Encouragement for the first few weeks

I'm mainly writing this because I want to remind myself of how difficult the first few weeks are with a precious little baby. (If I ever decide to submit myself to this torture again! Okay, maybe I'm being a little dramatic...I'll blame it on the hormones.)

Don't get me wrong, my Gideon is PERFECT! He is the cutest, most wonderful baby on planet Earth. He's even cute when he poops! The cuteness dwindles a tad when I realize the poop has shot out onto his back and sleeper, and then seeped through onto my shirt and pants.

Those first couple of weeks were exhausting. I was recovering from almost 48 hours with no sleep, I had no clue what I was doing (do I now?), and all I wanted to do was take 1000 photos of Gideon with every facial expression, outfit, and appearance of emotion.

My milk started to come in, he seemed to be growing well, and everyone was happy.

I felt like I had this parenting thing under control...for about a day! It's all a bit of a blur, but I remember that we started having a hard time getting him to go to sleep. He woke up to the world and it wasn't as simple as it had been. We had a rough few days, and he probably went through a growth spurt somewhere in there. I don't even remember!

Once again, we figured out how to help him to sleep, I started experimenting with feeding which helped with spit up off and on, and I continued to regain energy. We had a couple of bumps in the road: we pushed it too much one weekend, which completely wore me out, and I had an infection that took a few days to get over. Overall, though, things were going well.

Sometime after four weeks, he refused to do much of anything but be held while awake (and falling to sleep). No more sitting him in the bouncer while I make food, no more laying him on the play mat so I can pick up a bit. And, of course, he must be help upright, preferably over my shoulder. Talk about exhausting.

When he was about five and a half weeks, things got really wonky. He wouldn't go down to sleep anymore, sometimes taking an hour or longer to fall asleep! His naps, especially the morning ones, started becoming shorter and shorter (down to about thirty minutes). He missed a couple of naps because he wouldn't sleep. And then, the dreaded six week growth spurt. At least, that's what I think it is. We're still in the middle of it. He ate about every two hours yesterday, slept a decent stretch after feeding at 9:30pm, and then I was up every two hours. All. Night. And he wouldn't go back down to sleep easily. I thought we were over that for good.

We did buy a little portable swing and he seemed okay in it for about fifteen minutes while I made some lunch this afternoon. He's gone to sleep with only about 10-15 minutes of fussing for his naps today. I'm standing on God's promise that his grace is sufficient to carry me through and that His strength is more than enough to take care of Gideon.

And I'm encouraged that this is a, hopefully short, season!