Good Day vs. Bad Day

Elsa at the mall with me today!!  :)

Today was a very good day!  Well especially compared to yesterday, so I was soooooo thankful for today!  I don't want to go into a ton of detail about yesterday because really it wasn't anything so bad or out of the ordinary at all, but yet emotionally I hit a wall and was so stressed/frustrated/scared/tired/etc. 

Some days it seems like Elsa cries, while not all the time, much of the time or most of the time.  I've never sat down and documented a day so I know what proportion of her awake time she's happy as opposed to fussy or crying, but it sometimes seems like the proportion is really overpowered by the fussy and crying times.  I usually manage okay or well and just go with the flow, but it does worry me sometimes and somehow yesterday I suddenly felt so overwhelmed with so many emotions and it kept spiraling downward.

I felt so frustrated that she seemed to be crying 90% of the time that she was awake.  I felt sad for the image I'd had in my mind all these years of me playing with a happy and cooing baby and how far that image was from our current reality.  I felt so guilty for feeling sad and frustrated.  I felt alone.  I felt like I was going to be trapped in the house by myself because how can I go out or be with friends when I have a fussy baby all the time.  I was so worried for the future if this is indicative of her temperament.  I felt so helpless in knowing what to do to work with her temperament and better prepare her for a good life.  I felt so guilty then at the negative thoughts and worries I was having about my self-diagnosed personality issues with my one-month-old.  And it went on and on.

Like I said at the beginning, nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday and she wasn't necessarily crying more than she had been before or more than usual, but it just really stressed me out for some reason at that time.  I talked to Jody on the phone and he could hear in my voice that I was emotionally exhausted.  I kept crying, I kept worrying and feeling frustrated, and I kept feeling guilty for feeling that way.  And I really just wanted her to stop crying.

My feelings started when she woke up in the afternoon after a long sleep and I took her upstairs to quickly take some 1-month-old photos.  I'd made the room super warm and was all ready, and she was so good for a few minutes and took some very cute and funny photos that I love, but then she started crying and I wrapped her up to keep her warm and tried everything - diaper, feeding, cuddling, burping, leg bends for gas, walking, bouncing her, rocking her, distracting her, etc.  This definitely isn't the first time at all that this has happened and yesterday it didn't even last that long compared to other times, but it was just so hard all of a sudden and I so wished I could just have a happy baby for more of the time instead of a crying and sometimes wailing one.  (And yes, I feel guilty even writing all this because I feel like this makes me a bad mom to have felt so overwhelmed and unhappy with her baby - I keep feeling like I should justify it more or add in more good things so people won't negatively judge me, but I'm trying also to not do that and just be honest that I was overwhelmed and I know it happens and logically I know it's okay and doesn't say anything bad about my love for my daughter or my mothering abilities.)

Elsa eventually fell asleep, pretty quickly actually - I could tell she was tired from her eyes but yet she'd just been sleeping for a long time and it often takes her a very long time to fall asleep, so I was really happy that at that time of all times, she fell asleep quickly.  And then I had a little victory in that I finally got to take some cute sleeping baby photos of her, I'd felt like such a failure for all the times I'd tried and she wouldn't be having any of it so not having any of the sweet photos of my own little daughter seriously made me feel awful as a photographer and mother.  So now I have some cute ones and I'm so thankful for what I was able to get!

Elsa woke up again after I'd taken some photos, and again started crying, and I got her all dressed and warm while she cried, and again did all the soothing and checking things I could think of, and while she wasn't wailing anymore, she was still fussing and starting to cry frequently.  So then I tried a pacifier/soother.  Jody and I talked on the phone about it beforehand and agreed that we would try that, and I'd wanted to hold out a month and she was one month that day so I felt fine about it.  It took a little bit of holding the pacifier in her mouth gently, but then she took it and started sucking and calmed right down, and I held her while she soothed herself for a good twenty minutes - it was SO peaceful and quiet and calming and I looked at her adorable little face and felt so thankful.  I then started skimming parts of the Baby Whisperer book (I've listened to the abridged audiobook a few times but I see now that there's way more info in the actual book) and saw that the author highly recommends using pacifiers so babies learn how to self-sooth, which is a really important emotional skill and it's good to teach them that skill early on in life.  That made me so happy to read and to know that pacifiers are actually a good thing!  Of course we won't overuse it, but now I understand the benefits and that it actually wasn't good to not give it to her earlier cause our baby can definitely benefit from it (whereas I'm sure there are some babies who have no need for it as well).

Anyway, Jody came home soon after that and we shared holding her as we always do, but he held her more than I did and gave me a break which I really needed.  I was still so emotional and crying often, and so worried about how she would be as she got older and if this early fussiness was a sign of much more to come.  It was a low for me for sure.

This morning Elsa woke up crying again but somehow I was in a much better mental state, even though I didn't get much sleep at all (my doing, not anything to do with Elsa).  I got her to stop crying which made me feel really good of course, and somehow everything was looking up and Elsa was pretty happy and I was happy.  I was also happy cause we were going to be making our first mommy-baby outing alone!  And I was so happy to be getting out of the house and starting to learn to be a mom to her in the big world and not just in our house.  We were meeting my friend Tavia (and her little girl Lucy) at the mall - yay!  Elsa somehow magically fell very asleep just a little before we left, so she was asleep even as I put her in her car seat!  And she slept for the ride there and for over two hours of us walking around!  She woke up just as Tavia was about to leave and I picked her up out of her car seat and she got fussy and started crying just as I was walking us into the family area and private breastfeeding room.

I spent a whole hour in there, mostly in the little room cause after eating, Elsa was fussy for awhile but I was managing to keep it contained and not let it get too out of control - or else she was just being pretty nice to me!  :)  I talked for awhile with another mom in the room who has a 4-month-old, and she made me feel so much better that it will get easier and better.  And really I didn't feel out of control, I felt like I was doing a good job with her in there.  And I loved too that while in there I realized just how much stronger her little neck has become so it's so easy for me to hold her different ways now like on my shoulder, and I also saw her touching more things which made me happy (I'll address all this in a different post on milestones!)!  She was so calm when I changed her diaper out in the main area, and then I went back in the breastfeeding room to relax her a little more before leaving.  I gave her the pacifier when she seemed sleepy and she actually went back to sleep!  So she didn't fuss when I put her in her car seat and she slept on the ride home and even during a quick errand into a store!  Then she kept sleeping after we got home and we even went back out on another errand (I left her in her car seat cause she was sleeping).

So from this morning, her schedule was: 7:30-9:00 - awake.  9:00-12:00 - asleep.  12:00-1:00 - awake.  1:00-5:00 - asleep.  5:00-10:00 - awake.  Yes, a 5-hour block of time tonight!  She was happy and so cute and sweet for the first maybe 3 hours.  Then the last two she was increasingly fussy and super fussy for the last hour.  One of her big problems I know is that she doesn't fall asleep easily.  I read that the average baby takes at least 20 minutes to fall asleep, and some children take much longer.  She'll be so tired and we know she needs to sleep but she just won't fall asleep and gets more and more unhappy with absolutely everything.  I think the pacifier helped at times for sure, but it also was a struggle getting her to accept it which is hard.  But she definitely is soothed by it most of the time once she takes it.  It definitely takes a lot of patience though when she's in her super-tired-super-fussy stages, and it really helps too when Jody is there so we can take turns holding our fussy baby.  I feel like us using a pacifier is a good first step, but we need to work at figuring out how to get her to fall asleep better otherwise I see many hard times ahead.  We talked about a couple different things today, and I want to read a few things in a couple books to see what they recommend.

So since she fell asleep at 10, and had some snacks throughout the evening, I'm guessing she'll probably start making her noises around 12:30 or 1:00 and I'll probably get up with her between 1:00 and 2:00.  (Elsa is really loud in her sleep!  She'll sleep quietly and soundly half the time, and the other half of the time she'll suddenly make loud chirping noises or grunts or such, all in her sleep but it wakes me up!)

Anyway, this got much much much much longer than I intended!  I guess I had a lot to say.  Certainly yesterday was a very hard day for me, and then today was such a good day and such a big thing for me that our first outing and errands went so well!  It definitely gives me much more confidence to be able to go out now, either for short errands or to the mall to walk around.  So it's a big deal and big accomplishment for me!!!

Oh one more thing!  This may be TMI if there's ever a guy who actually reads all of this but since I think it will mostly be just girls, and since this is my little place to write whatever I want, I'm mentioning it!  On Sunday I stopped wearing the ugly granny panties that I'd gotten for after-baby wear and went back to my normal little panties with just a pantyliner in them - and I don't think I'll have to wear the pantyliner for much longer at all - yay!!!  I feel so good not wearing those big things anymore!  I feel more like me again!  Now I just need to start losing the 20 pounds that's still there.  I think going to the mall and walking will help a little cause at least it's better than just being here in the house.  And in two more weeks I can start exercising any way I want again - I think my best bet will be to get a workout DVD and doing it 3 or 4 times a week here, and with little weights as well.  I hope that, combined with eating well and walking at the mall, will help a large part start to come off.  And I hope it happens soon cause I can only wear my maternity pants still - my butt is too big to fit into any pre-pregnancy pants, I hate that!  Go away butt!!!!

Okay that's all for my big couple days!  To finish up, I'll say how thankful I am to have had such a good day to follow my low of days.  I felt more in control today, I felt hopeful and happy and very very in love with little Elsa all day, and I didn't even feel any real frustration at all even tonight when she was really fussy, and that makes me so happy!

Little Elsa so cute in her car seat last Friday!  She looks like such a little angel, so so so adorable!!