Update! Our second human child T was born on May 15, 2023 at 3:35 PM, weighing 8 lb 12 oz and 19.5 inches long.

I was re-reading the “a little update” blogpost I had written when S was born in the first week when T was home, and had written it when she was a few weeks old because “babies just sleep all the time.” I didn’t realize that S was a bit of a unicorn in that she slept independently basically since she was a newborn (while she liked contact naps as all newborns do, early on I would feed her and then put her in her bassinet basket and she would just sleep there for hours until her next feed). I remember hosting people for dinner when she was 5-6 days old for hours because she would be sleeping except for the 30-60 minutes where she was feeding.

T was born 6 weeks ago, and the few 1-2 weeks we realized what people meant when they say that each baby is different. Those weeks he would only sleep if being held (or in a moving car / bassinet), including at night. With a toddler at home (we do have full time daycare during the week, but someone has to wake up with her and hang out after daycare hours! Plus weekends!), the situation seemed dire. We were so sleep deprived – M especially, since he didn’t have to deal with the sleep deprivation of pregnancy (more on that later), and I was still healing so I couldn’t do much else besides stay in bed and feed T. He also started cluster feeding insanely around 3-4 weeks, and we tried to call night nurses to come in to support…but then no one was available. It was pretty dire (mostly for M – I still felt fine tbh, compared to a rough pregnancy). And I honestly didn’t mind being latch trapped on the couch while M chased around our feral toddler for bedtime!!!

And then T started regulating himself. I am writing this at 6 weeks because yesterday was M’s first day back at work and we spent the majority of the weekdays of parental leave from weeks 2-6 having daily mini-adventures out of the house (and spending the weekends with a toddler + newborn simply surviving!). Newborns are way more portable than toddlers, so we enjoyed lugging around a baby on little hikes, lunches, and random activities we wanted to do where we could wear him in a carrier or take a stroller. Now without someone to hang out with and do stuff with, I find myself with AMPLE FREE TIME during the day (minus of course feeding and burping etc. the baby) – sooo if you’re in the NY area and happen to be free on weekdays, hit me up! Of course babies change so quickly, so in a few weeks this sleepy phase will be over and I will have less time. Currently T is still napping a lot during the day – sometimes, but rarely, independently (currently I’m very proud I got him down for a nap in his bassinet!), sometimes in the carrier, which gives me a lot of time to do stuff around the house, if not time to chill. He’s started consolidating sleep at night too- of course it’s completely unpredictable, but lately he’s been doing a good 5-6 stretch at night, then wakes up to feed, and falls back asleep until 7 AM. Can’t rely on it, but so far we are sleeping somewhat at night at least to give us energy during the day.

Last time I posted about my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience which apparently was super helpful to my childfree friends, so I’ll be doing the same here – mostly because I don’t journal, so it’s also helpful for me to remember this period of time while it’s still fresh. So – here goes (hopefully my postpartum brain allows this post to be relatively intelligible. Apologies in advance for any grammatical or nonsensical errors in writing, hah.)

Pregnancy

Last time I said that postpartum was the worst part of it all, and pregnancy was the easiest. This time I felt terrible during pregnancy (although apparently still not as bad as many people’s experiences). I had the typical nausea during the first trimester, regained some energy in the second trimester but that’s when all the big tiring life events were happening (moving houses/states, M graduating, etc.), and then by the time my third trimester rolled around I was spent. It also didn’t help that we were getting settled into NY at the same time, while I slowly got larger and way more tired. Perhaps I was more tired this time because last time I was pregnant was during Zoom MBA during COVID, and I had no other children besides Panda. This time I had to seem relatively coherent at work, manage all the life things, and help keep my toddler alive. Or maybe it’s just because I’m slightly older and less healthy this time.

We also still had a lot going on late into my pregnancy – I had to fly across the country for a bachelorette at 32 weeks, we did a weekend at an amusement park at 35 weeks, I hosted a party at our house at 37 weeks, etc…..and at 38 weeks I was like “I FINALLY HAVE NO MORE PLANS/OBLIGATIONS! TIME TO RELAX!” while the first time I basically cancelled all plans after 30 weeks. Good thing it seems like my babies tend to cook for longer and never came early. And my whole pregnancy I wasn’t really interested in food, and certainly not interested in cooking. You know there’s something wrong with me when I’m not interested in trying out a new recipe or restaurant!

While I didn’t look huge (although I did actually show this time), I felt huge – and had a terrible time sleeping because I couldn’t get comfortable. At 39 weeks (full-term), on Mother’s Day, I called the hospital and got induced. I packed my bags and excitedly went to the hospital to BE DONE WITH PREGNANCY!! GOOD RIDDANCE!

While we are still planning on having 3 (mayyyybe 4?!) kids, the jury’s still out if I’ll be pregnant for the next one. We might adopt instead – although apparently that process is also super difficult. Similar to last time, I still don’t understand people who say they love pregnancy. I kept scrolling on Reddit if people found pregnancy + toddler more tiring or newborn + toddler more tiring, and I’m here to say that pregnancy + toddler is worse, hands down. At least with postpartum every day mostly gets better 🙂

Birth

Because of my great / relatively easy birth experience last time, I wasn’t worried about this time minus some annoyances with my new doctor in a new hospital. Since I was getting induced, I knew exactly what to plan for and expect, minus some differences in hospital care. I once again spent around 12 hours / the first night just “ripening my cervix”, which was annoying because I had to be hooked up to the monitor and was woken up basically every hour to adjust it. Once my contractions started they got strong very quickly. Since my first birth went relatively quickly/smoothly, the doctors told me that if I wanted to get an epidural, I needed to do it ASAP before my water broke. No waiting as long as possible for the epidural this time! So I got my epidural, waited for that instant relief (it didn’t come this time – I still had very terrible contractions on one side), got the doctor to give me another dose, finally felt a little relief, and took a 30 minute nap. They didn’t even want to put a catheter in because they thought my labor would go super fast…and they were right. After my 30 minute nap they checked me and said it was time to push.

Pushed 3 times, and T was here! Once again I didn’t feel any pressure or pain when he actually came out, so THANK YOU epidural! I felt immediately better after he exited my body (literally sigh of relief not from birth but from no longer being pregnant) – all that pressure and weight that I was lugging around was finally gone!

I was once again happy to be able to “plan” my birth – we were able to get my wonderful MIL to stay at our house ahead of time so that we had childcare for S while we were in the hospital, and I was happy to know mostly what to expect. The only minor complication was that I passed out for a second after birth because of low blood pressure (again!), but other than that I was cleared to go to the recovery room.

Postpartum

They say the more kids you have the more excited you are to go to the hospital because it’s a few days with meal service and without screaming toddlers/older kids….we very much felt this way. The first day of a newborn’s life is generally very sleepy, so even though I was recovering physically, it was still nice to FINALLY get some sleep (on my stomach! Yay!). Plus it helped that we had a steak and lobster dinner in the hospital.

Postpartum is much easier this time around – I remember my organs feeling like they were sloshing around last time for months, and I generally feel fine right now. Of course the first 2 weeks I tried to take it slow to recover, especially since I had lost so much blood, and had stitches that were healing. Breastfeeding is much easier this time too – T latched almost immediately, and it didn’t hurt as much in the beginning. I still have an oversupply and I could do without the soaked sheets and shirts, but T is packing on the pounds so all good there.

I did have much more intense baby blues for the week after we got home, but thankfully my hormones stabilized after that first week.

I will have to do some more work to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but this is currently the least of my concern as I’m still technically in the “trying to survive newborn life” phase.

Postpartum differences this time vs. last time

Because I mostly exclusively nurse, I have to get up in the middle of the night to feed or pump anyway, so I didn’t feel like it was useful to get an overnight nanny the first few weeks. HOW WRONG WAS I!

Last time M and I would wake up together, and he would change the diapers, hand S to me, I would feed, and he would take her away and burp and soothe her until I needed to feed again. Unfortunately this time we had other obligations during the day; most importantly, M needed to be up by 7 AM to take care of S and bring her to daycare. The first week we came home we tried to do everything together again, but he was so tired that he would nap all throughout the day. And I know you’re supposed to “nap when the baby’s napping”, but I generally feel fine on much less sleep than most people + I can’t nap during the day, so I felt like we were just tag-teaming all throughout the day. This felt very isolating in the midst of my baby blues!! So we decided to split the night in shifts instead. This way we both got some sleep (even though I had to pump during the shift he had T), and we were both relatively awake during the day. The first day we both left the house together to take Panda to the dog park (I still couldn’t walk too far), our mood improved drastically! Thus began our weeks of mini-adventures out of the house, which got more and more elaborate the more physically healed I became. Fun things included

• Hikes in nature preserves, with and without Panda
• A roadtrip to Boston at 2 weeks postpartum, for M’s graduation! (this was painful, but I didn’t want to miss it)
• A visit to a Hudson Valley mansion
• Lunches out (with wine! and oysters!)
• A foray into Manhattan to meet up with a friend, go to the top of the new One Vanderbilt, and walk to the Strand (the only difficult part of this is that many subway stations are not accessible, so not the best to travel with a giant stroller.)
• A visit to Flushing to do a self-guided food tour
• Visits to local parks, dams, and cute towns in Westchester
• etc.

We would generally try to schedule at least one thing out of the house a day. It was a fun excuse to explore our new neighborhood, and fun to spend time together on parental leave! Now if only companies would give even more paternity leave…

The biggest adjustment this time is navigating co-parenting with multiple kids and navigating our roles and responsibilities. It was a bit of an adjustment (and still is, I suppose) “splitting” duties more rather than feeling like we’re doing everything together. With S, we were both very much learning how to be parents together, and this time I feel like we generally know what to do, but just have to survive getting through the day with 2 young kids so we split duties a lot more. Slowly I will learn how to do both kids by myself (M did a few weeks of both kids by himself so I could sleep, although this has largely decreased now that T is sleeping until 8 AM with feeds rather than us needing to wake him up to help him pass gas all the time), which hopefully will mean the four of us being able to do stuff more together? Last weekend was our first weekend without someone staying with us overnight and without us hiring a babysitter, and we actually did a great job taking both kids to the zoo and the beach together on Sunday! We had family friends and extended family visiting on the other day.

Also, we had lots of help the first few weeks. A look into what we outsourced (with costs, since this blog started as an affordable travel/lifestyle blog…and nothing about my life is affordable now with 2 kids in Westchester NY.)

• Housecleaners 2x a month ($175 each time)
• A mother’s helper aka local college student home from the summer to help tidy the living areas, kitchen, and meal prep ($175 a week). Now that I’m feeling fine and actually see tidying/meal prep as a break from watching T, we’re switching her time from household tasks to babysitting S/watching the monitor after she goes to sleep on weekday nights, so that M and I can go out (with T) for a “date”!
• A dogwalker who would take Panda to the dog park or walk him at least 1 time a day ($30 per time – first 2 weeks was 4-5 times a week, then decreased because it was a good excuse to go out for a small hike with Panda as one of our excursions)
• A babysitter for half a day on weekends who would take one of the kids ($125, usually we did 8am-1pm one morning). This was helpful the second weekend we were home so she took T so I could participate in activities with S; the next weekend, she took S so that we could sit at home and just feed T instead of running around with a toddler. Soon we’re going to ask if she’s able to take both kids at once, so M and I can truly have time off sometimes!
• Very supportive family on both sides who came on the first two weekends to be an extra set of hands with the kids and who fed us and tidied (priceless!)
• Great friends who would visit every weekend from NYC who kept us company and brought food!! (priceless!!)

Thank you everyone for all the love and support from afar! Here’s hoping I stay sane by myself for the rest of mat leave (M is upstairs WFH so it’s honestly fine, just moreso the fact that I need to hang out with people/do stuff during the day or else I get way too restless. There is a group of 2023 moms who gave birth around the same time that I have been hanging with during the day, which seems promising. Maybe will actually make some mom friends! ). T’s first trip will be in 2 weeks to Seattle (just me and T, for my BFF’s wedding), and our first trip as a family of 4 will be to Greece in late August! Stay tuned for updates, and in the meantime, I’m still taking visitors and food 🙂