As June 20th quickly approaches and Shannon feels more and more tired out, we're starting to wonder what those first few weeks with the baby will be like. Here's some advice we got from my old college roommate, Holly...
And one other thing...the first few weeks (or months) are really tough, mostly because you're just so tired. But for some reason when you even attempt to share just a little bit of your extreme exhaustion with a friend or someone, they say something very non-helpful like "Oh, just enjoy this time, it goes so fast." Well, it lasts way longer than you'd like, and if it lasted much longer the human race would never perpetuate itself. I'm sure people are well meaning when they try to gloss over it, but it made me feel like I was doing it wrong...you never know, your baby may be a good sleeper and you'll be the kind of parents that I secretly hope have rebellious teenagers to make up for it.
Holly's baby girl, Maggie, is 16 1/2 months old. I suppose those first few weeks start to look a little rosier in hindsight—like 20 years later. Here's something our friend (and very new dad) Jon has to say...
...you want to help them out and get them to stop crying, but after nursing, changing the diaper, burping, massaging the belly, or churning legs to try to push out a poopie, you are still sometimes left walking the floor bouncing an eternally crying baby. During the "fourth trimester," baby still wishes it was back in the womb a lot of the time. Wants to be held all the time and close to Momma. Can't blame 'em—it's gotta be quite the transition.
For my part, hearing stories like these make me feel a lot less nervous about caring for our newborn!
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