One Week

I only have one week left before I have to go back to work.  Next Monday is my last day off.

I am sad beyond belief.  I do believe that at some point I would be ready to go back to work, but I really wish I could have taken 6 months off instead of just 12 weeks.  He still seems so little, so young, and so new that I really hate the thought of him essentially being raised by strangers while I toil away at work.  It seems so unfair...

Anyway, a lot has changed in the past couple of weeks.

1. I am trying to stop breastfeeding, but it isn't going well. 
Every time I think I've made some progress I get a horribly painful clog.

2. I have accepted the fact that I will not be completely done breastfeeding by the time that I go back to work. 
It took me a week or so to come to the "acceptance" stage but now that I'm there I'm going to focus on doing what I can to make the whole process as smooth and painless for me as possible.  Who knows - maybe I'll find that it's not so bad after all.  And if it IS so bad, I can step up my efforts on trying to stop.

3. EH is starting to be a better sleeper. 
His naps are still really erratic, but we've got him to the point where he goes to bed each night between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. (we kind of watch for signs that he's getting tired) and once he's asleep he's usually out for anywhere between 5 and 8 hours!!! (On average, it's about 6.5.)  This is major progress.

 He's like a little angel when he sleeps

4. There are good days and there are bad days. 
But it's easier to take the bad days in stride now that item #3 is in place.  Now if only I could get item #1 under control, I might actually be able to get more than 2 or 3 hours of consecutive sleep once I go back to work!!!  It's frustrating that he's able to sleep 8 hours straight some nights but no matter what I still have to wake up or else I risk another clog.  Ugh. Frustrating.

5. We are experimenting with different formulas.
Trying to figure out what works best, as he seems to be pretty prone to spitting up.  But what I do know for sure is that the only way he'll sleep 5 to 8 hours at night is if I give him a bottle of formula at his bedtime feeding.  With breast milk he's up and ready to eat again anywhere between 2.5 and 4 hours.  Needless to say, we have switched to exclusively giving him formula in the evenings.  Which is fine since that will be the case anyway once I am able to stop producing breastmilk.

So, all in all, things are going better.  We're finally getting into a better routine and he's predictable enough now that I'm willing to take brief outings to places such as Target where it's just me and him.  As soon as he's napped for more than an hour, I start getting stuff together to get ready to go out.  Then when he wakes up I feed him, get him in his car seat and we go on our adventure.  He's usually only good for about 45 minutes to an hour unless he falls asleep, but that's usually enough time for us to accomplish whatever I need to do.

It's just to bad that now that we're finally started to get into a groove he's going to have to go to daycare, and I'm going to have to go back to work, and I have a feeling things are going to get all sorts of messed up with the progress that we've made.  Our next transition day of daycare is on Thursday, so I guess I'll have a better sense of how things will go after that.