Biophilliac Mommy: Link's first few weeks at home

Yesterday, Meo turned 28 months old, today Link turned 3 weeks old, and today was the very last day of Robbie's "paternity leave" (aka saved up vacation time). What a crazy, wonderful, emotional, joyous, intense yet relaxing three weeks this has been. Yes, I do realize some of the adjectives contradict themselves, but that simply is the nature of introducing a newborn to a toddlers world. I'm going to break it down into sections to paint a complete picture of these past few weeks. First, the easiest:

Robbie

Robbie, who is used to spending about 9 hours a day in an office, and not at all used to being home all day with a two year old, had his work cut out for him. His main goal was to make sure I was able to rest and heal after delivery before he went back to work and I had to take care of both boys by myself. Thus, he tended to do most of the cooking and cleaning, as well as spent a lot of time entertaining Mattimeo. He often got overwhelmed, and I felt bad and would start to help, which would frustrate him more because he didn't want me to get sick. Even though his task was a difficult one, he did an amazing job and I can confidently say that all three of us are so happy that he was able to be home with us these past few weeks and are going to miss him greatly when he goes back to work tomorrow.

Jasmin

Thankfully, I had an excellent birthing experience and had no tearing so recovery was pretty straight forward these past few weeks. For the first week and a half or so, I was having painful contractions every time one of the boys nursed (apparently it is common for these afterbirth contractions to increase in intensity after each child...these definitely hurt a lot more than anything I experience after Meo). I felt sore, and took my midwives advice about not going up and down the stairs...if I went up, I stayed up for a while. I spent my days nursing and bonding with Link, trying to rest/sleep when I could, and not moving around a whole lot. Last time I ended up getting mastitis (breast infection) from doing to much, and I wanted to avoid that painful experience again if I could help it. I tried to do things with Meo too, like read to him or make art. This time was very emotional for me. I think the hardest part was seeing all the changes in Meo; especially his changes towards me. Meo and I have always been extremely close, and he's always been such a great listener to me. But for those first couple weeks, he wanted to do everything with Daddy, he cried a lot, and when he was really sad he wouldn't even let me nurse him...which he pretty much never refused before. With all the hormones flooding my body, there were several occasions where I just broke down and cried; I was afraid I was losing Meo. But please be assured, as I started to heal and feel more myself again, Meo started acting more himself again and now we are as close as we always were. My relationship with Link has been off to a wonderful start. He is almost always in my arms or on my lap, I love the way he smells (actually, its the same smell Meo had), I love his little smiles, and I am surprised how easy it has been to bond with him. I had been worried that having two would take too much attention away from him and I wouldn't attach to him as strongly as I did Meo. But thanks to Robbie being home, I have been able to focus so much attention on him that I feel the same intense closeness to my baby Link as I do to his brother. Somehow, my heart has doubled in size.

Mattimeo

I think it will be easiest to break this down into two parts...the good changes and the not so good changes. First, the good:

1. Mattimeo absolutely LOVES his brother Link. He is constantly showering him with kisses (we don't ask him to do this, he just has an uncontrollable urge to kiss him), he frequently asks to hold him (which we allow), he's always very gentle when he is near him, he enjoys playing by him on his play mat, encouraging Link during tummy time, helps with bathing him, and likes to try to teach him different things.

2. Meo has also been fairly patient with me. He knows that I am healing and that I am not supposed to carry him around and that I'm supposed to be resting. Sometimes, I can tell he is about to ask me to do something active with him and he will stop himself and say "Mama needs to heal". It is sweet to hear him say this, but I am also a bit tired between pregnancy and postpartum of not being able to play with him like I used to. But I know if I am patient and take care of myself, that soon I will be back to normal and I will be able to do whatever I want with him indefinitely.

Now, the not so good:

1. He was NOT listening. Our first week home was very challenging. Our usual excellent listener suddenly didn't want to do anything we asked, and did everything we asked him not to do. It was obnoxious, and extremely difficult to remain patient with him. He started regularly bursting into tears or screaming at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. He was driving us crazy. Despite feeling irritated, we kept telling each other that he was going through a lot right now and we just needed to be patient and respond to him with kindness and calmness like always. It was our hope that if we just were consistent in the way we responded to him that he would come back to us one day. And I'm pleased to say that we are almost there. Our sweet boy has been listening again...not always...but a lot more than he was a couple weeks ago and its so wonderful. We think a lot of this challenging behavior comes not only from a new baby in the house, but also from developmental changes (aka: being two), and being cranky from teething (his canines are coming in). I've also noticed that as I've gotten my strength back and have been feeling more myself, Meo has been acting more himself too. So I think part of the reason he has been acting out is because he's not used to spending so much time with Daddy. But as things become more normal with me, he seems to be getting back into a good rhythm as well.

2. He has not been eating well. For a while, I was getting really worried. Even our go to food items, like yogurt and applesauce, were just being smeared all over the table. He was barely eating anything. I was thankful that he at least asked to be nursed so I knew he was getting some nourishment. I decided to start him on a multivitamin (which he loves so much he asks for vitamins constantly and I have to remind him he only gets one with breakfast and one with dinner). Also, he decided to stop using silverware. Fortunately, in the past few days, he's gotten slightly better about eating...though not about the silverware. He's still not eating as much variety or quantity as I would like, but we are headed in the right direction at least. Again, I think his poor mouth hurting from teething has been the main cause of this.

3. He doesn't want to go to sleep. In fact, yesterday he straight out told Robbie, "I don't want to go to sleep EVER." Sometimes we struggle for a couple hours to get him down for a nap. One day he didn't have a nap at all, just some quiet time playing by himself in his room, and he was a horrible, grumpy, crying mess that evening. Robbie has gotten in the habit of taking him for a ride on days he refuses naps, and he will fall asleep within 5 minutes of being in the car. I am worried that when Robbie goes to work this week and I don't have the car, I am going to have some issues getting him to sleep. Especially since I somehow have to be watching Link while I'm putting me to sleep. Aw well, we'll figure something out I suppose.

4. Meo would SCREAM everytime Link cried. He was so worried something was wrong with him. So every single time Link would cry or fuss, we would have to explain to Meo that the only way Link knows how to communicate he needs something is by crying and that nothing is wrong with him so that Meo would calm down. He got to the point where he was running over to Link when he started crying and telling him "It's okay! It's okay!". I'm not sure if he was trying to convince Link or himself. Now he still will cry out if Link fusses, but not nearly as often or as loud.

Link

Finally, the star of this post! Well, Link has been incredible. He is a very easy going and happy baby. He is an excellent nurser and far surpassed his birth weight within a week. He's very strong and can lift his head, and I swear to you, he almost rolled over a couple times. I think I've birthed a little Hercules. He seems to enjoy being read to and will track pictures by moving his eyes and head if I move the book above him. He loves looking at lights. Sometimes, he even enjoys making eye contact with me and we will have precious moments of staring into each others blue eyes.

We are lucky because Link is quite a bit easier than baby Meo was. Meo was an excellent nurser too, but Meo never wanted to let go of my nipple. I was pretty much his pacifier for months and months, day and night. Link will nurse for a while, and when he starts pacifying I can pop him off and he will be perfectly fine falling asleep in my arms or my lap. This makes things a lot easier for me! Link seems to enjoy tummy time, whereas Meo hated it. I heard that sometimes second babies are easier than first babies, and this seems to be the case this time. But I have a hunch that a lot of it has to do with me being more confident and being experienced this time too.

Right now, Link spends most of his time sleeping, nursing or in a happy alert state. He rarely fusses. But for about three days, Link suddenly got very fussy and would scream everytime I nursed. This is because I have an oversupply of milk (this happened with Meo as well), so everytime he nursed I was basically drowning the poor guy. He would gasp for air and get huge air bubbles inside him and need to be burped. He would want to comfort nurse, but my milk would flood his poor little mouth. Fortunately, have had gone through this before, I knew a few tricks. I've been "block nursing", meaning I have him nurse on just one side for several hours before we switch sides. The idea is I confuse my body into thinking it needs to produce less milk. I have also been nursing him either on my side or in a recline position to lessen the force of milk flowing into his little mouth. These methods have been working wonderfully, and today my flow seems almost back under control and we only had one or two crying at the breast incidents (as opposed to 100).

Another thing to note is that poor Link had a blocked tear duct, which is apparently common. It got a little infected though which caused his eye to darken like a bruise and it looked like he got punched in the eye. It was awful. The doctor gave me an eye ointment that I had to apply 4 times a day for a week, and it made his eye as good as new rapidly...thank goodness.

Finally, Link really is an excellent sleeper. At first, we were putting him in the cosleeper for part of the night. But I was having a difficult time with this. Since Meo never would go in the cosleeper, no matter how much we tried, Meo ended up staying in our bed with us. Now, I feel like I'm not bonding as much with Link or that he's too far away when I put him in the cosleeper...which doesn't really make sense since he's literally inches away and I can keep my arm on him still. Nonetheless, this overwhelming feeling of sadness at having him in the cosleeper was keeping me up at night and making me a wreck. At some point, Link decided that he no longer wanted to stay asleep in the cosleeper by himself so we tried swaddling his arms. This made me feel weird too, but I was willing to try. But this tactic didn't really work either, and it got to the point where Link only wanted to sleep next to me in the bed...so we took down the cosleeper and put up the bed-rail. I've been so much happier since we made this decision, and have been able to get over my fear of hurting him somehow (our doctor scared me into wanted to try the cosleeper). I feel safer with him right next to me, and we are sure to follow all the safety guidelines for safe bed-sharing.

Link is such a great baby, that Robbie and I even felt brave enough to take him into a movie theater with us. My mom watched Meo so that Robbie, Link and I could get out of the house and go see "Catching Fire" (the second Hunger Games movie, based on a trilogy that Robbie and I read together last year). Link slept on my lap or nursed the entire movie and didn't make a peep. He was wonderful, and it was fun to go on a date.

Now for an insane amount of photos from our first three weeks, enjoy: