My take on being a mommy:

Wow, I can’t believe baby G is almost 4 weeks old already. Time has flown by! I would like to say, time flies when you’re having fun, and it has been fun mostly, but being a parent is also much harder than I thought!

The hard parts are that I haven’t had more than 4 hours sleep in almost 4 weeks at one stretch and that there are times when you just can’t go to the loo, no matter how urgently you need to, or you can’t eat until your baby allows you, and it’s happened that I’ve only had breakfast by 11h00 in the morning and by then I felt like fainting already. I’m keeping protein bars in the bedroom for when I need something to eat immediately. And I won’t even mention how difficult it is to set time aside to get a shower, and wash and dry my hair!

I also never realized that sometimes your baby does not allow you to sleep during the day. I always thought newborns slept a lot more than baby G does, and there are times when he sleeps maybe a half an hour here or there during the day, and I always assumed that I would get opportunities to nap during the day when he naps. Well, that has happened maybe every second day so far.

The other hard thing is that I’m exclusively breastfeeding, so I have to do every single feed, and that means I have to wake up every time he wants to feed. There is no break for me. But I try to console myself with the fact that it does get better with time and I must say from this week he has been sleeping a lot better. I think the breakthrough was that DH and I identified the problem, and that was that cramps have been bothering baby G a lot and keeping him awake. We weren’t very keen on giving him any medication but eventually we tried to give him some Tela.ment drops and since then he’s been sleeping a bit better, which makes a huge difference to mommy!

That was all the negative stuff, now for the good stuff: Baby G is just adorable, and quite an easy happy baby. We think he is the most gorgeous baby in the world, but I guess every parent thinks that. He loves to smile at us and when he does, we are putty in his hands. He almost never cries, only when he has really bad cramps and that is fortunately not often, or when I’m too slow to offer him a boobie.

He loves to chat and sometimes it sounds like real words. Like the first night after he was born it sounded like he said pa-pa (Afrikaans for daddy.) We joked that he is a little genius and that he said his first word already! He is also a strong baby, grabbing and holding on to all kinds of things, and it’s really difficult to get him to release his hold. He is also a strong kicker, and loves to kick one’s hands away when we change his nappies.

I knew I loved him a lot already when I was pregnant, but I must say nothing prepared me for the love I would feel after he was born. I was also surprised how protective I am of him. The second night in hospital the one nurse took him out of our room to try to get a wind out, and at the same time give me some rest, and I didn’t like that at all! DH was on the loo and when he came out I asked him to go check up on baby G at the nurse’s station. DH said that I asked very calmly and politely but my face said, “Go fetch my baby now!” Already I cannot imagine our lives without him.

Breastfeeding is going well now, but boy, o boy, I now know why so many people give up. It not easy! The first day I almost gave up, as I was totally overwhelmed and baby G did not latch easily. But fortunately there are many midwives working at Ge.nesis Clinic and they helped me a lot, and by the second day something had clicked and things were better. Every now and then Baby G still latches wrong to my right nipple and then it’s sore for a day or so, but generally he latches very well and he empties my boobies regularly.

We are actually surprised how well it is going and how much milk I am producing. Even with the operation I’ve had on my left breast, where about a third of the tissue in my breast was removed, (I admit I believed for a creative miracle here since before I got pregnant, so that I can breastfeed, and I know I received that), I’m producing more than enough milk, and that left breast is producing just as much milk as the right breast.

Baby G generally only drinks from one breast at a time, and he empties it in about 15 minutes, but in the late afternoons and early evening he is usually very hungry and he will drink so much that he will empty both breasts twice before he goes to sleep at about 20h00. After this he usually sleeps for about 4 hours and I usually also fall into bed as soon as he is asleep in the hope that I also get 4 hours uninterrupted sleep. But after that one long stretch he usually sleeps for 2 hours and then after that only for 1 hour until morning. It also usually takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours to get him to go to sleep again, depending on whether we manage a dream feed or if he wakes up completely and if he has cramps.

Baby G also doesn’t like to be swaddled. Every now and again I try again, but that usually ends up in screaming and then I remove it again. He was happy to be swaddled for only about the first week, and then we noticed that he would fight with his arms until they are free, so we swaddled him with his arms bent and his hands close to his face. That worked for another week or so and because it’s been really hot here, we didn’t swaddle him during the day and he got used to that, and now it’s almost impossible.

I know you must all be wondering what baby G looks like by now so I’ll post a few pictures for you. They were all taken by me with my phone. Hopefully we will get our professional newborn pictures in about a week’s time, then you will see some nice pictures, but until then these have to be good enough.

Advertisement