Sunday, January 13, 2013

A New Year . . what's ahead?

I can't believe that I've been a mother for over 6 months!  We had a very good Christmas with Winn and the rest of my extended family.  My favorite part was the Christmas Eve service at my parent's church - he sat through the whole thing.  He is such a good baby most of the time.  Breastfeeding has evened out.  I offer him solids twice a day and he loves to eat anything I give him, especially fruits.  Sleeping is going better for the most part.  I've had to re-ferberize him on occasions after we go out of town, etc.  Winn had his 6 month shots last Monday and that made him cranky for a couple of days - glad to get that over with.  We didn't get the flu shot for him, but our pedi told us to keep him away from Walmart. 

 It's been raining so much lately and I'm so sick of it, because I love getting outside with him.  My living room has turned into a play station. I have surrendered to the chronic mess that goes along with having a child.  I ordered this baby corral thing with extensions to make it bigger, and put down 3 yoga mats inside it.  He can really get some traction on my yoga mats and is starting to crawl!  I can get in there and play with him.  Favorite toys are stacking cups I bought at walgreens and these bath toys  - he loves anything that is not a toy, i.e. remote control, my phone.  His favorite book is Brown Bear Brown Bear what do you see. - first book he actually looks at while I'm reading instead of trying to eat it.  No teeth yet, but I am sure they will be in any day now. 

Even though Winn is still a little baby,  we've been thinking about if and when we want to try to give him a brother or sister.  I'm reading Far from the Tree by Andrew Soloman and it's kind of freaking me out about having another child.  The chapter I am reading right now is all about mothers raising severely autistic children and how hard that is. Not a good book to read when contemplating having more children. Other chapters were on deafness, dwarfism, down syndrome, schizophrenia and prodigies. Maybe I should just count my blessings and stop at one.    There are some days where I feel like I could handle 2 babies close in age, but other days when it totally wears me out to picture my life with an infant and a toddler.  We need alot more money coming in to make it a comfortable option for us, i.e. bigger house and part-time nanny.  I want to breastfeed until Winn is at least a year old (if he wants to go that long).  If we are gungho about having another baby, I think we would go back out to Colorado in October for another FET and then they would be exactly 2 years apart if it worked.  But will I be ready by the Fall?   I'm lucky to have my frosties, so I don't feel a huge pressure to jump right back into fertility treatments again and who knows maybe it will happen naturally (yeah right).  Technically, I have until age 54 to make this decision regarding my frozen embryos.   I don't want to wait too long, because I'd like to go back to work and I am scared I will forget everything I know if I stay at home too long.  So we'll see what happens.  Right now I just don't have that strong yearning to have another baby, which is probably pretty normal at seven months postpartum . . . I just want to focus on Winn and enjoying all of his "firsts" which are my firsts too.