Category: Miss Leyba

It’s night time, silly. Time to sleep!

Why sleep at night when you can sleep during the day?

Naptime

We seem to still be on our pregnancy sleep schedule: up all night on Friday, then sleep through the night (and all the evening breastfeeding sessions) on Saturday, then up all night on Sunday, then sleep (we hope) on Monday. Repeat. Over and over again. We used to joke when the little one was in utero that our baby was going to keep to this schedule once she was born. And she has.

Please, start formulating the sympathy comments.

It actually isn’t that bad. We are getting great nights of sleep every other day. And even on the nights when she’s up, we manage to get around 5-6 hours of sleep in short bursts (the key is getting into bed early and sleeping for a few hours before she wakes up at, say, midnight!). Thank goodness for co-sleeping. We can at least sleep during those feeding sessions.

Naptime

Part of the challenge with Miss Leyba’s sleep schedule is that she’s now up for longer stretches of time. For the first three weeks or so, she’d only be up for an hour or two, whereas now she often stays up for 3-5 hours at a stretch (usually twice a day). She has also been finishing up a growth spurt so she is no longer up and feeding every hour. (Yes, that was a fun few days. My nipples are still recovering… Actually, I loved all the extra time with her.) Unfortunately, last night her awake stretch was from around midnight until 5 this morning. (David and I took turns with her while the other one slept. Or tried to sleep.) We love the extra awake time with our peanut, but we need to figure out a way to have those awake periods be at more reasonable times of day.

We’ve tried to wake her up every hour or few hours during the day, but all she is interested in is feeding and going back to sleep. And none of the standard baby waking techniques seem to work (undressing, cool washcloths, loud music, vertical positions, etc.). The best way for her to stay awake is for her to gulp lots of air while breastfeeding so that she has tremendous burps and spit up and tummy troubles that keep her up. And truthfully, we wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone our little girl. Of course, being a baby who is a voracious eater and can empty my breast in ten minutes flat, this is a frequent occurrence. Hence the five hour stretch of awake time last night. Thank you to Harvey Karp for giving us the techniques to at least make the awake time fairly quiet and pleasant.

Growth spurt

Someone is in the process of jumping up into the next clothing size!
Getting big
3-6 month clothing is beginning to fit and her 0-3 month sized clothes are getting quite tight (thankfully most of the organic clothing we have is sized for 0-6 months and still fits!). I better start unpacking and washing the next round of clothes! (In a related note, I’ve updated and added more gift ideas to our baby gift wishlist.)

Our little squirt is in a growth spurt! We didn’t think it was possible, but she’s eating even more now (and going through that many more diapers each day too)! This photo was taken 3 days ago and I swear she has grown since then already. So amazing!

She’s almost three weeks old and I cannot believe how fast the time has flown by. It seems like she was born just yesterday (though, at the same time, we barely remember life before her!). She’s growing so big and she keeps reaching developmental milestones:

– David and I have both seen half-smiles now when she’s been awake and she’s cooing up a storm (especially when we’re breastfeeding — sometimes she gets very chatty).

– She continues to enjoy turning from her back to her side on the changing table.

– She has been able to lift her head up since day one, but can now turn her head from one side to the other when she’s lying on her tummy or leaning against us (it’s unnerving putting her down next to me to nap on her tummy and glancing over to see her head facing the opposite direction!).

– She also often lifts her head up to put her hand or arm under it; she likes propping herself up with her hands.

– She reaches her hands out to us and maintains eye contact.

– She’s perfecting the art of snuggling closer to us by straightening and pushing with her legs and using her arms to move herself around.

We think she’s following in the footsteps of her dad and uncle who were both early crawlers and walkers. Mama and Dada are so in trouble!

And suddenly she’s two weeks old!

Favorite Position
Our new favorite position

I’m such a new mom. David came home from work on Wednesday and found us like this. We had been lying like this for two hours. I didn’t want to put the baby down for fear she might wake up and I was enjoying some calm and quiet “alone” time trying to get caught up with email (ha! I think it will take me weeks to get back to all of you! And I haven’t even gotten to the thank you notes yet! Please be patient with me!). Since then I’ve been perfecting the art of putting the babe down next to me once she hits that deep sleep stage. Somehow before then she has this sixth sense that knows if David or I are not right by her, it’s not sleeping time. I don’t blame her: I feel more comforted when we are touching too. (The first couple days I couldn’t even be in a different room from her: some sort of animal instinct to be with my child right now came out and I couldn’t explain it; I just had to go find her and hold her immediately. Thankfully, that stage has passed.)

The jaundice is gone: a fair skinned, pink baby has emerged! She now looks more like my kid (David is the olive-toned one). Oh, she is so cute. I know I’m biased, but really she is.

Serious Girl
Watch out — she’ll stare you down! She can be so serious when she’s awake.

The little squirt not only gained back her birth weight ahead of schedule, but put on 3 extra ounces in less than a week! We are breastfeeding champs in the Spritzer Leyba house. It is, after all, baby’s favorite activity.

We also went out to lunch this week at our favorite vegetarian restaurant in Sebastopol! Babe slept through the whole meal on David’s chest. Yes, he is such a trooper. The meal was delicious and I savored being out and about. It was a warm, gloriously sunny, beautiful day and we loved being out of the house and able to enjoy it. Kuddos to my mother-in-law for encouraging us to do it.

We had several challenges this week though. 1) We were alone, without family to help us, for the first time in almost two weeks. They did so much laundry and grocery shopping while they were here that they left us in a great place and we’ve been able to stay on top of the housework, etc. since they headed home. I think we have transitioned into our own routines nicely as well (though wow do we miss having an extra set of hands to hold the babe when we want to, oh, pee or shower or, say, blow our nose).

2) And just when I thought postpartum recovery couldn’t get any worse, I found out I was wrong: the low point of this week was my run-in with mastitis (including a 101+ fever, chills, etc.) after we tried some new breastfeeding positions (with the baby wandering with her latch during those feedings — evidently, it’s boring when mama sits up to breastfeed) and I lost track of which breast is next in the middle of the night (several times in a row)… thankfully I kicked it without needing antibiotics thanks to herbal supplements suggested by my phenomenal midwife! Oh, I feel so much better now. I have even been doing laundry and loading up the dishwasher for the first time since before Peanut was born. Yes, I actually missed doing housework. I could nest for years.

Yesterday I turned to David and declared that it isn’t going to be pregnancy or labor that will make me think twice about getting pregnant again… but the postpartum recovery. Thankfully, our daughter is a happy, easy baby and we are actually getting quite a bit of sleep each night thanks to co-sleeping. Yes, I know it could be so much worse. And every day I do feel better. I can’t wait to see how I’m feeling in another week or two. And I am looking forward to getting back to exercising regularly. I really miss my yoga routine and our family runs. Soon.

It’s Presidents Day weekend and I don’t think I’ve ever been more happy to celebrate it. I am thrilled to spend this weekend together as a family and savor uninterrupted time with David and our beautiful daughter. Bring it on!