One Month with Kate
As I write this post, baby Kate is exactly 4 weeks old. And wow did time fly! One month into motherhood, and I already understand the “where did the time go?!” sentiment you hear so often from parents. She’s growing and changing every day. It’s a THRILL to watch. 🥰
Before I gush about the baby, I want to talk about our transition into parenthood and how that’s been going.
Adjusting to life as a new mom has gone smoother and been easier than I anticipated, to be honest. I think that’s because - mentally - I had prepared myself for the worst. At 32 years old, I’m a little on the older side to be having my first kid (at least by southern standards). Almost all my girlfriends are on baby number 2 or 3. Fortunately for me that means I’ve had the opportunity to watch them transition into parenthood and have heard about their various challenges (postpartum depression, breastfeeding struggles, marriage and friendship shifts, sleep deprivation, etc.). A few of them had especially rough starts entering motherhood, and even though I didn’t think that would be the case for me, I did prepare myself for that possibility. Anyway, these past few years I’ve been soaking up their wisdom, and because of that, I feel like I had pretty realistic expectations that having (referring to labor and delivery here) and caring for a newborn baby would be extremely challenging.
I guess what I’m saying is because I prepared for the worst, things really haven’t been too bad! 🤷🏻♀️
(On a side note since I mentioned it above… labor and delivery wasn’t a bad experience for me either. Most importantly, we were blessed to not deal with any kind of complications. 🙏🏻 I’m not going to share my birth story because honestly that’s too much sharing for me. I’ll just sum things up and tell you that we decided to do a scheduled induction at 39 weeks (yes, by choice) which was amazing and 10/10 would recommend an epidural. 😂 I wanted to mention these decisions specifically because sometimes society looks down on them. Soapbox: YOU are the CEO of your birth, so do what YOU want and to hell with other people’s opinions. 💃🏻 Finally, my husband was incredible. 💯 Birth was such a cool experience for me, and I feel like a total badass having been through it. 💪🏻)
Okay back to where I left off above. And this is something that has been KEY for me. Because I listened to my girlfriend’s experiences and applied them to my own lifestyle and what I know about my personal strengths and weaknesses, I decided two things before I even got pregnant that have made this transition way easier.
I made the choice up front not to breastfeed.
We would absolutely be hiring a night nanny.
Obviously, the decision whether or not to breastfeed is an extremely personal one so I’d never try to talk someone out of doing it who felt strongly in favor, but for me personally and our family’s lifestyle, this was the right decision for us. I won’t get into the details of my decision-making process in this post, but I do plan on writing about my choice not to breastfeed at some point in the near future. 👍🏻 And obviously hiring a night nanny is more just a matter of resources and financial priorities. We’re incredibly blessed to be able to have one (we have two at the moment, actually 😬). I’m a person who values my sleep, and honestly, I need more than 8 hours to be high functioning. My husband is the same way. I’ll talk more about our experience with the night nanny in a subsequent post as well! I feel like people may be curious about how that situation works, so if you have questions, let me know and I’ll answer them in the post.
Fortunately, I haven’t dealt with anything too bad hormonally speaking. (I did have my placenta made into pills and have been taking those, for what it’s worth! 💊) In fact, I feel better mentally and hormonally now than I did while I was pregnant. A week after I gave birth, I told David that I felt like a fog had been lifted. Looking back on it, I had a harder time during my pregnancy than I admitted to myself. I was very much just trying to get through it!
The only fear I did have entering motherhood was simply a matter of personal timing for David and me. Kate was born smack dab in the middle of our busy season. 😩 While this doesn’t impact me as much anymore since I went part-time, my husband is very much in the thick of it. In fact, the two weeks following Kate’s birth were the busiest, most insane work has ever been for him his entire career (if you know him, this is saying something!). I knew he’d need to go back to work right away, so I was apprehensive about being alone with baby all day and worried it would be isolating for me. But between friends coming over to visit and family helping out, it was no problem! And busy season ends one week from today, so we’re almost in the clear! 🙌🏻
Okay. I’ve gone on for longer than intended about me and David… I’ll cut myself off here and move on to what’s been happening with Nugget (her nickname). 😊
Thankfully, Kate has been a pretty “easy” baby so far (despite the picture you see above 😅). We haven’t had to deal anything other than gassiness. She has had a few “bad” days and a couple restless nights because of “immature gut”, but it seems like she’s learning to deal with it. I’ll admit than during those few bad days (which were all in a row at like the 2.5-3 week mark), some fears creeped in that she might have colic. As it turns out that was just me venturing into worst case scenario mode! As my dad put it, “sometimes babies cry, that’s what they do”.
Beyond the gas, she’s super strong for her age and does a great job holding up her neck. In fact, the doctor warned me “whoa! you need to keep an eye on her she’s strong!”. Our nanny says Kate’s neck strength rivals her 3 year old boy which is honestly crazy to me, but that’s what she said! 💪🏻
I’ve been taking her on walks around the block in the stroller, and she really seems to enjoy it. It’s springtime, so it does seem like being outside has given her some allergies, but it’s nothing the saline spray hasn’t immediately solved. 🌱 Plus, “they” say exposing kids to allergies at this age is good for their immunity so it’s not keeping us inside! 🌤️
As far as who she looks like… when she first came out David and I both thought she looked like my dad’s side of the family. I totally thought I was going to have a mini-me! Then as the days went by, she started to look more and more like David. I still think she looks more like David, but I’m starting to see some of my features come through. Especially when her eyes are open. She really does change daily though. It’s fun to watch! 💕
She’s got stork bites between her eyes and up her forehead, on her right eye, and on the back of her head. She’s got blue eyes right now and what I would describe as brown hair. 💙 Except sometimes it looks strawberry. We actually thought we might have a ginger baby on our hands for a while there, but her hair does seem to be growing in a light brown color (with a little strawberry tinge). 🍓 And her hair hasn’t fallen out, which everyone said it would so I’m THRILLED it hasn’t so far! She also came out with some milia, but that’s starting to fade away now. 👶🏻
Sometimes she shakes her head back and forth like an ANIMAL when taking a bottle which is hilarious. I can get her to burp pretty good now and am starting to learn what all her cries mean. She LOVES to be held, which we obviously don’t mind. 🤗 Just today she made eye contact with me for the first time and it was SO cool! She also likes to be stretched which is adorable to watch. And, like all babies I’m sure, she makes the sweetest little noises. She hates the doctor’s office, but who doesn’t? 👩🏻⚕️ She’s almost always fussy between 6 and 9pm and doesn’t sleep well during this stretch, which we’ve learned is a phenomenon common in babies referred to as “the witching hour”. 🧙🏻♀️ Apparently she’ll grow out of it (usually by 4-6 weeks, our night nurse said).
We’ve already got her on a schedule of eating every 3 hours (which she’s been able to do since day 1) and her bedtime is 7pm. She’s obviously not sleeping through the night yet, but we started sleep training her today! 👏🏻 We’ll be in the thick of that training over the next 3-4 weeks. The goal is to get her sleeping 12 hours by 12 weeks, and I feel confident we’ll be able to do it.
We’ve already scheduled an appointment to get her passport and can’t wait to take her somewhere fun this summer. ✈️ We’re thinking maybe Mexico because the plane ride wouldn’t be too long (for our first trip) and it’s a similar time zone, but TBD. We want to get her used to traveling at a young age… it’s something we’ve talked about extensively and are prioritizing. 🌎
So far she’s met all three sets of grandparents (Jefe and Honey, Tillie and Hoop, Chute and Pa), her cousins (Preston, Colin, Summer & Grace), both of her aunts (Daniella and April) and two of her three uncles (Chris and Bryan), her great aunt (my Aunt Lisa) and great grandmother (my grandmother Naggy), her first cousins once removed aka her “aunts” (my cousins, Aunt Lulu and Abby), and so many of our friends and neighbors. ❤️
The last thing I want to talk about (promise) is how amazing it’s been to see Kate bond with her dad (I actually tear up in real life talking about it! 😭 #feels). When I was pregnant, David was really hoping for a boy, and it took him a while to accept reality that we were having a girl. Fast forward to a few days ago… he professed he’d be more than fine having all girls. 🤣 HA! Already such a girl dad! 🎀 Yesterday he told me, “No one is going to mess with her! She will be a force to be reckoned with!”. Except he used a different 4-letter word but this is a PG-13 blog. LOL! Be careful what you wish for, Dad…
David was actually the first one to feed her about an hour after she was born, and he told me he felt an instant connection. The next day he said “I just love this little thing so much!”. ☠️ They bonded right away! In fact, he was so cute with her I decided we’d go with his first choice of name over mine (obviously I love the name Katherine, too!). Before work got too crazy, he would feed her at 6am before he left to head downtown, and he tries his best to get home before bedtime at 7 (though a lot of nights lately that’s been impossible). He’s definitely been hands on! In fact, when Kate was 2 weeks old I caught a wicked cold. Thankfully my worst 2 days were on the weekend so he took care of EVERYTHING. He’s just been awesome, and I can’t wait to see their relationship develop in the years ahead. 🥰
If you’re still reading this, I’m super impressed. This sort of turned into me writing down as much as I possibly could so I don’t forget a thing! Sorry, not sorry though. The best part about having this blog is I’ll be able to look back at old posts and remember these early days of motherhood, so thanks for indulging me. I can’t wait to see what the next month holds! 😚