It’s taking me forever to compose a post in the bits and pieces of time I have available. Therefore, you get a photo. Sidd was a little over a week old when this one was taken. That was about a month ago. What?! I can’t believe a month has passed since then. Time is definitely going faster now that we’re settling into a little bit of a routine. The routine usually consists of: eat, alert playtime, cranky time, sleep, and repeat. Usually. Newborns aren’t much for schedules and predictability.

The good news is that since this photo was taken we’ve gotten him to return to breastfeeding by way of a nipple shield, thanks to the lactation consultants at Good Samaritan Hospital. He’s starting sleeping a little longer at night. For a couple of nights it was six hours straight, but now it’s down to four or five, which is still decent at this point. We’re not sure if his fussiness and crying has gotten better or if we’ve just figured out what he needs to feel calm. We are now family-free and so far managing to do it on our own! Yay! We’ll probably still ask friends for help here and there, but it’s nice to be able to handle most things on our own and to have more quiet time with Sidd, and each other.

Sidd has made tremendous progress as well. His skin is no longer peeling off like a nasty full-body sunburn. He’s growing like those toy sponges you stick in water to watch them expand. His neck control, which was surprisingly strong from the beginning, continues to improve so he is now able to lift his head and face it in the opposite direction while laying on his belly without acting really cranky about it. Best of all, he’s smiling! I was sure it was just gas at first, but they’re really starting to seem deliberate and mostly unrelated to activity in the bowels.

I’m hoping to get some of the craziness of the first couple weeks posted so I can be well informed if we ever decide to do this again. It probably wouldn’t hurt for my readers to have an honest account of what life with a newborn is really like either. 😉

How long did it take for you to feel less panicked after your first child was born?