Month One in Review
I can’t believe it’s already been 4 weeks since giving birth! People say the newborn phase goes by fast and they’re not kidding.
I want to share my experience so far along with notes on the concept of “efficiency” while having a newborn and see how my thoughts evolve as time moves on.
For starters, this month has been a whirlwind from giving birth to my own recovery to dealing with childbirth PTSD to figuring out breastfeeding to establishing a sleep approach that doesn’t leave me drained to figuring out how to reply to new business inquires and more! Not to mention we had 10 visitors including one who stayed with us for a week, so there has been a lot of excitement, a lot of healing, and a lot to figure out.
Current time patterns
Here is an overview of how time has been looking throughout the course of the day for me:
The baby feeds about once every two hours
My husband is in charge of her from around 9pm-2am (though she usually is asleep around midnight)
I’m in charge of her from 2am onwards
I get a good 4-5 hours of sleep while he is watching her, and a couple of naps between feedings
From 7am-1pm, I can’t sleep while the baby sleeps (I’m too awake)
From 1pm-6pm I try to rest while the baby rests
We give her 1-2 bottles of formula per day (one for sure around midnight when my husband is with her, and the other could be around 5pm if she’s fussy and has been breastfeeding for a long time because I assume my milk isn’t coming through as strong at that point). The rest of the time is breastfeeding.
How I’m approaching chores/work
Babies that need attention are like ticking time bombs: you never know if they’ll cry in 5 minutes or 2 hours!
I’ve found that I can usually have a solid 30-45 minutes though on average between feeding/changing. So I think it’s good to approach chores and work assuming they are concentrated in these time blocks.
Since I’m too awake in the morning hours, I use this time to do laundry (either loading or unloading/hanging), wash dishes, take a shower, and computer-related things like checking emails or paying bills.
As for tasks like updating this blog or the articles on my business website, I’m finding it effective to do that while she’s feeding or sleeping on me (I’m using a mobile app version of my website which makes it easy to type these blogs from my phone).
Helpful tools/concepts
One thing I’ve also found helpful for my business website is using ChatGPT to help me generate ideas for content. The part that takes the longest is thinking of topics to write about so this helps spark some ideas that I can use as starting points and then write something quickly.
Another resource I’ve enjoyed for the baby is The Thompson Method for breastfeeding. I was having a lot of pain in the first 10 days or so and felt that the way the clinic told me to feed the baby seems a bit forced. The Thompson Method helped me try some things that felt more natural and I enjoy breastfeeding now.
As for housework, simply having the same routine each day has been helpful, even if it means doing a load of laundry a day instead of every other day (things can really get out of hand/behind, otherwise).
Getting out of the house
So far it’s been hard to wrap my head around going out of the house on my own with the baby. I’ve been out a handful of times so far but only with my husband. There have been a couple of occasions where I head home first beforehand and the baby has started screaming and I’ve had to juggle her, a bottle, diaper changing stations, and even pushing the stroller with my foot all while trying to manage the pain from my c-section which is still tender.
I think this will get easier over time, especially because I want to use the carrier too once my stomach feels strong to be able to carry it and the baby sleeps well in that. Looking forward to posting about this sense of independence, soon!