Hippie Mom in a Preppy World

Posts Tagged ‘post partum’

Motherhood really changes you, I never thought that I would get poop on myself and not be grossed out by it.

For the past week we have been dealing with a very fussy baby, this is a lot of fun when I’m home alone all day while hubby is at work because I can barely put the baby down to use the restroom and it requires an act of congress to get him down for a nap that he would then wake up from 5 mins later.

The fussiness seems to be gas related but I don’t know if it’s something in my diet that he gets through the breastmilk since it doesn’t happen at every feeding.  He tends to be cranky in the afternoon and evening, once he settles down for the night he sleeps like an angel and I have to wake him up to nurse or else he’ll sleep straight through the night.  By the morning my breasts are so full that I feel like I’m carrying water balloons.

Before we start to get the flood of suggestions for things to try, please know that we have done research and tried all of the usual suggestions from wearing, movement, positioning, white noise, vacuum cleaner, etc.  they usually work for a few minutes if that.  So unless your suggestion is really offbeat and uncommon, we have already tried it.

Usually he finally settles down after a nursing session in which he’ll fall asleep on my chest, the key is knowing when he’s in a deep enough sleep to be transferred to his bassinet, lately I’ve discovered that he’s fine as long as he’s not sleeping on his back.  Doctors don’t advise babies to sleep on their stomachs but I admit to have done it once or twice during the day when he finally falls asleep after crying inconsolably for hours.  I end up checking up on him very often and don’t do it at night.

It is only a matter of time before he makes the choice for himself though.  He can already easily roll over on to his side, another favorite sleeping position of his so I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see him completely turning onto his stomach and then there won’t be much that I could do about it.

I can’t hardly wait for Shaman’s and my appointment with Dr. Punger next week.  We had noticed that he had a slight tongue-tie but didn’t think it was a problem but after almost 2 weeks I think that it is interfering with his breastfeeding latch.  He is fully capable of a perfect latch… when he wants to but when he’s not in the mood he just does what he wants and it takes quite a bit of adjusting and pain in the meantime.  Thank goodness for Lansinoh.

After a struggle to get my disability forms in now it’s a matter on waiting for my employer’s HR department to submit their part in hopes that I can get the first check before our rent is due.

The baby blues have eased quite a bit without me having to take the pills but I admit that I come close to losing it when I’m home alone with a baby that’s been crying non stop for an hour.

The anemia is better in the sense that I no longer get dizzy spells but I still struggle with weakness and exhaustion and the fact that I easily get cold, even when the thermostat is set to 80 degrees.  That is quite a change from when I was pregnant and I felt like I was melting at 70 degrees.

I have lost an additional 8 pounds this week for a total of 29 pounds lost since birth.  I’m sure that a demanding baby that doesn’t let mommy eat more than mini snacks during the day has anything to do with this.

The swelling is not fully gone but it has gone down considerably, my wedding band fits again (barely) and some shoes fit again (tightly), we’re getting there.

Right now I’m not using cloth diapers exclusively due to some slight technical difficulties.  The washer for some reason is not filing up with hot water while washing them and since them his skin seems to be sensitive to them, not rash extreme but enough that I alternate between cloth and sposies to give his skin a break.

I will say that the cloth diapers are way better at containing his blowouts, the only time that he’s had “accidents” has been when wearing disposables.  I still use the sposies at night until he can grow into the pocket diapers that I have since he tends to sleep for so long that I have to wake him up to change him.

I do like the cloth wipes way better than the disposable wipes.  Just a cloth wipe and water does faster cleaning using less wipes, I really should get more of those!

And by the way, the backseat of the car SUCKS as a changing table.

Shaman’s first few days were spent being poked and prodded at all hours of the day.  Since Shammy was born after my water had been broken for a long period of time, the doctors feared that he may have an infection.  The cultures came back negative  and he never had a fever but one of the usual markers for infection was way higher than normal so he ended up receiving antibiotics and spending an extra day at the hospital.

Because he was born by C-section I wasn’t able to take the placenta home to encapsulate.  I actually had a mini argument with the surgeon while I laid out open in the OR but I realized that it was a losing battle as he dismissively said “we’ll have you talk to the pathologist”.  They were not against giving me the placenta once they were done with it, they just insisted on giving it to me in formaldehyde, ugh.

While at the hospital I kept getting comments of “wow, big baby!” and the doctor even said that he didn’t think he could have been born vaginally due to his head being so big, I disagree but there is no point in arguing by now.

Sometimes I look at him while somebody else is holding him and think “that big baby came out of me?!”, lol.  Now that we’re in the outside world people ask if he is a preemie until we tell them how old he really is and then they switch to wow, that’s big, lol.

This is a very strong boy from the start, he was holding his head up just hours after being born and smiling.

He has taken to breastfeeding well although since I nurse on demand we’re still trying to find a schedule and stick to it, right now it looks like it’ll be every 2 1/2 hours or so.  I am glad for this as breastfeeding poop is so much better and doesn’t smell.

There was a particular nurse at the hospital that annoyed me and I nicknamed her the breastfeeding nazi.  First she expected my milk to have come in less than 12 hours after he was born, she was overly critical of the latch position in contradiction to the feedback from other nurses, the lactation consultant and later on Dr. Punger.  But when she really freaking annoyed me was on the last night at the hospital when she tried to lay a booby trap on me.  Boobys trap are misconceptions that are forced upon nursing mothers that make them feel that they are unable to exclusively breastfeed their child, thankfully I had been well educated on this in pregnancy so her tactic didn’t work.

The bf nazi decided to wake me up at 2am on our last night at the hospital and while I was in a sleep induced fog tried to “inform” me that Shaman had lost too much weight and that I will need to supplement with formula starting immediately.  In my fog I was able to muster enough coherence to explain to her that no, it is normal for a newborn to lose weight (and she should know that) and that even though he was in the upper range of weight loss, it is normal for breastfed babies to lose more until mom’s milk comes in and there is no need to rush into formula as long as he’s soiling enough diapers.  She kept arguing with me so I ultimately convinced her to bring me a breast pump and allow me to supplement with pumped breastmilk.  She didn’t like it but realized that she was not going to change my mind without bringing a team of pediatricians in carrying medical literature.

In the end I only pumped about an ounce that was never brought back to us to give to him before discharge.  Just like I knew, she had been making a big deal over nothing as Shammy had regained 8 oz by the time he had his first pediatrician’s appointment approx 30 hours later (and grew half an inch!) and although he hasn’t been weighed since then I can tell that he’s gaining weight by watching his cheeks filling up and noticing that he’s already outgrowing the newborn sized fitted cloth diapers.

I am lucky that I only encountered the one booby trap but feel bad for other mothers that would have easily succumbed to the pressure.  I met one such mom at the breastfeeding class I took at the hospital that was already supplementing with formula on the belief that she wasn’t making enough for her baby.

The hospital experience was so stressful for him that it made him constipated.  This poor kid was really holding it in for several days.  He pooped while in distress and then once more the night he was born and then nothing again until he came home from the hospital.  The doctor was not worried so I wasn’t either.  Within hours of coming home he relaxed and cleaned himself out over the next 24 hours to catch up.  Now he can fart with the best of them, it can be heard all the way across the house.

I am not doing elimination communication yet as it was too overwhelming to move around and take care of him but I am trying to pay attention to his patterns so that when I do try it it’ll be easier for me to know when he needs to go.

This little baby has inherited his mom’s “in your face” approach to certain things as he insisted on nursing during the whole wheelchair ride out of the hospital room to the car when we were discharged.  It was hilarious to watch the look of shock on everybody that we encountered along the way.  The nurses asked if we wanted to wait and my response was “he doesn’t mind”, I guess that they’re not used to dealing with somebody that is confident in nature’s design.

Now that he’s at home I wish that there was a camera constantly following us to document all of the precious moments, there is so much that is being missed on a daily basis.

I can just stare into his eyes forever, they are so hypnotizing.  I just sit there in awe every time he smiles or when he makes interesting facial expressions as he is having nice dreams.

He is showing tendencies of being a barefoot hippie as he doesn’t seem to like wearing socks and is an expert at taking them off in record time.  The same applies to hats and blankets.  We just ended up having to get a sleep sac so that he won’t end up with cold feet overnight.

Pardon the randomness of thought, this entry has been composed in tiny installments with no interest for proper editing and story flow.

Because I can ramble quite a bit I have broken down posts between my actual post partum recovery and baby Shaman’s first week (upcoming).

Recovering from a c-section is no walk in the park, I was bed bound until the following day and the first few hours were spent with minimal feeling and movement while I waited for the anesthesia to wear off.  They hooked me up to a morphine drip for the pain which did nothing, the nurses just kept saying “keep pressing the button” and it took several hours to convince them that no amount of button pressing would make a difference.

Finally they called the doctor and he approved some magic something to be injected in my IV that gave me relief and allowed me to get some sleep.

Because my water had been broken for so long before Shaman was born the biggest concern was infection, even though he never had a fever or any symptoms and his culture came back negative one of the markers was very high so he was on a course of antibiotics for a while, as a result baby didn’t get released from the hospital until a day after mom did.  I never felt like I was released as I never left the floor, not even to go to the cafeteria, the only difference is that I couldn’t ask the nurses for happy pills.

Thankfully breastfeeding got off to a good start, given that c-section can have a negative impact on breastfeeding I consider myself lucky.  When I first tried shortly after birth Shaman was too hyper and overstimulated to be interested in the breast so we gave him a couple of hours to chill out.  A few hours later he was focused on the mission and once he found the nipple he latched on like a pro.

I’m in desperate need of nursing bras and tank tops, I have very little that I can wear to facilitate nursing.

The challenge now since my milk has come in is that I spend most of my day being a leaky faucet, I’ve actually made small puddles of leaking milk!  The 2 pairs of cloth nursing pads that I have are definitely not enough!  This baby ain’t starving!

Now back on to the recovery process, there are various painful moments that come to mind:

Painful moment #1- removing the dressing from the incision, they were nice enough to wait until all painkillers had worn off.

Painful Moment #2, the Mother of All Painful Moments: standing up for the first time.  I almost fell over but miraculously I didn’t cry.

You will stand up and feel like the front of your body’s being ripped off.  Thanfully the nurses were cool and didn’t rush me, they just told me to call them when i was ready to try.  I would stand completely bent over then slowly have to raise up.

Soon after that my own self imposed mission was to take a shower, I am proud to have done it unassisted although it took forever as moving was still quite the mission but at least it helped me start to feel human again.

Most stupid painful thing to do ever: allowing the Percocet to wear off! I learned that this is no time to be a hero.  I still try to go unmedicated as much as possible but sometimes I just can’t help it.

The remaining painful moments are coughing, sneezing and laughing, specially if without warning, I just see stars!

By next morning they had me on a liquid diet even though I cheated and got the night nurse to sneak me some juice and jello the previous night.  By lunch time the second day I was on solid foods and mediocre hospital food had never tasted so good!

I was encouraged to walk around the floor and after a successful trial run we decided to go on a walk with Shammy, he was being fussy so I pulled out my Baby K-tan carrier and he immediately loved it!  Apparently the nurses had never seen a baby being worn and were amazed that he could look so happy.  We did get in trouble for using the “fancy thing” because nobody told us that baby had to be moved in the bassinet at all times.  I seems to have been missing the rules book in my admissions packet.

We couldn’t help but roll our eyes when as we headed back to the room one of the nurses commented on how “those fancy things were not available back when I had my kids”, I guess that people truly don’t know that baby slings and carriers predate strollers and car seats by thousands of years… :sigh::

Here I am almost a week later and still trying to clean iodine (or something like it) and adhesive from the myriad sensors, needles and IVs off my skin)

For the most part we had a great experience at the hospital, almost all of the nurses were excellent and one of them went above and beyond being helpful to us.  I did have a clash with a breastfeeding nazi nurse that expected my milk to come in less than 24 hours after birth.

The biggest challenge was the staff being loud whenever coming into the room at all hours and waking Shammy up, usually a minute after we finally got him to sleep which most of the time wasn’t a quick and easy thing.

Halfway through our stay they relocated us to a different room.  I understand their logic as we were in a larger room equipment for surgery recovery and they were preparing for Monday which is a busy day for scheduled C-sections, however the staff really dropped the ball in the process.  With no advance warning we are told that we need to move, the nurse says “no rush” but is trying to pick up our belongings to move them to the new room.  Thank goodness I had just gotten a dose or I would have been barely able to move myself.  This whole process left a very sour aftertaste and we made sure to report it.

I took the opportunity to take a breastfeeding class offered by the hospital’s lactation consultant.  I truly felt like a nerd in there, the LC was shocked that I had been attending La Leche League meetings and read books and websites on the subject, she is used to dealing with moms like my classmates, completely clueless and vulnerable to booby traps.  I am glad that I was as prepared as I was as I did encounter my own booby trap later that night and if I hadn’t been as well informed I could have easily been guilt-tripped into something that wasn’t truly necessary and I would have regretted later.  I will share the booby trap story as part of the upcoming Baby’s first week report.

Since I wasn’t able to get the placenta for encapsulation (more about that later), I started to feel my first major hormonal drive on my second day at the hospital.  That subsided fairly quickly but by the time I reached my second day at home I had a firm case of the baby blues established.  I noticed it was bad when I started to cry when I dropped yet another something on the floor that I couldn’t pick up.   Most of it is stress induced as I’m overwhelmed at how impotent I feel while still recovering, how many simple things I am not allowed to do and the fact that Daddy Fox is going back to work tomorrow and I’m suddenly trying to figure out how to survive the long days home alone with Shammy.

On Thursday I had a follow up with the surgeon to have the staples removed and he immediately could tell that I wasn’t doing well so now I have a prescription for anti depressants that I don’t want to have to take but will have to seriously consider depending on how things go.

My body hasn’t learned the whole concept of sleep when baby sleeps so the sleep deprivation is adding up!  I am freaking exhausted and today I learned that it wasn’t just from lack of sleep.  It turns out that my hemoglobin level is very low causing anemia probably as a result of the 1200 cc of blood that I lost less than a week ago.

I am glad that I got this information as I was starting to wonder if something else was wrong, I had reached the point that I didn’t dare try to stand up while holding baby for fear of falling.  So now I need to boost my iron consumption and have a prescription for iron tablets.  The doctor was talking about blood transfusions if I didn’t improve by Monday but I definitely don’t plan to go there.

In the meantime I just have to deal with feeling more weak and tired than I already should be feeling but at least I know the reason why.

I admit that I have been lacking nutritionally and that doesn’t help matters.  My day consists of mostly snacks and small meals, not all of them optimal choices but that’s what happens when I’m not recovering at an all-inclusive resort.

I haven’t proofread anything that I’ve written but I can only assume at how negative most of it may seem, I’m sure that my mood doesn’t help matters but I do want to point out that it isn’t all bad.  Compared to an online friend that had a c-section 6 weeks ago I’m doing great,  unlike her, I have full control of my bladder and don’t have to walk around wearing depends.  See? the glass is half full.

In other news,  I have already lost 21 pounds, I did gain a lot so we’ll see how long it takes for the rest.  I’m not particularly concerned and don’t plan to stress about it as I’m more into stressing about what to wear that’s convenient for nursing and doesn’t irritate my scar.