my infant to a movie. I took him to the same movie twice. 

If your haven't seen Frozen, get in your car immediately, drive to your local theater, buy a ticket to the next showing, try not to fall in love with ever character. No, but seriously this movie was worth seeing twice. 

In my defense though, I saw it the first time with my best friend and the second time with Ben. It was equally awesome the second time. 

So how did I do it? I lazor beamed anyone who gave me a mean look. 

Ok ok. I brought my hoppy pillow and little man nursed and slept the WHOLE time, both times. 

Yeah I was a little nervous. But we made it through. 

It was almost to easy. We also went to matinee movies just in case he decided to scream blood murder during the quietest parts of the movie. 

In fact, here is a picture of my sweet boy right after we saw the movie, for the first time. 

Seriously, this is my ring tone now. LOVE this song :)

Girl look at that body

Today is day 1!

I started Zumba this evening and can I just say holy moly I am out of shape. However, I am SO ready to feel more confident in my body. I'm not necessarily going to go for a goal weight. I want to feel better. I want to look in the mirror and not hate everything I see from my boobs (although there days I have those too) down. 

My second goal is to run my next 5K. I have walked the last three and the last one I walked in 55 minutes. I want to run the Color Run on April 26th. Saturday I am starting Couch to 5K in hopes of meeting that goal. 

I also started tanning (I know, I know its bad for me. But a girl has to have her vices very now and again). I am in a wedding in March and the dress is navy blue. I am whiter then white since I was pregnant all summer and refused to lay out in the heat. I swear I will only tan until the wedding :)

The only down side to my fitness goals is child care. I can only work out on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays because Ben gets the other days. I am just not comfortable with leaving Walker in a gym daycare. I toured the daycare, I talked to moms who use the daycare, but I just can't do it. If I have learned anything this far into motherhood, its that your trust your gut and my gut says to keep him out of that daycare till he can at least sit up by himself. So we have to trade days. Also, my Zumba class gets out at 7:35 and after I tan I don't get home till 8:00-8:10 so we were late starting Walker's bed time routine and he didn't go to bed till 10 tonight. Hopefully this doesn't become a regular thing. For as much as I love working out it can't interfere with our system that I worked my butt off to set up! 

I'm also trying to come up with a new blog name. We aren't trying to become 3 anymore, we are 3. Hopefully something will come to to me :)

Leaving baby overnight?

I have a bachlorette party to attend in exactly 18 days in a completely different state. I am freaking out over the idea of leave Walker for a full 24 hours. We have never spent a day apart and to be completely honest, I wouldn't even go if I wasn't in the wedding. 

Ben will be staying with him obviously, but I just have so many worries. Ben has never done a night feeding. He has never put him to bed, or done bath time by himself. They are  both going to be completely miserable when I'm gone. I highly doubt either of them will be sleeping much during that time. 

Aside from that I have to pump for the trip. Right now I am sitting at 30oz. I'm hoping t have somewhere around 60oz when it's time to leave. I am going to show Ben how to make a bottle using formula in the off chance that's not enough milk.

All the logistics aside, I am freaking out. I don't want to leave my baby. I wish Ben and Walker could just come with me. It's getting to the point where I keep having theses terrible stress dreams about the house catching on fire or Ben forgetting Walker and leaving him at home. The list goes on. There is no real solution though. Since I am in the wedding I am expected at the bachlorette party. Honestly, I would have a blast at the party if I wasn't so concerned about the well-bring of my 3 month old at home. 

At this point, I need to accept that i will probably bawl my eyes out more then once that night and continue with the pumping. 

The baby blues

I wanted to write this post to draw attention to a subject that few want to talk about. 

The baby blues. 

 

Now that Walker is almost 3 months old, I can definitely look back and see that I suffered from the baby blues. It was the loneliest I had every felt in my life, those first few weeks. I loved my son with everything I had in me, but I felt completely isolated from those around me. I only wanted to be around Walker. I had terrible night time anxiety. Just the thought of having to go to bed made me nauseous. Everything and I do mean everything made me cry. Ben could look at me wrong and I would bawl. These are all normal things, however these aren't what I want to write about. 

The problem isn't that I had a minor case of the baby blues, it's that when I was asked by my husband on multiple occasion if I was feeling a little down I would lie. 

I lied because in my head I couldn't be that woman. I refused to be her. I had failed at having a natural birth, I wasn't going to fail as a mother and admitting to the baby blues was admitting that I couldn't do this. 

In society, we have this perfect idea of what a mom should be. She should cook gourmet meals, have a spotless home, look spectacular (and thin of course), be about to care for her children's every need, never have a bad day and still have energy to have sex with her husband. 

Well I'm calling bullshit. 

It took me week to realize that feel lonely didn't make me a bad mother. My marriage suffered because I wanted Ben to fix something that I couldn't even tell him was broken because I wanted to fit into the mold of a perfect mom. I needed to fit into that mold after my failed natural birth. I didn't want to admit that I was struggling because I didn't want to be judged. My friend's are great examples for the "token mom" and I couldn't tell them that I was no where near meeting those expectations. 

Time healed my baby blues. Routine, scheduling, getting to know my baby, and falling into my role as a mom really helped. I'm still not super mom. My house is rarely clean (because I refuse to miss a second of my child growing up on me). There are nights we have PB&Js for dinner. I know that my child feels loved though. To me, that makes battling the baby blues worth it. 

Scheduling our lives

No, but seriously, if your also a stay at home mom how do you do it?! 

Right now we are working on a bed time routine. I want our lives to be at least a tad bit more predictable. We started this schedule this week (of course, Walker and I ended up sick this week too):

8:00- Bath time (this was with mom all week because the steam from the shower helped with his breathing). We do soap every 3 days, so usually these are water baths. 

8:30- We do a baby massage, jammie time, and snuggles.

8:45- We start to nurse. I want to implement a book into this time as well. 

Somewhere between 9:00-10:00 he will fall asleep and I will swaddle him and lay him in the rock n play. Usually he doesn't wake up, sometimes he does. I try to let him sooth himself back to sleep, but if he starts to cry I always go and get him immediately and we nurse again. 

Now his wake times during the night are a bit erratic since we just started this system. He usually only wakes twice. The first will be around 3-4am and the second is almost always 5:30-6am. He wakes up around 8 to nurse and we snooze on the couch till 9 before starting our day (usually). 

Now during the day time, its anybody's game. We have no schedule for anything. I choose to nurse on demand so I never look at the clock for nursing. I let him sleep when he chooses, but we also have no regular activities. We almost always play on our kick in play piano, exersaurcer, and gym. We sing songs and listen to music. I need to start reading more books to him. Once it's warmer, I want to go for a walk once a day (even for 10 minutes). 

I have all these plans, but it's impossible to get on a schedule. I need time in the day to clean, take bathroom breaks, and eat and I never seem to have it. So anyone out there have a schedule they use? I would love to hear it!

Ever get that feeling...

that you aren't doing this parenting thing wrong?

I'm constantly wondering if I am creating a person that will be a gem to our society. By adhering to his every demand is he going to be the whiny, bratty child that everyone says i'm raising? To be completely honest, I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm any good at this mom thing.

I do know that I love being a mom. I'm not sure I have all the answers and on a day like today, when I have been criticized about my choices in parenting I'm not sure I give a damn. I love my son and I feel like he deserves to know how much I love him. I love him enough to give up doing what I want so he can be comforted by constant nursing. I love him to the point where my sleep doesn't matter, he wants to nurse and cuddle every hour through out the night then so be it. I love him enough to wash diapers every day because it's better for him. I love him enough to bring him into my bed early in the morning to nurse and snuggle until we choose to get up.

I love my son and i'm getting really sick of being told I'm raising a dependent child.

Personally, I believe a 2 month old should be dependent on his mother. God intended me to care for him and in my book that includes comforting him, soothing him, cuddling him, and loving him in all the ways that I am capable. I have been blessed to be a stay at home mom, he deserves all of my time and attention.

Maybe I'll regret my choice of attachment parenting someday, maybe I won't. Right now I'm enjoying loving my boy because today is all that really matters.

Walker's 2 month post

I can't believe he's 2 months old already!

*as of 12/29/13*

Daily life:

He is the light of my life. He has become so active in the last month! He responds with smiles and coos.   He is a happy baby 99% of the time, the only fussy times we have are around nap time. He hate tummy time, but loves his exercisaucer (spelling?). He loves to stand. I have a feeling I may have an early walker on my hands! He is a momma's boy too. He prefers me over anyone else and I can't say that I'm upset about that. 

Sleep: 

Walker sleeps fairly well for his age. He use to have a schedule of bedtime at 10, sleep till 3 then nurse, sleep till 6 then nurse, up for the day around 9-10. I recently switched his bedtime back to 9 so he is waking every 3 hours like clockwork and wanting to start his day at 6 (not good for this momma). We are still working through the kinks of this new schedule. As for nap times, we recently started napping in his crib. No real problems. On the first day he took a 3 hour nap. I was really proud of him. 

Nursing:

I have chosen to nurse on demand so every day is different. I never deny him boob time, so usually he nurses every 2 hours give or take 15 minutes. He always nurses to sleep and I plan to let him do that for at least the first 6 months. 

I'm going to include his one month picture on this post as well. I never got around to writing a one month post, but I did take a picture!

*as of 11/29/13*