Life with a newborn

Phew! I haven't blogged for so long and it's because Eli is a handful to take care of lol

Doula
Our doula left three weeks ago and it's been a struggle without her. She was setting Eli up for failure by holding him 24/7 and rocking him to sleep. Eli wasn't even sleeping in his crib toward the end of her stay! We knew something has to be done so I asked her to leave early. Boy was it tough without her! We were so happy that she left but yet at the same time... things were so rough without an extra pair of hands around the house.

Night Time Sleep
Eli needed to be held constantly and we were both so sleep deprived and stressed. Slowly but surely though with some patience, he got better each day. Now we have our bed time routine and if we are lucky, he is in bed in his crib around 7 - 8 pm and he would feed every 5 hours at night and his wake time would be around 7 - 8 am.

Daytime Naps
Eli is a wonderful sleeper at night but he is a terrible napper during the day. At first, he would fall asleep in my arms and wake up wailing only a few minutes after I put him down in his crib. It drove me insane! I couldn't even eat during the day. But now, things are much better. I would go through our nap time routine (swaddle, white noise, a song, holding and soothing) and I would put him down in his crib sleepy but still awake... most of the time he would drift off to sleep on his own! It's happening more and more frequently. This is resulting in longer naps because when he wakes up from his nap prematurely, he is able to soothe himself back to sleep (half of the time anyway).

He used to only catnap (15 - 30 minutes) during the day but now... he would wake up 30 - 45 minutes into his nap, fuss at bit, then drift back to sleep on his own. I stare at the monitor like a hawk because I have to mark down his wake time so I know when to soothe him back to sleep for his next nap. Needless to say, taking care of a baby is a full time job. I can't really nap through out the day because as soon as he fusses and makes a sound, I have to see if he is waking up or he is going back to sleep. It's like he has a built in radar.. as soon as I start to fall asleep.. he would fuss and wake me up!

It is so draining to care for a newborn but luckily he is getting better each and every day. He will be 8 weeks old tomorrow and we can't wait till he drops his nighttime bottle. We are hoping that he would stretch it out for 6 hours between feedings this week... we'll see how that goes.

Feedings
Eli needs to feed every 3 hours or so during the day and 5 hours during nighttime. He eats about 5oz each time. He is a very slow eater though... on average it takes him 40 minutes to finish his feeding including all the burps etc. When he is REALLY hungry, he drinks it all in 20 minutes. He loves to fall asleep during feeding. We try to feed him when he first wake up so he is more alert and we've been trying our best to keep him awake since it's a bad habit to have... but it's just so darn hard to keep this baby awake when all he wants is sleep when he eats! 

Play
Eli is definitely getting more and more fun when he is awake. He loves to smile, coo, and even attempts to talk back to you. It's really a lot of fun when he is awake. He loves his play matt and spends a lot of time on it playing by himself. He also likes his mobile a lot... when he wakes up in the morning I would catch him laughing at the mobile by himself haha

  
It's so hard caring for a newborn but we are slowly getting the hang of things and hoping all of us will adjust well eventually :)