One of the big highlights of the week… Jake’s moths are cocooning! We woke up one morning and saw a giant web of silk around one of the caterpillars! So exciting! Jake wishes he got to see the caterpillar actually make the cocoon. It’s okay, we have a total of 8 caterpillars. So he has 7 more chances…

Another huge highlight of the week was… taking a bath! It doesn’t sound like much, but it was super relaxing & refreshing and just what each of us needed. We took turns watching the baby so the other person could go enjoy a relaxing bath. It was 20 minutes of baby free bliss. We love Baby R, but sometimes we just need a little break!

Speaking of baby breaks, we had our first baby-free date day this past week! Jake’s brother from D.C. (who is in town visiting) came along. Jake’s parents came over to watch the baby and the three of us went out for some In-N-Out. Afterwards we did the Dreamscape virtual reality experience. This was something Cindy really wanted to do during pregnancy, but it was advised that pregnant people don’t participate. So this was the first activity she wanted to do post-baby. It was a really cool experience and well-worth the wait! Prior to having the baby, Cindy thought her first time leaving the baby would be emotionally difficult. To her surprise, she was fine. In fact, she was so eager to leave the house she forgot to say “bye” to the baby…

We had a Starbucks outing this past week. We’ve been doing daily walks, so both Cindy and Baby R can get a little fresh air. On one of the days, we walked over to a nearby Starbuck and got the Strawberry Funnel Cake Frappuccino to share. Again, doesn’t seem like much, but it felt like a mini date which was very nice! When your whole day consists of nonstop baby needs, these small things (like a bath or Starbucks drink) really make the day seem special.

Postpartum Updates: Week 3

We’re starting to get a routine down. It feels like we say this every week…but we really do feel like we’re getting more and more of a routine down with each passing week! Baby R feeds about every 2-3 hours. Cindy’s started watching Netflix movies to make the feeds go by faster. She’s basically watched a movie a day– in 30 minute increments throughout the day. It definitely makes the feedings and day go by much faster. Oh! Unrelated…we finally watched Pieces of a Woman. We shared in our Pregnancy Journal that Cindy really wanted to watch this movie, but Jake strongly encouraged her to watch it after she had the baby. She’s glad she listened to him…probably not the best movie to watch when you’re pregnant…but it was a pretty good movie overall.

The days seem to both fly and drag by. It’s weird. Our new mantra is “2 weeks at a time“. We read somewhere online that it gets better every 2 weeks…and it seems to be true! Looking back, each week has gotten easier. Less frequent hopeless breakdowns. More hope we’ll be able to sleep again one day. Just last night, Baby R slept a whopping 5 hours!! Pre-baby us would have thought 5 hours was barely any sleep. But in baby world, 5 hours is heaven.

We’ve been pushing ourselves to move past our comfort zones a bit more each week. It’s very tempting to want to hole up and stay home where it’s easy and convenient. It’s tempting to not want to leave the house and make plans because then we have to consider feeding and napping and uncontrollable baby cries. But we want to be able to ease back into some of our old routines & activities. This past week, we went back to church for the first time since having the baby. And it was pretty nice!! We loved seeing our friends and being back in-person. It was hard to pay attention to the sermon, but we felt very accomplished for just showing up. Cindy feels especially accomplished. She always gets super anxious each time we venture out somewhere. But each time, she’s come back feeling like it wasn’t as big a deal as she made it out to be. She’s trying not to let the worrying hold us back from getting out and living life.