Motherhood: 3 Month Update

Our Darling Olivia Margaret is three months old!

She is a bucket of sweetness with her expressive eyes, and contagious smiles.

She continues to sleep like a champ through the night (although I’m watching for that 3-4 month sleep regression). We love that she’s showing more personality on a daily basis, and it’s a joy to watch her grow and develop. We still follow the baby wise principles/schedule (eat, wake, sleep model) pretty closely and it’s worked well for us!

generally her schedule looks something like this:

7:00 AM- eat, wake- bath time, get dressed for the day, down for a nap

10:00 AM- eat, wake time- run errands, go to the gym with mom, cat nap in the car seat

12:30 PM- eat, down for a nap

3:00 PM- eat, wake time, down for a nap

5:30 PM- eat, wake time (sometime dozes off while cuddling mom and dad)

8:00 PM- eat, down for bed

10:00 PM- dream feed

Our evening schedule is very loose. We just take cues from her and don’t worry too much about rigid time frames. I’m also working on finding the balance of being flexible enough with her schedule during the day so that it doesn’t completely rule our life, (for instance, being OK with running errands all morning while she naps on the go), and at the same time guarding her naps at home, because I know that’s where she sleeps best. And good naps in the day = good sleep at night.

my 3 month postpartum update:

Sometimes the transition in to motherhood is hard, painful, sleep deprived, chaotic, yet still beautiful. For me it’s been pretty smooth. My girl sleeps well and so do I. Breastfeeding has been a really positive experience. Aside from the early baby blues it doesn’t seem like I’m facing any Postpartum Depression or Postpartum anxiety. — all this is also beautiful. Sure, it’s been an adjustment, but I am thankful for the ease we’ve had.

After much thought and prayer I’ve decided not to show any postpartum body comparisons to when I was pregnant.

The reasoning is that I want to encourage moms in their healthy lifestyle journeys, not provide temptation for comparison.

Every body is SO different and heals/recovers in different ways on different time tables. I remember just endlessly scrolling though before and after pregnancy pictures on Instagram and it wasn’t healthy for me mentally or emotionally. Please though, feel free to email and ask any questions about my health journey- I’d love to talk one on one with you and share everything! I’ll simply say this: I lost most of my baby weight within the first few weeks. However, my body has changed. Right now I carry more of my weight in my stomach than before, and my pants still don’t quite fit right.

But even so, losing the baby weight is not an indicator of healing or gaining your strength back.

It took my body a lot longer to heal from birth than it did to lose the baby weight. Even after my 6 week checkup when most women feel fully recovered, thing were healing for me, but slowly. (Read my Birth Story here) I’m just now starting to get back in to working out more intensely like I did pre pregnancy/early pregnancy. I was reminded this week that I still have to be careful: I strained a muscle just going too heavy on some weights and it was a good wake up call to continue listen to my body and give it time to get back to where i was with strength and endurance.

Sometimes I feel guilty for how easy things have been for us, but I know that this can be just as damaging of a thought pattern as bitterness, discontent, or self pity in those that have had a hard time.

Instead, (at the risk of sounding cliche,) I remind my heart to humbly give thanks for these undeserved gifts. I’ll strive to honor the Lord in this journey knowing there will be highs and lows along the way. We fall in love with our girl more and more every day and pray that one day she might come to know the Father’s love.

#family #Motherhood #postpartum #Pregnancy