The first month of Vivian’s life was an absolute whirlwind. I was sleep deprived, overwhelmed, emotional, and the list goes on. I kept reminding myself that she sure was lucky to be cute because boy was it hard! Luckily, all I had to do was look down at her and I would instantly fall back in love with this tiny creature that was keeping me awake all night.
Vivian was nocturnal for the beginning of her life, as most babies are. Perhaps another thing no one tells you? You just assume that new babies sleep all the time. While kind of true, it’s also so false. 😂 They are happy to sleep in your arms, but as soon as you’d like to put them down somewhere so you can get some shut eye too, their eyes instantly pop back open. At 2am, this was no longer cute.
Yoda’s turn for a snuggle 
Olive’s turn for a snuggle
When babies are awake, they like to eat. And boy did Vivian find her voice quickly. She could go from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds and would scream at us if she was hungry. Not necessarily a bad thing – girl just knows what she wants. New babies need to eat every 2-3 hours because their stomachs are so tiny in the beginning. This doesn’t sound so bad, right? What I didn’t realize beforehand was that the timer starts at the beginning of the feed, not the end. So really, it could end up closer to an hour in between feeds, depending on how long she ate for, burping, settling back down, etc.
In those early days, I constantly had the timer on my phone going and would reset that 3 hour timer as soon as she began to feed. Rarely did we make it to the 3 hour mark before she was ready to eat again. It was sometimes only an hour and a half. She was a hungry girl!
In this first month of life, we were simply running in survival mode. Mike went back to work after two weeks, so I did my best to let him get his rest, though he did help out in the evenings so I could take a nap after dinner. For those first few weeks, it seemed that as soon as the sun would set and it would get dark out, my body would go into shut down mode, and I could barely keep my eyes open any longer. I assume this was a response to knowing another sleepless night was coming my way. Mike also moved into the guest room to get better sleep, so I had our big bed all to myself, and Vivian in her bassinet next to me. It was quite luxurious after being used to sharing the bed with Mike plus our two dogs!
During many of her night wakings, it would be hard to get her back into her bassinet afterwards. She just wanted to snuggle me. It was so hard to resist, but I knew that we both needed our rest, and safely where we belonged.
I took my sleep for any number of minutes I could get. I often awoke in a state of confusion. For a while, there was a period where I always thought I fell asleep holding her so I would wake up cradling my pillow or blanket, assuming it was Vivian. As I opened my eyes, I would realize that she was in fact in her bassinet, and I had lost my mind. There were even times that I dreamt I was feeding her, so when Mike walked over and said ‘the baby is hungry,’ I told him I that I was already feeding her and closed my eyes. This was when I realized how real sleep deprivation was. It is kind of funny to think back on now, but was quite awful in the moment.
We didn’t do a whole lot during Vivian’s first month of life. Mostly because I was exhausted and it was too much effort to get packed up to go anywhere, but also because the world was pretty much still shut down due to the pandemic. I figured we would keep Vivian even more safely away from those big, scary germs out in the world.
If we did leave the house, it was typically for a walk around the neighborhood because the weather was still beautiful through September and into October; lucky us! We had very few visitors, again due to the circumstances, so it was snuggles at home for us!
Exhausted and sleep deprived, it was also an accomplishment to have made it through one month! Everyone assured us that things would get easier with time, which they have. She is only that tiny once, so enjoying those newborn snuggles is so cherished.
Laugh Often – Rachel
Simply Stoops 