I'm a believer!

I'd heard many times the advice from moms to take a shower each day. I hadn't really made a point to shower every day for the first five weeks. Gross, but true. However, last week, as posted (I think...) I took my first shower while home alone with the baby. I felt free. I sort of thought it was a fluke, though--that I had conquered something, but not really a big deal. Well, today I got up with the baby when she was ready to eat around 7. I fed her, then re-swaddled her and put her back down (this is the small routine we've gotten into). I came downstairs, went to the bathroom (a luxury when you're home alone with a baby!), and had frozen waffles for breakfast (eating warm food...with a fork...I wish I had appreciated that phenomenon before!). It was wonderful.

I should stop here and say that baby isn't on a schedule. At all. I never know when she'll want to eat or when she'll sleep. They say this is to be expected, but it drives me a little insane. That said, she does typically go back down after her 6 or 7 a.m. feeding and I sometimes have to wake her up again after 3 hours (we're still trying to wake her after three hours so maybe she'll go longer between feedings at night).

Leave it to this child to throw me for a loop. :) I put her down at 7:45 a.m. and, lo and behold, around 8:35 she started fussing. This wasn't normal... I finished my waffles and went upstairs--there she was, fighting her swaddle with her eyes wide open. This, we have come to realize, means she's truly awake (she makes a LOT of noise when she's still sleeping). I scooped her up, took her out of the swaddle, and tried to get her to go back to sleep on my chest. Not happening. She started in with her hunger cues, so I fed her. Of course she fell asleep while eating because she was still tired! We made it through the feeding and I snuggled her up to me while I finished my TV show. It was lovely to snuggle with her, but I soon realized that if I wanted a shower, I needed to go get it. So, at 9:30, I went ahead and re-swaddled her and took her back to her crib and put her down.

I turned on the shower and got the monitor, only to realize that she wasn't sleeping very soundly and was making a lot of noise. Then came the decision point--to shower or not? I figured I could shower in a couple of minutes and it would be worth it. I turned the monitor all the way up and got in the shower. I was happy to realize that I could hear her noises while in the shower (this was something I had doubted in the past).

I got out of the shower and she was still sleeping--success! I can't describe how much better I felt. And she's since calmed down and is sleeping soundly right now, at 11:10 a.m. I'm going to go get some lunch (another hot meal with a fork??? No way....) before I get my snugglebug and enjoy her little warm body on mine some more :)

Who knows what barriers we may cross today....maybe we'll give the grocery store a try. We are out of bread...