Hygiene, Husband, and Hats

First six weeks: 3 keys to my survival

*Hygiene
There are so many things that are chucked out the window when a newborn arrives. Priorities realign and there is a temporary shift into survival mode. The first and biggest thing to go was all sense of vanity. I refused to worry about how I looked or how the house looked. However, in order to stay sane I knew I couldn't forgo hygiene. The small act of making sure I brushed my teeth every morning separated the days from one another and prevented my turning into a muttering hermit with no sense of time or the outside world.

*Husband
What can I say? Glasses of water would miraculously appear, dishes were always done, and dinners made. This is a man who held my hand through every contraction and continues to split each night feeding shift with me. Really, I can't ever say enough.

*Hats
For the first month, I nursed through the night every hour on the hour. I was hanging on by a thread and needed sleep so much I could almost taste its sweetness. My sanity was going, so much so that I was absolutely convinced a ghost entered the bedroom every night between 3 and 4 o'clock. One cold night, I discovered my salvation. Tightly swaddle Olympia like a burrito and put on the silliest, strawberry shortcake, hat I could find. I couldn't help but laugh and kept an assortment of hideous hats in the crib from then on.


Yeah...it was all really hard but hell, what great thing in life isn't?