Transition to baby

I expected my life to become overwhelming, constantly demanding, and somewhat difficult for the first few weeks/months of baby, but it hasn't! I have sure been blessed with an amazing child. He is so alert for his age and rarely fusses unless he's hungry. He loves to lift his head already and stand up full force on his legs. This honestly freaks me out! He is way too young to be doing this kind of stuff.

He's a fantastic sleeper, nurser, and most of all...pooper! I may need to convert to cloth diapers just to afford keeping his little butt covered if he keeps up at this pace.

It didn't take more than a week for us to get into a fairly nice routine either. His nursing schedule is not very typical of a newborn, and that did worry me for a bit. Because breast milk is digested faster, most babies need to eat every 2-3 hours (and that's exactly what Lucas did.) Levin, however, is such a great sleeper that he has no problems going 3.5-4 hours during the day and between 3.5-6 hours at night. But he was already back to his birth weight by one week, so I have no fear that he's missing out on the nutrients that he needs. If I keep him up for two hours in the evening and nurse him to sleep between 10 or 11, he only wakes up around 2-3ish and once again between 6-7. After a quick diaper change and some boob lovin'...he's immediately back in dreamland. Now tell me that's not a perfect schedule!

Lucas brought home some yucky cold germs from preschool and got daddy and brother sick too. Somehow the bug skipped me, but I'm sure not complaining. Anyways, poor Levin got sick at 5 days old and he was so darn congested that he was having difficulties breathing. We did all the home remedies we could: had multiple humidifiers going, routinely sucked out his nose with the bulb syringe and saline drops, placed him in the steamy bathroom, and used Vick's baby rub. Nothing was helping. In fact, it only seemed to be getting worse. After a week and a half of this awfulness, his breathing appeared very labored. I discussed my concerns with his nurse (who happened to be out of town otherwise she would have came right on over) and then decided to take him into the ER to be examined. You can never be too cautious when it comes to breathing issues. I've been down this road before with Lucas, who caught RSV as an infant and has been to the ER on multiple occasions for breathing treatments. Scary stuff.

The nasal swab for RSV and influenza were both negative and the chest x-ray was clear of pneumonia...thank goodness! I hated seeing him get an x-ray, but at this point we really wanted to rule out anything serious. We continued our home remedies and he finally recovered after two entire weeks of being sick. During those two weeks we only let him sleep on our chests so that he was elevated and we could monitor his breathing. They say that you can't spoil a newborn, but I seriously beg to differ. Now that's the only way he ever wants to be!

If we lay him down for any reason he throws quite the tantrum, but once picked up he immediately stops. Oh boy. Thank goodness we love to babywear otherwise we'd never get anything done!

So my transition from one to two children has been great. I honestly feel like I get more sleep now than I did when I was pregnant, and I have never had an "I can't do this" moment. I don't feel like I have spent as much quality time with Lucas as I should, but my mom and brother were up visiting until this morning and he honestly didn't want me. He was far too preoccupied playing with his uncle.

Lucas has been fantastic with his baby brother. I sure hope it stays that way!