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One Month Old

One month old!

Yikes!

Miss Lillian turned one month old yesterday. Here she is post-bath in her party outfit. Yesterday’s bath was her first official tub bath, supervised by Grandma, and it involved no screaming! Imagine the possibilities.

Lillian changes a little every day. She’s starting to make “aaahh” noises, a precursor to cooing, or so I’m told. She’s awake and alert for more of the day (and unfortunately more of the night). Her tiny digestive system is ramping up which means more diapers, more discomfort, and less sleep for us. I’m told this peaks around five or six weeks, so fingers crossed.

There are many things I’m looking forward to. Six weeks means it’s safer to take her out in public. I can take hot baths. Yoga! Ohmygod yoga. Can’t wait for yoga.

Twelve weeks is another good milestone. Hopefully by then she’ll be able to hold her head up consistently and I can use my carriers more often. She practices a lot now, and can hold it up for a while, so I’m guessing she’ll be ahead of the curve on that one.

Things I’m not enjoying:

Pumping. Lord, I hate pumping. Yuck.

Lack of exercise. If we miss our evening walk, things get ugly. I miss yoga and belly dance and I want to run and do sit ups until I collapse. Argh. I’ve lost a lot of weight very quickly, but my abs are just all kinds of smooshy. Not unexpected, but frustrating that I can’t work on them yet.

Sleep deprivation. This is a given, and I’m still having a very hard time sleeping when the baby sleeps. Like now, for instance. It’s slowly getting better, but nobody mentioned that I’d be hard-wired to the baby and every time she moves or makes a sound I wake up. Argh.

And now for the cute pictures:

One month old!

Panda Butt!

One month old!

So dang cute!

One month old!

Frazzled new mom and baby

It's all about the boobs.

Howdy folks,

So now that I’ve gotten the really ugly bits out of the way, what is life like with a newborn? Er, totally unrecognizable from life before. And that’s not really a bad thing, it’s just a massive, sudden, permanent change. My previous existence looks a little shallow, and I wonder how I’ll integrate the new with the old (like my career and business and stuff) in the long term.

Right now it’s really all about getting through the next feeding and trying to get enough sleep that I don’t melt down too much. While nursing is going well from the perspective of supply and demand, I’m not enjoying it much. I’m really sore on one side, and it’s just kind of uncomfortable all around. Pumping is really yuck, though I got this holster thing that means I can go hands-free which is an improvement. It makes it go a lot faster and easier. I do wonder if I’m going to be able to stick with all of this for the six months I’d planned. I guess it’s up to me and to my milk supply. When we were briefly supplementing with formula Lillian was not a big fan, she always ate up the pumped milk way faster. So I guess I’m ambivalent for my sake, but not hers. She clearly enjoys the boob. I don’t always enjoy providing it, but I’m going to suck it up (har) for as long as I can.

And since we’re dropping a pretty penny on boob supplies (pump rental, nursing bras, storage bags, etc) I feel obligated to stick with it. Here are a couple things that have made the life of the boob a little better:

Bravado Nursing Tanks
These puppies are GENIUS. So comfortable and supportive. I’m totally going to be living in mine this summer. Get fitted at a local supplier and then buy online for cheap if you can find them.

Bravado Seamless Nursing Bra
I bought two. Sooooo comfortabuls.

Polysporin
Medela Hydrogel Pads
Help for soreness.

The Cutness

Miss Lillian is really frickin’ cute. I’m just saying. She has this whole repertoire of facial expressions that keep me endlessly amused. Most of them happen in relationship to the boob. The boob is her main squeeze. I don’t know if she cares much for me or anyone else, but she is really into the boob. Here is a partial list of facial expressions:

  • Tiny Rosebud Face (possibly the cutest)
  • Fleeting Smile (this happens when she’s dreaming and involves dimples)
  • Junior Mafioso
  • Tiny Godfather (I swear she looks like Marlon Brando when she does this)
  • Mild consternation (she inherited brow furrowing from me it seems)
  • Air Conductor (She waves her harms around and looks as if she’s enjoying classical music with a glass of fine wine. I think it’s actually to do with gas.)
  • Excellent, Smithers
  • Creepy Animatronic Doll (This is actually what happens when she’s in REM sleep. Her eyes are partially open and rolling around and it’s like she’s speed nursing.)

I’d have more of these documented if they didn’t all involve pictures of my boobs, which I plan not to share. Here’s a few that I’ve captured:

2 weeks old, post bath Kevin Bacon hair

Excellent, Smithers

2 weeks old, post bath Kevin Bacon hair

Junior Mafioso

I’ll add more as they become available. I never remember to take pictures any more. Sigh.

Post Partum Part the First: The Hospital

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Hospital beds: not as comfy as they look

The 48 hours ish we spent in post-partum at the hospital were not great fun. People come in and wake you up all the freaking time. Nurses, doctors, other random people. They just knock and walk in. Even if I had wanted to sleep I was so wired up from the birth that I only slept about an hour at a time, even with drugs. I had a couple of nice nurses, and several annoying, incompetent, or belittling nurses. Sometimes all in one!

I’m not sure where some of these ladies got their make-you-feel-like-a-stupid-asshole skillz, but they must have learned from the best. I had one night nurse both nights who did everything she could to show me how little I knew about anything baby. She’d spout of statistics or numbers after a checkup with exactly no explanation of what they meant, and smile at me ingratiatingly. Her nursing technique sucked and involved squeezing my breast painfully without authorization. That was a recurring theme. Nothing in there yet ladies, thanks. Our final nurse who checked us out was totally lame. Lackadaisical doesn’t begin to cover it. She forgot to stop at the pharmacy for my meds, didn’t feel like answering questions, and would disappear for long periods when we were trying to get out of the room and get home.

I still had a port in my hand for the first 24 hours, and I had to get 4 more doses of antibiotic through it. This was supposed to take about 20 minutes, but sometimes it stretched out to 1.5 hours, because apparently nobody had taught the nurses how to administer a fucking IV. They’d flush out the port with saline, which hurt like hell, and then start the drug. And invariably fuck it up – it wouldn’t pump, or the line would be jammed. The bitch nurse fucked the last one up really badly at like 1am and acted as if I was just being whiny. It took like 2 hours to finish it. Did I mention how much that shit hurt? I did however talk to the charge nurse about it. Go me. I also called the charge nurse to ask for feedback forms on all my nurses and guess what? She never showed. The OD consultant in me was not impressed.

Trying to learn to breast feed, which is wicked hard anyway, was impossible with the awful hospital pillows. Plus I didn’t seem to be producing anything which was stressful. I had one day nurse who was great and I at least got an idea of what a good latch felt like. Lillian was all about the boob, but she chewed with her surprisingly strong gums and it hurt like hell. I guess I lucked out with the latch, but OW.

David was in a world of pain from the horrible bed in L&D, and the one in the recovery room was far worse. Fortunately, that nice nurse got him a cot which was a bit better. It royally sucks that you can’t sleep with your husband when you need snuggles incredibly badly.

The food was really pretty good. Who knew? They had a killer veggie burger, and decent breakfast tacos. Of course, I would have eaten a tire happily at that point, but it really wasn’t bad.

Yeah, so I couldn’t wind down. This did not bode well for when we got home. There was serious boding. We wanted to get home so badly, but at the same time, how were we going to take care of this tiny being without anyone qualified around to help? How are we allowed to take her home without a medical degree? Does not compute.

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Biological Imperative Win

The other thing that happened while we were there was we both fell madly in love. People don’t always bond with babies right away. For us, it was like one of those cartoon 10 ton weights dropped on our heads. It helps that she’s so dang cute.

Not much of a narrative, I know, but hold on to your hats. Next up, postpartum depression/anxiety/craziness and extra extra sleep deprivation!

Guess what I got?

Lillian

Brand Freakin' New: Lillian Anna Quimby, born 2/25/2010

Yep, I had a baby. I was in labor for 36 hours. It was a saga of epic Nordic saga proportions. She’s a healthy, beautiful little girl who I think takes after her daddy quite a bit. I will be writing extensive praise to said daddy in the coming weeks/months/years, as he has been unbelievably wonderful through this whole experience. I knew I married a good one, but I had no idea how good. Through the crazy labor which included horrible random muscle spasms and a reaction to the epidural, among other things, to the uncomfortable hospital stay, to the new mom’s totally exhaustion and overwhelmedness over the last couple of weeks, David has been incredibly present, supportive, and show so much faith in me. Even when I have negative amounts of faith in myself. Seriously, I can’t praise this guy enough.

There will be much relating of the minutiae of learning how to care for a newborn while not going crazy for more than a couple hours at a time in the near future. Right now I just want to say we’re here, we’re semi-intact, and our baby is possibly the cutest thing ever created.

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Sleeping on Daddy's chest.