2 Week Postpartum Update

Apr 22

Written By Kelly

2 Week Postpartum Update via. The Pacific Standard | thepacificstandard.com

It’s still quite surreal to be sitting here (baby fast asleep next to me) to recap our first few weeks with Evie. To sum everything up, it's been a whirlwind of emotions! I was going to give myself a bit of a buffer before diving back into the blog, but getting back into writing has been a nice break from sitting on the couch and watching T.V. I guess you could say my previous routine was pretty fast-paced so being inside most of the day has made me a bit stir-crazy. This definitely isn’t a complaint, I’d do anything for my sweet baby girl - including staying indoors for however long it took to raise her.

I won’t go too much into my delivery/labor story in this post but will say that both myself and baby are healthy and recovering as expected. It’s funny even with everything people tell you about the recovery process and post-hospital experience each person's experience is so different it’s hard to truly prepare. Both Kev and I were pretty eager to take Evie home after being in the hospital. We craved the comforts that included our own bed and of course being able to take a quick shower! Both of us are first time parents and the anxiety of raising a newborn was pretty heavy on our minds. The first night at home we were up most if not all of the night.

We took turns rocking and soothing baby as she’d wake up for feedings or diaper changes. We quickly figured out after 4 nights of both staying up like zombies that we needed to let each other sleep while the other was on baby duty. We kind of followed the instructions (or suggestions) given to us by the hospital staff to help ease her into sleep. It became very clear that she HATED swaddles that wrapped her arms in so many of the ones we’d purchased were not working. We decided we needed to give her back the comforts that she was familiar with in the womb, which were most likely her hands. (You can see her wrapping her little hands near her face and neck in a few of the images below.)

While that was a step in the right direction she still wasn’t loving her Moses basket. There was almost too much room and she wasn’t having it. By the 5th night, we had a routine down and Evie was able to finally sleep in her bassinet. Much of that was due to the addition of a DockaTot from our sweet neighbor! We moved the bassinet into our bedroom and began a feeding schedule that would allow us to sleep when she did and wake her up every 3 hours for feedings - unless she woke us up for other needs. So far this has been working out well. We got our first 4-hour stretch of sleep and it.was.incredible!

Each night is still a little different, but we’re trying to stick to our daily/nightly routine as closely as possible. One thing that is true is that each day gets a little smoother! It’s definitely been a work in progress, I mean we are only 2-week into this journey of parenthood!