I had good intentions of writing this post a couple weeks ago when she officially turned three months old, but of course time got away from me and I’m just now taking time to sit down and write.

Our sweet little Abbey is now three months old and life is so different!

I’d love to let you all know how life has been since she was born. Here’s a peek into what’s been going on!

Feeding

Our journey with breastfeeding has been an interesting one. In her birth announcement blog post, I mentioned that I initially was working on nursing with her the first several weeks. After those first several weeks of dealing with extreme pain, soreness and cracks, I decided to exclusively pump.

We saw at least three different lactation consultants, who all told me our latch looked great (but then why was I still dealing with cracks and pain?!). Many tears and feelings of guilt later I stopped trying to latch her. I had this dream of sweetly nursing my baby all throughout the day and that definitely was not what I ended up with.

I started pumping 6-8 times per day and had an incredible amount of milk supply. I was freezing 2-3 bottles a day. Having PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), I was afraid of not having enough supply. So, that was definitely a surprise! Abbey took to the bottle well and was eating and growing. After a month of pumping the guilt and sadness about not nursing finally went away.

Now, it’s really nice when other people can feed her. Nick can give her the bedtime bottle and bond with her. Both Grandmas, Grandpas and Aunts can give her bottles and bond with her as well. It’s a relief to be able to hand her to someone else for a break when I’ve been feeding her all day! Now, looking back, perhaps bottle feeding breast milk was easier overall than nursing for us in the end.

At three months (almost four months, really), she’s drinking 6oz bottles 5x a day. I’m pumping just 4 times a day (7am, 12pm, 5pm, 11pm) and producing 30 ounces, and it only takes about 15 minutes per pump session. I’ll probably jinx myself when I say this, but I haven’t had any clogged ducts, blisters or bouts of mastitis for almost a month now (I had mastitis three times in a row in January). I think after three months of pumping, my body has finally gotten used to it.

She’s been dealing with a little reflux so we’re on medicine. I also bought some Avent reflux bottles that we really like and make a huge difference!

Sleeping

I definitely got lucky with a baby who sleeps well. Don’t get me wrong, we definitely had a period where it wasn’t good at all (think month 1) but it has improved greatly since then. I give full credit to Taking Cara Babies — I did her newborn class and her 3/4 month class and it was AMAZING. Abbey takes 3-4 naps per day and is now officially sleeping 12 hours at night! Here’s a peek into our average schedule:

7am: Wake up, bottle
7:30-8:30am: Play time
8:30am: Down for nap #1
10am: Bottle
10:30am-11:30am: Play time
11:30am: Nap #2
1:00pm: Bottle
1:30-2:30: Play time
2:30pm: Nap #3
4:00pm: Bottle
4:30-5:30pm: Play time
5:30pm – 6:00pm: Cat nap, sometimes
7:00pm: Bottle and bedtime routine, down by 7:30pm

We follow the Eat-Awake-Sleep routine. She has a wake window (time between naps) of about 90 minutes right now. I don’t let her sleep longer than 2 hours, but lately she’s just been taking 1 hour naps. She takes naps swaddles, with a paci (that she usually spits out after sleeping for 5 minutes haha), and the sound machine on full blast.

She takes naps in her bassinet in our bedroom, but I’m setting up her nursery upstairs so she can start to nap up there instead. It’s so bright in our bedroom that I think that’s why she only naps for an hour at a time. Hopefully moving naps upstairs will allow them to be longer where it’s dark. I’ll definitely post pictures of her nursery when it’s all set up!

This past week she started sleeping 12 hours straight at night without a feeding. She still fusses about 2 times per night and I pop her paci back in and she goes right back to sleep. I’m not quite sure why she’s doing this, as I think if she was really hungry she’d wake up fully and scream. Hopefully she stops doing this in the next couple months so I can get a full night’s sleep without waking up!

Playing

Abbey loves smiling and cooing, she loves when you “talk” to her and make silly noises. She’s SO close to laughing, it’ll be any day now. She loves her bouncer and the little spinning blue monkey makes her smile in awe. She likes her floor mat for the most part, and has just now started to reach out and grab things.

My sister is a pediatric occupational therapist (handy, I know) and got her this pink ball with holes in it (similar) and she loves that thing. Since there’s holes in it, she can easily grab it. Recently she’s started bringing it to her mouth!

She can hold her head up pretty well now and recently started rolling halfway onto her side!

Mommy

Oh boy, has post partum been interesting. My life has changed so dramatically it’s crazy. You just don’t understand how hard pregnancy / labor / post partum is until you’ve gone through it. I was lucky to have a pretty textbook delivery with no complications, to which I am SO thankful. But feeling like myself again has been a long journey, and I feel like I’m sort of getting there.

The biggest adjustment for me physically has been the huge change in my body. Prior to pregnancy, I was very active. Lots of yoga, a little running, boot camps sometimes, weightlifting, etc. When I got pregnant and was dealing with horrible pelvic pain, I was basically on bedrest for the last 6 months of my pregnancy because I couldn’t do anything. After not exercising for almost a year now, I feel so weak. Almost all of my muscle tone is gone and little things that I would have been able to do before, I can no longer do. Yoga poses that have always been easy for me are now very difficult.

As with any major life change and body change, many of us tend to lean towards dieting to help ourselves feel better. I have definitely felt this urge more than ever before in my life, and it’s taking all of my effort not to do it. I feel like this warrants it’s own post. But I’m really trying to listen to my body for when it’s hungry and full, and taking it slow and steady with reintroducing exercise.

As far as mental changes, it was rough there for a while too. When we lived in our tiny apartment in Fort Worth, far away from friends and family, I felt very alone. But when we moved back to Dallas into our new house, I have felt so much better. We finally have space for everything and we are closer to family. That’s helped a lot.

Life at Home

I started working again mid-January and it was definitely an adjustment to figure out the balance of working-feeding baby-cleaning house-resting. After a couple weeks we’ve finally gotten into the rhythm! My mom and aunt come over quite frequently to watch her while I get work done.

In case you missed my announcement on social media, this year I have officially been my own boss! I left my job at Dairy MAX to pursue Zen and Spice full time. When I first started my blog six years ago, it was my dream for it to make enough money for it to be my full time job once we had kids. I’ve finally reached that goal! It’s been years of hard work and perseverance to get to this place and I am so grateful. I will be continuing posts and recipes on my website, as well as cooking demos and classes all over DFW, and also creating recipes and content for some of my biggest clients.

I wouldn’t be able to get by without Shipt/Instacart delivery with how much I cook now!

Well I think that’s everything I can think of so far. If I missed anything feel free to ask questions in a comment below :) I’ll do another update when she’s six months or so.