my first truly sleep deprived night

Our baby is HERE!!!! Cliff Notes version: Baby girl Lydia Celeste born Tuesday night, December 5th. 12 hours of labor, entirely unmedicated. We had her 3 hours after we got to the hospital. Weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and was about 21 inches long. :)
Here is the full version of my birth story, with a link to pictures.

Lydia is 18 days old today and I wonder if she may be starting her 3-week growth spurt early. From about noon yesterday all the way through 5:00 this morning, she was wanting to eat every hour to hour and a half. I really wanted to bring her into bed with us so I could sleep and nurse at the same time, but I haven't quite learned how to feed her while lying down yet. I barely had time to eat, and could only take a few bites in between nursing sessions. I was able to get her to nap in the sling and I was excited about that, because previously whenever I'd put her in the sling while she was awake, she would get mad. She did get mad yesterday too, but I was standing with her and swayed back and forth about twice, and then all of a sudden she was asleep. That didn't help MY sleep situation any, but at least Lydia was able to take a nap.

After 5 am, she did let me sleep all the way to 10, so that was my sleep for the night. Now I'm up for the day and we'll do it all again. I had wanted to do some of my work at home stuff today but don't know if I'll be able to or not. We'll have to wait and see if Lydia will sleep later, and also if there happens to be work available while she is sleeping. I am going to put her swing together and see how she likes that. I haven't "needed" it yet and was wondering if we would. I hope she finds it calming.

already missing work a little, and "crazy" mom to be

Yesterday and today are my first two days REALLY off work. Today is of course Saturday but yesterday felt like Saturday too. I have been working for about 12.5 years, with a brief break to "try" college (but that's a story for another blog lol). I pretty much always knew that when the time came I would be a stay at home mom, but now that the time is nigh, I actually really miss working. I miss my coworkers from all 3 of the jobs I've had while here in Missouri, I miss the work, and I'll definitely be missing the pay. LOL. We are going to easily be able to live just on hubby's income, but I'll still do my LiveOps (my work at home gig) thing here and there for some extra money. I'll have a shower sometime this week (possibly tomorrow) and have asked friends who have children already what I still need, and my hostesses have asked for that list. I have registered also but most of my registry items are non-essential. I purposely left off things like socks, clothes, blankets, etc b/c in my limited experience, people will get those things for you anyway. But anyway about work. I left so far before my due date so I could have some time to "nest" and finish things up around the house before the baby comes, but for some reason even having all this time off isn't motivating me to do that. I have sewing to do and sewing supplies to organize, and a hospital bag to pack (especially with the roads still frozen... I don't want to have to send hubby home 5 times for this and that). But so far I've only been motivated to take a nap. :P I think later tonight and tomorrow and so forth I'll be a little more motivated... this afternoon I have an hour and a half shift for LiveOps and recently even the half-hour shifts tired me out, but hopefully I'll feel energized and motivated afterwards and can do some sewing after dinner tonight. Or tomorrow. :P

My mom has been calling every day wanting news... makes me wish that I had stuck to my original plan of telling people I was 2 weeks less along than I actually was. It would have been a good plan, too, if they didn't wrangle the fact that I was pregnant out of me when I was home at 5w4d for my grandfather's funeral. If they're already calling me every day now, they'll probably up it to twice a day as my due date approaches, and I just feel certain that I'll go overdue. I may just have to turn my phone off and change my outgoing message to "No, we haven't had the baby yet. We will call you back when there's news. Feel free to leave a message." But anyway Mom is asking about names, etc., and we really don't have those picked out yet. We feel this baby is a girl so we sortof have a girl's name picked, but that may change when it's born... and as for a boy's name, we haven't even talked about it for several months so we'll definitely have to have a big discussion if this baby is a boy. :P But Mom is sad that we're not sharing our names choices. She says that I'm crazy, and says it with a tone that she uses when she is really mad at me like I'm doing something wrong. Well guess what, Mom, you have no idea just how "crazy" I'm going to end up being. (with cloth diapering and planning to nurse our baby for at least a year or so). I'm sure she will have lots of words to say about that. Maybe she won't find out about the cloth diapers right off though since we'll start off using 'sposies and I have to take the baby go to see her since she won't be able to come see me. Even if we've started using cloth by then I'll probably switch back to sposies for the trip since it won't be very convenient to try and find a washing machine once a day for 10+ straight days. :P