Tired

UGH...oh yeah, this is what having a newborn is like!
Wonderful, beautiful, peaceful moments when the baby is sleeping on your chest and you feel like the world is complete, and then maniac crazy moments with all three kids are crying at you at once and you are so tired you can barely keep your eyes open.
Things that are going well:

• Some nights Odell sleeps up to 7.5 hours at a time. Every parent I talk to says "let the baby sleep!" and every doctor gets silent and then cautiously reminds me to not let the baby sleep for more than 4 hours at a time without feeding. On Wednesday I need to go in to get a weight on Odell, so I'm going ask what exactly it is that I'm risking by not feeding her, especially if she is growing well. Not that I'm lazy and don't want to get up with her (well...let's be honest, not that I'm lying in bed each night just waiting for her to wake up, sleep is definitely something I value highly these days...), but a tired momma= a stressed momma most days and I feel it's just as important to be rested so I can spend time with my other kids as well...any opinions/ideas to share on the matter?
• She is growing well- she was almost caught up to her birthweight at her first appointment, so I assume she'll be beyond that on Wednesday.
  
• Breastfeeding is smooth, but mostly because I cheated and have been using the breastsheild. More on that in the "what's not going well" section."
• Nursing has lost it's curiosity with my kids and they no longer look for everything they can get away with while I'm nursing and just move on with their toy playing/imagining together daily routine.
  
• I've lost 30 lbs already without thinking about it (which is about 10lbs more than I gained in the whole pregnancy- my body with all three pregnancies just let's everything fall off as soon as I'm done being pregnant, so it's like my spring-board to getting to my ideal weight each time...until I stop nursing and gain it all back...). I think that's about where I'm going to plateau, it looks like, until I can get a good exercise routine going on. I'm going to wait until I'm done bleeding though.
  
• I'm almost done bleeding, I think, which surprises me. Not getting my hopes up quite yet, as I know for me anyway, it comes and goes, but with my other kids it seemed like I was bleeding for like 5 weeks before it let up. I'm sort of sick of bleeding, and I hope it finishes soon. I've had enough of it this whole pregnancy and I wouldn't complain if I never had another period in my life!
  
• I can hug Craig and not feel miles away from him. I never take that for granted anymore.
  Snuggling while watching Hogan's Heroes is something we now look forward to almost every night (except now he's started school, so probably not so much anymore)

Things that aren't going so well:

• The nights Odell doesn't sleep 7.5 hours she stays awake for 7.5 hours! She's not crying when I'm holding her, feeding her (which she gets a frenzy about during that time), or even just sitting next to her, but the second I try to wrap her up and turn the lights out she starts crying. Some nights I've resorted to just pulling up a pillow next to her bouncer (or making Craig do it so I can sleep in the bed) and taking a snooze with the lights on on the floor. The days following those nights are rough, I'm not gonna lie. But manageable.
  
• Chloe and especially Linus are having a hard time transitioning to getting less attention and I feel completely helpless as to know how to help them sometimes. I always make sure to spend some time reading books, playing games, singing songs with them when I can, but their behavior just keeps getting worse. Chloe has resorted back to needing help every time she goes potty and if she doesn't get it, she'll sit there and wet her pants in the bathroom, and she won't eat her food at any meal anymore. We've tried setting timers, taking away desserts, and even putting her to bed, but she refuses to finish any meal. Linus either screams and cries over everything or he deliberately ignores both Craig and I whenever we give him any type of instruction, or doing exactly what we ask him not to do on purpose. He also hits Chloe way more frequently than he used to and will hit, throw toys at, poke, and kick Odell whenever he can- I monitor him around her all the time, but the second I try to pull him away from her for her protection, he throws a ginormous tantrum and I have to just put him on his bed and shut the door until he calms down. The worst is when the both of them get in a silly fit and anything we say or do has no effect on them whatsoever. This usually happens at bed time, which results in the two of them running around their room after we put them down, running out of their room and not staying in bed, getting on Chloe's bunk bed and scraping the popcorn ceiling with their fingers, or throwing everything off of Chloe's bed- we decided over the summer that we needed to read scriptures with them every night and pray as a family before they went to bed, and this makes it very difficult for either of those things to happen. On the nights when Odell is up all night and the days following when the kids go nuts, it makes for a very stressful household and a very stressed mommy sometimes. Just praying that it will get better soon! I know it's just a phase, but I don't breathe most days until the kids are either napping (which, thank goodness, they still do every day) or asleep in bed. Also, thank goodness Odell sleeps so much or I think I would go nuts!! I'm very nervous as to how they are going to adjust even further when their schedule changes again and I'm back at work...hopefully we'll have more of a routine by then. *disclaimer: they really aren't like that all the time, I just have had one of "those" mornings, so I had to vent about it a little*
  
• Breastfeeding: while it's super easy to feed with the breastsheild now, I think it is making my supply go down, which causes for more "up all night feeding" nights. I started using it because I was bleeding so much from cracking with every feeding (she had a hard time latching on deep enough to begin with, which caused the cracking and bleeding from the very start- and I mean very start, the first time she latched on right after she was born, I was already bleeding- I think I just have sensitive skin overall- and then it's just taken a while to heal because even when she was latched on right, it still made me open up and bleed again)- and after she started spitting up bloody milk, I needed some respite. But now when I try to get her to latch on, she can't get as much out and just gets hungry and frustrated with me until I put the sheild back on. I'm going to call the Wee Steps program and sign up for a time with a lactation consultant to see if we can work on this. The same thing happened with Linus, but after having someone help me a couple of times, he got off of the sheild quickly and we didn't have any problems after that. PS- am I looking forward to pumping when I go back to work? Absolutely not. It's worth it, but it's just so time consuming...
• ...

Yep, that's about all I had to complain about. Overall though I think the transition has been fairly smooth and like I said, I just LOVE Odell. She's very easy to fall in love with, and has been a very good baby so far.