Catching up from the weekend? Check out the posts below:
10 Things Pregnancy Taught Me / Homemade Tomato Soup Recipe / Eating Well

I also decided to revisit Self-Love Reflections topics once/week on the blog. Topic 1 = Confidence. Check it out; share your thoughts; be confident this week!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things are still going smoothly around here. I haven’t gone a night without at least 6 hours of sleep and during the day we have slowly been getting into a groove. Getting into a routine is so important to me. I believe children thrive on routine…and I know I do too. Knowing (somewhat) what to expect during a day helps tremendously.

When I was pregnant with Makenzie, I read a book called Babywise. The book discusses helping infants get into a routine and it quickly became controversial. I took what I wanted from the book and adjusted it to fit us well. I will never rigidly place my own routines over baby B, but I can do things to help him fall into one on his own.

I focus on keeping him awake to take a full feeding each time he eats. It is beneficial to his health because he gets more of my quality, heavier milk. It also helps him go longer stretches between feedings. This helps him fall into a natural eating schedule of every 2-3 hours. I still feed him when hungry, but I can also tell around what time he will get hungry based on when he last ate. So important!

For sleep, I try to keep him awake briefly after each feeding. This is so when he naps, which is a LOT as a newborn, he isn’t used to being held, rocked, etc in order to fall asleep. I hold and rock and cuddle him plenty, but when he tries to sleep…he gets to fall asleep on his own. Which he does easily.

I used these ideas with Makenzie and very rarely did we have issues with them. I believe it helped her feel more secure to know what to expect in her little world. It helped me more easily go about life and be able to take her places. You certainly have to be prepared to go with the flow as a parent, because the unexpected always waits around the corner. However, you can still have some order with a little practice, patience, and persistence.

Please note: These are my personal beliefs on what works best for me and my family. Every mother knows her child and her own needs best. I never judge anyone for doing/believing differently. I hope the same courtesy can be extended to me as I know, from past experience, that these topics can sometimes get heated.

Question of the Day – Do you thrive on routine or does it stifle you?

On one hand, I can’t believe its already Sunday! Then, on the other hand…that means baby B is only 5 days old and it seems like he has been here forever. Crazy how time works.

Yesterday was a fairly busy day. After getting things situated around the house in the morning, we headed out for a couple of errands. We had to stop by Babies R Us to stock up on a few essentials…like diapers. They had a deal this weekend for a $15 gift card back when purchasing 2 boxes. You  have to take advantage of things like that.

After our Babies R Us trip, we headed over to Peter’s parents’ place for a birthday celebration. My little niece, Avi, is now 7 years old!

We had lunch while there. The Italian family always dines on pasta at get-togethers, so my lunch consisted of a small bowl of fettuccine alfredo and some salad.

Normally I am a hater of alfredo…but when breastfeeding, you eat. I was starving! I even managed to down this plate of dessert (scoop of icecream and a brownie) plus another brownie before leaving.

Even after that, I still felt hungry. Breastfeeding hunger can rival pregnancy hunger. I guess that will happen when your body is fueling itself for a kiddo that likes to eat every 2 hours on average throughout the day. I don’t mind. I think it helps him sleep for those longer stretches at night.

I continued to eat well with dinner last night. Remember when we bought a share of a cow from a local source to get higher quality beef? We pulled some steaks out for dinner last night with my parents before they leave today. I had a small filet alongside a baked potato with chives & plain Greek yogurt, some sautéed mushrooms, and a small salad.

I have to say I could get used to people cooking for me. It helps us so much!

A New Idea – Your Thoughts?

Before I sign off this post, I wanted to let you all in on an idea that struck me this morning. In September of 2010 I shared a series of posts called the 30 Days of Self-Love. I adored writing these posts and reflecting on the various topics.

I know many of you were around during that time, but I have had some new readers (hi friends!) show up around these parts. Quite a few have emailed me or left comments about the 30 Days and shown interest in the series. I quickly learned during the posting of that series that these topics were fairly heavy to reflect on each day. The thought struck me today, however, that I would still like these messages to hold a special place here on FFF.

For that reason, I am going to see how it goes posting one of the messages each week (on Sunday night) as a topic to reflect on for the week. Hopefully this will allow us to continue thinking about and discussing such topics, but not overtake FFF with super serious topics day in and day out. If you have already gone through the series I hope you don’t mind seeing these posts re-published once a week. If you’re new, I sincerely hope they bring a message to brighten your day as they did mine. I think it will be rewarding to go back through them again a bit slower and more informally. I’m excited for it, in fact! Look for the first post to go up tonight!

Question of the Day – What do you think would be the BIGGEST help to you after something like having a baby, being ill/injured, etc?

Were you around for the 30 Days? Thoughts on the 1x/week republishing of these topics?