Six Week Momma Reflection

Yesterday was my 6 week post-partum visit and I decided it was the perfect time to do a little reflection of my first 6 weeks as a momma...the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good...

~Nursing has gone much better than I could have hoped. Elyse caught on incredibly well and she is gaining weight like a champ! Sometimes I wish I could eat 8 times a day and it be considered a wonderful thing...ha!

~I'm grabbing sleep whenever I can. Everyone always says to sleep when the baby sleeps and it's so true! For the first month I tried to nap at least once during the day when Elyse was sleeping. Once Hubby went back to work after the first of the year I spent several days at my parents' house and I would nap while my mom would watch Elyse. Thankfully I'm getting about 8 hours of sleep each night in 2 4-hour segments...I can't ask for anything more than that!

~As of today I have lost all but 14 of the 40ish pounds I gained during the pregnancy. Thank goodness for nursing!

The bad...

~Time...seriously where do all the hours go in a day?!? I used to have these grand plans of what I might accomplish during a day...but with feeding & diaper changing & laundry & pumping..the day disappears so fast!

~So I might have lost most of my baby weight, but things definitely aren't where they should be! Now that we've got a little bit of a routine going I can start finding a little bit of time during the evenings to workout just a bit...5k in May? Maybe?

The ugly...

~Hormones, hormones, hormones! Oh my goodness, in the first few days I was seriously OUT OF CONTROL!!!! I'm not going to lie, I had my own version of PPD and it was not a fun time. I had serious paranoia...everything from not being able to produce enough milk to feed my baby to some seriously crazy ideas that my high blood pressure was going to cause me to die! Yeah, it was crazy...and definitely not the best moment in my life. Thankfully those hormones have leveled off & I'm not a crazy momma!

~Ok, so maybe that's not entirely true...there are still some days when the tears flow freely & I feel like I'm doing a terrible job of being a mom! However, I am SO blessed to have such a strong support system to lift me up and just be my shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen when I need to vent. I was certainly OCD about the details before Elyse and while I still care about the details, I have learned to relax just a little bit!

~Google. Yes, Google is horrible for a new mom. In those first few weeks I spent most of Elyse's feedings on my phone searching all sorts of stuff from poop color to sleeping patterns to my diet to infant hiccups. Let me just tell you...Google will make you even more crazy than you already are! I'm sure there was a small bit of truth in what I read, but it was consuming me! After a serious chat with my best friend & my mom, I decided to stop reading anything and to just follow my motherly instinct. That instinct seems to be serving me pretty well right now...so who needs Google!

And because no post is complete without a picture of Elyse...

Bath time for my Baby Girl with those big Baby Blues!