Jude's First Week

Y'all.

This little guy is a dream baby.

His favorite things right now are eating, sleeping, and snuggling. 

Heavenly.

I hate to compare him to John Paul because who likes to be compared to their sibs? But seriously. Night and day. Night and day. 

John Paul was a terrible eater because of his undiagnosed lip tie. Feedings took 30-45 minutes, and he never got enough so he was cranky and bad at sleeping too. The kid fought sleep SO hard. 

Jude, on the other hand, is a milk guzzler. It's amazing. Feedings take 15 minutes. And then he's ready to pass out. He'll fight naps here and there, but once he's down, he's OUT. He's even given us a 4 hour stretch of sleep already! #mombrag

I feel like a completely different mom this time around. Way less stressed. Way more go with the flow. It's so refreshing! 

This advice has helped a ton too. 

Plus having my husband home for this whole month. He's basically on John Paul duty all day. And I'm on newborn duty. Divide and conquer, FTW! 

Btw, have I ever mentioned how amazing my husband is? I could not be doing this parenting thing without him. He helps in the middle of the night when I'm just too tired to rock Jude or change a dipe or wash my pump. He feeds Jude bottles while I'm pumping. He lets me sleep in with Jude in the morning while he gets up bright and early with John Paul. He runs out to the store and back just to buy me the sushi I've been craving but not been able to eat for the past 9 months. We're so SO blessed to call him ours.

Ok, mushy stuff mostly over.

Breastfeeding isn't perfect, but we've come up with a routine that's working really well for us for now.  I pump with a manual pump for 1/2 his feedings and he gets a bottle of that milk instead of being fed at the breast. This gives my achey nipples a break 50% of the time, which has been a game changer. The nips are like THANK YOU WOMAN! And when he is feeding at the breast, ahhhh, so nice! While it's a little painful, we still get all those lovely milkie hormones. And I can tell his latch is already improving.

We're thinking the issues are due to a bad nipple-to-mouth size match. So yeah, the nipples are a little beaten up. But the hope is Jude's mouth will grow over the next month and then everything will be hunky dory. Howevz, if we're still having issues after a month, I'm totally gonna push for another lip-tie eval. We're pretty sure he has a tie, but it's not restricting his lip movement, or so we think, so for now we're living with it.

And he's gaining wait like a CHAMP. So that's super reassuring. After all of John Paul's feeding and weight gaining issues, we decided to buy a scale this time around. And it has take a lot of the "am I feeding him enough??" stress out of the equation. We're able to do weighed feedings and confirm that this kid is a little porker. Jude is already more than a pound above birth weight. At 11 days old!!

Proud baby right here . . .

My sister-in-law organized a meal train for us, so folks in town are being so generous and bringing us meals every other night. We're so spoiled! And I also prepped a bunch of freezer meals, so we have that too.

In case you're curious:

black bean and sweet potato enchiladas
chicken enchilada soup
beef, tomato, and acini de pepe soup
moroccan vegetable stew
cheesy turkey chili mac
bolognese sauce

We haven't had to use any yet, but I'm thinking they'll be so helpful when we do!

In the weeks leading up to Jude's birth, I would just double my dinner recipes when I was already cooking. So it never felt like a huge effort to get all those extra meals prepped. We call that a win.

Also a win (but not very nice to mother nature), we're using lots of paper plates and bowls and cups. Less time doing dishes = more time snuggling up with our boys.

John Paul is adjusting very nicely! We have seen a few extra tantrums in the past week. And he's has these really sad moments when we're trying to put him down for his nap or bedtime. Like crying out to us and, with tears in his eyes, saying "sweet dreams" and "I love you" as we walk toward the door. Ugh. Kills me. But overall, he seems really excited to be a big brother. He asks for Jude all the time. We hear "Baby Jude?" on repeat. Always thinking about his lil bro. And he loves giving him kisses or bringing him his bottle or pacifier. So dang cute. I can't wait to see what kind of adventures they have together. The adventures of John Paul and Jude. :)

So far, they both seem to enjoy taking a nap at the same time and being ready for bed at the same time. How did we get so lucky? 

(And that is how I was able to write out Jude's birth saga so soon after his arrival. Sweet napping babies, y'all.)

We also enjoy watching movies together snuggled on the couch before bedtime. John Paul is currently obsessed with the Cars movies and the Finding Nemo movies. So we watch a little bit of one or the other as a family bonding activity and enjoy all the snuggles as we wind down for bed. 

It's such a joy to be their mom.  

And of course, our little guy has already accumulated about a hundred nicknames.

Jude Baby

Sweet Jude

Juderbug

Jude Bug Bear

Jude the Dude

Juji

Juju Train

Jude Frank

Jude Frank the Tank

I'm sure there will be more by tomorrow.

For now, we're just gonna keep soaking in all this newborn preciousness. While he's a champ at eating and sleeping now, I'm positive there will be hiccups and regressions and all that ahead. No biggie, though. It's the life of a parent. And we love it. 

God has been so good to us. I think Jude agrees . . . 

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