Came home yesterday and am just knackered! She has a really poor latch so I was able to get a pump to take home. Still having to supplement with formula though just to keep her weight up, but when she does eat, she can chow down!
My best pumping session so far was 20ml and that I think was her favorite meal. She guzzled that down and then only had about 5ml formula (she's had up to 40ml when really hungry). It looks like milk will be coming in well though. I have one nipple that's quite leaky already. Once that happens we should be able to make the breast shields work for her (I have flat nipples so she has nothing really to get ahold of.)
For the birth, I admire anyone who can do a pitocin induced birth without pain meds. I tried as I really wanted to go natural (well, I didn't want induction either but it was that or c-section and I flat-out refused to do that without at least trying labor first) but couldn't. My cervix wasn't ripe at all when we went in and after a couple suppositories to try to get that going, they just started pit at 4:00am. I have no idea when I finally said, "I'm rethinking that epidural" but I remember that the pit was turned up to 12 at that point and contractions were about every three minutes with constant pain in between. The epidural got rid of the pain between contractions so I could at least rest up.
Oh, did I mention vomiting all over myself when he OB broke my waters? Actually vomiting happened so much that I was down to drips of bile and dry heaves by the end.
At some point we switched OB shifts and I recall be measured at only 4cm and then just two hours later (which must have been about 3pm) was up to 9cm and +1. She wanted me to go an hour more to make sure to get rid of the lip so I wouldn't tear my cervix and I started pushing at 4:00pm. Four contractions, 12 pushes, in 10 minutes and Violet shot out. No skin-to-skin as the took her away to the heat immediately and were checking her breathing which wasn't great. After about 15 minutes though the finally let me hold her.
Meanwhile I was being stitched up. 2nd degree tear but there was a bleeder high inside she couldn't find. I was taken to the OR where the light was better and they could get my legs up higher to try to find that. That whole experience is a bit of a blur as I kind of passed out somewhere in there. When I came too back in the room I was on a big-ass dose of magneseum sulfate which made it nearly impossible for me to think straight or be in any way mobile. 24 hours of that was more than enough.
I'm a "hard stick," as they say so look rather like a pincushion now from all the failed blood draws and IV attempts.
But we made it home! And that was probably the one thing that did go as planned! I got to take her wrapped in the Moby on me on public transportation. She's too small for our car seat anyway so even if we had gotten a ride she couldn't have done it.
Here she is avoiding her 1:00 feeding. She made up for a couple late feedings last night by requesting food every hour between 3 and 7!
She does actually open her eyes now and then, I swear! I just haven't gotten any pictures of that yet.
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