Life with 3

Owen David Zaugg joined our family Jan 6th, 2012 after an amazing labor and delivery (story to come). Once again I did it unmedicated, which was virtually painless this time!
He's 6 days old today, and life is surreal. It's amazing how good I feel. The blessings are flowing freely and it doesn't seem fair how easy this has been so far. It could be that my mom is still helping out, and I haven't been on my own yet, but I somehow feel an ease of transition. I spent 2 nights in the hospital-a first for me, which was wonderfully relaxing and I felt so good by the time we left, that I'm ready to take it all on again. Like I said, the blessings have been plentiful.
 Porter seems interested and helpful, yet indifferent. Henry has been a challenge. He has hit an "I'm not a baby anymore" stage. It's been difficult to deal with. He won't sit in the high chair, doesn't want to sleep in his crib, and needs more one-on-one attention from me (that's a given.) I feel bad, cause none of this is his fault. His life was changed with no input of his own and he is trying to deal with it the best he can. We're debating whether to put him in a bed, or fight it out...
Owen has been doing well, and seems to have caught on so far about nights and days. My other 2 kids have had a pattern I prepared for for this one. The 2nd and 3rd nights (both at home) they are up ALL night. I remember sitting in the rocker holding a pacie in their mouths all night twice in a row. After that, they seemed to catch on and created a schedule of 2-3 wakings during the night. (I can live with that). I stayed an extra night in the hospital so that I could rest the 2nd night and not have to deal with a fussy baby. It worked! Despite Evan's best attempts to leave the baby in our room that 2nd night, exhaustion won out, and we both slept well with Owen in the nursery. I think that has contributed to my overall good feeling. That 3rd night was not bad, and we took turns dealing with a fussy, non-sleeping baby. The other nights have been better than expected, and last night, we were only up twice.

I found a cool product online a few weeks ago as I was researching an alternative to the swing for baby to sleep in. It seems for the first few months, my babies can't sleep well on their backs in the crib, and propping them up always made me feel uneasy and I wanted to check on them all night long and make sure they were still alive. I found a cool product called the nap nanny. The downside to this was the $120 price tag. Unfortunately I couldn't find one much cheaper than that, so I looked for an alternative. I found a fisher price sleeper seat called the rock n play sleeper. It's wonderful! We're singing it's praises every morning around here. It's basically an inclined bassinet that rocks, but the seat is big, and the back is straight, and the incline seems to be the same as the bassinet at the hospital. The best part-babies are SUPPOSED to sleep in it! It really takes the worry out of leaving him there in the night. He sleeps like a champ! LOVE LOVE LOVE.