3am musings while pumping

One of the startling things about postpartum was the speed with which I returned to my pre-pregnant state. My nose bleeds stopped immediately. My food cravings vanished, although some of my aversions stayed, no nausea, just a general aversion. My skin is back to normal and my hair is oily again. Fascinating.

I'm up at 3am pumping breast milk. I managed to go out tonight and Scott got previously pumped milk. The side effect of this, that I learned last night at 5am was thatI get engorged if he doesn't eat enough from me in a day. I'm just going to bed (probably a bad plan) now, so I'm being proactive. I just fed him and now I'm pumping. At least last night I got 7.5oz when I did this, we'll see how I do tonight. After about 6 minutes it looks similar to last night.

Pumping, while hands free, isn't exactly graceful and it is really awkward trying to hold a laptop on my lap. The pumps stick out a lot with the bottles and tubes. I'll say it again, awkward.

Fortunately, it's just about time to stop this nonsense an climb into bed with my warm child and husband. :)

I post so many things to so many different groups of people. I thought I'd say this to everyone.

I have a new little child named Scott. His arrival is allowing me to take 3 months off work. He's also allowing me to drop pretty much all house work for 2 months while I have awesome family come and help me out. He's a relatively easy baby and he's cute and charming, if still fairly non-interactive. Eric is behaving wonderfully toward me and Scott. I am as happy as I've ever been! I am truly enjoying this period in life. Thank you to everyone who has sent gifts, kind words and come to visit (and brought me food!). I have a wonderful family and community. :)

Eww, gross

I'm enjoying a rare moment of solitude with nothing to do (thanks to all of my really fabulous help around the house from visiting family), a sleeping baby and things returning to my groggy mind to write about.

So I had delusions about writing a book this month as a part of NaNoWriMo. Ha! I did it last year, I will do it again in the future, but a few weeks after giving birth is not the right time to write the book. However, I do think I will turn the contents of this blog and other pregnancy writings I have done into a book someday, so I figured I should write about this stuff while it's still on my mind.

I warn you, it's kinda gross. Stop reading if you don't want to read about gross stuff I went through during and after birth. Really, I'm assuming you will stop reading now if you are squeamish.

You've been warned.

Lots of things about labor were surprising. For one, I didn't know it could go on for 50 hours with only 2cm of dilation. That was unpleasant. It was also surprising to me that I "lost my mucus plug"... and then kept losing more and more. And Mucus Plug and Bloody Show are both really nice terms for what is basically a giant ball of bloody snot. You know that kind of stringy white/clear mucus you get when you're really congested? That's kind of what it was like, but with blood. All in all, I probably noticed about an oranges worth of that stuff over a 30 hour period. I expected the first tablespoon of it to be the bulk, but it just kept coming! Odd.

Oh, and then there was the matter of my "water breaking". I have friends who had it break to start labor. And in birth class they told me that it would probably not break until I was in the hospital already, around 4-5cm dilated. And of course there was always the possibility that it would be broken to progress labor. But I wasn't really prepared for what did happen. It didn't break. At all. In fact, when Scott's head first started to crown, the doctor and nurse were both a little confused at how odd it looked. Not enough to tell me at the time, but it was odd. Finally my doctor figured out that all my membranes were still in tact and she cut them. If she hadn't done that, Scott probably would have come out in a fully intact bag of fluid. That's super odd. So my water never broke.

After you give birth, they sew you up. I think I got one stitch, but I didn't ask. I'll try and find out at my follow up doctor visit. Afterwards, I sat on the bed for a while, and eventually when enough feeling had returned to my legs, they told me to try and stand. I had my catheter removed a little while before that, so first order of business was to go to the bathroom. Let me tell you, you have no shame in the moments after birth, but it's still a little odd to have someone walk you into the bathroom. Ah, but then you see why. You have zero control of your bladder after giving birth. I didn't really pee until I got to the toilet, but it just sorta went. And boy was it gross. So much blood. And then I had a very nice nurse explain to me how to clean myself up with a squirt bottle because wiping was going to be too painful. These things they don't tell you when you are pregnant. Labor, sure, you learn about. But losing all bladder control after birth for a good day was odd. I didn't pee myself, but but still.

Finally, it's now 3.5 weeks later and things still hurt. I am still bleeding bright red blood with some clots, although a very small amount of it at this point. No fun. My dining room chairs are uncomfortable for extended periods of time. At least Scott won't let me sit down and eat for more than 10 minutes, he just knows when I'm ready to eat... or done. I'd like to be healed, but I guess that's why they say 6 weeks healing time.

Ok, that's the update for now. Not so much of an update, but things I didn't want to forget, because it's all this gross and uncomfortable stuff that you forget about in order to talk yourself into having more children.

Milestones!

Woo! So Scott has finally gotten off the nipple shield. He and I went cold turkey yesterday and although it was a bit of a fight, he seems to have come through to the other side none worse for the wear. He's even starting to get the hang of self latching. In fact, I cried last night when he did it for the first time successfully.

In other news, he was awake from 7:30am-3:00pm with only about 45 minutes of nap in there. That's a long time. Especially since I'm on solo night duty for 3 nights. I'm pretty exhausted.

And I need a shower.

But he's sleeping now and that's a good thing. :)

Also, he's now been alive in two different months. He survived his first holiday fairly uneventfully. I'm excited about all of the future holidays we get to have together too!

Scott is 19 days old.

An Update

When I'm sitting and nursing Scott, I think of all of these things I'd like to write about here. But when I get a free moment and I sit down at my computer I don't feel like writing. So here's a summary, some of which I may expand on later, but no promises.

Good things:

• I get it. Motherhood and all that. It's awesome and I'm so enjoying these first few weeks.
• I'm so much more patient than I expected to be. I can handle the crying, I just want him to be happy.
  
• Swaddling and The Happiest Baby on the Block are good things!
• Having a swing is really useful.
• Cosleeping is way less scary than I expected, it actually makes sleeping better.

Less than good things:

• I am tired. I get way more sleep than most mothers I know and yet I'm still tired.
• Scott nurses a lot. Upwards of 4 hours a day. It's boring.
  
• I've stopped dropping 2 lbs a day, sad. I'll have to lose the last bit of weight slowly.
• Having a baby hurts, in unfortunate ways, for weeks. Boo to that.

In any case, I'm really enjoying this, and despite how hard all of this is and all the pain and frustration, I'm actually thinking about how soon we will do it again. I'm pretty sure that we will be making him a little brother or sister in the next couple of years. I think that must mean this is really good stuff, to want to go through it all again, even being in the throws of the pain of it.

Scott is 17 days old.

Doing better!

Ok! Things are much better.

First, my mom started stepping in and doing a lot of things that Eric and I aren't terribly good at yet. She's kept the crying to a minimum and that's been awesome.

Second, I have gotten Scott to latch, as long as I use a nipple shield. It's not the most comfortable way to nurse, but both he and I are getting better at it. Plus, I'm super excited to be breastfeeding at all that it's awesome.

I'm also continuing to pump and I'm on day 3 of it. On day 1, I could pump about an ounce at a go. Day 2, 2 oz at a go. Now, we're up to 3 oz at a go. :) I know women that can do way more than that, but I also know women that do less, so I'm happy to be able to feed my kid and stock away extra milk at the same day. So I have 10 oz in the fridge and no need for it except a fussy baby today. :) I'll start freezing soon.

So that's my update. We're all doing better! I don't have much else to say. I'm still not quite ready for visitors, but soon!

Not fair

Birth story to come, when I can think about it.

In the mean time, short version. I had a baby that went straight into the NICU after birth. He had a tear in his lungs during his first breath and ended up with air in his chest. As a result, he spent the last 3+ days in the care of other people. As a result, he ended up getting formula from a bottle. Now, he won't latch and breast feed without a lactation consultant standing over me and helping. Even my husband and mother trying to play the part of the consultant doesn't do it. I've spent the last two feedings with a SCREAMING child who calms down completely when he is given a bottle.

I'm so worn out and sad because of this. And my mom keeps reading me stuff from the breastfeeding book about how if a baby is given a bottle he'll have tons of trouble latching. NOT HELPFUL. No kidding, I didn't want this to happen. But what was I going to say? I wish he could have had formula from my breast, but he couldn't. My milk is in, it's not like he's trying to eat nothing, he's just not interested in the breast. The bottle is all he knows. He's eaten from the breast twice.

Great.

Just great.

If you'd asked me Sunday night, I would have bet that I wouldn't have Sprat for another couple of days. Then in the early morning hours of Monday I would have bet it would be Monday. Now I'm back to thinking Tuesday or so.

I'm exhausted. Like, haven't gotten a full sleep cycle in days exhausted. But when I tried to sleep tonight I kept being woken up by contractions.

I'm going on about 20 hours of labor now. I'm bored.

Days Pregnant: 9 months

Days to go: Probably less than one

Getting it

There are so many situations in life that are really hard to "get" unless you're in them yourself. I knew pregnancy was one of those, as every step along the way I slowly start to understand the things that have been explained to me by people that have gone through it.

I'm now in the end game portion of pregnancy. I'm past 39 weeks and I really could have this baby any day. I'd been told that sleeping toward the end just got impossible. I didn't understand why but I get it now. I wake up every 45 minutes all night long. Every time I roll over I wake up because it's uncomfortable to move. I wake up in a little pain and think "is this a contraction?" and even if I can conclusively answer yes to that, I then wonder if it's labor and I can't answer that one.

I have contractions, definitively. But do they count as labor? Not yet anyway. I'm waiting for them to become regular. I'm waiting to lose my mucus plug. I'm waiting for my water to break. This is the waiting game. And I'm exhausted. I was only in bed last night for just over 7 hours because trying to continue to go back to sleep gets exhausting in itself. Trying to talk myself back to sleep is hard.

So now that I'm up, I don't think I'm in labor, as expected. But I'm still waiting and paying attention.

Days Pregnant: 275

Days to go: 5?

Today is my first day of maternity leave. I slept in (until 8:30), went and got a pedicure and now I'm enjoying some TV.

I'm reminding myself not to get use to this because this glorious and restful period isn't going to last very long. But while it lasts, I like it.

Days Pregnant: 269

Days to go: 11