Born Anew

 I'm not sure why, but the first weeks of living with a newborn are rarely documented it seems, and when asking those who have parented and now have grown kids they vaguely remember the first few weeks. We've had an incredibly easy baby, one that generally wants to eat every 2.5-4 hours, enjoys cuddles, has hiccups, and only really cries when she's hungry or wet.  After hearing stories of babies that would cry 18 hours a day for the first year of their lives, I wonder how we got this lucky. 

There are certain things we were very purposeful about doing in the early parts of the pregnancy, like talking to her as if she was there. We frequently read her stories from the bible, and addressed her by the name that we felt was hers. We would have a daily ritual where just before going to bed we would tell her about what the day was like, and talk about people we met, meals we had, what mom was up to, and what I was up to. Even though these things seemed mundane, there was often a positive response felt. I would ask her questions and feel with my spirit what she needed. Mom would rub her belly affectionately, especially when it started growing to the point of feeling the baby in the womb, and the kicks got more intense around the ribs. I frequently blessed her with what I felt were things Abba wanted me to bless her with, and other than that, just eating normally (except no onions), there weren't really any drastic things that took hours and hours of time. 

The labor wasn't easy when the time came. I tried to hold Evelinn's knee's for the contractions, but they started at around 9pm and went until 3am. I tapped out around 11pm when she got a small dose of morphine. Elizah Sophia was born at 3:15am, and when she came out we had to cut the umbilical cord fairly quickly because she didn't give her first cries. We took her into the next room while the medical staff took care of mom and the delivery of the placenta, and they rubbed her back with a towel and then baby cried. She then went to sleep soon after and slept pretty easily for the first day, and then had her first feeding sometime later. Now we're in the first couple of weeks of her life, and there are the poops, the pees, and the pukes. Other than that, she still sleeps the majority of the day. She started getting about 6 hours of non-stop sleep during the nights at the end of last week and has kept that pattern up. 

We haven't done a whole lot, and when she sleeps she spends a good majority of that time in her nest. So mom and I and a lot of downtimes just to spend chatting with people, watching tv, reading, writing this blog post, and a few other things. I think everybody hopes for an easy baby, and maybe they'll draw this up to luck. I think there's more to do with it than that.