Planes, Trains, and Running Shoes

We've been thinking about and planning for these early weeks with a baby for so long and now that we're finally experiencing it, we've jumped right in. We're learning to respond to her cues and what different cries mean, what she needs when, and even getting her on a very loose schedule (eat, play, sleep). For the first week, we didn't have any visitors - I wanted that time for us to figure out our new family and I don't regret that decision for a second. Although, now that my mom is here, I'm so grateful for the extra help!

I thought I'd write this post to share a little bit about how we're doing and answer some of the most common questions I've gotten since bringing Aurora home!

How am I doing? Postpartum recovery has been tough. I thought I managed my expectations well but two weeks postpartum, I still can't go up or down stairs without pain and I still can't get in or out of bed while holding Aurora. I've graduated from being mostly bedridden to being able to get up and about the house. We've left the house quite a bit but it's always a struggle. I didn't expect to still feel like this two weeks postpartum without major complications or a c-section but here we are. I didn't have any complications but it took 27 hours of active labor with almost 5 hours of pushing to bring her into the world and that isn't easy to recover from. I honestly thought I'd be back to walking Peyton within a week of coming home and thought that timeline might even seem generous. I'm listening to my body but I really want to be able to just go outside and take a walk. I talked to my midwife about it and she said that I could still be feeling like this for another week or two which is a little disappointing so I'm just doing what I can to try to heal.

Did we really not know what we were having? Yup! It was a total surprise and the absolute best moment when, right after she was born, The Pilot said, "It's a girl!" I never really had a feeling one way or another through my pregnancy. I wouldn't really let myself have a strong feeling one way or the other. The night before I found out I was pregnant, I had a dream that I had a boy. Right around the start of my third trimester, I had a dream that I was having a girl. We had already picked out names for both a boy and a girl and two weeks before she was born, I was driving and got cut off by a truck with the name Aurora written across the back and then I really started wondering if she might be a girl. 

How did we choose her name? The Pilot and I had a really hard time thinking of baby names. It was really important to me that our baby's name could easily be said by my Spanish speaking family. I didn't feel like the name had to be Spanish but it needed to be easily translatable and that was tough. The Pilot came home one day and asked how I felt about Aurora. He had just heard the name somewhere and liked it but what he didn't know was that Aurora was my great grandmother's name, is my grandmother's middle name, and my aunt's middle name! And that was it! I've always liked the name Olivia so we chose it as her middle name.

How is Peyton handling a baby in the house? Peyton doesn't think she's allowed near Aurora. It's pretty adorable. She gets pretty close to her but won't come too close even when we try to get her to, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Every time The Pilot takes her out, she comes back in and runs to the bassinet to check on Aurora. It's adorable. She definitely doesn't mind having a baby in the house though. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, Peyton runs to her bassinet and lays down underneath it. It's super cute. 

So that's it! We have a baby and I have to say, it's pretty great!