In a couple of days Liam will be three months old. It feels like he’s been here forever and at the same time, it feels like he’s only been here for a heartbeat.
Some things that I have learned:
- Breastfeeding is hard. If you have a bub who latches on straight away, you’re damn lucky. I wasn’t, and it took a lot of hard work to get to where we are. We still have some bad days if Liam is fussy, but most of the time it is wonderful.
- I’ve dealt with fatigue from illness for a long time. I thought I knew what tiredness and sleep deprivation were. Hoo boy, I was wrong. In the first few weeks, I was so sleep deprived that I was hallucinating.
- People who offer help are angels, and you should take them up on it as much as possible.
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My husband is truly awesome. He did so much in the first few weeks, including dealing with many messy nappies in the middle of the night.
- The smiles you get from your baby when you enter the room are the best thing ever.
- Cloth nappies are awesome and awfully cute. And dreadfully addictive.
- Same goes for baby carriers.
- You’ll find yourself doing things that you never planned on for the sake of your sanity. For us, this was using disposable nappies fulltime for the first six weeks and introducing a dummy. Still unhappy about the latter, but it keeps us sane and Liam happy.
- For me, trying to get any work other than caring for the baby and looking after the house (a bare minimum of that) is impossible for the first few months.
- That said, I’ve managed to do all of my judging work for the Australian Shadows Awards, and have started to plan a new novel in the last month. I plan on returning to slush reading soon as well as trying to get more fun reading in.
