I can’t believe sweet Keilah is already two months old! Here’s an update on our life as a family of seven, and how I’m feeling 2 months postpartum! 

Our sweet Keilah Faith has been in our arms for two months now, but it feels like she has been in our lives forever! Of course, I cannot imagine our family without this sweet little love bug, and I wanted to take some time to update you on the last two months of life!

So here are some personal updates on just about everything you could want to know about life with my sweet baby girl postpartum! Don’t forget I wrote an entire post about Thriving Postpartum after I had Mara, and it is all still as true today as it was then!

Keilah

Keilah is a pretty good baby. In the temperament department she isn’t quite as pleasant now as we thought she was when she was born. Basically if she’s awake she likes to be eating or walked around, or else she gets pretty fussy! But that is totally normal for a baby and I’m grateful I have so many willing hands to hold her when I need help!

NOT a morning person!

Something I think is hilarious about Keilah is that she doesn’t like to be woken up! Since I am all about the schedule (read Babywise) I sometimes have to wake Keilah up to feed her after a nap or in the morning. My other kids all welcomed being woken up to be fed…but not Keilah. She gets a little pouty lip and cries the second I touch her and sweetly say her name. This might be a foreshadowing of her morning temperament for the rest of her life…LOL!

The first few weeks all we did was snuggle. I unashamedly did nothing but sit on the couch with this sweet girl on my chest feeling her breathe in and out and enjoying her fresh newborn scent!

After a couple weeks I started wrapping her during our snuggle sessions, because I had to get back into doing things like homeschool, cooking dinner, etc. (BUMMER). I’d live that post-baby snuggly hermit life for MUCH longer if it were up to me. 😉 

Look at that HAIR!

The first thing most people comment on when they see Keilah is her luscious locks. And then they ask me if I had a lot of heartburn during my pregnancy! LOL! I had a little bit (which is more than I had with any other baby), but nothing too notable!

But really, I’ve never had a baby born with this much hair! And the color is unreal! It’s a dark reddish and it’s just so pretty! I was just looking at Mara’s photos and I thought she had hair when she was born, but compared to Keilah she was practically BALD! LOL! 

Sleep

This kid is an amazing nighttime sleeper…maybe my best one yet. She sleeps from 9 PM until 5 AM and has since she was 5 weeks old (with a few bonus nights around 3 weeks even)! I wake her up every morning to feed her at 5 AM and then she goes right back to sleep until 8 AM. That way I can workout, eat, shower, etc. before all my other kids wake up

We’re still working on the whole napping thing, but I know she’ll get there! I would just wrap her all day long but I need a little bit of time in the mornings to do homeschool with the older kids without a baby attached to me, and in the afternoons for my own sanity! 

GROWTH:

Keilah was 8 lbs 4 oz (my biggest baby yet) at birth. She left the hospital at 7 lbs 7 oz, and at her two week checkup she was 8 lbs 7oz, which is great because by that appointment they just hope that the baby has gotten back up to their birthweight. Her two month checkup isn’t until next week, so I can’t wait to see how chunky my little monkey is then!

MILESTONES: 

Smiling!!! Keilah is officially smiling {like not just gas}! It’s SO rewarding when your baby finally starts reciprocating the love! She has recently added little coos and giggles to her smiles, which just melts my heart. Other than that, she’s still pretty standard for a newborn! LOL!

NURSING:

Keilah has been the most challenging nurser out of all of my kids.  If you remember, she had a lip/tongue tie and I feel like she still hasn’t fully learned how to latch perfectly. I’m not in pain like I was before, and nursing feels about 90% normal. But since I have had so much experience nursing my other four kids, I know it could be better. However at this point I’m just kind of riding it out, since it’s getting easier as she grows.

However I wills ay that she is an alert nurser, which is great! My first three babies would get super sleepy during their feedings and it was seriously hard work keeping them awake to get a full belly! Keilah eats while she’s sleeping, and does it with ease! 

MOMMY-2 months postpartum

This has been the BEST recovery I have ever had! Since I didn’t really tear (one stitch) and had such a quick labor I literally felt like I could go run five miles a week after giving birth (I didn’t don’t worry lol).

Post-pregnancy body

I got the all-clear for activity at my 6 week postpartum checkup and was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight, but obviously do not yet have my pre-pregnancy body. I think that’s an important distinction to talk about. 

Our bodies undergo incredible changes during the 10 months of pregnancy to grow and sustain that sweet little life. And what takes 10 months to do will not be “undone” in a few short weeks. So my advice is to embrace it. I don’t expect my clothes to fit the way I prefer them to for at least 6 months postpartum. I just live in leggings and sweaters and dresses and let it go! I would rather snuggle, rest, eat what my body craves and enjoy life than be focused on looking a certain way. 

That being said, my husband reminded me that “normal foods” for me are very healthy (although I do love my dessert LOL). And it’s true, I genuinely enjoy eating healthy meals and exercising! And since nursing uses so many extra calories I don’t have a lot of trouble getting back in shape as long as I am patient! 

Some changes can be permanent

I know some of you might not like to hear this…but some of the changes our bodies undergo after pregnancy are permanent. The way I choose to see it is that I will carry these sweet reminders of the time when my babies were a part of me for the rest of my life, and I will cherish that. This time around my fingers grew. No joke I wore a fake wedding ring for 8 months and I assumed that after I gave birth my fingers would go back to normal. Nope. I had to get my wedding rings resized to fit comfortably! LOL!

Other parts of me, after growing five beautiful babies, are also not what they once were. But I can honestly say I don’t care! And my husband doesn’t either! He always tells me I’m beautiful and after I have my babies he affirms that he loves me just the way I am. I never feel pressure from him to lose weight or to look any other way that I do at any given moment, and I am beyond grateful for that. 

EXERCISE

This time around I was a little less eager to jump back into exercising. I much preferred the extra sleep in the mornings for a while, because with 5 kids I definitely never get any naps during the day. However around week 3 I started itching to get outside, go for a walk, and breathe in the fresh mountain air!

I always take it super easy on the exercise until I get the all clear from my OB at my 6 week postpartum checkup. I do not run when I am pregnant {for lots of reasons} so it takes me a little bit of time to build back up post-baby! This time around I started run/walking around 4 weeks {I’m talking 9 minutes of walking, 1 minute of running…repeat a few times}. I started running for longer after my OB told me I was all healed, healthy and had no restrictions on my physical activity. I’m up to 30 straight minutes of running, which I feel pretty good about. It does feel strange to only be able to run for such a short time (former cross country runner here)! However I am listening to my body and only doing what I feel like doing and what I think my body can handle! 

Hormones

Oh boy oh boy. The hormones have been serious this time around (but they always are). For the first month I would cry for no reason, usually around 7 PM like clockwork. The kids would all get very concerned and ask Ritch, “What’s wrong with mommy?!” He explained that nothing was wrong mommy is just feeling grateful for Keilah (which is very true), and emotional. 

I think one of the things that makes this time around more emotional is that Keilah could very well be our last baby. I’m not fully ready to declare that I am done, but I currently feel very stretched and am not sure another sweet baby is what God wants for us. So the thought of all Keilah’s firsts and lasts being the last first and lasts of our baby phase is just overwhelming to me. 

For example, after I left my 6 week postpartum checkup I got in the car and bawled my eyes out. I almost had to pull the car over because I couldn’t hold it together. I just kept thinking about it being my last postpartum checkup and how sad I was for that season to potentially be over. I also cried because I would miss my OB! I know that sounds silly but she is not only an amazing doctor but an amazing person! She has been there through three of the most important events in my life (growing and birthing three beautiful baby girls) and I could not imagine going through that without her! I literally asked my husband before I left if it was appropriate to ask your OB to be your friend! Because she is just so absolutely wonderful and we have so much in common! 

To make this experience even more of a gut-wrencher, one of my favorite songs from Steve Miller Band came on called “Wild Mountain Honey.” One of the lines in the song really spoke to me…

“Come on momma now look what’s been done, you can only see the stars after the setting sun.”

Phew, oh boy that verse was just so applicable to me in that moment. The idea of looking back and being grateful for all that I have done in growing five beautiful, healthy kids in my body and then nourishing them with my body over the last eight years. And realizing that after the sun sets on this phase of life there will be even more joyful times ahead that I can’t even experience until this season is over. But I definitely cried all day that day! 

Finding our “new normal”

This has been hard for me, and I feel like we still haven’t fully gotten back into our groove. After my mom left I couldn’t even handle the thought of Ritch going back to work and leaving me alone with these five tiny humans. I would cry every time he mentioned leaving me even for an hour lunch meeting. 

However at week 3 I started reminding myself that I am a capable woman who can handle my own children, and Ritch basically went back to work full-time that week…and we survived! LOL! 

The days go by SO fast right now. Between nursing, homeschool and feeding my family the hours just disappear. Add selling a house and preparing to move to this season of life and let me tell you it has been exhausting. However I keep reminding myself that all of the things happening in our life are amazing blessings. A perfect labor, a beautiful healthy baby girl, getting to be home with my kids, moving into our dream house, selling our home in FOUR days, a thriving business (this blog), family who loves us enough they want to come visit, etc. etc. but boy oh boy I am tired and ready to have a little season of calm after we move into the new house! 

My other kids

The other kids are still smitten with little Miss Keilah. They all want to hold her, watch her get a scrub down in the bath, and help as much as possible. I will say, it’s a total game changer having a responsible 8 year old to help me with the baby! I trust Bethany to do just about everything I would need help with during the day (besides changing diapers). She is such a great big sister and absolutely adores Keilah! Gabe is exactly the same way, and is  a 5-year-old boy version of helpful! 😉 

I will say, Bethany has felt the changes a new baby bring more than the other kids. She all of a sudden had to share her room, not get the usual one-on-one reading time with daddy at the end of the night, and understood the changes in mommy (read: hormonal mess) way more than the other kids. We’re trying to teach her that all of these changes are good and some of them are temporary just until Keilah is out of the newborn phase. But a lot is happening all at on time! 

Naomi and Mara like to hold her until she cries, and then they ask me to come get her! They emulate me the most, and are always rocking their babies or holding them and pretending to be little mommies. 

Naomi carried her baby doll around on a walk in her coat the same way I hold Keilah in the Solly wrap! It was so cute! Mara always looks at the baby and says, “Keilah Cute!” and I repeat after her. Then she says, “Yeah, and funny!” It’s adorable! 

Do you want to have more kids? 

Oh boy! This is the very first time in our lives that I am not 100% certain I want another baby in our future. That makes me unbelievably sad, and so I have chosen not to think about it too much right now because it’s more than I can handle emotionally while the postpartum hormones are flowing. 

I just rest in the fact that we have plenty of time before we have to even start thinking about this (I don’t get a cycle while I’m nursing), and I absolutely do not need to make this decision now. I honestly feel super tired and stretched, but that is to be expected with a newborn and four other sweet kids. I kept telling myself to remember how I felt the last month of pregnancy and the first two weeks postpartum…because it’s amazing how much we forget (my doctor says that’s the only way women have more than one baby lol)! Because I am getting older (read: I’m not 25 anymore lol) and I want to be able to fully enjoy the kids I have been blessed with instead of just focusing on having more. 

All that being said, I always said I wanted six kids. So I’m concerned I will regret not having another one and will always wonder what would’ve happened (would we have had that brother for Gabe?! LOL)! I have never heard anyone say they wish they didn’t have as many kids as they did, but I have heard women say they regret NOT having more. And I believe children are a blessing from the Lord, so why would I not want more blessings when I’m still young-ish (33). I also absolutely love the baby phase, and the thought of never having another baby makes me cry! 

So I’m honestly praying that if we’re supposed to have another baby God will just make it happen. I would love it if something unexpected happened (like getting pregnant while nursing) or something that made it so I didn’t have to make the choice. The one thing we do know for certain is that we are not ready to take any permanent measures to ensure another baby doesn’t come along. So we’ll just have to wait and see! And enjoy this baby girl!

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