Over the past month

The last month has been filled with adjusting to and enjoying life with a newborn.  We've had family make trips in town to visit and share in our joy.  We've been blessed to have a months worth of meals provided to us by our family and friends.  But now our family is gone, the meals have stopped, and it's time to settle into some sort of normalcy and routine with our little family.

Noah is doing well, growing and changing by the day.  He's not the same quiet baby that he was for the first two weeks.  He's taken to some crying and screaming, normally a few hours a day, and always in the evening or at night.  Him and I normally get up 1-2 times a night to nurse, and then we sleep in until about 9 am as a result from getting up during the night.  Some days we even manage to squeeze in an afternoon nap together.  Other than being awake for his feedings Noah generally sleeps all night, morning and afternoon... it's exhausting growing so much, and he needs to save up his energy for his evening screaming sessions.

Noah is still in disposable diapers... his legs are so skinny that our cloth diapers leak on him.  We are trying to fatten him up so that we can make the switch to cloth only.

I've been working some exercise back into my routine, and have gone for several walks of 3-4 miles, and have made two trips to the gym, where I was able to ride the eliptical machine for 45 minutes.  My body feels like it is slowly starting to return to it's pre-pregnancy shape and size, but it can't happen soon enough for me, and it seems like this is going to be a long process.

Jeremy and I have ventured out of the house without our little one several times now for a coffee date, trips to the gym, and a dinner date.  We are super grateful to have family nearby that loves to watch our son.  We didn't even spend much of the time that we were out talking about Noah, as I feared he might steal all of our conversation going forward.

All is going well, and we are loving our time together as a family.  The hardest thing for me currently is to have confidence in our decisions and choices.  Everyone seems to have an opinion about everything having to do with babies... from feeding, to scheduling (or lack there of), to how to handle when they cry, to sleeping and so on, everyone has an opinion based off of their own experience/ feelings, and I feel like I am constantly being judged and evaluated on what I do, and then I question what I do.  I need to learn to be confident that I know my son, know what is best for him, and how to gently and graciously let all of the opinions roll off of my back.

That's all for now, but I'll leave you with a few pictures from the last two weeks.

Shannon