One Month

Our sweet little Tacy is one month old today. Can you believe it because we sure can't!  We love her so much and think that she is the cutest baby in the world.  Here are some of the things Tracy does right now:

Tacy hiccups. She hiccupped a lot in utero but she still has whole body hiccups. I feel bad for her but its kind of funny too. Unless of course its the middle of the night and then the hiccups wake her up. Her aunt Christine calls her Hiccup (from how to train your dragon).

She makes all sort of faces and is such a poser with her face and hands.

Tacy loves to have her hands by her face.  It can make feeding her hard sometimes when she won't move her hands away from her face.

She has really strong arms.  When she locks her fingers together it is hard to get her arms apart.

She has a very strong neck and loves to swing her head back and shake it like crazy.

Tacy laughs in her sleep and we think she has some crazy dreams because she will have a big smile on her face and then a huge frown and then the maddest face.

If Tacy is ever mad and crying you just have to start smacking her back like you are burping her and she gets happy again.

We love our sweet baby.

"How do you do it?!"

Sweet Tacy doing some tummy time

Five days after having my baby I started nursing school.  It was a good thing I had her early because otherwise she would have been born during school and I would have missed a lot and been behind, which was a big concern for me and the instructors.

Well, having a baby and starting school right away had not exactly been a cake walk either.  The night before school started I was an emotional wreck.  I was crying uncontrollably and freaking out and paranoid about being a bad mom and failing school.  Brad thank goodness is amazing and calmed me down and gave me a blessing.  The first day of school went okay.  The program director was happy to hear that I was healthy, that my baby was healthy, and that we no longer had to worry about me missing school to have a baby.  My nursing class has 40 total students, 5 guys and 35 women.  I'd say about half of the students are parents.  We all had to go around and say a bit about ourselves and why we wanted to be nurses.  Well, telling everyone that I had a baby 5 days previous has made me very memorable.  I had girls coming up to me asking "How are you doing this?" or "You are amazing I don't know how you are doing this!" 

They are all very nice and ask me every day how my baby is doing.  I was ready to quit after the first day of class though.  When they went through the schedule and how fast the program moves and how demanding it is, I was ready to quit.  Brad once again calmed me down and assured me that I could do this.  I survived the first week, even with minimal sleep because Tacy woke up every hour some nights.  The next Sunday night I had another breakdown though.  I had a test the next day and was freaking out because I had not been able to study as much as I would have liked and didn't know how I could manage school and being a mom.  Brad calmed me down again (see how lucky I am to have him?).  

I passed my test the next day.  I can thank my husband and family for helping me by watching Tacy so I could study.  When I have homework or studying to do, there is usually someone I can pass her off to.  Other than the crazyness of balancing school and baby, I have been having a hard time being able to rely solely on breastfeeding.  My doctor said that even with pumping, it's probably just all of the crazy stress/life that I have right now with my crazy schedule.  Granted, formula does help so Brad can get up and feed Tacy at night, or family can feed her while I'm studying, but I wish breastfeeding satisfied her enough because formula is expensive.  Oh well, I keep doing my best and hoping that fenugreek helps. 

On the plus side, I have been doing well in school and actually got a 98 on my test today, which is pretty awesome.  We will see how it goes, but hopefully I can survive this crazy time with a sane mind.  One good thing about my schedule is I have no time for postpartum depression because school keeps me occupied when I'm not home with the baby.