3 weeks

We are possibly seeing sleep patterns; Nathan is awake and very alert for about an hour around 7-8. He also seems to take a long afternoon nap and tends to have a long (3 hour ish) sleep starting around 8-9 so when he goes down then after nursing. I go to bed at that point and put him in the rock n play next to me. After that he's awake every hour looking to eat so I'm starting to move to the couch at that point. I can sleep while nursing and it doesn't disturb Dave or Neil so much. (Since I'm writing this later, ha to patterns. This only lasted a few days.)

I had my 2 week appointment. The midwife said that because I feel so good after the birth, I'm doing too much and not allowing my body to fully heal so I need to slow down. This is really hard for me. She also said though that I can pick up and carry Neil; what they don't want is me bending over to pick him up. She showed me how my ab muscles are separated (blech felt that with my hand and it was kinda gross) and gave me some tips/exercises to do to start to work on that. I guess you have to be careful because a lot of typical abdominal exercises will actually separate those muscles even further, not help put them back in place. And it turns out I might not have ever gotten them back in place after having Neil. It's not something I knew to even check or look for. Maybe this explains why running was always more rough after Neil. So I guess I need to try to take it more easy to let my body heal fully. She said it will take 6-8 weeks total, that I'm mostly back to normal but this last bit takes time too.

We gave Nathan his first real bath. He didn't cry at all and seemed to like it. We had bathed him over the sink with a washcloth and that actually made him seem to go to sleep, especially when we were washing his head/hair. I'm not holding my breath though; I'm guessing as he gets more aware he might not like baths as much.

Because of potential patterns I decided to try to use the app on my phone again. It's not 100% because Dave isn't using it so if I'm not there I'm not recording what's going on. But I started tracking sleep, feeding, and diaper changes. It looks like I nurse Nathan for 4-5 total hours over a 24 hour period. I actually nurse him about 14 times on each side; if I alternate then that's considered just one session but my app doesn't track like that. Nathan often nurses on just one side at a time and falls asleep. So those are mostly individual, although some of the times are extremely short. He does nurse in spurts- goes back and forth for an hour at a time. He still tends to nurse less than 10 minutes at a time.

We also started a bedtime routine, which now is just swaddling to show it's bedtime; then I take Neil upstairs to our room, nurse him in bed, and put him in the Rock N Play. It takes forever to get him in the Rock N Play though. He needs to be very sound asleep and that takes some time. I tend to actually doze off and when I wake up from that he seems to be asleep enough that I can transfer him. He's very loud though and that kinda keeps me up. He does seem in general to want to be held more than he did the first 2 weeks. I assume that's because he's becoming more aware. He will sleep for a longer stretch if I hold him. If I put him down he doesn't sleep as long. One night I held him the entire night and he slept for a 5 hour stretch, nursed, then slept for a 3 hour stretch. It was nice for me; I got some solid sleep with him in my arms.

I am up overall 2 pounds. Also looked at some pictures and realized I definitely still have a stomach. I thought I was pretty flat. Dave pointed out that when you're full term pregnant your stomach is pretty big so yes compared to that I'm way way down but not back to normal. I just need to have some patience, which is something I struggle with. I do weigh myself almost daily and at my lowest I was half a pound above pre-pregnancy weight! But my weight does fluctuate throughout the week.