Becoming a Parent
It has been an incredible month and a half with our little girl, and it’s hard to believe she has been here nearly 6 weeks. In the past 6 weeks we’ve learned quite a bit about becoming parents, but even more about ourselves. I was surprised just how difficult those first weeks were. I expected them to be trying, but I was astounded at just what an adjustment it was to get to know our daughter. Six weeks later I feel like we are just starting to really get the hang of things. It seems that the first few weeks you just fake it ’til you make it- you can read all the books in the world and get all the well-meaning advice friends and family have to offer, but until you are “in it” with your own baby, you don’t realize what a challenge it is. I think a good bit of it is learning what your baby needs, and not in the general sense of - all babies need to be fed, changed and loved- but in the sense that each baby is an individual and responds to different things. All of the things we’ve read about in books and all of the tips we’ve gotten from other parents have been a trial and error process- we’ve tried them out, some successfully, others not. Now, 6 weeks in, we’re starting to see that a great deal of this parenting business is trial and error!
Hazel is changing so much day by day. Just last week she started to smile in response to silly facial expressions. This week she smiles at us when we go to get her from her crib in the morning. She is cooing, oohing, and ahhing nearly all the time and she absolutely loves her swing now. She sits in her swing and watches the mobile and just smiles and smiles away. We’ve also recently learned that Hazel loves to look around at the world- she doesn’t like to be held cradled in your arms like a baby, but instead much prefers being held over your shoulder with her arms and head free to move around. When she gets fussy- 90% of the time all we have to do is throw her over our shoulder and walk around so that she can take in all that is going on around her.
Sleep has gotten a bit better in the past week. Our longest stretch has still only been 5 hours at a time, but those 5 hours seem to be happening much more consistently. The past two nights she’s slept for a 4-5 hour stretch followed by another 2-3 hour stretch. This is a huge improvement over where we were just two weeks ago (up every 2-3 hours 24 hours a day!).
All in all I feel like we are settling into parenthood. Every day we seem to learn more about Hazel, each other and about ourselves. I never knew just how amazing this experience could be!
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