Life With A Baby

Happy Monday all! Todays post is all about baby, so if that's not your jam stop reading now because this one is a doozy! 
Baby Liv is already 3 months, it is hard to believe! Everyone tells you the time flies and they are not lying! I feel like I am being conscious of taking in every moment, even the night feedingsI feel like it is still not enough though...it is just going by too fast. 
Life with Liv has totally changed our lives, but at the same time hasn't. During my pregnancy I was so worried about loosing myself in the baby (there is nothing wrong with that, but for myself I still wanted to remain Ang,..and not turn in to a mommy mom.)I hated the thought of being a zombie the first few months and not being able to enjoy the summer. I worried about not having time for myself (there is nothing I love more then being the first one up in the morning and cuddling up on the couch with my coffee and bible). It was also a huge concern of mine to have time to workout, eat healthy, work on my blog and remain a wife to my husband. 
I am happy to report that I was worried for nothing. We are making having a baby fit in with our life, not the other way around. For the most part it is business as usual around our house. The first month maybe not as much just because we were learning how to be parents but we are now in an awesome groove. 
We got back in to normal life pretty much right away. I must say a lot of this may have to do to the fact that I had a pretty easy delivery. WAIT, did I just say easy delivery?!?! I don't think that exists...not a single part of it was easy! I should say I didn't have any complications! I blogged about my birth story, if you missed it you can find the post here.
Not long after the birth I was ready to get to our postpartum room, get settled in (unpack, rearrange the room haha...I am super OCD) and get in the shower. I was feeling like myself right after the delivery for the most part (minus the part where I was wearing an adult diaper pretty much).  Working out through my entire pregnancy may have played a role in how quickly I bounced back. My mother kept harping on me to get in bed and relax, but honestly I didn't need to. 
When we got home from the hospital life pretty much resumed back to normal...expect for sleep of course. The first few days where the only ones she really didn't sleep, but I was running on adrenaline then so it didn't really phase me. By day 3 I was at the grocery store and back to cooking meals for my family. Liv was pretty good at eating every two hours so I was able to get out of the house. I knew I wanted to leave Carey alone with the baby right away, I had done a bunch of reading on how this helps him bond with the baby and gets him learning the responsibility of caring for a child right away. It comes natural to us women but it is more of a learning curve for men. So going to the grocery store was the perfect opportunity to do this. 
LETTING HUBBY DO HIS THING
Speaking of husband and baby, I told myself at the beginning that I would let Carey do his thing with the baby with out me butting in every two seconds. This was a little harder then I expected. When she was crying I knew exactly how to soothe her and I badly wanted to tell him what to do. I refraimed though and let him figure out his own technique.  His was totally different than mine ( I woke up a few times to them in the laundry room, Liv on top of the dryer loving the vibrations haha) but hey, whatever works! She is now a huge daddies girl and already has Carey wrapped around her little finger.

SLEEPING
his is currently a sore subject, haha! But it wasn't always.  We started off with her sleeping in our room just in her pack and play. By day 3 we were pretty solid with only waking every two hours. After about two weeks she got good at giving me a solid few hours with her first stretch of sleep. Which then turned in to her sleeping through the night at around 7 weeks. Amazing right! What was with all these moms complaining about sleepless nights?!  We were sleeping like champs in our house! We moved in to her crib around 10 weeks, life was good!
Enter week 12 and my once good sleeper is no where to be found. I had read sleep regression was normal...though I was expecting that more around 4 months. And I had no idea she could regress so much!! In the last couple of weeks we have had many of nights where we have been up every 45 minutes, we are now thankfully at every 2 hours. I never thought I would be thankful for only two hour stretches, but compared to every 45 minutes its a world of difference! I gave myself a couple days of staying in my PJ's and hanging on the couch, but when her lack of sleep continued I figured I better just get on with my life.
It was hard but I pushed myself to get out for workouts, which really does make me feel a hundred times better sleep or no sleep. Though, I was still tired and mind felt so fuzzy, I was longing for my quite calm mornings.  So I forced myself to stay awake after her 7am feeding and have some me time. This is almost like mediation for me, it helps me refocus and is so calming. It really sets the tone for the rest of my day. Just getting back to these two things  helped tremendously to feel like myself again, instead of sleep deprived zombie. 
We are currently working on a little sleep training for naps. After we put Liv down she loves to wake up every few minutes just wanting us to put the pacifier back in her mouth.  So we have been letting her cry it out a little. Which has worked great for us. ** I am NOT asking for any ones comments or advice on this subject...so please leave the debating for another time please.** She never cries long, and the last few days she is actually putting herself to sleep! I get her swaddled for nap time, cuddle for a few minutes then in her crib she goes. She usually talks to herself for about 5 minutes before drifting off. 

FEEDING
The first three weeks Liv was exclusively breast fed. I feel incredibly lucky that I had no issues with breastfeeding. My milk came in right away and Liv had a good latch from the start. I had heard so many horror stories about how painful breast feeding was, but that was not the case for me. I started pumping right away, stocking the freezer with milk. At 3 weeks we introduced the bottle. I wanted to wait long enough for Liv and I to be completely comfortable with the breast, but not too long that she wouldn't take a bottle. Again we had no issues with this, she took the bottle just fine. I knew I would be  leaving her for longer periods during the summer so I wanted to be sure she was completely comfortable with a bottle.  So we gave her a bottle at least once a day, and at all different times of the day. We were having a hard time with her taking a bottle at night for bed so we had to work on that one, but after a few nights she was fine with it. 

Working Out
ike I said before, I felt pretty good right after giving birth. At about a week I started going for walks, and slowly started adding squats, hip thrusts and other low impact workout moves I could do while holding Liv. By week 5 I felt like I was ready to really get back at it. I had also committed to a half marathon in September that I needed to start training for. The hubs has summers off so getting out for work outs was not too hard. Now that he is back to training and skating though it is getting a little harder. We have a little set up in the garage so when I put Liv down for her afternoon nap I usually head out there. 99% of the time she wakes up during my work out though, so she comes out and joins me. I am up jumping and moving around so much that she enjoys just watching me and listening to the music. 

Taveling
Little Liv has sure put on some serious highway miles this summer. Every once in awhile she has a bad road trip but for the most part she has it down. She naps the best in the mornings so we try to hit the road first thing. If we keep moving she usually doesn't wake up so stops are limited. We travel with her DockATot so it keeps her sleeping environment consistent so we have never had trouble with her sleeping in a new place.

This post turned out to be wayyy longer than I anticipated, my apologies! I could just talk about my babe non stop. 
Hope this post kind of answered all the questions I have been getting! If you have anymore just let me know! 
I have a couple more baby posts coming this week...including a giveaway! So keep your eyes out for those. 
Much Love,