I survived!

I am officially a working mom! I made it through my first week back to work after three months. I experienced such a wide variety of feelings throughout the past four days. Monday night, I was a little worried about how I would do. I thought I was ready, but wasn't completely sure. My first two days back, Matt stayed home so I wasn't too concerned. It was great for them to spend so much time together after Matt had been gone for a week with his class. For the remaining two days, CJ spent time with two friends. While Thursday was a little sad for me, I really didn't stress too much. I'm proud to say that in those four days, I probably only checked in on him twice. Not too bad! I really count us blessed to have friends who are willing to offer up so much of their time to help us out. I think that is the reason that I was able to make it through the week. That, and my schedule was crazy. I'm definitely back to work.

On my drive home each day, I have been so tired. My daily schedule now starts earlier, ends later and has a lot more in between. The funny thing is that when I get home, I have a burst of energy because all I want to do is play with the little man. It's so refreshing! That tiredness comes back as soon as CJ goes to bed for the night. While I am able to fall asleep, my quality of sleep has been suffering! Even when I sleep I am still half listening for noises from the baby monitor. Occasionally, he decides to wake up earlier than usual. Take this morning for example, 4am was apparently a great time to wake up. It took almost 45 minutes to get him back to sleep. By the time I laid him down, it was time for me to get up and get ready for work (it was an early day, I don't always get up at 5am). Gone are the days when I can hit the snooze or make up my sleep on the weekend. I just hope my body can adjust quickly!

I'm a little embarrassed to share this, but it's part of my experience so you get to hear about it. Throughout my leave, I would occasionally have nightmares that CJ was in our bed, and that we had rolled over on him. I would wake up pushing Matt out of the way or digging through the covers to find him. Each time, I would be in a panic because I couldn't find him. Each time, Matt would bring me back to reality and explain that the baby was not in our bed. As my first day back approached, the nightmares came more often. On Monday night, I practically pushed Matt out of bed. I'm not really sure why the nightmares started because we don't have him sleep in our bed. These dreams don't help in getting rest because it takes time to calm down again. I'm not sure if these dreams are normal or if other moms have had similar experiences (maybe with a different dream). I don't know what it means but I'm sure I could find an answer online. You know what...I'm not even going to look. My guess is that each new mom goes through something weird at some point, whether they admit it or not. While I'm sure I look foolish during the nightmare, I'll look back at this and laugh. I just hope that they stop soon because I don't know how much longer I want to deal with it. :)