Chronicles of Connor J.: Month 1 - Did we really sign up for this?

Once we get home and settle in, we create a home base in the "man cave" room which was glorious in the 2 months prior to Connor showing up. Videogames were played, movies were watched, and we rested / relaxed comfortably in that room. When Connor showed up it now became a room of chaos, constant crying/pain, and very little sleep.

As I talked about in the previous post, Barbara still had some pains to deal - physical pains from labor/breastfeeding, but also now included more emotional pain. She essentially had a feeling of being a slave to the child with little/to no reciprocation of appreciation or love. All she heard was constant crying. There was also a lot of guilt on her end on not being able to produce a lot of milk up front and constantly worrying - "Does he have enough food? Is he still hungry?" Those thoughts add up and led to some postpartum depression.

As for myself, it was definitely a tough month for me as well. I was extremely sleep deprived and my body wasn't used to waking up every 2 hours for 5 weeks straight. I took about 6 weeks off of work (1 week prior to Connor's birth and 5 weeks post), but I can honestly say that this was the LEAST restful vacation I've ever taken. It was constant work to keep an eye on Connor, give Barbara a break, try to support her emotionally, and still be able to provide love to our little guy. I fell in love with Connor immediately, but it was a trying month and I can't imagine anything harder. I truly understood what my parents, friends, employees had to go through when they had their kids and I definitely have a lot more empathy for anyone that has to go through this.

Lucky for the both us that we had SO much love and support from our family and friends. Both would constantly bring over food, watch the kid, just hang out with us so we didn't feel excluded from the world. Barbara's mom came over 3-4 times a week to help out and it was a life saver. Auntie Shannon (who also introduced Barbara and I) spent time over her winter break to help us out and she even stayed over one night just so that we can get some sleep! Uncle Brendan made his famous somen salad and Uncle Steve bought us dinner. Others like Auntie Leigh and Rachelle brought over home made goodies - Things like that make me really appreciate having the friends that we do and just reaffirmed the type of support/love that we knew they'd provide not just to us, but to our son.

All in all - the first month was hellish, but we survived and a lot of that was due to the support from great family and friends.