This has to be quick since I'm writing during that precious, rare and magical time in which both children are napping at once.
Some of the best baby advice I ever received was from my mother-in-law, a wonderful woman who had 13 amazing children, so she knows babies pretty well. When my husband and I went to his parents' house shortly after Diana was born, probably with haggard and desperate looks in our eyes, she told me that she always used to circle the date on the calendar one month after the baby was born. Then, in the middle of the late, tired nights and long hectic days when it seemed like things would never be the same again, she could look at the calendar and know that most of the seemingly overwhelming problems associated with having a new baby would be resolved by that day.
She was absolutely right! I've found that to be true for both of my babies. Despite bouts of mastitis, thrush, and some excruciating breastfeeding problems, I am feeling almost back to normal. Our nursing problems may be related to the fact that Liam seems unable to open his mouth quite as wide when he turns his head to his right side. That possibly accounted for our latch problems and may be something we can fix with some gentle physical therapy. In the meantime, I just switched my positioning to the "football hold" on my left side and we can now nurse painlessly. The other side just healed itself once I worked with him a little bit to train him to open his mouth wider. I realize again just what a wonderful, natural and convenient thing nursing is. Hallelujah!
Liam is a healthy growing boy. He still mostly sleeps four hours at a time, but he's starting to spend more time awake after feedings looking around and occasionally giving out precious giant baby smiles. Mostly he seems to like smiling at his daddy. Go figure. I got a daddy's girl and a daddy's boy. ;) I don't really mind. I love that our kids seem to love Joseph right off the bat.
Our biggest trouble with Liam isn't really too bad at all. He puts himself on a four hour feeding schedule, but often he wakes up to eat exactly when Diana is going to sleep- robbing me of a chance to get anything done (or, you know, sleep)- and goes to sleep just when Diana is waking up. Sleep deprivation is starting to really catch up with me, so we wanted to try massaging his natural schedule into something more convenient for us. If everything goes well, it even allows time for me to get some cleaning and personal time. We started this schedule just a couple of days ago, much later than we started with Diana, mostly because her natural schedule was a little more demanding and we needed to make her fit into our lifestyle or go completely crazy and never spend any time with each other until she was several years old. Since Liam was so reasonable, we gave him more leeway.
Of course, once we made plans, life changed. I took some allergy medicine that made Liam especially drowsy, so I had to try waking him up to feed, but he didn't seem particularly interested in eating. I tried some different allergy medicine that unfortunately had the same effect on him. At the same time, Diana and I both caught a cold that Joseph had, so now we're all just trying to catch sleep when we can. I'm getting up to feed Liam whenever he wakes up, since he sometimes sleeps for 10 hours (until the medicine passes through my system) and is ravenous when he wakes up.
Overall, colds and allergies aside, life is going well. I'm even starting to do some light working out which feels amazing! I'll post more updates about Diana and our family later.
