Mar

Today is the first day of the rest of my life…well, that’s a *little* extreme, I guess! %-) Yesterday I went to the doctor for my post-op/post-partum checkup, and received a clean bill of health. I can now safely resume all of my regular activities – Craig is *very* pleased!!!

I am still supposed to take it easy in terms of driving, and also I am still not supposed to do high-impact exercise; but both of these are really just a matter of comfort, not a medical reason. I continue to be surprised at how much tenderness and soreness there is around the incision. I really expected it to be all healed by now. The doctor said it could take 3 months for the pain to go away completely. Kathi (Craig’s sister, for those of you who don’t know her) had a c-section with one of her kids, and she agrees that the pain lasts a long time. She says you finally just get used to being in pain all the time, and then finally after months pass, you wake up one day and realize it’s gone. Sigh…

It is true that driving causes more discomfort than other things, especially since I have a stick shift in my car. I am going to have to drive, though, since the next academic quarter starts on Friday, and so it’s back to work for me…

I have really mixed feelings about leaving Sami. She will be staying home with Craig for the time being – we have decided to trade off days until she’s about 5 months old, and then put her in daycare before stranger anxiety sets in. This works for us since we each only have to go into our offices 2 or 3 days per week, and can work at home the rest of the time. Anyway, I have been starting to go a little stir crazy being at home virtually 24/7 for five weeks, so it will be good to go back to my “normal” life (as if such a thing is *really* possible post-baby! %-). But I worry that she will start liking the bottle better than nursing, that she will achieve all her milestones while I’m gone, etc. I guess this is a good example of MBD!

Okay, time to go feed my baby…

  

Mar

I guess it’s about time for Daddy to check in again!

For me, the big news right now is that Sami has a really nice social smile! Kind of makes the fatigue all worthwhile. In fact, sometimes it looks like she is so delighted to see either me or Leslie that she tries to laugh. It doesn’t seem like she has enough control of her vocal chords yet to actually laugh, but the effort on her part is *reallY* appreciated.

All in all, Sami continues to be a delightful baby. About 90% of the time she acts very happy and content, and about half of the rest of the time, she is fussing because she is either hungry or needs a new diaper — both of which are easy to fix. More interesting is that last 5% of the time, when she seems to be fussy because she is *very* tired, but *determined* not to go to sleep. It seems like she really likes to hang out with us, and doesn’t want to miss anything by falling asleep. From our fatigued perspective, this seems down right demented! A cute aspect of this is that often just before she goes to sleep she will fuss some, let out a couple of really loud cries, like she is very agitated and distressed, and then …. konk — solidly out.

I am back at work now, and this has been a busy week, as folk who missed me the past month want to get their piece of me! So, I am feeling lots of time-pressure right now — which with no sleep is a *wonderful* combination. After tomorrow, it looks like things will settle down some, so perhaps I can settle into a more workable long-term work routine! Let’s hope!

  

Mar

I’m back! Long time, no blog. I have a good excuse, though – a beautiful, sweet, loving, lovable, challenging, wonderful baby girl!!! A baby girl who will be 3 weeks old tomorrow – WOW! It is hard to believe – the time is just flying by.

I won’t try to detail all that has happened in the last 3 weeks here, since I don’t know how much time I will have before the phone rings, the UPS man comes, the baby wakes up…you get the idea. However, for those who are interested, I have put our birth story and an annotated list of Sami’s milestones up on our web site.

Speaking of the web site – we now have our own domain name! We are very excited. The Brinkster service has been good to us (large storage allotment, it’s free, and there are no ads); unfortunately, they are now pushing everyone toward their pay service and so the free service essentially sucks now. For days at a time, we will be unable to login to update the page, etc. So, I took the plunge and registered a domain name for us. Now I have no excuses for not updating the page regularly! %-)

On a more substantive note, today was a very big day for Sami and me. We spent the *whole day* by ourselves! This is actually the second time we have been by ourselves for a long period of time, but the first time she was only a week old and we were both exhausted so we slept the whole day. Today, Craig had to go to Nashville to pick up Aaron anyway, so he agreed to a couple of meetings as well – even though he is on leave right now! (I can’t ride him too much about this, though, because he did get my permission ahead of time! . Then, after picking up Aaron, he had to go with him to a basketball banquet for the 5th grade basketball team at Aaron’s school. They all got trophies, which Craig and I both thought was kind of funny since they only won one game. When we were kids, you didn’t get trophies just for participating! But, this seems to be a yuppie-parent kind of thing – always make the kids feel good. Craig and I have a lot to learn about how to be good yuppie parents!

Anyway, I was worried about today, because I’m still adjusting to this being a new mom thing. For the first couple of weeks, I would kind of panic every time she cried – I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to figure out what was wrong with her, and that even if I did, I surely wouldn’t be able to fix it! But I am getting a lot more comfortable with her now. We actually had a really great day today. She is becoming more and more social by the day, and she likes to stay awake and play more now, instead of just eat-sleep-eat-sleep-eat-sleep. We even did our Shabbat candle-lighting service together, and she loved looking at the candles.

Well, that’s enough for now – Daddy is home now and he wants his girls to pay attention to him! More later…hopefully not three weeks later this time, but I can’t make any promises. This mom thing is hard!