I missed posting yesterday, so here am I today!
Charlie B is four weeks old now, and his little personality is showing more and more every day.
His yawns are bigger than he is, his legs are powerful kicking machines, and his neck movements are pretty impressive. This kid just wants to look at the world that is happening around him.
I've been down a bit because of Charlie's weight. He finally broke 7lbs at 3.5 weeks, but he is still very small. Because of this I've been super neurotic about how much he's eating, how frequently he eats, how many wet diapers he makes, increasing my milk supply, establishing a pumping schedule, supplementing with formula, how much formula to use each day, etc.
It is driving me crazy.
I had my postpartum appointment with the doctor earlier this week, and we talked about how much pressure I was under to feed my baby. The scary part about this whole experience was that I didn't even notice that I was under pressure because it all happened so gradually. Which meant I wasn't talking about it to anyone, not even Sam or Victoria.
When I kept crying spontaneously during the day when Sam was at work, I knew something was up but I didn't know how to deal with it. By the time I finally spoke up, it had been two weeks. At that point, I had an abundance of emotion spilling out every time I looked at my baby. I couldn't look at him without feeling like a failure.
He was small because of me.
He cried so often because I couldn't feed him enough.
He cried because he was gassy and I didn't know how to relieve his discomfort fast enough.
I couldn't look at him anymore without crying.
It wasn't enough. I felt like I didn't love him enough. How terrible that as much as I loved him, somehow it fell short of what he deserved.
Sadly, this perception dominated me, and still lingers.
I try to remind myself that my neurosis comes from how much I do love my son, and how I really am doing everything I can to help him grow and thrive.
I just have to remind myself that it is enough.
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