The BIG highlight of the week: Jake’s brother’s bachelor party!! They went tubing & had all you can meat at a nice restaurant after. It was a day filled with lots of sun, fun, getting thrown into & skidded across the water, and hanging out. Jake came home wiped, super sunburned, and bruised. Luckily Baby R slept super well that night, so he was able to get a nice long sleep to recover from an exhausting day. In case you can’t tell, our days are basically defined by how much sleep we get each night.

Cindy spent the day with Baby R. She wasn’t ready to be alone all day with baby yet, so her parents came over to help and keep company. She was able to get in a nap and take a nice, long, hot shower. There’s something about long hot showers that really make you feel like a new person.

We’re super happy for Jake’s brother and his fiancé and can’t wait for their upcoming wedding!

Postpartum Updates: Week 6

We’re halfway through the 4th trimester! Everyone says things get better at 3 months– baby starts interacting more & baby starts sleeping better… Cindy’s been holding on to that hope when the days are hard. We’re halfway there!

Things haven’t been that bad though. We truly think we’ve been blessed with an “easy” baby. *knock on wood* It had been getting harder and harder to sleep with Baby R in a bassinet next to our bed. She moves SO MUCH and makes SO MUCH noise! It’s hard not to respond to every little grunt or sleep-cry. We probably also move a lot and make a lot of noise. Maybe we were all keeping each other up. One night, in a desperate attempt to get her to sleep, after nearly 3 hours of rocking, shushing, and crying, we moved her bassinet into the hallway just outside of our bedroom and left her there. To our surprise…she fell asleep… and stayed asleep… for an entire 5 hours! The next night…she put herself to sleep with ZERO rocking and stayed asleep for 6 hours… We’re not sure if that was the magic solution or if we just got a couple lucky nights…but we’ll take it. And hope that Baby R keeps it up!

The #1 advice we got from other parents during pregnancy was to get the whole sleep situation down. And they’re right. Sleep deprivation is miserable. And the sooner you work on better sleep, the happier everyone will be.

As for Cindy’s recovery– she’s started a 12 week postnatal workout program. Week 1 has just been short, light workouts to ease back into things again. A lot of the exercises focus on strengthening the pelvic floor and core (to work on any diastasis recti). During the workouts, the exercises felt too easy. But afterwards, Cindy found herself a bit sore for the rest of the day. Your body really does go through a lot during childbirth.

Jake has also been keeping up with his running. We felt it was important that Jake be able to get his runs in almost everyday. It’s so tempting to put exercise on hold because we’re tired and not getting as much sleep as before. But we didn’t want Jake to gain the “Dad 15”. Apparently, research has shown that a lot of men gain weight once they become dads and that’s because eating healthy & exercising isn’t exactly a top priority during this extremely exhausting time. For us, not only are Jake’s daily runs good for his physical health, but also his mental health. He always feels reinvigorated after a run, no matter how tired he was before it. The more refreshed he feels, the more he’s able to help out around the house and with the baby.

Baby R can’t run yet…so no exercise updates for her. She did have a few appts this week, one of which was her hearing test. Good news! She finally passed her hearing test! The audiologists realized after failing 5 babies in the past week, and all in their left ear, that one of the wires in the testing equipment wasn’t working.