6 Weeks

6 weeks in, and I think the haze is starting to lift a bit. Just in the last week, I've felt like we have a bit more of a handle on things and I'm starting to enjoy this whole motherhood thing a lot more (and that's conveniently ignoring the really rough day we had on Monday, when I dared mention to Ryan that the crying seemed to have lessened and then Josie cried for most of the evening despite employing our nuclear weapons of nursing and walking). Josie has started to have much more awake time that doesn't involve nursing and/or crying, and also started to track objects much more. Now that she's smiling a lot more too, the whole relationship with her is starting to feel more interactive :)

Despite our intentions to not take her out of the house until she was anywhere from 2 months to 6 years old (depending on the destination), we've actually been on quite a few public excursions. She has now visited both of our offices, and luckily she was a good baby and slept most of the time at my work rather than repeating the poo blowout she had at Ryan's work. We've also taken her out to a few restaurants now, and while she's only made it through one meal so far without crying (which was lovely - I had barbecue with a friend, and we actually were able to have a leisurely lunch and then talk for a while afterwards, while Josie was peacefully sleeping in her wrap), we're getting a lot better at reacting more efficiently to her - so less "what should we do?!" and more "I'm going to nurse her for a bit, then you can take her outside for a while if she's still crying."

I've also been surprised at how much I've been craving social interaction - specifically, social interactions with people I can talk to about baby stuff. So since I'm on leave for another 6 weeks, I figured I might as well go to every La Leche League meeting in the area (which is four a month), as well as a weekly Mom & Baby group at the hospital, and I'm also trying to find some other groups in the area to join for meetups. So far, I like the LLL meetings the most, although the topic is more narrow (breastfeeding) than the general moms group. But there are a few regulars who I really like (including a couple from our childbirth classes), and the meetings I've been attending don't seem as militant as I've heard some LLL groups can be. I think it's also good for me to just get out of the house with Josie, since each outing that we make it through, I feel a little more confident in my abilities to be able to handle her on my own without it being a complete disaster.

We think Josie is likely in the midst of her 6-week growth spurt too. We had weighed her last week on our scale, and it showed that she was up to 12lbs now, and she was measuring about 22" long (up from 10lbs 3oz at her 2-week appointment and 20.1" at birth). So after the aforementioned rough day on Monday, she then proceeded to sleep pretty much all day on Tuesday and Wednesday - sleeping from midnight to 10:15am on Tuesday (waking up twice to nurse), and from 1:00 to 11:30am on Wednesday (waking once to nurse), and then still taking little catnaps after each feeding and 4 hour+ naps in the afternoons. Last night she slept from midnight to 11:00am (waking up once to nurse), although she hasn't been quite as sleepy and she's been nursing more during the day, so I expect she'll stop sleeping through the night again pretty soon. It was nice while it lasted, though!