3 Weeks

Today at 12:03 Nolan will be three weeks old. This makes me sad. I want him to stay a squishy newborn for a little longer! He's my last newborn so I'm really trying to enjoy every minute with him while he's still so super tiny!! Okay, he's not super tiny, he was born big and just kept on going!!

3 weeks postpartum I'm starting to feel the effects of no sleep. Nolan wakes up to eat every 2 hours at night. The routine is that Dan changes Nolan's little tush while I run down to the kitchen, throw a bottle of BM in the bottle warmer, put together my pumping stuff, bring the bottle upstairs, Dan feeds baby, I pump more milk. That part of the routine works well. The part that sucks is that it's taking anywhere from 15-25 minutes to empty my milk boulders so by the time I get back into bed it's been a half an hour or more. So, when Nolan is waking every 2 hours, and I'm up for at least a half hour every time, that leaves me with maybe an hour and a half of sleep time. Not enough. And on top of that, every night Nolan is up for at least an hour, sometimes 2. Usually around 3 or so he wakes up to eat and then decides he needs to be awake for a while. He's not pissy, just ready to be awake. I have no idea how to change it either. So I'm getting sleep in 1.5 hour intervals, plus a guaranteed 1 hour of hang out with Nolan time through the night. That leaves me with not very much shut eye.

I notice that with this lack of sleep is a lack of patience. I'm very short tempered with the big boys. I hate this and it wears heavily on my conscience. It seems lately my only form of communicating with the big boys is scolding or yelling at them. I'm not focusing enough on little things and praising them for it. I'm sending them both to their rooms or to time out WAY more than they deserve, and I'm yelling far more than I should be. I need to stop this cycle because it's definitely not their fault I'm tired and hormonal. I'm going to really make an effort to be NICER to my kids. Because right now, I'm not being a very nice mom and I hate that. A lot.

So aside from my lack of sleep and bitchiness towards my kids, things are going pretty good. I'm able to keep my house somewhat in order, I haven't had a complete meltdown yet, though I'm sure it's coming. Dan got to work this morning almost on time!! We're slowly starting to fall into a bit of a routine, hopefully it lasts!! Anyone who knows me knows I need routine and order! I'm not good with chaos and 'flying by the seat of my pants' kind of lifestyle. I'm a planner, an organizer and a scheduler, so you can imagine what the chaos of a newborn does to my world!

Well, time to put Liam down for a morning nap, a diaper full of poop and a 7am start to his day are not going well for him so far!! hopefully a nap can turn his day around!