Half a Year Gone

My baby girl is almost 7 months old now, and we have survived half a year with a new baby. I can't believe we are here already! 

The best thing about parenthood I've heard so far is "the hours are long but the years are short" and nothing has ever been truer and we aren't even one year down yet. It's hard to believe but Matt and I are already starting to look to the future and planning number 2 (god help me).

So, what have I learned in six months? well...I've learned that I am better at this than I originally thought. I've learned that it took me time to fall in love with my child, but now I couldn't imagine loving anyone more than I love her. I have learned to trust my instincts; to make a decision and stick to it. I have learned that consistency is key...with everything. I have learned that I am a terrible scheduler, and that may be my biggest pitfall as a parent. I can now breastfeed in public without any hesitation and have even accidentally left my boob out!!! Can you imagine EVER not knowing your titty is hanging out?! It's outrageous. 

My advice to the upcoming new moms of the world:

It's going to be rough as hell....but it gets easier

Make your man change as many diapers as humanly possible...it will help you hate him and his male genitalia less.

Ask for help

Sleep train that baby as soon as you can

Get on a schedule

Leave the house once a day

Your role to the baby is far more involved than your husbands...it's just biology. They need and want you more, and sometimes that's frustrating and sometimes it is sweet...just enjoy it and settle into your new role as mom

My idea of a good time now is silence...sleep...wine...and good food that I haven't cooked (that's a big one for me)

You may lose all the weight quickly, but getting those muscles back in shape will take a little while. Your core just went through HELL

Settle in to the chaos.

Resist the urge to play russian roulette with having another baby...now that Lyla sleeps through the night we've had some "what the hell" moments and just keep telling yourself NEWBORN, NEWBORN, NEWBORN....or NO WINE if the first mantra doesn't work

It will be difficult keeping up with non-mommy friends....they just wont understand your life and will probably pity you, and your unshowered, yoga pant-wearing exhausted self....but they'll be here eventually and then you get to be the wise older more experienced mother who wears makeup and goes to the gym regularly. So let them go to concerts and rage till the wee hours...because mommyhood is waiting for us all and when they get here, they'll know the struggle is real.

TRY to make yourself look presentable (after you hit the two month mark). You will feel much better about your life. 

There are many many more things I have learned, but my beautiful baby girl is up from her nap and mommy duty calls.

Lyla's First Trip!! 3 Months Old

It has taken me a long time to write this post. Lately, Lyla requires more attention than ever, leaving me exhausted and mentally drained during her nap times when I usually write.

Feb. 13th-17th our family made its first trip as a trio!

We went down to Naples, Florida to visit Matt's parents. We were excited and anxious, it was the first time we have taken Lyla on such a long car ride and we weren't sure how she would handle it. Thankfully we had nothing to worry about. She was a champ! We left at the ass crack of dawn...actually, it wasn't even dawn, it was 1:30am. We had planned to wait until Lyla's middle of the night feed, usually around 3am. That night however, she decided to get up and be wide awake at 1:30am so we decided to just go with it. We fed her, packed up her pack n' play and got on the road by 2am.

The drive was pretty uneventful. We had to stop a couple of times to feed and change her but mostly she slept. When we arrived the weather was great; a little cooler than expected (in fact it was record lows for Florida) but it was warmer than home so we didn't mind. We had planned to spend most of the trip by the pool, but that wasn't going to work anymore, so we improvised with one trip downtown each day. We went out to two great lunches, both times I was worried about Lyla waking up and being fussy but she surprised and impressed us all by sleeping soundly for both outings.

Our last day was the best weather-wise. It was 75 and sunny and we took full advantage by getting Lyla into the pool for her first time ever! It was so cute and exciting to see her face as we played in the kiddie pool at my in-law's community pool complex. She loved it! It was just the sort of adorable family activity I had been anticipating and dreaming of while I was pregnant.

Lyla with Grandma Mary

Lyla turned 3 months during our trip on Valentines Day! Getting so big already

To Name or Not to Name...That Was The Question

My husband was raised methodist, I on the otherhand was raised Jewish. We had a non-religious civil marriage ceremony and actually agree on all points of faith. The Jesus thing doesn't even come up. There are the occasional awkward moments when his mother says grace before a meal or my parents have us over for Shabbat dinner but other than that, in our own home, religion is never an issue.

We do a mennorah and a christmas tree and I have embraced the yule tide season with all the childhood glee barred from me as a Jewish kid on Christmas. However, we now have a three month old daughter and believe it or not, we have to make the decision now as to how she will be raised. Wehad long ago agreed to raise her Jewish. I should say "raise her Jewish" with quotation marks because my wonderful hubby didn't really have a clue as to what that meant or entailed...he just knew it was what I wanted. My parents have been suggesting a naming ceremony, which is a Jewish rite of passage where a baby girl is brought up in front of her new congregation and given a hebrew name, it is a ceremonial welcoming into the Jewish faith, much like a baptism would be for a Christian baby.

Our circumstances with our families is rocky to say the least. My parents straight up refuse to commingle with Matt's father and step-mother (there's a lot of bad history between them). So they wanted to do Lyla's naming at their temple with just my family and maybe invite Matt's other two parents. This unfortunately gave Matt and I so much anxiety that we originally decided to not do the ceremony at all.

Now, however, we both have realized that that is not an acceptable response to an awkward situation. So we are going ahead with the naming ceremony and the "raising her jewish" thing. My brilliant husband was actually the one who came up with the solution to the interfaith family issue as well as the naming ceremony. We are going to attend and become members of the Reform Jewish temple here in Charleston, not the conservative temple my parents belong to.

Reform Judaism is not how I was raised, I was raised more conservative, however, taking a step down to what I will call "Judaism-light" is just perfect for our little interfaith baby. As Matt put it, it doesn't make sense to raise our daughter how I was raised because she is completely different. She will be growing up in the South, for one, and with 90% of her family being non-Jewish. We plan to join the temple as a family and Matt will attend services with us but he will have no pressure to convert. I personally have no interest in Matt ever converting, or us raising our daughter without all the beautiful traditions of his side of the family. I think Lyla will benefit from an open and accepting upbringing that incorporates both of her parents religious backgrounds, while still "choosing a side" if you will.

This issue has caused a lot of anxiety for my husband and I and now we are on the same page and excited about joining a religious community as a whole family.

XOXO

Lisa

The New Normal (Sleeping through the night)

I haven't wanted to put this in writing out of fear but here it goes....my baby is almost sleeping through the night!!!!

Que the happy dance!!

She now goes to bed around 7pm, wakes up ONCE at 3am to eat and then sleeps until 7am. For those of you who sleep all night every night, either with some sort of miracle baby or because you have yet to have one, you have no idea how huge this is. Since Lyla was born we have been waking up 3 times a night!!! Now, out of no where and with no sleep scheduling from us she is pleasantly sleeping through the night.

HOWEVER....and this is a big however...she makes the hours of 4pm-7/8pm an absolute fucking nightmare. She screams, and when I say she screams she wails like a banshee for no reason for three straight hours. She doesn't want to be in her swing or put down. She does want to be held and rocked and walked around the house, but even that doesn't keep her quiet for long. She also does an incredible fake out. When you think she has finally taken that binky into her mouth and fallen into a peaceful slumber, she will arise from that docile state a red-faced demon-child and scream tear-filled howls at the top of her lungs.

It is hard to say which scenario is worse...a happy quiet baby who naps easily throughout the day but wakes up three times a night, or a baby that gives you a full night of sleep but makes you want to hang yourself every evening.

XOXO

Lisa

My typical Day With a 11-week-old

My baby turns 11 weeks old tomorrow. For those who don't have children or are not pregnant, once you do/are the world forever is counted in weeks.

I realize I haven't posted in a while and that is entirely because of said 11-week-old infant. Every day is a little different and we haven't quite gotten on a schedule with her yet. I have also found out that some babies are strictly regimented by their parents from birth while others, like mine, have a basic order of operations for the day that has no concrete timing.

My usual day starts at 7am with her first feed, followed by 30 minutes of awake time before she is down again for a nap. During that awake time I try to drink a cup of coffee to rid myself of the drowsy after-effects of getting little sleep the night before.There also may or may not be a massive poopy diaper at this time, but my husband handles that. He also makes breakfast which is fantastic...after all, I am providing breakfast for our baby.

After her early morning feed I try and compose an idea of what the day ahead will hold. I find out what my hard-working husband has in store for the day and add up the total number of hours I will be home alone with Lyla. I figure most of that will be feeding, changing and napping...but I also try and fit in some tummy time (which she and I both hate doing) and some time to play. Playing at this age just really means talking to her and dangling toys in front of her face. During her naps I try to get some house-work done and watch some t.v.

The real struggle comes once 4pm hits. It's called the witching hour because your sweet predictable baby turns into Satan and is hell-bent on destroying your will to live. Lyla hasn't had a bad witching hour for almost two weeks...until last night. Beginning at 4pm she cried until 9pm. She didn't cry non-stop but she cried consistantly and nothing I did could make her stop. I rocked her, I walked with her, I put her in her swing which only made her cry harder. The few moments I got her to fall asleep she would instantly wake up if her binkie fell and start screaming bloody murder. Of course at 9pm when my husband walked through the door she was finally asleep, on me, and looked like an angel. I could've hung myself right then and there.

The whole day ends with me trying to create a bed time routine of feed, swaddle, and down in her basinet with white noise. This has worked so far and she seems to understand it is night time. How long she sleeps and how many times she wakes up at night is still kind of a crap chute. Typically, however, she eats between 9-11pm and wakes up around 2am, and 6am...this varies by two hours on either direction, some nights are better than others.

And then I wake up and do it all over again. One day I will put on jeans and makeup and have full days of activities with a happy baby that sleeps through the night. But today is not that day my friends. Today...and all the days that have come before it are about survival. Today is the day to be in my pajamas until 2pm when I change into spandex to "get dressed". Today is the day to have my tits on tap and available at a moments notice. Today is the day to be covered in breastmilk and get nothing accomplished except writing a blog post.

XOXO

Lisa

She's Here!! my labor story

It turns out that all that false labor I was experiencing wasn't so useless after all! Lyla June Pontius was born on Friday November 14th, 2014 at 3:05pm and was exactly 8 days early at 38 weeks 6 days.

Matt and I went to bed around 11pm. I had been having trouble sleeping with all the pain and discomfort I had been feeling so I took an ambien to sleep. Matt took one too. I immediately fell asleep and Matt fought the slumber by playing on his Ipad. At 12:30pm I woke up from sleeping because I felt like I was leaking fluid. I turned to Matt and said "I think my water just broke". Considering that we had just been turned away from the hospital that Monday I wanted to be 100% sure before we left for the hospital again. So I put a pad in my underwear and got back in bed. Well, they told us in our prenatal class that it's your water breaking if it soaks a pad in less than an hour and after about 20 minutes and a few more gushes of liquid I was pretty certain this was the real deal. It's called a slow leak when your water breaks higher up in the amniotic sac and leaks out over a period of time (as opposed to the movie version where there is an eruption that comes at once). Anyway, we packed up our gear, which had conveniently been packed for our fake-out trip in Monday and called the doctor who told us to come in right away. Well, we had learned our lesson about rushing off to the hospital so Matt jumped in the shower  to wake himself out of the ambien haze and I got ready (did my makeup, packed my toiletries and got dressed). We then made a peanut butter banana protein smoothie and calmly left for the hospital, still a little skeptical that this was the real thing.

We got to the hospital around 2am and I was immediately checked by the nurse. They tested my cervix for amniotic fluid to make sure I had really broken my water. Well...I had! it was the real deal and we weren't leaving the hospital without a baby. At 3am they started me on Pitocin through my IV becuse my water breaking hadn't started contractions. in less than 30min contractions started and I was surprised that they didn't hurt as bad as they had on Monday (when I technically wasn't in labor). They checked my cervix and I was 3cm so we had a while to wait and they suggested I get some sleep and let them know when I was ready for pain meds. The epidural was still my biggest fear so I wanted to hold off as long as I could. I made a point to use the bathroom in those early morning hours, even managing to poop which was a huge coup because I was also worried about taking a huge dump with five people watching and my legs in the air.

So Matt and I drifted between sleep and awake until 7am when the staff switched over and the new doctor on call came to see us. we were told it could take all day so dilate fully so we were pretty much left on our own for most of the morning, listening to reggae and talking to family. Around 10:30/11am I was offered some IV pain meds that the nurse described as "like drinking a bottle of wine, you will still feel the contractions but you wont care". That sounded right up my alley so off I went to La-La-Land. In all honesty I hated whatever they gave me. There should be a street name for what it was. I felt like I was having a serious acid trip: I was out of touch with reality, I was trying really hard to stay conscious and I had this panic that I was going to forget to breathe and die. My mom got to the hospital around noon when I was 5cm dilated and right when the acid trip was subsiding and I was coming back to reality. I decided now was my moment to get the epidural...I was still kind of out of it from the pain meds and so  didn't feel a thing when they hooked me up to the epidural.

My biggest surprise during this whole labor experience was how happy and calm I was through the whole thing. I felt so at peace the whole day, it was truly an wonderful experience. I owe a lot of that to feeling no pain.

Around 2pm they checked me again and I was 8-9cm. Everyone was pretty shocked because I had progressed really quickly. The doctor said that I would be holding my baby by 3:30pm. She was right!! I got to 10cm really fast and then it was push time. I couldn't feel a thing below my belly button so they put my legs on stirrups and my mom took a leg and Matt took a leg and 7 contractions and about 15 minutes later out she came! The doctor was floored! A first pregnancy usually takes a lot longer, especially the pushing time. Pushing was hard, but I just gave it all I had during the contractions and thankfully she was a small baby.

So at 3:05pm Lyla June Pontius was born. 6lbs 12oz, 19.5" long.

The whole thing took 12 hours and was filled with calm, chill, happy vibes and I felt no pain. I couldn't have asked for a more positive experience.