1 week

Today marks one week since Bracken was born.  How are we doing?  The short answer is good but I wouldn't be writing this post if that was all I had to say about it :)

We, and probably more so I, are so happy to have Bracken here.  Newborns are always such a miracle to me.  Every time I see his sweet little face I'm just so in love with him.  I love his little nose, his long gorilla arms and toddler sized hands.  I love the way he loves to cuddle on my chest.  I love that his initial cry when he wakes up sounds like a velociraptor. 

Bracken still hates being changed and doesn't much care for being moved.  When he isn't sleeping he is begging to eat and when he isn't eating he of course is sleeping.  We do get some good open eye moments now and we are feeling pretty certain that he will not have blue eyes.  Mark thinks he will have green eyes and I just think that they wont be blue but I feel like brown eyes are more likely than green. 

I am doing pretty well.  Definitely a lot better than the beginning.  There are 2 things about having a newborn that make me really emotional.  One is breastfeeding and the other is the first week being over and Mark going back to work.  Sometimes facing reality is hard and I shed a few tears last week when I thought about doing this alone all day.  But here we are, Mark is back at work and I am not dying.  In fact things are quite calm right now.  The girls are watching Max and Ruby and Bracken is, for the current and probably very brief moment, satiated and cuddling with me.  As for the other aforementioned emotional teaser things are actually going fairly well.  Much much better than things were at this point with Arya.  It's still a struggle but I can see progress and feel encouraged that things will get better.  I hate this first part of breastfeeding when things are really full and uncomfortable and it's hard to keep the baby awake to properly empty things out.  But like I said it's getting a little better every day.  I started off using prescription ointment to help prevent too much nipple soreness and now I am hardly using it.  Where at first I used to almost cry from the initial latch now I am just uncomfortable and it ends more quickly.  There are still many hurtles to overcome though.  Like the fact that he falls asleep too quickly when eating which means we don't get a lot of sleep at night as he wants to eat constantly.  Or the fact that on one side my let down is too forceful and we spend about 10 minutes doing the whole suck suck, gulp, gulp, guuuuulp, choke and scream until things finally settle down and he can stay latched but then is usually so exhausted from the whole ordeal that he falls asleep almost right away.  Or last night he wouldn't latch on for long enough to even get any milk out and would just cry every time I tried to get him latched on.  But things are getting better every day and I am hopeful that this wont ruin my whole life for the next two months as I felt it did with Arya. 

Having a newborn is definitely hard but I love it.  I love how tiny Bracken is and how sweet his little face is and all the silly sounds he makes.  I love the cuddles and the overwhelming love and right now I just really really don't want him to grow up.  Could he stay this little and precious for a lot longer than I know he will??