Crawling out of My Cave

I'm sitting and listening to Led Zeppelin, typing with one hand while Bruno sleeps peacefully in my arms. This . . . us . . . Massi, Bruno and I, has been incredible lately.

I've arrived to motherhood 100% and I'm in love beyond everyday more that it's sometimes difficult to swallow. I even start thinking about the "what ifs . . . What if Bruno wants to ride motorcycles very fast. What if some kid at school bites him . . . What if he hurts himself? The evil curse of fear that comes with the depth of unbelievable love you attain from your baby love. I think I handle it pretty well. I think about how annoying it was when my mother was overprotective of me and I try to let it go. It's a challenging road to navigate . . . control, protection, obsession. . . especially as a mother.

Bruno is now three months old and he is just spectacular. He's started sleeping 6 hours straight through the night occasionally and I have him on a routine of wake, eat, sleep that occur in basically three hour rhythms. The structure and routine make it easier for us to communicate together and for me to feel more at ease about why he may be crying. Plus he recognizes that I'm in charge and he takes comfort with that. He really only cries now when he has to take his naps. He fights the sleep that overwhelms him and that's where I come into play and rock him and tell him it's time to take a nap. He knows what time it is, the repetition, the conditioned response of certain sounds I make when he needs to sleep.
In the beginning when it started working even I was surprised, but now we have such a better relationship. There is more clarity to communicate with each other because a lot of uncertainty over what he is feeling is eliminated. He doesn't have to ask to eat because I feed him every time he wakes up from a nap and his body has adjusted it's need to this schedule. Plus he will always stop eating if he's no longer hungry. This has decreased much of his fussiness and crankiness from either being overtired (because he will not regulate his sleep himself), or from crying over being too hungry . . .and the result overall has been one super smiles happy Bruno.

He is now eating his hands and will sit in his bassinet for an hour while I either cook something, clean, exercise in the living room, and recently I have even brought him into the bathroom while I shower. It's all about timing and I know that I need to start these projects right after he feeds in order to get the best results. It's been almost liberating and I no longer wake up asking myself, "what am I going to do today?" and have to answer, "oh, nothing." Now I have my master list of what needs to get done and I try to crank out as much as I can. I feel like I am crawling out from a cave I've lived in over the last year. It's been a cozy cave with bonfires and 'smores, but I'm so over it and ready for dresses, white table cloth dining, and glasses of wine again in my life.