One Month

On Oct. 30th, Meliya turned one month old. In one month, she has lived in two different cities. She weighs 9 lbs 4 ounces as of last Thursday. She likes to drink mother's milk and her newest milestone is that she has figured out her days and nights. Let us hope she doesn't revert back to her old schedule though.

She sometimes is a little gassy and really likes to poo, esp. in the morning. She can sleep through white noise, esp. jack hammers next door (neighbors doing renovations) during the day; this is when she does sleep in the daytime. She has a strong set of lungs, so maybe she will be a singer one day.

First Four Weeks

Meliya will be a month old in a day. The time really has gone fast. Sometimes though, when she is crying and not going down for a nap, I struggle with "am I going to make it?" It reminds me of when I was first learning how to drive, and I was having a hard time. I would watch other drivers and think, "wow, so many people know how to drive, why is it so hard for me?" It is funny; these days, when I see an older person on tv, I think, "look, they made it from baby to old person." Yes, I know the logic doesn't make any sense. I guess I should look more at other mothers and think, "hey, they have 2+ kids, and they made it, I can make it too." Right now, all I am thinking is, "why would you want 2+ kids?"

She's Asleep

It is an incredible feeling you get when the baby goes down for a nap. I think, "ok, I have 10 min to 2 hours to do things around the house." Good thing I have been only having small goals (ie. reply to email, blog, eat lunch, read). I gave myself to Monday to do these things (I guess I would have had to eat some more meals in between too), but was able to do it since she has slept for an hour.

Yeah!

Sanity Time

One piece of advice I received from my sister-in-law was that I should take some time for myself. She recommended to take a shower (and since I am not doing the yuezi, I have been partaking) to get some "me" time.

This advice has been invaluable. At night, when the baby is crying, I ask Alvin to just take over for the next 30 minutes, and then I take a shower. In the shower, I can't hear any crying, and am always surprised when I come out and then re-hear the loving noises of my daughter.

Do you have any other good advice to keep the sanity for both mom and dad?

Not Doing the "Yuezi"

In this country, new mothers do the "yuezi." This is a month long time whether the mother and baby must adhere to strict rules. I don't know all the rules, but I have heard some.

1) The mother and baby can not leave the house for one month after the baby is born so no one gets sick.
2) The mother cannot eat/drink any cold things or the mother will get lifelong diarrhea.
3) The mother and baby must wear warm clothes all the time.
4) The mother must drink soups such as chicken, lamb, fish, beef, soup.
5) The mother cannot take a shower and definitely cannot wash her hair.

Well officially I have been outside already about 7 times, I ate ice cream the other day, I am sitting around the house right now without socks, and I really enjoy my shower time.

When I got back to our city, I knew I only had one week before "yuezi" was over. I thought I could endure by not going out, but after two days I got stir-crazy. The whole family took a walk, where we were approached by a women who screamed that this baby is only three weeks old and shouldn't be out of the house. Still, the exit out of the house was much needed.

The sad part is that I heard that although the name officially means "one month," I heard that the proper time is actually 100 days for baby and mom. No way, we would all go crazy.

Getting to Sleep

We're all a little short on sleep these days.

We're new to this parenting thing.  Our friends who are veteran parents probably read our blog posts and think, "Heh heh, maybe they'll figure it out someday."  Our friends who are not parents probably think, "When will these people finally write a post about something other than Meliya already?"

These last 3 weeks have been filled with lots of joyful moments and lots of frustrating ones.  The joyful moments come throughout the day at various times.  The frustrating ones... have usually been sometime between midnight and 3am.  But as much as I've been tired and frustrated in the middle of the night trying to understand why in the world Meliya is crying instead of sleeping, or sleeping instead of eating... when I see her in the morning and watch her wake up and stretch, I tend to forget the frustrations from the night before.

First Two Weeks + 4 Days

It has been two weeks and 4 days, and things are going ok. She nurses very well, and she is gaining weight. She also sleeps very well, except that there is a period of 1-3 hours where she is active/fussy. The last few days, unfortunately, it was in the middle of the night. I am convinced she has her days and nights confused, and so we are trying really hard to give her some wake time during the day. But she seems so sleepy in the daytime.

The first two weeks actually were a surprise to me. I was so focused on reading about breastfeeding, that I didn't think about how we would react to the baby's sleeping and crying. I felt a little numb the first week we got back from the hospital. After two weeks, I felt like I finally snapped out of it. I still don't know the "right" thing to do for each of her reactions, but emotionally I feel a lot better. I am trying to enjoy my moments with Meliya because I know that she will grow up fast.