a schedule

i'm finally feeling like i have a schedule. of course, it will change over the next few weeks as ella starts to sleep longer at night and less during the day. but it's workable now.

i wake up with j.'s alarm and get a shower. then when elenora wakes up i feed her, burp her, cuddle, and then have alert time with her. this consists of lots of singing and rocking and looking out the window and reading Mother Goose and doing exercises and hand games. when she starts to get fussy and tired i change her diaper, feed her again, bundle her up, and take her out for a walk in the babybjorn. i'm venturing farther and farther now, and letting myself do some errands around town while i'm out. today we went to the organic store and got more Mother's Milk tea (i really think it helps a lot) and then walked to zumis for an iced latte. probably an hour long walk, and ella just slept the whole time.

people are really nice to you and want to stop you and look at the baby and make comments when you're out with a newborn. the construction men all pause their work to watch you walk by and the middle-aged mothers all want to reminisce.

when we get home from our walk ella usually wakes up when i take her out of the snuggly. so i feed her, burp her, and then help her get back to sleep with lots of rocking and singing (today i sang christmas carols). it takes her a good 45 minutes to fall asleep fully to where i can put her in her crib and go get some stuff done.

"stuff" includes running to the bathroom and drinking my latte while eating pizza while charging my phone while putting lip gloss on while checking email and writing a blog.

like i said yesterday, you have to maximize your free time.

she'll probably sleep for a couple of hours and wake up to feed around four or five. then she might stay awake or she might sleep two more hours before being awake for a three or four hour stretch at night. j. and i have discovered that she really needs good, quality one-on-one alert time in the evenings or she really has trouble getting to sleep. i think that for a few nights j. and i were giving her kind of half-hearted alert time in the evenings because we were both thinking we needed to have a break--me from being full-time mommy and j. from work in general--so all of our interactions with elenora said "fall asleep soon" and she just wasn't ready for that. this left her frustrated and made her stay awake longer. last night we really tried to give her a lot of good alert time with singing and reading poems and rocking and face-to-face time and daddy time, and she went to sleep by 10:45 and didn't fuss when i put her in the bed.

it's a lot of work and so much for the relaxing evenings of silly tv we used to have.

but when she smiles it just melts your heart. i swear she smiled at me while she was awake this morning. and there are times when she's falling asleep that she gives off this deep belly chuckle. j. thinks i'm making that up, but i've heard it about four times.

the thing i'm struggling with most is the middle of the night feeding from three to five in the morning. last night i got up and fed her (practically falling asleep over her) and when i burped her she was fast asleep and smiling. but she had a poopy diaper so i had to change her. this woke her up and made her upset, so i took her back to feed her again to see if she would fall off to sleep again. but instead of going back to sleep smiling she was suddenly wide awake and did not want to go back to bed. we were up until five in the morning and it was so tiring and i was so frustrated.

i need to not get so frustrated with her. she's not doing it on purpose.

the next feeding, at seven, i just rolled over and decided to try nursing her laying down. it sort of worked. she was able to eat and i fell back to sleep and she did eventually, too. but her latch was awful and i couldn't really get her on right because one hand was pinned and the other was in an awkward position, so my nipple is sore today.

at seven in the morning it seems worth it to not have to get out of bed again.