There's nothing like a baby...

Six weeks ago today I went in to my OB for a regular check up at 36weeks and he told me I was going to have my baby and needed to go to the hospital. I had her about 14hrs later. Today I went back to my OB and took my precious little one with me. In regards to the (official tomorrow) 6 weeks of her life I've come up with a few "sayings" that are kind of like "you might be a redneck if..." except I'm not a comedian, so don't expect these to be funny.

There's nothing like a baby to make you lose weight.
     -no joke... I am down now 12lbs from my prepregnancy weight (although before you read this and feel jealous if you didn't have a similar experience please note that I STILL look 4 months pregnant). I spoke to my doctor about this today because the truth is, I don't actually mind being fat. So long as I'm not in plus sized clothing, I'm pretty okay with my appearance. What I'm NOT okay with is looking like I'm pregnant when I'm not. So, it's time to start doing some crunches :(  (and maybe buy spanx for between now and whenever I have done enough crunches to no longer look pregnant)

There's nothing like a baby to make you appreciate 4hrs of uninterrupted sleep.
    -if you've ever had a baby, there's no explanation needed here.

There's nothing like a baby to make your standards of "good" go down so far.
    -we've come to measure our status of being "good" parents by the fact that she's alive and healthy... and our new definition of a "good" night or day really just means our kid didn't scream the whole time and at some point she slept long enough for us to put her down and go pee.

There's nothing like a baby to make you stop caring what other people think.
     -I don't care if people look at me when my baby screams. I also don't care if they think I'm crazy for having left her two nights in a row with my mom at just 5 weeks old, or for putting her in the church nursery at 5 1/2 weeks. I also don't care that pediatricians think I shouldn't put a little cereal in her bottle at night, or that I let her sleep on her tummy, or use the adorable crib bumper on her bed. I'm her mom. I get to decide what's right for her and us. The only opinion in regards to my parenting that matters to me (other than Cameron of course, we are a team) is Violet's. So if in 20 years she comes to me and tells me that I somehow damaged her in my parenting decisions, I will gladly explain why I did what I did and apologize for my failures. I don't make decisions lightly and her safety is at the top of my priority list, but I'm also an intelligent human being who doesn't feel the need to follow every "rule" put out there by people who think they know what's best: I do the research, take time to find out why they think I shouldn't do something, and then decide what's right for us.

I love my daughter with all of my heart. Getting her cost me a greater amount of pain/torture than I ever would have imagined, but she's worth more. However, as precious as she is to me, she isn't #1 in my life (aside from God of course). My husband comes first, my marriage comes first. When we are both exhausted and start snapping at each other, it's time to take a break and have someone else watch Violet long enough for us to rest and remember what it's like to just be "us" because twenty-something years from now, it's just going to be "us" again.

There's nothing like a baby to make you appreciate "us" time.