Lemony Webbles

baby update

It's the middle of the second week since Teresa's birth and since Billy's been at home on parental leave. Next week he goes back to work and I need to figure out how I'm going to do this on my own during the day. So far my strategy has been to rest as much as possible so I can be recovered as much as possible by then. With more energy, I can think more creatively and have more patience for difficulties. In general, I think that staying connected- all the family members that is- is going to be important. Other than that, it's going to be a learning process. With trials and errors. Georgia is doing very well with all the changes- she's done this before after all. Maya gets pretty upset when she can't have mommy at certain times. Like bedtime or when she wakes up or when she needs a nap- all sleepy times that she's used to lots of cuddling in. Sometimes we can find a way for us all to be together- I'll nurse Teresa and Maya will lay on my leg and Georgia will hug me around the middle on my free side. It's pretty cute. Other times it doesn't go so smoothly and Georgia and/or Maya has to be hauled off by Billy for kicking or hitting or jumping around the bed. Those are the times that I'm worried about because I won't be able to haul them off and redirect them. This was the problem with being eight and a half months pregnant too. I couldn't bodily remove Maya from a situation because I really couldn't carry her. Then I feel like I can't be consistent or even effective at discipline, which freaks out the kids because they don't have boundaries that they can rely on. And then it just gets worse and worse. Argh! Does anyone have any stories about sharing Mommy when you were little that I can share with the girls so they know that other people go through this too?

I feel like I should give a Teresa update. But it seems like she is doing the same things every day, and I can't see her really getting bigger yet, or changing, except in tiny little ways that could just be my imagination. Like, she doesn't flail her arms quite as wildly getting in the way of her nursing every time. She also has better skill with latch-on, although she still has trouble sometimes. And she seems like she's a tiny little bit longer, and her skinny legs are just a little bit less skinny. She opens her eyes more, and her eyes are definitely turning blue. She's gotten a lot less yellow as her jaundice goes away; she enjoyed her first bath at home -- she even liked getting her hair washed, which I think is pretty much unheard of. She made a statement at her first Feast last night, doing a huge poop right in the middle of prayers that made Liz and Liza giggle behind their hands. She had been saving up that poop for a day and a half, and I had to change all her clothes. She was awake and alert, looking around at everyone and socializing after that, though.

Here are some pictures from her first week:

We made a cake for the Ayyam-i-Ha party whose theme was "Think Summer" and decided to decorate it to look like a garden with all our leftover gingerbread house decorations. After the landscaping was complete, we decided it needed little people to frolick in the garden. Maya got a little too enthusiastic pushing this little girl doll into the frosting, with the following result:

I decided to rescue her from the waist high grass and rearranged them a little.

Now here are a few pictures from Teresa's second week. Does she look different to you?

P.S. Update to the update: Today Teresa's umbilical cord stump fell off, so now she's got her very own belly button!

Posted by Bahiyyih at March 2, 2005 11:09 AM