The fourth trimester.

If you're a parent, my guess is that you know all about the fourth trimester; we learned about it from watching and reading the Happiest Baby on the Block during the excitement of our third trimester. If you aren't in the know, the basic idea is that children are born 12 weeks too early, but are forced to come out when they do because of their growing heads, which our bodies could not handle delivering if we waited any longer. Can you imagine popping out a kid the size of your 4-month old? Hell no. Anyway, it makes sense why newborns act the way they do. They are so used to living in the comfort of their mother's womb (in fact that's all they know!) that it becomes a literal rude awakening when they enter the world. The uterus is an incredibly dark place where the baby lives in warm water, without exposure to cold air, where sounds are pleasantly muffled, they are gently rocked through most of the day when we walk, and they receive all their nutrition without really having to work for it. I'd be pretty pissed too, if I had to leave such an inviting environment and be forced to enter a place that's the exact opposite. It'd be like living your entire life from a beautiful hut in Tahiti above crystal blue water, only to wake up one day in the Sahara Desert. No thank you.

Understanding this theory going into the "fourth trimester" made things a little easier, at least mentally. But after hearing from other moms in the same position as us, I realized that our baby girl has had a much rougher time acclimating to this world than a lot of other babies do, which in turn has made it much harder on her parents as well!

I guess we'll go back to bringing our little darling home from the hospital. Thank GOD my mom stayed with us for a few weeks after the birth; I don't know how we would have coped without her! There were things I knew beforehand would be a nice relief - like assistance with cooking and

cleaning, and newborn advice (she did go through this 3 times after all; one of those times with twins!). But there was something I wasn't expecting that I appreciated help with most of all, and that was sleep! I fully expected to have to get up many times throughout the night with the baby, but in my pre-baby mind, all children slept wherever they were placed, no problem. Not our Brynn girl! She absolutely HATED being on her back. She would scream bloody murder until she was red in the face, and she would only stop when you picked her up. In fact, this was the case for being put down at all times. Her body just wasn't ready for diaper or clothing changes, riding in the carseat, or sleeping in the bassinet.

So for the first two weeks, the three of us took shifts every night to stay up with the baby. My mom would stay up as late as she could with her, and then was my turn, and then Leigh's. It was pretty miserable, especially because our girl liked to nurse ALL the time - not just to eat, but to comfort herself too. I was so incredibly exhausted, and even worse than that, in so much more pain than I ever have been from having to sit on the couch for so long and nurse. I know many new moms feel like it's a never-ending cycle. I had SO many tears; there were days when I don't even remember when I wasn't crying. The pain, the sleep deprivation, the freaking diapers you have to wear that are SO uncomfortable, and the hormones...oh the hormones! With my Lyme, I have grown pretty accustomed to feeling like I have no control over my emotions and being a hot hormonal mess over the years. But it still never feels good when you're crying for no reason, or when you know you're being a horrid witch to someone you love, yet you feel like you can't stop.

It was so incredibly difficult with three of us, yet I dreaded the end of those two weeks, because I knew I was going from help from two other people, to being completely on my own with the baby. I imagine that would be hard on any new mother, but knowing the pain my body was in from holding our child, is what really placed a fear inside of me. That, and knowing there would only be two of us on sleep shifts, completely freaked me out. As I'm sure you can guess, I cried about this quite a lot before it came to fruition.

Thankfully, Leigh's work allowed him to phase back in at a slower pace and work from home a bit to alleviate some of this pressure. However, that frame of time flew by, and before I knew it, I was completely on my own throughout the day. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED (and still love!) my baby snuggles! I know that I will look back at this time in my life and cherish the fond memories. But most days, I couldn't wait until 5pm came around, when my hubby came home to relieve me. Because Brynn wouldn't be put down, I spent almost my entire maternity leave sitting on the couch, holding her. It sounds restful, but it wasn't. My body was in so much pain from sitting and holding her all day, every day. And trying to calm down her crying wasn't any easier - just 1 minute of standing and holding her or rocking her (even at her mere 6 pounds to begin with) was excruciating. I read social media posts of other mothers who talked about their baby's long naps, and felt nothing but pure envy. Because the most I could get her to sleep on her own, on a good day, was a 20 minute stretch. This would only happen if I placed her on her tummy in the bassinet, and only if I was lucky enough to do it during that "sweet spot" where she was in a deep enough sleep not to notice that I was no longer holding her. That probably happened a total of 6 times.

As much as I dreaded going back to work, and leaving my baby girl for strangers to watch, I was also kind of relieved to have a break from the pressure of taking care of her all day while in the health state that I am in. The first day back, I had to concentrate on not crying MANY times throughout the day. But I was also hopeful that the experienced caretakers at daycare could help us with her aversion to being on her own. And as much as I really hated the idea of her crying alone in her crib, I was also kind of thankful that it would be those strangers dealing with it more than I would be. (Although fast-forward to now, and daycare has actually made the problem much worse!)

Having been born right before the holidays made for an interesting few months as well. We traveled across state when she was 2 weeks old for Thanksgiving, and again for Christmas. It was great to see family, and show her off right away. My mom and sister also helped stay up with her a few nights so that we could each get more than 4 hours of sleep in a night. But, oh man, were those car trips hell! She hated the car seat more than anything. I think it was a mixture of being on her back, getting overheated, and not having someone holding her. There were many times when she would scream for over an hour straight, until she was purple in the face, choking, and frothing at the mouth. I've never felt so helpless in my life - it was scary! But we couldn't stop every single time, otherwise we never would have reached our destination! The few times we did stop, she would be severely shaking, sweating and clinging to me for dear life-man I felt like such a jerkface.

The intro to parenthood also came with some laughable moments, of course. Like on the trip home from Christmas, traveling over the pass, we experienced our first blow-out. It was freezing and snowing outside, so both of us crammed our very tall selves into the back seat and changed our daughter while holding her over her carseat. While I don't have a picture of that, I did take a great montage of daddy holding his baby girl in her first Seahawks outfit, in utter surprise over the explosive nature of her pooping in her diaper while he held her little booty in his hand. How such a loud noise can come out of such a little person I will never know.

Thankfully, that fourth trimester is well behind us. Our baby girl no longer screams bloody murder every time she's on her back (unless she's hungry and upset) - in fact she smiles and giggles more often than not when getting her diaper changed. She loves playing on her play mat most days, and at times is perfectly fine on her own in her jumparoo or doing tummy time. Even short car rides are okay on most days, with only a whimper here or there. She still hates being on her own and on long rides one of us has to be back there with her (usually daddy) - which means I'm driving 5 hour trips on 3-4 hours sleep. It's painful for all of us!

Yet she still won't sleep on her own. We've tried the bassinet, the crib, and even the rock-and-play that everyone seemed to swear by, but nothing works. She won't co-sleep and she doesn't even like laying on us when we are flat on our backs, we must be sitting up. So now she is over 5 months old, and Leigh and I are still taking shifts to hold her each night, sitting up on the couch. He stays up in the living room holding her until 3am, at which point I get up to do the same thing for the rest of the morning. She also kicks and thrashes in her sleep all night long; so if you think there is any chance of us getting to snooze while doing this, you'd be wrong. It's a lovely time that I'm sure we'll look back and kind of miss, yet also a miserable hellish phase. How we get through each day with full time jobs is beyond me. Leigh often takes naps in his car during his lunch break, and I guess (thankfully?), my body is so used to a lack of sleep from the Lyme, that coffee does enough to get me through the work day.

What's worse, is that baby girl doesn't take a single nap during the day at daycare. Her body is constantly on high-alert and super sensitive. She wakes at the tiniest sound and movement. So although they try to hold her when they can, rather than put her in her crib, she still isn't getting much of any sleep during the day. Which means that as soon as she is home, she crashes HARD. We can't wake her up for hardly anything other than feeding, which means no baths and no fun interacting with our baby. And then she wakes up in the middle of the night (sometimes during Leigh's shift, sometimes during mine) and is ready to PAR-TAY! I think each of us secretly hopes that it's the other person's turn each night. ;)

We've finally reached a point where we've decided to reach out to a sleep specialist. She first had us take Brynn to a chiropractor to check for any underlying nervous system issues etc., but just like every other doctor appointment, she's checking out perfectly healthy (which is great!). I can't help worrying, though, that the inability for her nervous system to normalize and her sleep issues are stemming from something I did - either from my Lyme or from the medications I had to take throughout pregnancy. But I've also read many similar stories online, so I'm hoping it's just a random baby thing. We are anticipating to start with the specialist in a few weeks (bye, bye savings) and I'm really praying she can help us.

So while our baby is changing in many fun and amazing ways, she seems to still be a little stuck in the 4th trimester phase. I pray to God that she is just taking a little longer than most to grow out of it, and that one magical day, she will be okay with being on her own. We definitely need a reprieve from this - for our health and our sanity!

In my next blog I'll talk more about the effects all of this has had on my health, as well as our last visit to the Lyme doctor!