Maternity Leave

I thought for sure I would blog more once I was home on maternity leave, but I couldn’t have been more wrong! Needless to say, being a full-time mom has proven to be so much more work than I originally anticipated.

It’s been two weeks since we brought Liam home from the hospital. On one hand it feels like the weeks have gone so fast, but on the other hand it seems like it’s been forever since I was still pregnant.

Anyway, he was born at 4:38pm on July 12th weighing in at 7 lbs, 3 ounces and he was 20 inches long. I was originally scheduled to be induced at 7:30 that morning, but by that time I was already well into labor. By 9:30am by contractions were only 2 minutes apart and I was begging for my epidural. Thankfully it came quickly. :)(By the way – props to anyone who has given birth without an epidural…you’re now my new hero.)

He did really well in the hospital, except that he wasn’t eating well. The doctors almost had us stay an extra day because he had lost so much weight but they agreed to let us go home if we came back the next day for him to be weighed. That appointment proved that he had gained enough weight and now he’s well over 8 lbs, so his doctor is no longer worried about his weight.

Two days after he was born we brought our little guy home. I am so thankful that Ben had a few days off work to help with the transition. He’s been SO great! It’s been so awesome just to watch Ben interact with our son and I feel so blessed to be married to a man who equally shares in the responsibility of raising our child. (I NEVER expected him to get up in the middle of night when he has to be at work at 7am, and yet he does it…I’m so lucky!) After Ben went back to work my mom came and stayed for a few days. It was so nice to have her helping with the cooking and cleaning, which allowed me to work on catching up on sleep.

Now it’s just Liam and me at home during the day. I’m loving all of my time with him, but still working on balancing chores & sleep. I know I should be napping when he is since I’m up all night, but that’s so hard to do when there’s housework that can be done. Eventually I’ll get it figured out.

This coming weekend we are moving into our new home (another rental). We’re so excited that we’ll have the extra space and just anxious to get the move over with. We’re praying everything goes smoothly with this additional transition. We’re also continuing to pray about Ben’s job situation. He continues to look for jobs in his field that won’t require him to work on Sundays, but employment opportunities are pretty slim still.

We’re also praying that we’ll find the right daycare for Liam. I only have 7 weeks until I go back to work and we need to have plans in place well before then. I had a list of places we were going to check out, but none of them have turned out to be what we’re looking for. We’re hoping to find something close to my work that we will feel comfortable with. It’s kind of scary leaving your kid with someone you don’t know, and we just really hope to feel at peace about where we send him. Keep us in your prayers if you can!