Life With a Three Week Old!

Emilia Solymar Bañuelos came into the world on the morning of March 2nd, 2013. Here is a photo of the sunrise taken from my hospital room on the morning she was born. It was a beautiful clear morning.

After over 48 hours of labor, I have to say that I was ready for her to be born! I was exhausted but her arrival gave me a surge of energy and I feel like that energy has continued to sustain me over the past few weeks.

Life with a newborn is incredibly tiring, but it's amazing what your body can adjust to. I haven't slept more than 3 hours at a time for weeks and yet, this morning, I feel surprisingly awake, refreshed, and happy. It took a while but it seems that Emilia has finally gotten her nights and days straightened out, so she is sleeping for longer stretches a night and letting her mom get some much-needed rest! Dad is helping out however he can (especially in the evenings when she goes through her nightly "fussy period"). However, when you are trying to breastfeed exclusively, those first few weeks really do end up being harder for mom because she's the only one who can feed the baby. Breastfeeding was a big challenge for me, but we are slowly getting better at it and hopefully soon we'll start using a bottle more so that dad can feed her regularly as well.

There really is nothing that can prepare you for life with a newborn, but I feel as if I am finally starting to regain some semblance of normalcy. Friends have been coming over with meals to meet her and to socialize with us a bit, and we have been going out for walks every day to get sunshine and fresh air, which is truly necessary if you want to keep your sanity in these early weeks!

Every day is a new challenge and I am constantly wondering if I'm doing the right thing. This has easily been the hardest task I've ever been faced with in my life, but it has also been the most amazing, life-changing, extraordinary experience I have gone through and I am excited to see where it leads.

Here she is with grandpa at the airport. She gave him a big smile!

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.  ~Buddha