Thank you lovely ladies for all of the support regarding my previous few posts. It is always nice to know that you are not alone and that there are others who understand what you’re going through and can offer advice of their own.

A couple of days after my Blubbering Mess post, I had another small breakdown and my husband sat down and talked everything out with me. I told him that I’d never felt so alone in all of my life and I felt like he didn’t even love me anymore. I told him that I was frustrated with how things were going and that what I needed most was to be given words of encouragement and to be told how much he loved me. My guess is that it was a combo of him doing those things for me and my hormones leveling out as I immediately felt better and continue to feel really good. Bye, bye baby blues! We’ve been really enjoying life since that point.

I did end up sending my friend an e-mail about her infertility struggle. I told her that I was well aware that it was none of my business, but I wanted her to know that we also struggled to conceive and I was there for her if she ever wanted to talk. I didn’t hear anything from her for five days and was convinced that I had somehow offended, embarrassed or angered her. Last night we were together with some of our other friends and she seemed as cordial as usual, so then I wondered if she even got my e-mail in the first place. On our way out to our cars at the end of the evening she pulled me aside and told me that she got my e-mail. She said she just wanted to talk to me about it in person and that’s why she hadn’t responded. She said that she really doesn’t have anyone to talk about it with who can directly relate to what she’s going through. Her family is aware, but none of them ever dealt with infertility, so they can’t put themselves in her place. We’re going to get together to talk next week and hopefully I can provide some sort of an outlet for her.

Nina is gaining weight like a champ. She was born at 8lbs 7oz and rapidly lost weight to the point where she was 7lbs 5oz the night before we left the hospital. Because she’d lost 12% of her body weight at that point, it was recommended that we supplement her to help her get back on track with her weight gain. She would eat on one side and then I would use a syringe filled with formula with a narrow tube attached to it and thread that into her mouth as she ate on the second side. The formula did the trick and she maintained her weight by the time we checked out of the hospital. We continued supplementing her until her two day post discharge check up where she was up to 7lb 7oz and the doctor determined that we could stop supplementing her. We just went back two days ago on her one month birthday and she’s now up to 9lbs 6oz, so she’s caught back up nicely.

Breastfeeding is going well and as such we were able to introduce both a pacifier and bottle this week without confusion. It will be nice for other people to be able to feed her with a bottle so that I can be away from her for more than a couple of hours at a time if necessary. It will also be nice for Mark to be able to take part in feeding her and be able to bond with her that way. He got such a kick out of giving her the first bottle and can’t wait to do it again. On a related note, we’re not 100% sold on the bottles we have (The First Years Breastflow) and are looking to try other bottles. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Nina turned one month old two days ago. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that she’s been in the outside world for four weeks already. It seems like just yesterday that we brought her home. I know that everyone says that the time goes by so quickly and to be sure to enjoy every moment of it, but this first month has gone by faster than I could have ever imagined. I am sure that a large part of it has to do with the lack of sleep and the fact that each day seems to pass by in the blink of an eye. We’ve done our best to get out and about as much as possible and I think that has made the time go by quickly as well. Nina’s been to over 10 restaurants, been geocaching on two separate occasions and to the dog park a few times. We love integrating her into every aspect of our lives and can’t imagine life without her now.

Being a mom is more than I could have ever hoped for. I have so immensely enjoyed this first month getting to know our daughter. My husband has less than two weeks of work left at his current job and then we’ll have six weeks off together before I go back to work to enjoy Nina and make memories that we will fondly look back on and smile. We’ve got lots of baseball tickets for this spring and we’ll be taking a trip out to Seattle to introduce Nina to her aunt, uncle and nieces. We plan to take more local trips around our state with her as well and I’m sure there will be lots of other fun things to come in the next two months as well. As much fun as we have planned for the future, I have to slow down and remember to savor the here and now too. We’ve waited so long for this…I don’t want to miss a moment of it.