6 Months Postpartum : The Magical Month

6 months postpartum and things are really starting to fall back into place. Why? You may ask. Well here's why..

1. My postpartum hair loss comes to a halt.

Seriously, I struggled with this from month 3 onwards and was so worried that the bald patch at the side of my head going backwards from my hairline would be permanent. 6 months on.. It is miraculously growing back at an incredibly fast rate.

2. I've finally lost the stubborn 2.5 kgs.

This happened literally overnight. I woke up one morning, weight myself and found that I was 2.5kgs lighter. This could have coincidentally been a result of the stress I've been experiencing organising the move to Brisbane. Nonetheless, once I'd hit 6 months PP, the last stubborn 2.5kgs dropped off just like that *snap fingers*

3. I now have a flat  (relatively) tummy.

What they said is true - your body will never be the same again once you've carried a baby. And don't get me wrong. I think the female body is an amazing apparatus in many aspects and one of them is the ability to carry and grow a whole human for 9 months. Imagine the amount of work your body has to put in to sustain not just 1 but 2 lives and still keep on functioning on a daily basis.

After I gave birth, it took at least 10 weeks for me to feel even slightly normal again. I plateau-ed at 3 months (despite exercising from week 6 onwards) and only managed to lose the remainder of the weight from 4.5 months onwards.  At 6 months,  like I mentioned above I lost the remaining 2.5kgs and that came with a flatter stomach. I know I'll never get the same super flat tummy I was so proud of pre-pregnancy, but ill never be more proud of the fact that I gave birth to nothing short of a miracle.

So if you haven't hit the 6 month postpartum yet and are thinking of giving up altogether, don't lose faith.
What helped me the most was keeping a positive mindset, focusing on looking after my baby and at the same time eating healthy and taking time out every week to maintain an exercise regime.

Trust me, keep this up and you WILL eventually feel like a million bucks again. 

:-)

Crawling Milestone Reached @ 5 months 3 weeks old

So last week, for a period of 3-4 days, AJ went through an extremely fussy phase. Up until this stage he would sleep from 9pm to 3am, wake to feed and back to sleep immediately till about 7am.

In this fussy period, he would only finally fall asleep at around 11pm to 12 am (after 2 hours of non stop fussing) only to wake up screaming bloody murder one hour later; needing to be rocked back to sleep; then waking up again within the hour screaming bloody murder again. This went on for 4 days and at a time when John and I both fell sick. So by the end of it, we were so exhausted.

I didn't realise we were actually experience his 6 month growth spurt at the time.  All I wanted was for it to end!  Miraculously by the 5th day, things went back to normal and at the same time he started crawling! Army crawling to be precise.

So, at 5 months and 3 weeks old, our dearest baby boy has started to crawl :)

"6 month Sleep Regression"

AJ's 6 month old Sleep Regression came when he was just 5.5 months old - and it reared it's ugly little head at the most inappropriate time (I mean, when it is ever an appropriate time for a sleep regression anyway?!)

By that I mean, it came the very day I fell sick with a high fever, tonsilitis and had to manage an inflamed tendon (tendonitis).
It will still lurking around as an evil entity when John fell equally sick with a very high fever. Just when you thought things couldnt get ANY worse, my period decided to make its appearance, coupled with the sickness & the immense stress ive been feeling the last week or so, my milk supply took a huge dip.

So by day 3 of the regression, it was us 2 extremely exhausted, wearied and broken bodies with a fussy, screaming baby who simply won't settle down (even with boob!) or go to bed.

And then, magically, by day 4 he was sleeping well again (by about 4 months old he'd been sleeping from 8-9pm to 2-4am feed then back to sleep for another 3-4 hours).

My milk supply is slowly creeping back up but it is during this time that I've finally properly appreciated my freezer milk stash. Before this, the bags were sitting untouched and I actually thought I would've to throw them all away because we are moving to brissy in a month's time (permanent move) & will not ship them over because of the amount of trouble it will take plus I have already established a good milk supply and AJ will be starting solids by the time we are in brissy anyway.

So as I'm typing this it's day 5, 1020pm and he's sound asleep in his cot. I'd better use this time to catch up on some sleep!