8 weeks and still in PJs

It's Tuesday again and we went to another mommy group. At 8 weeks, Ian weighed 12 pounds, 5 ounces, which means he gained 6 ounces this past week. He's really thriving!

His wardrobe, however, could use some help. According to the women in the mommy group, I always dress Ian in pajamas. Pajamas!?! Is that what the cute one piece outfits with feet are? Ha! I didn't realize that most people think of them as PJs. My mom and sister told me that I shouldn't bother with separate pants and shirts because it is too difficult for dressing and undressing the baby, as well as diaper changes. In fact, they told me that I should return all those outfits when I received them as gifts. So I listened to them because they've had children and know better than me. But now, all Ian has in his wardrobe is PJs! I think I'll sneak out and buy a couple of cute "real" outfits so that Ian has them for mommy group and other outings. :-)

Mother's Day Weekend

It is Mother's Day weekend and I'm excited about celebrating my very first Mother's Day! My sweet husband (and baby!) bought me an outdoor bonsai tree (an outdoor Satsuki Azalea) from Pro Flowers. I put it out on our front steps and I can't wait to see it flower.

Tonight, we are planning to take the baby out to an early dinner at Sweet Basil. We still have a $50 gift certificate left over from Hanukkah. (We had tried to go to Sweet Basil to celebrate my due date/achieving 40 weeks of pregnancy, but it would have been a 90 minute wait and instead we went to Fuji Steak House. My water broke 8 hours later!)

As a new mother, I'm amazed at how quickly the baby can change/learn. Ian first smiled at 6 weeks (proof here). But I couldn't get him to repeat that smile and when he did smile, it was at the ceiling or the wall instead of when he was looking at me. At 7 weeks, he started smiling more consistently and he was clearly making more eye contact and tracking our faces. And now, at almost 8 weeks, he is constantly smiling. If he is not sleeping or feeding, he is smiling. Just now, he started fussing...not because he was hungry and not because of gas but because he wanted attention. Daddy went over to play with him and out came the smile. It is amazing. Ian is a very happy baby. I feel extremely lucky.

Happy Baby and Captain Smiley!

It's amazing how much a baby can change in 1 week. At 6 weeks, Ian gave us his first real smile. But he didn't smile consistently and his smiles were often directed at the ceiling or the wall instead of at me. But now, at 7 weeks, he is making great eye contact and smiling a lot. He is clearly interacting with me. I took the following photos today and got Ian to smile by putting the burp cloth in his face and then pulling it away while babbling to him. I know I'm totally and completely biased, but MAN, he is one freakin' adorable baby!

Reminders of Infertility

When I was at mommy group on Tuesday, another mother mentioned that she was pregnant again. I immediately congratulated her and was genuinely happy for her...but I noticed there were some other feelings down deep. I was jealous and even a bit angry. You would think that those feelings would have gone away given my successful IVF and successful pregnancy. After all, I was at a mommy group with my beautiful 7 week old son. But those old feelings resurfaced...especially when another mother chimed in about how she was planning to perfectly time her next pregnancy. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to hop in the sack with your husband and make a baby the natural way?

I'm annoyed with myself. I have always had a bad habit of looking into the future too much instead of living in the present. And I'm doing it again. Instead of focusing 100% on my child, who I love more and more with each passing day, I am already spending mental energy thinking about how I am going to have my second child. Should I do a frozen embryo transfer with one of the three embryos I have frozen? Or, given that I'm turning 35 this month, should I do a fresh IVF cycle while I still have the chance and save the embryos that came from 34 year old eggs? Should we only transfer one embryo like we did last time and risk failure or transfer more than one and risk having multiples? I'm already thinking about making an appointment with my RE to discuss next steps in having a second child. I want Ian to have a sibling and I very much want them to be fairly close in age (2 years or less). But I wish I could just shut down these thoughts for the moment. I don't need to be thinking about this yet, but I am. I wish I wasn't such a nutjob.

7 week weight

It's Tuesday, which means Ian and I went to mommy group again. He weighed in at 11 pounds, 15 ounces. So he only gained 4 ounces this past week. His weight gain appears to be settling down, which makes sense because his night time feeds are very short. Last night, he fed twice from me, but only 6 minutes for each feeding!

I was hoping that Ian would get closer to sleeping through the night because for 3 days in a row, he only had one overnight feeding. But he has now gone back to multiple nighttime feeds, which is disappointing. But the nurse at mommy group said that this is common and normal. She also mentioned to me that exclusively breastfed babies will not sleep like formula fed babies. That's too bad, but I'm not so overtired that I'm going to break down and give him formula. I'm still producing a TON of milk and so that's what he's gonna get!

Mums the Word

There are two topics that I generally don't discuss at my Tuesday mommy group because if I did, I would look like a total biyatch.

The first is my weight loss. I gained only 26.5 pounds during my 40 week pregnancy (which makes it all the more shocking that I had a baby that weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces!). And except for 4-5 pounds, all of that extra weight came off dramatically and without effort about 3 weeks after Ian was born. As of this morning, 7 weeks after Ian's birth, I weighed 144.5 pounds, which means I have only 2 more pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. (That being said, I would love to get down to 135 pounds, which would really be ideal for me.) Today, I wore a pair of my old jeans and I was actually comfortable in them. They are just a bit tight in the stomach area, but otherwise fit quite well. And I have a sneaky feeling that even after I lose the last 2 pounds, my stomach still won't look the way it did before I got pregnant. I can just tell that the muscles in my abdomen are stretched and I'm going to need to work hard to tighten them and pull everything back in.

The second topic that I don't discuss is my supply of breast milk. All the other mothers in the group have started supplementing their child with formula because they don't make enough milk. They ask the nurse what they can do to produce more milk and pride themselves on pumping 3-4 extra ounces of milk to keep in the fridge or freezer. I pumped 20 ounces yesterday, in addition to breast feeding my child. The milk pours out of my breasts. At this time, I have roughly 175 ounces of breast milk frozen in our freezer. We even went out and bought an additional fridge/freezer for the basement so that we have room to store all of my milk and not take-over the freezer in the kitchen. Needless to say, my problem is that I have an overabundance of breast milk. Now I'm certainly not complaining about having enough milk to feed my child. It really feels great to know that my child is exclusively breastfed and thriving on it. But I really do wish I made only enough to feed him. My breasts get so unbelievably full of milk during the course of the night that I have woken up from the pain. The discomfort I feel has even worked its way into my dreams. And my poor baby often gags, chokes and sputters when he first starts feeding from one of my overly full breasts. I know that breast milk will only last 3-4 months in the freezer and so we have been using the older breast milk in the 1 bottle that my husband feeds Ian in the morning. But still, I am pumping more than we use each day. At this point, I think I may actually look into donating my extra milk. I don't want it to go to waste and I think it would be absolutely fantastic if someone else could benefit. For now, I'm happy to feed my child and continue pumping. But I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm already anxious about the time when I have to wean my child. It is going to really hurt.

I Guess I Really Was Sliced Open

My exercise classes at the JCC started this week. On Wednesday mornings, I do a class called "Restore the Core" and on Friday mornings, I do a class called "StrollerFit." Both classes are geared towards new mothers and their babies. Before I got pregnant and had Ian, I would have found these classes inordinately easy. But man, being pregnant for 40 weeks (I refuse to say 9 months because women are pregnant for 10 months!) really did a number on my body. And it didn't help that my ab muscles got sliced open just under 7 weeks ago. I could totally feel the incision site when doing certain of the ab exercises. I didn't feel pain, but the incision wasn't letting me forget that I had an emergency C-section on March 16!

So now I sit here on the couch, with a heating pad on my twitching back muscles, whining to myself. Today, as part of the class, we did squats (fine), pushups (fine) and tricep exercises (also fine). But we also ran. Ran! Sometimes we ran with the stroller. Sometimes we ran without it. Either way, it hurt. It didn't hurt my feet, knees, legs or lower back. It SLAUGHTERED my breasts. I was wearing my regular sports bra (which fits correctly only right after I pump) and that just didn't cut it. I didn't have enough support. And I'm pretty sure that I could wear 8 of the sports bras and STILL not have enough support. Apparently, at least one other mother felt the same as me because I noticed that as she was running, she was holding her breasts up with her hands! I really wanted to do the same, but there were children playing at a nearby playground and I didn't want to be the one responsible for scarring them for life. For next week's class, I may have to break out an ace bandage and wrap myself up super tight. Or maybe duct tape will work? Either way, I have to come up with a solution.