Back to work

For mom that is. Tomorrow will be my first day back after 6-weeks of maternity leave and 3-days vacation. It will be nice to only have to work 3-days this week, with Thanksgiving and all. But, still, the fact that I have to go back is a little bitter sweet.

Don’t get me wrong, it has been nice having 6-weeks (paid) leave. But has it been a vacation, nope. Has it been very relaxing, nope. Have I caught up on anything that you would usually want to get caught up on when you have some time off (besides the weekends), nope. But, on the other hand, I am going to miss the 24-7 with baby boy JW. It will be hard sending him to daycare at only 6-weeks of age. And I am sure I am going to shed a few tears the first couple of weeks. Not only being away from him, but because we still don’t have a stinking routine down.

Now, I could swear that I had a routine down with Miss J about the time I went back to work with her. If not at 6-weeks, it was shortly after that. But, I am sure I was getting more sleep at 6-weeks with her. She knew how to sleep. We would put her down and she would doze off and sleep consistently for a few hours. But JW…complete opposite. Can’t figure out why this boy doesn’t want to sleep. If we miss that (short) window of opportunity where he is just getting tired and started the yawning/fussy stage…then we are doomed to 2-3 hours of trying to get him to sleep. Either by rocking him, holding him, or going into his room every 10 minutes to put his binky back in his mouth. And by that time, it is time for him to eat again. It is exhausting, to say the least.

If he could just figure out how to doze off by himself…and then stay to sleep, I think we would be golden. Is that too much to ask for a 6-week old. Probably. I probably have my expectation a bit too high, not sky high, but too high for this kid who is so different from Miss J.

We do have his 3-month appt scheduled in a couple of weeks, and if we can make it that long, I will ask the doc what she thinks. It could be acid reflux. Could be something I am eating that he may be allergic to(I am trying to eliminate milk products for the next couple of days to see if that helps). Could be he is always too cold (my mom thinks this is always his problem since every time she is over she bundles him up like an Eskimo and he falls right to sleep in her arms…go figure). Could be he likes the constant movement or cuddling of the arms of mom/dad. Could be his bed is too hard/soft/cold. Could be he doesn’t like his room.

Who knows, right…but that is what parenthood is all about. Trial and error. Keep trying and keep guessing until something works.

Last night was the peak, that I sure thought he was either going to bust a kidney or we were going to put earplugs in and walk away until we didn’t hear screams any more. 9 pm he woke up to eat. He ate on and off until about 10pm (mainly because we both were falling asleep on and of). So after 10 we tried to lay him down. He tossed and moaned and grunted for over an hour. DH went to go pick him up and then he was wide awake. Until after 12:30. At which point he was wailing and screaming so loud I was praying either him or DH would just pass out from exhaustion. Finally, we brought him to bed, and I think he did just end up passing out from exhaustion…JW that is. I was sure he was going to be up again at about 2am for his next feeding, if not earlier. To my surprise, he didn’t wake up until 4:30. Now, if Miss J hadn’t waken up at 3am wanting me to hold her, I would have gotten a nice 4 hour stretch of sleep time. But, can’t win them all, can you?

That was the worst night though. Most of the others are just a few hours of burping and rocking and running in and out of his room to coax him back to sleep. Surely it will get better soon. I have an idea how to plan my morning with work. I will get up before Joe and jump in the shower before anyone else gets up (whew…it will be nice to have some quiet time a shower all to myself in the morning). Then Miss J will be up, we will get JW fed while watching Curious George, then get Josey fed, and us all out the door by 7:30am. I sure hope if pans out that way…odds are it won’t, but I think I have enough slack time in there to allot for some off schedule. We shall see.

Have a great Thanksgiving week! Here are some recent pics.

Yes, she is trying to "pump" just like mommy, it is funny when she tries to feed her baby like mommy too...guess it is the age!!