the first couple of weeks

I need to try to catch up to present day, but I feel like I have some holes to fill here! So.....I will talk about the first couple of weeks. They were pretty hard, and starting to become blurry. This must be one of the benefits of having a child...making you forget the difficult parts so you want to have more!

I was so bloated and my feet were giant when I got home. I also had stretch marks! None of those things happened while I was pregnant. The bloating and swelling was from the fluids they pumped into me, and I went down fast. After just a few days I had lost much of the water and thankfully the water weight! The c-section didn't make life very easy. I had a hard time getting up and my husband had to get everything for me. It was slow going for me. Thankfully my parents came to visit and they were a great help. Every day I felt a little bit better and became a little more mobile though. I tried to get outside for walks, but the weather didn't cooperate much and we had most of our coldest days right when I got home and needed to be outside!

I definitely didn't realize how time consuming a lot of things would be. Someone told me "newborns sleep a lot" and they failed to also use the phrase "some newborns"...MY newborn never sleeps! Well, he sleeps now, but initially he didn't sleep at all. Not even in the hospital after he was born. He was too worried about getting food to be concerned with sleep. Once we got home, he barely slept...I mean a few hours here and there, and gradually it got better, but anytime we got him to be asleep after a feeding, he would wake up as soon as we transferred him to his bassinet. I *think* he slept better at night, and for the first 2 weeks we were home so did I. Since we were supplementing with formula, my husband could get up and do one of the feedings and I could stay asleep - luxury!

Although that was nice, I had a LOT of anxiety about formula. I am a big breastfeeding advocate, and it broke my heart to have to give him formula..at least we used the organic stuff. The supplementing started in the hospital because he got a fever due to dehydration, so we had to keep doing it for a while, and then wean him off. That stuff is like baby crack. After he had the formula he would sleep SO deeply. I guess because it's higher in fat than breastmilk, so it takes less time to go through him, whereas especially in the early days of milk, I was producing skim and it went through him FAST. Anyway - I was very worried about how we would wean him off, and we started to just give him less and less, but then one day we just gave him none. It had been long enough that my milk was satisfying him more and he didn't seem to miss it or really notice.

Angus liked to eat ALL the time...I literally mean 18-20 out of the 24 hours in a day this kid would be on the boob as I like to say. It was VERY draining and I think I assumed he would eat, we would put him down and then he would sleep for a few hours. No dice. He would eat, sleep for a short time, wake up, eat, poop, etc. And in the middle of this he would be swaddled and unswaddled numerous times. Inevitably, once he was perfectly swaddled, he would take a giant poop and we would have to do that again. It was tricky...but it got and continues to get much better.

I got a good breastfeeding book, and it said that after about 40 days, things improve and you and your child figure each other out. That timeline was spot on. I've got many of his habits figured out and those first few weeks were nutty and sleep deprived and stressful....on top of my hormones working themselves out - many tears were shed - tears of joy and tears of stress. I haven't cried in a couple of weeks now though and it's been 7 weeks!

feelings after the fact...

So, if you read the story of my labor and any of my previous posts about how I wanted my birth to be, you may recall that I wanted a natural childbirth. So how do I feel about the events that took place? How do I feel about what became the most unnatural birth? I don't know really. In a way I am still processing what happened. Everyone says that you can plan and hope for whatever you want, but childbirth can be like Murphy's law. Ultimately my husband is right though. In short, by signing up to have a hospital birth, you also sign yourself up for the likelihood of many interventions that "may help you progress" or "are best for the baby" and it can be hard to avoid them. Of course though, every hospital is different, every town is different and every caretaker is different.

Ultimately I am very thankful that I have a happy, healthy baby and in short that outweighs how he got here - BUT - if there is a next time, I will do it quite differently. If I am still in NYC, I would go back to St.Luke's-Roosevelt, but I would be in their birthing center under the care of a midwife. It's nice to know that if there were to be an emergency that it can be handled a mere floor away.

...or maybe I should just go to The Farm!

after the delivery....

After the delivery, I was wheeled into a recovery area where we re-met up with our doula Shana. Angus was brought in briefly, and we put him to the breast and he latched on right away - which was awesome. Unfortunately, a really bitchy intern came and told us we had to let Angus to get all his tests and everything done. We tried to get her to delay for 10-15 minutes so we could bond and he could continue to nurse, but she wasn't having it and - well - she was a TOTAL BITCH. No way to treat a new mom. Anyway, I sent Johnny with him to the nursery, and eventually I was wheeled to my room. I wasn't going to be able to get up for a couple of days...I had a catheter, IV's with pain medication and fluids, and these weird things on my calves which were like electric boots. They vibrated on and off and I guess since the medication takes a while to wear off, and during that time I can't feel anything fro the waist down, they massage me to avoid DVT.

Eventually Johnny and Angus showed up and we nursed some more and tried to sleep a bit. Things were fine, but eventually night came and Johnny had to leave, which was sad. Angus was very fussy all night (he roomed with me) and I had problems getting him to latch again. He hadn't really slept, and he was only getting colostrum and it was an all night battle. What really sucked was that he was in a bassinet next to my bed, but I couldn't physically take him out of it or out him in it because of my limited mobility, so I had to keep buzzing the nurses to do it. Also, the lady next to me had a vaginal birth and was clearly disturbed by Angus' crying and my inability to stop it - which stressed me out.

Over the next couple of days the nursing got a bit better, but he was still a little fussy and continually on the boob. My catheter and my leg machines were removed, and I was up and walking...albeit uncomfortably. Eventually Angus developed a fever, so they had to give him some formula as they assumed he was dehydrated - which he was. I felt really bad about it - but I guess it was just because my milk hadn't arrived. Looking back, I would have benefited greatly from having a lactation consultant come see me - which my husband suggested, but I didn't. The nurses all give you different opinions on breastfeeding, and there are no lactation consultants on staff. We also have conflicting blood types, which caused elevated billirubin levels (which is what causes jaundice) and that may have contributed to the fever too. The fever went down quickly after the formula was given, so after breastfeedings it was recommended that I continue to "top him off" with the formula.

So....I gave birth on a Tuesday and went home on Friday. My parents had arrived in town the night before so they were there to help, which was wonderful. We left St.Luke's Roosevelt and were left to our own devices to start our journey as parents