Today Ember turned 3 weeks old. Her original due date was yesterday, May 2nd. I can’t imagine still having been pregnant with this tiny person this long. I still marvel at the fact that she was IN there the whole time – as usual, it’s all very “surreal” and/or weird and/or unbelievable. 

She’s doing great and Mommy is doing pretty well about 70% of the time. The other 30% includes being worn out, stressed out, and worried. I think that’s about the right balance. 

Although I’m not breast feeding, I am pumping and feeding her breast milk, which means I do double duty each time she wakes up. First, I feed her from a bottle in the fridge, then change her, then sit her down while I pump for about 15-20 minutes to restock her food supply for next time. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but at 3am when she’s ready to go back to sleep after the feed/change cycle that only takes 15 minutes, it’s tiring to have to keep going on my next step. 

There’s also the fact that she’s​ eating more and more and sometimes I can’t seem to catch up. When she was on a 3 hour schedule, it was fine, but the past few days she’s been eating every one or two hours and I simply don’t have enough to offer. Using my frozen stash of milk from a friend has been helpful, but eventually it’ll run out, which makes me panicky.

I’ve also been feeling the pressure to start freezing my own milk for later, which is just one more thing to deal with. Before she was here, I told myself, very logically, that I’d feed her without formula for as long as I could and then I’d just let it go and supplement. But now that she’s here, I find it far harder to just have a laid back attitude about it. Which means I’m juggling pumping for hours a day along with the rest of life.

We’ve had so many sweet visitors and it’s been so nice. While sometimes it can feel overwhelming, it’s great to have people come by to break up the day’s cycle of feed/diaper/pump/nap.

The sunshine has been great the past few days as it’s been raining almost torrential downpours since she came home from the hospital. But a sunny day means I can see the back yard and all the work that needs to be done in it, and I think about going out and pulling weeds and feel bad for not doing it.

The Big News is that as of 3 weeks, Ember weighs 7.4lbs! All those one to two hour feedings seem to have paid off – almost a pound gained in a week. This is great news, of course, and also means that I was able to put her in my little baby carrier (Ergo 360) tonight since the minimum weight required is 7lbs. She liked it for a few minutes, and it’ll take some time to get used to, but the ability to go on walks or hiking is exciting. 

All is well here. I feel so blessed and lucky to have such a sweet perfect little baby – and I remind myself that at 4 am when she isn’t interested in going to sleep and I can barely sit up.