Week 5 Post Partum Vlog by Teresa Palmer
What week
5
How big is baby
She is a hair under 11lbs/4.9kg! So some major weight gain going on haha!
What’s something new this week
Giggles! She woke up and gave a big giggle to me this morning, so much smiling and eye contact. She has really filled out and has the cutest double chin. Even though she is only 5 weeks old. her newborn-ness seems to be quickly fading. I just cannot believe how fast it’s going. I’m trying to be as present with her as possible to lap it all up. She has us all wrapped around her little finger, and has been given the nickname “Queen Baby”. We always say, “Queenie gets what Queenie wants!” Whenever she makes a peep, one of the boys will announce in a very overly committed pommy accent “Queenie requests milk” “or, “The Queenie demands a cuddle!” Bodhi and Forest’s theatrical performances crack us all up.
Most challenging moment
This week has been pretty smooth sailing, actually. Poet is getting older and having longer sleep stretches, which has been very much welcomed. This is less challenging and more just a funny side note, but I always get all the kids ready first before I get myself ready (I’m sure that sounds very familiar), and then I have to rush in the last 5 minutes to pull myself together. One school mum the other day looked at me with some concern filled pity and said, “are you doing okay?” I quickly shrugged it off and gave a rather over enthusiastic, “yeah, great! Loving it actually, why?” She didn’t say “because you look like shit” or “you seem frazzled as Fk,” but she might as well have!! I headed to the bathroom quite quickly after that exchange and looked in the mirror to see that my hair was completely wildly frizzy and tangled with bits sticking out in all different directions like I had been electrocuted in an early morning kitchen incident. I still had the scrunchy-tied topknot in that I wore to bed the night before and I had yesterday’s mascara sprawled under my eyes with a smudge of it on my nose. SMOKIN. I realised I hadn’t even looked in the mirror that day and in fact I couldn’t remember a morning where I had EVER looked in the mirror, how many days in a row had I done the school run like this?! Ah well, keeping it real. I’m sure I’m not the only mum rocking up to school drop off looking unpolished..
Favourite moments
We decided to take an impromptu road trip to Coffin Bay this past weekend. We took Bodhi out of school for one day and headed to the other side of South Australia for some R & R and an epic road trip (road trips are in my top 3 life experiences, jealous of all the #vanlifers out there). I’ll get into this a little later, but it was an amazing opportunity for Mark and I to connect and get very real and deep with each other. When we got to Coffin Bay, we spent the two days riding bikes, walking around and exploring the small town, catching up with friends in Pt Lincoln and trying out the local restaurants (suuuuper tasty smashed Avo toast at Rogue and Rascal in Pt Lincoln btw). We also just stayed in, cooked and all played games together, um I may have gotten overly competitive with my 5 year old at Twister). This trip was one of the highlights of our year.
Mama time
I got to have a lovely catchup with my friends Pippa and Chrissy this week, just the girls (plus Poet & Raffy, Chrissy’s daughter) as all the rest of our kids were in school. It was so nice seeing them, they both have three kids, plus Pippa is also a stepmom and they both understand the juggle and complexities that come with child raising. There’s nothing like spending time with people in similar situations, we get to celebrate, gush and also vent about all the things going on in our lives, and we can really relate to each other. So refreshing and so recharging to have my friendship pow wows (and relatively uninterrupted!!)
My body
Feels great! The bleeding has finally subsided. I’m pretty starving a lot of the time, which is very typical whenever I’m breastfeeding (which has been non stop since I birthed Bodhi). I’ve gone from one to the other child to the other without giving my body a break. I’m still not finished having children, so I don’t envision having my body back for myself for a number of years yet! I’m pretty tired in the morning, but usually my energy kicks in after half an hour of being awake, and it sees me through the day. I go to sleep around 9:30/10pm, and that usually gives me just enough sleep in the blocks I’m getting to support me.
What am I eating
I’ve been eating these really yummy croissants with a marinated tofu mix in them almost daily. Lots of green juices, chocolate Lovewell smoothies, vegan waffles, broccoli with nutritional yeast, pasta with veggie sausage, pizza. Lots of junky road trip food too!!
What’s working
Poet has put herself into some kind of a routine. She nurses on demand multiple times a day, has lots of awake time and it’s all dictated by the messages she gives us. She’ll put herself off to sleep when she wants to. At night time I’ve been switching when we use the SNOO. I start with her in her cosleeper in the bed zipped up in a Sleepea swaddle from Happiest Baby. She’ll do her first stretch in the bed for about 4-5 hours then I nurse her, change her and then put her in to the SNOO and she will sleep in there for another 4-5 hours. She knows that when I change her, zip her in the swaddle, nurse her, turn the lights right down and put the sound machine on that it’s night time.
The other thing that has been really working is the leg bouncer move! It keeps her really happy. It’s a baby hack that I like to think I came up with, but I know other people have probably been doing this for years! I discovered it by accident one day in our mama/baby class when Bodhi was a baby. I didn’t know where to put him as I had to do something and my leg happened to be in that position, so I popped him there and boom, it became one of my favourite tricks. I highly recommend it as it means with the little babies you can be hands free at a table or anywhere you’re sitting, leaving you able to eat food or anything else you’d want to be doing with two hands whilst sitting. I found using a carrier during dinner was hard as the baby’s body gets in the way or you end up dropping food on their head! The hack is very basic, you sit in a chair and cross one leg over the other to make a triangle shape and baby sits in that triangle shape like a bouncer and you just bounce your legs up and down gently to lull them off to sleep or just to calm them down. Poet LOVES it. I posted this on my Instagram stories Video below!
Mark on the other hand is just as addicted to his phone as before and actually said during our road trip that he is feeling the real ramifications of a phone addiction. I notice him on it constantly, even when we are with our friends having a catch up. At least he recognises it and wants to do something about it. These phone designers are smart though, as these devices are designed to be addictive! A phone was at the end of my hand too before Poet came along, we even take photos of our kids from our phone! I used to always know where it was. I now mostly use it when I’m in the passenger seat in the car as the kids are strapped in and it’s okay for me to disappear into a work zone. It’s funny how much it’s shifted for me.
On our road trip this past weekend, Mark and I had all this incredible time to connect with each other during the drive. It was 7.5 hours long. The kids did various activities and then we let them watch shows for the second half of the trip. Because it is such a novelty for them, as TV is such a rare occurrence in our house, they absolutely lapped it up. With the boys focused on their shows with headphones on, Mark and I could talk about everything and anything. He was driving so not on his phone, mine had no reception, so it was him and I and our thoughts. We came up with movie ideas, talked the complexities of co-parenting and blended families, discussed future plans and both of our current emotional states. It was pure bliss and something that we as a couple really, really needed. We have now decided that a daily phone free period once the kids are in bed is a non negotiable. I’m so excited what that does for us. I didn’t realise how much I missed the long deep and connected chats with him and now I just know how healthy it is for us to have that time together.