Life Update: April 2021

Welcome back to the blog! It’s been a bit longer than I would have liked since I last posted because life has been hectic lately. Most days, I honestly feel like I’ve barely taken a breath. I finally found the time and energy to sit down and write, so let’s catch up!

How am I feeling? Overwhelmed! I have a heavy plate with what feels like multiple full-time jobs: my day job, being a mom, breastfeeding, helping Justin with his real estate stuff (more on that in a sec), doing my blog, etc. I don’t have much free time, and when I do have free time, I’m typically frantically cleaning the house or taking a shower. In combination with that, I’ve been feeling a bit lonely since most of my time is spent alone with my baby. I wouldn’t have it any other way because being with her is my preference and I love being a mom, but I do long for post-pandemic times where I don’t have to worry about being around people & also a world where I have mom friends (lol, still need to find those or my current friends need to start popping out some kids). Being a new mom during a pandemic is very isolating, which I think I’m going to write an entire blog post about… so more on that later.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I got mastitis a few weeks ago. I started feeling extremely tired with bruise-like pain deep in my left breast. This pain confused me because I couldn’t find any lumps from clogged ducts, which is what usually causes me pain if I’m having any, and my breast felt completely normal to the touch. The pain continued and increased, and so did the exhaustion. We went on a walk one night (certainly not a long one) and I was BEAT for the rest of the evening. Though I didn’t feel good, I got ready to go into the office as I normally would the next morning and when I pulled my bra down to feed Clay before I left, the entire bottom half of my breast was purple. I fed her on that side, which was even more painful than the day before, and a red wedge shape appeared on my skin. I luckily didn’t have a fever, but I obviously didn’t make it to work that day and was put on an antibiotic. I’m very glad I caught it early before the fever and chills set in and I focused on feeding her on that side every two hours for the rest of the day. The pain subsided within a couple of days and I haven’t had issues since!

As I mentioned, Justin is selling real estate on the side now and he just closed on his first listing this past week. I’m so excited for him! Pursing this definitely takes a lot of extra time and energy from both of us, which is definitely hard to find with a new baby, but we feel that it’s worth it and that it will pay off for our family in the long run. He’s loving it and I really love that for him, too. It’s fun to see him be passionate about something new and I admire his hard work!

As for an update on Clay, she is getting cuter and cuter by the second, I swear. We started purees this week and she is LOVING food! Carrots weren’t her fave, but she has really liked avocado and a blueberry/banana combo. I’m making her purees myself until we plan to start baby-led weaning at 6 months and I’m actually having a lot of fun with it. Aside from that, she’s doing this thing now where she rolls from her back to her belly at night, gets stuck because she refuses to roll back over herself (even though she can), cries and we have to go roll her back over. She also is in a phase where she always wants to be sitting up or standing (with assistance) and loves interaction. We slowly moved her bedtime to around 8 p.m., which has been really great. This gives us a couple of extra hours to ourselves every night and I think she’s thriving with the extra evening sleep.

We recently scheduled our first vacation in four years! I haven’t taken more than a day or two off work (maternity leave doesn’t count, lol) since our honeymoon in 2017, so I couldn’t be more excited to have a real break. It’s extra exciting that this will be Clay’s first vacation too! We’ll be heading up to Michigan in June to hang out by the lake for a week and I can’t wait to see her little toes in the sand. Now I need to find swimsuits for both of us!

I’ve been working on slowly rebuilding my wardrobe. Fashion has been a huge interest of mine for as long as I can remember, but I feel like I’ve let my style take a backseat in my daily life over the last year and I really want to get back into it. When I was pregnant, I was just trying to make it by in the clothing department and simply wore whatever fit and was comfortable, but now that I’ve had Clay, I want to embrace the fashionable element of my personality again and feel like myself. It’s easy to wear the same lounge clothes every day when you’re taking care of a baby, but I truly feel better about myself when I mix some good outfits into my rotation so leggings and giant t-shirts become a ~sometimes~ thing and not an ~everyday~ thing, you know? It’s hard for me to spend money on myself though and invest in new clothes, so I’m trying to ease myself into it. Maybe I’ll do a post on the stuff I’ve purchased!

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That’s my update! As always, thank you for reading. I appreciate all of your kind words and encouraging messages so much. THANK YOU!