Hello reader! I have RISEN FROM THE DEAD.

The last blogpost I wrote was on Quebec City, last August…which was the last trip we took before I got pregnant (literally found out a week later).

Since then, I have been in a haze the entire time….but now that baby C has been evicted, I am BACK.

It was a rough pregnancy, to say the least. My first 20 weeks were tiring and nauseating, and truly did not let up until around 20 weeks. I took an easier role at work, where I only really had to work a few hours a day, and spent the rest of the day in bed. As soon as the other kids were in bed at 7, I too entered my bed. M and I took a couples-only trip to Ireland for a wedding, and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was so tired :(. Then I had ~8 weeks of tired but relatively normal-for-second-trimester time, which coincided with the holidays and I had enough energy to host all the things and do all the holiday things. In February we took one last family trip to the Dominican Republic (which was awesome – all-inclusive, and all we did was alternate between the pool and the beach. But I was starting to get really third trimester tired on that trip and couldn’t function too well). THEN, as soon as we got back, I had a medical emergency which knocked me out until the beginning of April (truly knocked me out – I was basically on bed rest, and had to take medical leave from work). Once I recovered from that, I was in my last few weeks of third trimester, which were both physically and mentally tiring. I couldn’t sleep, I was constantly tired, and worst of all I perpetually felt hungover. I could barely function all day, and I wasn’t even working!

Finally, on May 3, it was BABY DAY. Truly as soon as baby C and the placenta exited my body, the fog lifted. I finally had a good sleep (3 hours, but still, 3 QUALITY hours), and no longer felt hungover.

So this past year has basically been a wash.

Baby C is 3 weeks old, and I feel like I’ve been back from the dead. I took around a week to take it chill at home, and then started joining outings after a week. Week 2 included outings that didn’t require much walking (and I even hosted T’s 2nd birthday party!), but this past week I’ve felt basically back to myself. I’ve already hosted watch parties (past 7 PM! woohoo!), we’ve booked a lake weekend for a few weeks from now, and we’ve even booked a family trip to Switzerland later this summer. I’m excited to do all the things again, and as all my kids are Taurus birthdays (April/May), it’s the best time of year to be on maternity leave.

Snippets of life returning to our household…local vehicle fair, OYSTERS and my first postpartum champagne, some cozy time at home

M is taking his full paternity leave at the same time as me. It’s only 8 weeks, which is more solid than a lot of people’s, but much less than what I’m used to in consulting. Most couples I know stagger their parental leaves, but we had such a great time together last time that I much prefer to hang with M for the full 8 weeks instead of staggering. We have already gone out to some local restaurants (where I’ve finally had my oysters and cocktails!!), some museums, and short walks with Panda, and are excited to do more in the remaining 5 weeks we have together! We figured that there will never be a time again where we have so much time together, so are taking advantage of it as much as possible.

Perhaps because my pregnancy was so terrible, or because I tend to have easy labors/deliveries, my recovery has been pretty smooth. Everyone who saw me in the week after I gave birth commented on how much energy I had again 😀 Compared to being a literal zombie the past 9 months, having a newborn is a walk in the park. It helped that I didn’t tear this time – I was again induced, and had a very uneventful labor besides asking for the epidural too late. I actually pushed the longest that I have out of the 3 kids (20 whole minutes!!), which I attribute to them not letting me just chill for hours with an epidural this time. There was much less fanfare in the hospital, and we were released home 36 hours after birth. We were excited to get back to our lives again, and M was excited to get his wife back 🙂

T’s 2nd birthday party, outtings as a family of 5 (we haven’t actually gone anywhere as a family of 6 including Panda yet..), museum trips, and my first time handling all 3 kids by MYSELF for half a day at 1 week postpartum.

My mantra this time, especially because this is our last baby, is to make everything as easy as possible. If there is a solution to a problem, I will take it. There is NO solution to a terrible pregnancy!! So I’ve not been shy about taking all the help I can get.

• M’s mom stayed with us for a few days to help alleviate childcare and keep our house clean and laundry done, while I was still fully recovering
• My parents came for a weekend to cook postpartum food, as is tradition
• We hired a night nurse 4x a week for 6 weeks. This has been a game-changer: C is just an average baby – not as great of a sleeper as S, but not as terrible as T. We probably COULD make the nights work with shifts, but having that extra support is so helpful. M gets a full night of sleep when the night nurse is here, and we both get our “rot time” back before bedtime. She comes from 8 PM – 6 AM, so I pump before I go to bed around 11 PM, and then once around 3 AM as well. My original plan was to nurse the baby every time she woke up and the night nurse could do all the diapering / burping / holding, but she wakes up every 1.5-2 hours right now and I didn’t think that would be worth it. I am pretty chill about my milk supply this time around, having successfully breastfed both other kids for a year, so I’m not killing myself to pump all the time. The second day of C’s life, when she was cluster feeding, I just told the nursery to give her formula because I knew my milk hadn’t come in yet. Saved me some sanity the first few days…and my milk fully came in by day 4 and we haven’t needed to supplement since.
• ANY baby gear that’s helpful, I am willing to buy. Which is crazy because 95% of all the baby gear I currently have were hand-me-downs or from Buy Nothing groups. For example, I invested in a fancy bottle washer/sterilizer, which I always thought was overkill, but it’s my FAVORITE THING. With 3 kids, we will take any time-saving we can get!
• I ordered a postpartum meal delivery service for me, and M has been making easy foods for himself and the kids or utilizing the generous meal delivery gifts various family members and friends have gifted him. I think starting next week we will get back into meal-prepping again. I truly haven’t cooked since August, because food made me nauseous, and then I was too tired to do any cooking. There was a lot of random Uber Eats for myself during pregnancy, because no homemade food tasted good. I certainly had no energy to meal prep freezer meals before giving birth.
• Coordinating parental leaves so I get a partner to hang with during the day and help with baby stuff 🙂 This time, I have had not had even a hint of baby blues…maybe my hormones were so out of whack during pregnancy that the “post-birth hormone crash” simply got me back to normal human levels. But also the weather and having M with me all day probably help a lot!
• I upped my cleaning service to every week
• I’m not shy about hiring a nanny or sitter to help with the kids during weekends, but honestly because I’ve been so MIA the last few months I’m excited to do family stuff together. M has been used to taking the 2 other kids on his own for a while now, so the 3 kid situation truly isn’t much different from 2 kids, especially with a more functional mom (at least for now, while the 3rd kid is still just a blob).

I am appreciating the newborn stage as much as possible this time, knowing it’s our last. Part of me still thinks 4 kids would be so fun, but a) one more pregnancy would actually kill me and b) I don’t think we have the time or finances to dedicate the resources I think each kid deserves if we were to have one more. So our family is complete, and I’m looking forward to my next chapter – of living life as a family, traveling again, and getting my career back on track (I’ll likely be looking for a new job on maternity leave to start my next chapter – stay tuned!)

I really feel like I’ve gotten a second wind at life, and so this is the final birth update from me. It’s a little bittersweet closing the babymaking chapters, but at least I have these blogposts to remind me of this crazy, tiring, but somewhat sweet time. (Here’s a little update from S’s birth in 2021, and (another) little update from T’s birth in 2023).

Onwards to our next trip – stay tuned! 🙂