One Week Later

Wow I can't believe its only been a week. I've heard other people say it... now I get it... I can't even remember or imagine my life without Moana! I'm totally in love.


She's the most mellow and easygoing baby ever. She sleeps like a champ (even the ear-piercingly loud jackhammer right outside my condo door this morning just made her squirm a bit before falling back into her slumber). She is eating really well, and always gives me a signal when she's starting to feel hungry (she sucks on her fist) so I can get her some food before she has a meltdown. Frantically hungry babies are so much harder to feed! We're not on a 'schedule' per say, but she's pretty predictable- wanting to eat every 3-4 hours. Last night she woke for feeding at midnight, 3ish, and 6ish. Now it's 9:45 AM and she's still sound asleep, although I expect her to wake up soon for some chow. I don't know about that advice about waking a sleeping baby to eat. I tried that once at the end of a particularly long nap, and it resulted in a particularly fussy baby who took forever to latch on. Lesson learned.


The key to this whole parenting thing for me has been to trust Moana to tell me what she needs. Since she's such a healthy baby, she has great instincts that are easy for me to follow. For example: Fist in mouth = feed her. Lips pierced tightly = stop feeding her. Eyes closed in a drunken and very relaxed state = let her sleep. It's really not rocket science. And when I pay attention to those little things, I'm able to meet her needs as soon as she has them so I think she feels really safe/secure and we rarely have meltdowns.

And I'm feeling good! My blood pressure is coming down slowly but steadily (130/82 this AM) so I'm feeling good about that. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll really be back to my normal self. It's Monday so I've started my weekly weigh-ins. I'm down 20 lbs from last Monday. Probably the biggest single week weight loss I'll ever see! (For those Biggest Loser fans out there, that's a 12.6% weight loss this week! Woohoo!) Now I just hope to be on the 1 lb/week plan so I can be back at pre-peggo weight by Christmas or so. My belly is still like jelly, but it's shrinking every day so I'm ok with it. It's good that others told me about the jelly belly or else I'd be a bit distressed about the softness of it all. Like what the heck happened to my abs? And how long until they get hard again? In other good news, I fit into my old shorts already! I didn't expect to yet, but it was really great to button them up this morning. And just because I could, I put on a belt too. It's the little things.