Q+A From Bed! 6 Month Postpartum Check In!

hello hello and welcome back to the [Music] channel come here you're too far away hi you guys you might be wondering why um why are you in your bed well today's video is going to be a 6mon postpartum Q&A I can't believe about to be 6 months postpartum here and I thought we'd do a check-in I haven't done a Q&A in a while I haven't talked about just like pregnancy postpartum baby stuff like just as its own video in a while so I thought this would be a good little check-in moment and today's video is sponsored by bed share bed share's goal is to bring joy to customers around the world they design products with your everyday comfort in mind whether it's a soft blanket or a warm comforter they want you to get cozy in the place you call home today I have made my bed with bamboo and linen sheets that are breathable and keep us cool at night this pre-washed cotton comforter is extra cozy and Ultra Soft and looks so good in our bedroom I also got this silk pillowcase for my pillow my hair gets so frizzy but sleeping on silk really helps to combat a lot of that frizz so I wake up looking a little more refreshed also we got this cotton wheat blanket which comes in handy as an extra blanket on the bed when Mario and I inevitably fight for covers all night it's so warm yet lightweight and honestly it would be such a great gift too plus the best part about all of this bedding is that it is bomen approved for sure it would be tuna approved too but he's a little camera shy so if you're interested in this like seriously so comfortable so soft and more importantly like like nice and breathable I live here in Los Angeles and it has been hot lately and we've had issues with ourc so it's nice but I also like I can't sleep without a comforter that's just me and I like this green we had this like really um pattern comforter before which we've had for years cuz we have kind of like an art deco gold Motif going on in our bedroom um but I kind of like just the olive green a lot better it's more simple feels more I don't know it's a little less chaotic on the eye I just love these textures these colors the lived and feel so links below now let's jump into why you guys are really here a Q&A I asked you guys on Instagram for questions and I haven't looked it's actually been a few weeks since I asked that um cuz I wanted to actually do the Q&A when I was closer to 6 months postpartum and you guys this morning we gave August his first food we gave him mashed avocado we're doing I think we're going to do like a combo of like baby lead weaning and purees and um he is not a fan of avocado but one of my best friends her baby is just a few months older than August and um I was Tex with her about it that she was like oh like my son didn't like a lot of the first foods we gave him and now he eats everything so okay where did I ask that question okay so I'm just going to go through and pick some of the questions that I like and let's get this going have you started thinking about what age Gap you want yet I'm 5 months postpartum with my first and I realized I have to start thinking about it even just generally yeah um honestly this is something we started thinking about kind of the day that August was born we know we want to give him siblings I think for me I just I needed to see how the birth was going to go before I was 100% sure I'm an only child Mario is essentially an only child he has two half sisters that were out of the house by the time he was born so we were both raised as only children as a result August doesn't have cousins he technically has cousins from Mario's half sisters who we love dearly but his youngest cousin is like a teenager 15 or 16 I believe so he's not going to have any cousins his age and so even though we were both kind of raised as only children it's so important to us that he has siblings and just other kids in the family around his age cuz I have one cousin that's kind of close to me and age that's having kids but he lives in San Francisco and we're not that close so like really this is it so our doctor told us 18 months um and that's kind of what we're going on so basically when August is a year and a half old that's when we've got the go-ahead honestly I feel ready to go I'm I know that sounds crazy but I'm Ready the only thing that like emotionally I'm not really ready is that like I just really want to like enjoy August for as long as I can as an only child but then I think like whoever the next is like they'll never get that so maybe it's better to just bring them into the world now like I feel physically ready um but my doctor says I'm not so I think we're just going to wait the 18 months and then start trying again that's our current plan at the moment what's an upcoming Milestone I'm excited about um I would say eating but we started that today um I would say he's really close to well maybe not really close my a stretch the next thing I think physically he's going to do is sit up so we been like practicing sitting up up and he's getting pretty good so maybe sitting I don't know every new thing that he does I'm just like oh my God now he's been mocking like sticking I got like this at him a lot and he's been going like back to me and it's oh every new thing he does is like a joy and a gift oh this is a great one how are the cats reacting to the baby now so if you're new here I have two cats two long-hair cats Beethoven and Big Tuna when we first brought August home the cats wanted nothing to do with him they weren't mean to him or mad at him they just wanted to avoid him and he had like no awareness of the cats at all from the cats perspective that has not changed they still don't want anything to do with him but they're not mean to him or anything they just kind of they don't even really avoid him anymore cuz they'll like sit in the room with us while we're playing but they just kind of like don't have any interest in playing with him August however has discovered that he has cats and wants to play with them so bad every time he sees one of the cats he lights up he tries really hard to reach for it like we have really nice cats we're very lucky so like sometimes we'll hold him near like Beethoven and he'll just like reach out and like play with Beethoven's Fur play with Beethoven's tail and bethoven doesn't really care he's not like thrilled but he doesn't like run away or anything and that is like August's favorite time of day so August loves the cats the cats remain indifferent at best towards August is anything easier than you thought it would be how about harder I think like knowing what to do with him every day and like being comfortable with him that's so much easier than I ever thought it would be that was kind of one of the things I was most weirdly nervous about just because before before I got pregnant I never really spent a lot of time with babies sorry I'm screenshotting so yeah that's that's been easier and and enjoy honestly like spending time with my son is like literally the greatest gift in the world and I just I was so nervous that we weren't going to know like we weren't going to know each other and we know each other like we're we're besties um harder yeah I think I thought that getting into a routine would be easier like that's so much harder than I thought it was going to be and the thing is that like every once in a while I feel really confident like we're we're in a routine like he now apps for this amount of time and then he's a we for this amount of time blah and then like boom he's teething and now all of that is out the window and or boom we hit our sleep regression or boom hit a grow spurt and like every time you think you have it down it changes on you and I hear that's just how it is kind of for a long time so I'm getting used to the erratic patterns but as someone who's bring craves pattern control and routine that has been harder for me than I thought it was going to be but I'm so lucky to have a flexible job so that I can just like sit here and figure him out and learn him that's like something that I've been really privileged to have and I know that and like it's made even the hardest parts like manageable uh someone just said how are you feeling and honestly like I'm feeling pretty good like I kind of can't believe it I didn't really get like postpartum depression um which I was totally expecting so I know it can still happen but like emotionally I'm feeling really good like sometimes I go through these periods of like extreme anger or extreme sadness I am bipolar so like that is kind of part for the course with me but I also realized that it's very much tied to my cycle which by the way my period came back like 6 weeks postpartum so I've had many periods since giving birth and um I do have like stronger emotional like my hormone up and downs are way more strong than they ever were before I got pregnant um and it took me a couple months to like figure out like why am I so mad and then I was like oh it's always like the couple of days before my period I'm just like so sad and so mad um but mostly emotionally I've been feeling very level and physically I feel great I feel fantastic I started going to the gym a few weeks ago and I just feel like really in control I had no idea what recovery was going to be like and Recovery was very painful in those first few weeks like you know I'm past it now so it's like kind of a haze that I don't really remember but if I try and put myself back in those like first couple of weeks post partum oh my God like I was Liv I was sitting on ice packs like I was just like miserably painful but I feel like it all healed up in a couple of weeks and if you told me I gave birth I would be shocked everything is completely back to my experience of normal so I feel great breastfeeding journey and your pumping process how are you juggling both I'm doing December congratulations another thing that we got really lucky on is August took to breastfeeding really quickly um and I've been breastfeeding since the start I I hate to Coss is braggy this was just my experience like he had no latch problems and we just have been for the most part really successful in breastfeeding when I went back to work again I'm really fortunate to primarily work from home and so I only have child care 2 days a week um when she is here I pump bottles for her the thing is I am a just enough producer I never had an over Supply I only have four bags of milk in my freezer right now because I just like I don't have a lot of like extra Supply and what Supply I do have is starting to kind of dwindle and we're starting to have some issues um with the breastfeeding we like he's not getting enough we're also about to start solids but I'm also considering you know we're at the 6mon point and I'm considering starting to wean him a little bit and doing some combo feeding with formula just because I feel like he's not getting enough I have um we just talked to a lactation consultant and I have an appointment with our pediatrician of course next week so all of this is something I'm going to be talking about with them but so far the breastfeeding Journey has been fantastic and great and I have no complaints other than this like innate fear that he's not getting enough he's also you know he's on the smaller side for the weight percentile and so like I just worry about these things but like his output is fine all of the signs that he is getting enough or there it's just like an internal anxiety um and that and also like the fact that like I don't have a lot of extra production so like when I do go away for work when I do go to film it's very stressful to like stay on top of the pumping and and like to pop enough bottles to like leave for him is like almost sometimes impossible so for that those reasons we're considering weaning him into a combo feeding formula breast milk situation after we are officially 6 months which is next week so so far so good but there are some like weird Hang-Ups with breastfeeding for me personally if I was able to do it which I was I wanted to definitely make it to 6 months which I have um he has only had breast milk up until today when he had an avocado but before that he has only had breast milk his whole life and I I'm so happy and blessed that I was able to do that for him um but now we're at the 6 month point and we're starting to think about weaning him a little bit so that's kind of been like a little touch on my journey so far yeah that honestly check in with me again in 6 months and see what we ended up doing um cuz right now we've really just only been breastfeeding and and he will fortunately take a bottle of breast milk so like if I pump a bottle he'll take it from Mario or from our nanny or from you know whoever is watching him which like I know because I have a friend whose baby will not take a bottle that we were also lucky that he's pretty chill in that regard it's just that like I can't pre pump bottles and we don't have a huge stash so it's getting harder and harder to give him milk when I'm gone which I'm gone like two to four times a month so you know most of the time I don't mind having to be constantly with August for his food source but also like my parents were here the other day they wanted to take them out to the gardens I didn't have an extra bottle of milk to give them so I like had to go with them even even though I would have preferred to stay back and do some work it's just kind of like that so for a lot of reasons we're considering weaning um but not until uh 6 months and after we talk to our pediatrician as a 20-year-old who's never had a baby I want to know what is the worst part of pregnancy and birth well people's pregnancies you know vary I mean some people get really really really sick and you know it's just a miserable experience start to finish um I didn't necessarily get sick and also every pregnancy is different so like my next pregnancy could be nothing like my pregnancy with August for me I just got like really really big I was just like my bump was really forward I went to physical therapy for like the back half of my pregnancy because like my bump was causing so much like physical discomfort and pain um it's not that I was sick it's not that I even had like any of those kind of pregnancy symptoms it's just that like the extra weight and the bump was like and the movement of my pelvic floor bones was literally just like making everything painful Physical Therapy helped but I didn't really think about that before I got pregnant like oh it's going to hurt it's going to be miserable in so many ways but also I think I had a really lucky pregnancy and that in general like the the like pain the joint pain and the discomfort not a deterrent from doing it all over again um I just like really was like forward showing and who knows we may won't be like that next time but honestly like I said it's like that was maybe the worst part and I think I got lucky cuz cuz not a deterrent the worst part about birth honestly for me was just like the unknown of it all like going into the hospital not knowing like is this going to end in a C-section like is everything going to be okay am I going to deliver fine am I going to tear is it going to you know hurt is like all of just like that I just didn't know I had never gone through it I feel like now that I've done it i' I was I was so afraid of giving birth when I got that positive pregnancy test like it was the happiest day of my life followed by one of the like most anxious days of my life cuzz I was like oh I now have to give birth like giving birth is in my future and it is something I'm going to have to do and I something I had always been really afraid of it's scary it looks scary it sounds scary nobody talks about it like Wonder like in a wonderful positive way usually um my experience ended up being pretty positive and I'm so glad but like I know a lot of people who had C-sections after like pushing for a long time my I was breach and my mom and we did like an inversion like after she you know started labor like it was like I just heard all of these like scary things that could happen um I wasn't ready for the how mundane my own birth was there was like a scary moment and if you haven't seen or heard my birth story I I made a video of it I'll link it below if I don't remind me yeah I think like just the unknown and the anticipation of the worst that was the worst part of birth because my actual birth experience given that I had like an epidural and he came out pretty quickly was relatively chill I tore yes but I didn't feel a goddamn thing and that's the goal right I think that's my answer how has yours and Mario's relationship changed since having a baby oh I wish she was here to answer this with me but I would say our relationship has gotten stronger and better I know that's not always the situation that you hear about from people but Mar and I have been together for uh it'll be not uh 9 years this year um we've just been together for a really long time and um we've known we like this has been a conversation that we've been having for like let's say 7 and 1/2 out of those 9 years is like having a baby and what our life is going to be like and we waited you know until we were like in the right spot financially and like we had a h like we had all these benchmarks we wanted to hit that we hit before we you know had him but we have been thinking about having kids for a long time so for us this is something that we really wanted and so even when times are like you know when August isn't sleeping or one of us feels like we're taking on more of than work than the other or whatever like there is never a moment where we're not so grateful for our family and I think like there's something about the hormones and the euphoria postbirth that it has not worn off that's just like oh my God like we did this we're a family like I love you so so much like every time I look at him I'm just like oh my God that is the love of my life that is my best friend and him and I made a baby and that baby is amazing and I know like he has said similar things about me and like I just Mario has always been an incredible partner but he's an even more incredible dad and literally having a child has only made our relationship and our family unit like so much stronger I love my husband I'm so obsessed with him you guys have been around you know I'm like codependent as hell on him um but yeah it's just been it's been really good like emotionally physically mentally like every on every level of our relationship things have only gotten better which I never would have predicted like literally we actually we did coup's counseling while we were I was pregnant because I was anticipating things getting harder and I wanted to make sure that like we had really strong open lines of communication which I think was a great idea we didn't like have any particular issues I just like wanted to be prepared for when the baby came so we did a couple sessions of C couples counseling before or Coupes therapy I guess or whatever before I gave birth and I'm glad we did that because I do feel like we've been able to like really communicate well and we have had like a couple little tiny fights that we resolve like super quickly but things have just not been as difficult as I thought they were going to be I thought my anxiety was going to prevent me from trusting him but seeing how good he is with August like my trust in him has only like quintupled so not to be so gross and sappy but literally our relationship has never been better what topics are you watching about baby development content on Tik Tok or YouTube I had to stop looking at at Tik Tok and YouTube for like parenting stuff it was just there was too much conflicting stuff I was getting in this like pit of feeling like I wasn't doing enough for August which was crazy cuz I am and like I don't know it was just not great so I kind of stopped looking at parenting stuff I will say I follow um solid starts for baby blood weaning advice on Instagram and I also follow this wonderful account called OT Marissa and I'll link them below if I don't remind me her baby is only 1 month older than August and she's a like a child OT and so she's been giving like she gives lot of advice on like what to do for tummy time and like how to help them hit the next Milestone so just because like her son is literally just like one month ahead of August it's nice to like look at her account and be like ah here's what's coming up and here's like some products I can buy and stuff I can do um but really those are the only two accounts that I have been looking at because I'm trying not to oversaturate myself with like advice from others like we are seeking advice in real life from people and resources that we trust but I feel like social media is not 100% reliable sometimes it can be fantastic but for the most part it should just be entertainment so I haven't really been looking too much at like Tik Tok YouTube stuff for parenting personally I know that it can be very helpful and there are a lot of great resources out there this is just what's working for me okay let's answer this TMI question because I'm in bed and then we'll we'll close this video off maybe TMI so I'm sorry but does sex feel the same it's one of my silly worries I get it I was concerned about the same thing everything is back to normal everything Everything feels the same I promise you from my experience I had a second degree tear with you know stitches and um everything is completely normal back up and running everything functions as it should and um we've put it through the test multiple times and all good so everything goes back and everything works as it should and intimacy is sometimes even better than it was before before we gave birth kind of weird you would never have imagined but yeah that's the truth okay you guys I think that's going to be all of the questions I answer today but thanks for doing this little check-in Q&A with me with all my cozy bedding from bedir so to remember to shop bed Shire to make your bedding as cozy as mine and thanks again to bed Shire for sponsoring this video and making this one of the comfiest filming locations of the channel I appreciate it so much and I wish I could stay in bed all day but unfortunately August will be getting up from his nap soon and I got to go breastfeed him um so thank you guys so much for being here I love you oh so much and I'll see you in the next one bye [Music]