Sofia: Three months

Dear Sofia,
Today you are three months old! How fitting that the three month anniversary of your birth falls on Thanksgiving. You are what I am most thankful for. You bring me such joy everyday just knowing you, seeing you smile, and watching you grow. You are a beautiful child.

You have grown so much! I love kissing your little thunder thighs. You make your daddy and me work for your smiles sometimes, but I don't mind. All the silly voices and faces are worth your beautiful bright smile.

This month you started daycare, which was incredibly difficult for me. You seem to be doing well and get happy faces on your activity sheets everyday. Miss E says you never cry. Daddy feeds you a bottle of breastmilk every morning and drops you off at daycare after I leave for work. Sometimes I visit you during lunch to breastfeed you and just hold you and smell you and love you. I pick you up at the end of the day and bring you home to spend a few precious hours with you.

When I bring you home, I read to you and help you practice rolling over, sitting up, and grabbing at things. Yesterday you rolled over all on your own, and now there is no stopping you! You love to roll! You love seeing the world from this new angle. Even in your bouncy seat, you try to roll. Everyone is very impressed with your new rolling abilities.

Tomorrow morning we head out to San Antonio for Thanksgiving at your Aunt Jessica's. You'll see your grandparents and most of your aunts and uncles. Mommy should be asleep because we still have to pack a lot of stuff and wake up around 6 am, but I wanted to be sure that I told you how very special you are on this day. I am so truly thankful for you, Sofia. You are the single most wonderful thing in my world. Always know that I love you.

Love,
Mommy

Milestone

I "worked from home" today. Yes, my day consisted of doing a little work and hanging out with my baby for a large part of the day. I loved it! I loved not wasting an hour of my day driving to and from work. I loved eating breakfast in my house and not having to get my coffee on the outside because of my mad rush out of the house. I loved sleeping in a little later. I loved that Robert felt relaxed because he didn't have to rush to get the babe ready for daycare. And most of all I LOVED being able to see my sweet Sofia all day long!

Sofia ROLLED over today! She started showing signs of this increased mobility over the past few days. She would roll on her side and stay there. Then I started giving her a nudge while she was doing it on her activity mat. She would roll over onto her belly and look around. But today, folks, she did it all on her own! And once she did it, there was no stopping her. She wants to roll in her pack and play, on her changing mat, everywhere! She is so cute too. She throws her whole body into it and gets really excited once she's on her belly.




As soon as Robert got home, I had to show him! And I think she's rolling early too! I can't wait to show my little love off!

Happy

This week my manager gave me the okay to work from home. Limited, of course. I'm going to play it by ear and only work from home on the days I don't have any meetings planned or don't physically have to be present for work, but I think it'll work out well. I am soooo excited about this new development! This means I can be with my Sofia a little more!

I am also happy that I made it through my full second week back at work. Pumping is getting easier. It's just a fact of my life now. It will be tough sometimes, but I think I can do it for Sofia's first year. I just have to keep telling myself that I have to and that Sofia is getting all kinds of benefits because of it.

I went to visit her at her daycare twice this week and breastfed her. It sucks that it's so far, but this is yet another inconvenient hurdle, and something I can work around. Seeing her brightens up my day, so it's totally worth it.

I'm excited that the holidays are right around the corner and that we get to see family.

And right now I'm just excited that it's Friday night (Saturday morning) and I don't have to get up early tomorrow!

Daddy's Little Angel

I couldn't help myself. I tried to resist, but I just had to post this photo.

The Joys of Motherhood

Sofia pooped a giant explosive one this morning. It leaked through her onesie and onto my shirt and shorts. It even got on my foot somehow. Gross. Then? as I changed her I allowed her to air dry a little and carried her over to her daddy to show him how cute our naked little baby is...and THEN she proceeded to pee on me.

Lately

Well, I managed to get through my first full week of work. I haven't had much time to do anything though. My days are FULL. I wake up and try to feed Sofia before I rush off to work. She doesn't always want to eat either if she's already eaten around 5 or 6 am. The 7 am feeding I try to force on her doesn't always go over well. She usually stays asleep. Then I rush off to work ( I find myself driving 80 mph every morning thinking, "the earlier I get there, the earlier I can leave..."). Then I rush through my work somehow fitting three pumping sessions in so I can have milk for my baby's next day. At the end of the day I rush over to her daycare (a good 20-minute drive without traffic, so more like 25) to pick her up, try to feed her bit before we begin our other long drive home. Then I feed her properly when we get home, play with her and pay as much attention as I can to her (trying not to allow my attention get sucked in by the television), try to shove a sensible dinner down my throat. I bathe her with Robert's help if he's not working late, then we put her to bed (usually by 10 pm). Then I fix Sofia's bottles for the next day, shower, iron my clothes, and fall into bed to do it all over again the next day. I also try to lay out clothes for her to wear to daycare because you've all seen how Robert dresses her.

I keep hoping I will get used to this routine and it will get easier.

The whole daycare thing has been especially hard on me, as you all know. Everytime I pick her up she's in the swing. I know they aren't giving Sofia the kind of attention I give to her when I'm with her. The kind she deserves. When I picked her up for the first time I cried. The magnitude of it all just hit me: Someone else has my child all week. Oh, sure, I get her at nights and on weekends, but it hardly feels like anything. I know one thing: I will cherish every moment I have with her. At least she gets to be home with her dad on Fridays. And he drops her off every morning. That would be especially hard for me.

On Thursday Robert was driving Sofia to daycare and was almost there when he realized he forgot her bottles at home and had to drive all the way back. He said he'd never make that mistake again. I'm glad he was able to have a few days with Sofia alone and that he's taking care of her every Friday. It makes me love him more knowing that he enjoys the time he has with her. And I love that he now knows he has to wake up before the baby if he wants to shower, brush his teeth, or make coffee before her 11 am nap. I did not enjoy coming home the other day to a poop diaper he forgot to close up and throw in the trash, but he's getting better.

On another note, I had an especially dreadful visit to my ob/gyn on Wednesday. She wanted to do my annual. I waited forever until she finally saw me. When she finally came in I had leaked milk all over the paper gown I had to wear. It wasn't pretty.
Then I didn't have money for the parking garage (I usually park off-street and use the meters, but the whole street was torn up with construction), which cost me 6 bucks for less than two hours! The only good news was that I lost three more pounds! So I have seven pounds to go to get to my weight at my first doc's visit of the pregnancy. I don't really know what my prepregnancy weight was, since it was around the holidays and I wasn't really weighing myself much then. I was busy eating.

I apologize for another mopey post. It's just how I feel all the time. I either feel sad or stressed or both. I swear, most days I feel like my brains are scrambled trying to remember all the things I have to do. I feel like my house will perpetually be a disaster. It seems like I just can't get ahead with the cleaning. It just keeps piling up because I'm too tired to do any of it. This motherhood thing is no joke. Did anyone see that ABC news thing the other day about motherhood making women smarter? That was kind of neat. I'd post a link to it if I could find it. Frankly, I feel like it's made me dumber, but I don't know...

I'm so happy I don't have to work tomorrow and that I can relax with Sofia all night and tomorrow...

This is how my daddy dresses me

GUILT

I started back at work on Thursday. It was sooooo hard leaving Sofia in the morning. I made sure her diaper bag was packed and had clothes out for Robert to dress her in in case they went out. I just wanted to kiss her and kiss her and kiss her. She was still sleeping when I left. Robert assured me he would take good care of her.

Then, of course, my first day back was a lot of nothing. I spent most of the day cleaning out my email inbox. The only worthwhile thing I felt like I did was pump breastmilk. This pumping thing, while not hard, will still be a challenge, especially with my days getting busier as time goes on. First, he mother's room is way across the building for me. Then it's a first come, first served type thing so sometimes it's occupied when I show up. And I either have to wait until that person is done (and if they just started it will be a good fifteen minutes) or trek back across the building and trek back for a few minutes. It sucks. Then the pumping is relatively easy, but the cleanup part sucks. The Medela pump in style has all these parts that need to be cleaned after you pump, and there is no sink in the mother's room, so I have to trek back to my part of the building, go to the break room and clean the parts as best I can, then go back to my desk to lay the parts out to dry. All this and still try and get through my day of meetings and regular work. The building that I work in is off-site the actual center where most of the employees reside, so I often have to drive to meetings anyway. This pumping three times a day will definitely be a challenge...I thought about buying extra parts to bring to work for pumping (so I wouldn't have to wash as many things), but that's just more shit I would have to lug around, and the pump and my purse is plenty!

The weird thing is, work actually feels like a vacation compared to taking care of Sofia. And I feel incredibly guilty about this. I spend all day reading email and reviewing stuff and working on projects, with the occasional bullshit session here and there. Sofia requires much more attention and time. I actually had energy to clean up some when I got home from work. But then all I wanted to do was hold my baby. So I have all these mixed feelings. Robert was great taking care of her, but how will I feel when we have to leave her with the daycare people? I feel so much guilt and sadness about this.

I bought more clothes and shoes yesterday. I'm still stuck buying bigger sizes which sucks. Even buying shoes is trickier. I have to buy a half size bigger than what I'm used to.

I'm also going a little crazy because, since I returned to work, I have been trying to nurse my baby as often as she wants because I don't want her to start rejecting me for the bottle, which she now gets three times a day with the exception of weekends. Well, the past few days she hasn't wanted to nurse much in the middle of the night (I had been nursing her lying on my side and half asleep when she would wake up), and my breasts are painful and feeling like they are about to burst in the morning. Is she just "sleeping throught the night" now or is there a problem? Also, even when she nurses in the evening she acts frustrated at the boob sometimes. All this just since I've gone back to work. It's a bit frustrating for me.

I really wish I could just be with her all the time. At least I have all day with her today...