I expected six weeks in to feel different, lord knows why. I mean, saying it out loud, I know exactly why. It’s because I heard so many new mums say ‘I got to six weeks and I felt like a switch had flipped, like I knew what I was doing’ so I expected to reach the day where I felt in control. It turns out I think I have known what I was doing all along. Don’t get me wrong, this is no humble brag. I still have no fucking clue what is going on, I can make an educated guess but if those tiny beautiful little ears hear my assumption he will do the exact opposite and make me feel like we are back at square one. I like it though, it keeps me on my toes.
So, the stuff I will want to remember is all the stuff that just feels a little bit superficial at the moment. He started smiling around four and a half weeks (yes, everyone says its wind but it wasn’t), he is currently just under 8lbs (a touchy subject that I will cover in this post) meaning he just fits into newborn but not 0-1 months and definitely not 0-3 months my tiny little dot. He is exclusively breast fed and he loves a dummy. He gets ridiculously sassy when he wants to be and honestly, he smiles at everything. He comes off the boob just to give me a grin and it melts me to the point I don’t know how I can ever watch him grow up without it breaking me. I want him to be tiny boy forever. Although I would like more sleep. He sleeps well and does about 4 hours in his longest stretch, I thought I would be aching for him to sleep more but I just don’t mind. I love seeing that perfect little face at 4am.
Now for the not so positive. Week 6 of breastfeeding was TOUGH! I don’t know how we got through it to be honest but something I love so much usually turned into something I found I was dreading. He we unlatching every couple of minutes and seemed to hate it just as much as I did, his latch had got more shallow and in my search for help I had tried everything under the sun and it didn’t seem to be working. I forgot that every baby is different and tried to follow the ‘one size fits all’ route and it did not work. I am ever so lucky that in our area we have a fantastic infant feeding team who value breastfeeding just as much as I do and are supporting us, including by loaning us a hospital grade pump and doing a feeding assessment. Since this, we have excelled and hoping for a gain in weight on Friday after a dip in weight after our last weigh in. We are supplementing with 9oz of expressed breast milk per day and I simultaneously feel like a dairy cow, an absolute failure for my bub losing weight and an absolute hero for being able to pump the amount he needs and feed from the breast and stay blood sane.
All in all, sprinkle in a visit to Brighton and the most wonderful support system springing into action, its been an eventful but wonderful week.
Court Doesn't Do Cosmetics Anymore 