No longer a newborn

Back when BabyH was 7 weeks old and I was in the worst of the sleep deprivation, all these people would tell me on mailing lists "This too shall pass. It will get better". Of course at the time, my response to that was "these people are smoking crack - I will never be able to recover from this amount of sleep debt". I'm not quite sure when it happened but probably around when she was 2 - 2.5 months, I was on the road to recovery with the help of C and my parents (meaning I was no longer anxious about trying so hard to fall asleep at night). In the last week even, I finally regained the ability to wake up randomly and just roll over and fall back asleep. Thank god. Now sasha the cat meowing in my face at 6am doesn't result in homicidal thoughts.

I used to spend all day obsessing about her naps and going through a ton of shenanigans trying to get her to nap longer than 30 minutes. 3 weeks ago, I realized that she went to sleep a lot easier with the pacifier for naps and started doing that process more consistently for the day and I suddenly found the key to her going down for a nap more easily. We still have to bounce her first but that's not so bad though my left arm is starting to get tired from holding her since she's getting heavy. Once I figured out what worked though, it has been incredibly freeing and I feel much more relaxed even when she has a bad nap day.

This last month has gone by in a whirlwind and I just realized babyH is no longer a newborn. This last week, she was extremely fussy in the carseat and someone in my mom class suggested I remove the infant insert. Since I wasn't the one to setup the carseat, I went and read the manual and realized she should have been out of the infant insert 2 months ago! Oops. I then also removed the newborn insert from the bouncer as well and now all the buckles and belts fit better. Now our days go more like: wakeup, eat, diaper, playtime with the rattle or in the bouncer, activity mat time, naptime. repeat. Kind of monotonous so I do try to break it up by getting out of the house daily.

But it is awesome to see babyH be such a happy baby (with a very styled looking hairdo) and that wonderful baby rewarded me with an 11 hour stretch of sleep last night. Tears of joy. Of course this will come back to bite me in the ass next week when she starts waking up every 3 hours or something. But for now, I read stressed out new mom posts wanting to tell them "this too shall pass and it does get better". Well until we hit the terrible twos...

Updated: and of course after I posted this, the next night she woke up twice for night feedings. Back to square 1 but at least I know what is possible...