Evolving Marriage--Tuesday, May 17

We've had an uneventful day.  All I've done is laundry, dishes, feeding, and changing diapers.  Well, that along with watching parts of the Law and Order SVU marathon.  As I've stated before, it's impossible to watch TV uninterrupted these days, so it takes me an hour and a half to watch an hour long show.  Jackson has been refusing to nap the past few days.  The only time he'll sleep is if I put him in the Ergo and continue about my day.

Now that Jackson can wear most of his 3 month clothes, I've been having fun dressing him each morning.  Today he wore a green soccer romper.  He's made such improvements in his neck control, I couldn't resist putting him in the bumbo.  He was doing a great job until I got the camera.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, I think you can get the idea from this one:

As much as I've been pumping, I haven't actually frozen any milk.  Today I cleared out a drawer in the freezer and poured the bottles of refrigerated milk from the past three days into 5-ounce storage bags.  I now have 20 ounces of milk in the freezer and 15 ounces in the refrigerator.  My goal is to daily pump 5 ounces of  milk to freeze in addition to the 5 ounces for Jesse to give Jackson a bottle at least every other day.  That's an awful lot, so I'm not sure if that's a realistic goal or not.  I am going to make lactation bars to try and increase my milk supply with the hopes of increasing my pumping output. 

I wouldn't say that having a child puts a strain on our marriage, but it definitely changes things (in both good and bad ways).  I find myself getting irritable with Jesse.  I know teaching is exhausting, but so is caring for an infant.  I love him more than I ever have before, but we've had extremely few conversations that didn't revolve around Jackson.  And it's not like he's the one making the money necessarily because I am on maternity leave and still getting paid.  I spend 75% of my day solely caring for Jackson and the 25% of the time that Jesse is home and awake, he wants to be with Jackson.  (Of course in those few hours Jesse is available I am still the one changing and feeding Jackson!)  There's not really any time for us left.  I'm not sure how to balance being a mother and a wife.  I think my only role right now is as a mother--a tired mother. 

Laundry is folded and put away.  Dinner is cooked and dishes are washed.  Time to enjoy the evening.