July 2008 First Time Mama's Support

[JennaW]

How is everyone doing with their new LO's? Recovery? Entering the new world of parenthood with their DP/DH?

Things are going pretty well around here. I am having a pretty good recovery. It is still a little painful to pee but the peri bottle helps so much! BM's are getting more regular thanks to lots of fruit! I will be so happy when going to the bathroom isn't an event!

Caroline is an avid little nurser! I'm so glad. It does get hard sometimes though when it feels like DH just can't soothe her and I'm just nursing her or she is sleeping on me all the time. I love her so much but I wish the above mentioned bathroom trips did not have to be so carefully planned, lol.

Last night we had some rough times. She was just cluster feeding from 10pm-4am. I was so tired. Mixed in there was some painful crying. I hate it when she cries, I just want her to be happy all the time. I try not to take it personally but its hard.

Things with DH are pretty good. I feel bad because I get unfairly frustrated at him because I feel like it is all on me. Not because he doesn't help because he has been so helpful but just because I've got the boobs and that is what she wants. But we are working through it, just being honest with each other. Also, DH has been awesome about fulfilling every request I have in terms of food, housekeeping, pets...I don't know how people have a baby without help.

So here we are. I am trying to mentally prepare myself for another possible night of sleeplessness/constant nursing. At least today I was smart and tried to rest as much as possible...

Can't wait to hear how the rest of you are doing.

[Lorette]

Did your milk fully come in yet?
There can be a lot of crying when they are still hungry at the beginning.
When your milk is flowing and she starts getting a full tummy she will sleep longer and nights should get better.

[JennaW]

I think she was working on getting my milk to come in and I think it is in now because she is sleeping for longer stretches

She had her 2 day appt today and everything looks great. She is only down half an ounce from when we left the hospital, which she was down 6 ounces from her birth weight then.

Last night went much better. We are also still figuring out the family bed logistics too

[anonymousk]

Congrats on your beautiful baby, Jenna! I am so glad that she's finally here and you are home and settling in. I totally understand about needing to psych yourself up for nighttime. I do that too.

We are hanging in there. Auggie is 4 weeks old today and I am already missing my tiny newborn. At breastfeeding group on Thursday he weighed 7 lbs 12 oz... up 12 oz from his doc visit the week before. He has been in his cloth diapers (not all of them, but certain combinations) for two full days now and I hope we're over the hump there now that we know what actually fits and what doesn't. He loves to be worn and his daddy loves to wear him, which is great when he is home but his going back to work last week was tough. Tough on me but I think tough on baby too - he was a lot more fussy and harder to please last week. Since DH has been home for the weekend, it's been better. Coincidence? He likes the Sleepy Wrap better than the Hotsling, and he particularly likes it if you put him in the Sleepy Wrap and bounce on the exercise ball. (The exercise ball has been a great buy: I used it for my physical therapy exercises and as my desk chair when I was pg, laid on it when I got so sick, and now it soothes the baby and works my abs at the same time!)

Breastfeeding is going well and I am neither sore nor engorged at this point, and I've been pumping and seem to have plenty of milk. Maybe even enough to share, but the milk bank won't take it because I take allergy medicine. Tonight we tried a bottle for the first time in hopes that DH can give him a bottle occasionally so I can get some more sleep. It's been over a month with not more than 3.5 hours in a row, and it's really wearing me down. Most nights he eats every 2 hours and it takes me an hour to feed and change him and put him back down, so I'm snatching one hour stretches all night. Auggie took 2 oz from the bottle and while I cried, DH was so excited to feed him. I was so relieved when he finished the bottle and was still hungry and went right back to the breast without a problem. (He also takes a pacifier, so I guess we've broken all the breastfeeding 'rules' so far. Horrible crushing guilt, but I am pretty sure I would make the same choices over again. And he still seems to eat just fine, so far.)

Our family situation continues to deteriorate and I keep getting less and less able to deal with it. At this point MIL has announced that if I don't let FIL (mentally ill, committed felonies with firearms last summer) see the baby, then she doesn't want to see the baby either. She has seen him once and I thought we had a good visit except for the FIL drama. She has multiple sclerosis and is effectively paralyzed so she is in her house all the time with him and it is a huge production to get her alone. I sent them a letter months ago outlining how I felt and what the ground rules would be and they ignored it until now, I guess hoping that I would get over it. I don't have anything new to say about it so I pretty much think that's her choice. But now she's calling me and trying to 'fix' it for him and I am so completely over dealing with it and just can't handle it right now. On my side, my mentally ill mother sent me a letter asking me to detail all the ways that her illness has hurt me over the years for her counselor. Like, last week. My dad's pancreas died the week before I delivered and I was never officially told about it because I was pregnant, but I seriously doubt he is taking care of himself and I have no idea what his options are because no one has talked to me about it. We had a wonderful, mentally healthy, fantastic set of 'adopted' grandparents lined up - and were devastated when our adopted grandma lost her year long battle with cancer 2 days after we came home from the hospital. We went to their house directly from the hospital, so she did get to see him and hold him and love him, but the poor little guy went to his first funeral when he was 2 weeks old.

I don't feel angry or violated or in any way betrayed by my caregivers or the management of my pre-e/hellp and his birth, but I feel like I failed on a lot of basic levels and I can't really figure it out because I still don't really remember what happened or what it means. I am looking forward to my 6 week check up so I can go over it all with the OB. I have to admit that I am more than a little relieved that my pelvic floor was untouched, even though I'd rather not be paying ICU charges on my hospital bill. I'd really really like to be done with this lochia nonsense but it just keeps dragging on. It's not bad, but it keeps going away and coming back. I would really, really like to be intimate with my husband again. Soon. Which is surprising to me but I'm not going to question it too much.

Today I'm paranoid that the baby is dehydrated, even though he is nursing like a champ and has peed through several diapers today, because I can see the outline of his soft spot and maybe it's sunken. Also, sometimes I think there is mucus in his poo, even though I gave up dairy a week ago. I think he might be a heavy wetter, but then I think, heavy compared to what? What is a normal amount of pee? We see the ped again on Monday so that is keeping me calm for now.

So, to summarize: the baby seems to be doing great, the basics of infant care are going smoothly, paranoia aside, and otherwise I am struggling to keep my head above water. Most days I accomplish this by watching a lot of Angel episodes on Hulu. It is a lifesaver. How did people live before internet video????

[lotusblossom9]

Hi ladies~
Just wanted to say that I can't wait to post on this thread! Just need this baby to come!
Amy

[FiberLover]

Originally Posted by lotusblossom9

Hi ladies~
Just wanted to say that I can't wait to post on this thread! Just need this baby to come!
Amy

Same here!

[JennaW]

anon- I'm sorry for all the family issues! I don't really have any advice but it sounds just awful. I hope you and DH find resolution in some way soon.

Last night was way better. Opps- got to run, more later.

[HidaShara]

Well, I'll be lucky if I get the time to type this up, but I wanted to share my two cents worth!

Maggie is almost 1 week old today! We had our first Dr's appt. and discovered she's an inch taller than we thought she was in the hospital (54cm (21") rather than 50cm (20")). She has also gained 3oz from when she was discharged on Wednesday - so she's only 4oz from her birth-weight now! The doctor says they don't "expect" babies to reach their birth weights until 1 month, so she's growing really well! I felt really good about that.

Nursing has also gone better than I'd feared it might. It hurt at first, but I didn't get any injuries. When my milk came in (I went to bed normally Wednesday night and woke up Thursday morning with ENORMOUS TANKARDS OF BOOB) I felt like an overfilled water balloon for a while - I guess that's engorgement? - but she nurses enough that it's manageable. I leak like a pro, though. The first time I noticed she had milk just streaming down her thigh and my non-nursing breast was just splurting out milk like a faucet. And she's too small, yet, to really want the second breast when I offer it. I am gonna start pumping asap. 0_o

Her sleep cycles are evening out - I hope they stay like this. She will sleep for 4-5h at a time with 1-2h of cluster feeds and alert periods in between. I managed to get two consecutive 4h-slots of sleep this weekend. I felt soooo good. I couldn't get that much sleep while I was pregnant!

I could keep gushing, honestly. I love her so much and she is just so perfect and well behaved. The longer she can be this good the better - I have some pretty massive tears and an episiotomy to recover from. She can star being a brat when *I* feel better!

The down-sides:

DH really wants to feel more involved, I think, but there's just nothing for him to do. I mean, he could hold her while she sleeps, but there's no real need. The few times she has woken up while I am in the shower or having a sitz bath she screams at him, because he can't feed her. :/ And twice yesterday she had huge, explosive poops while I was in the shower, and he was totally beside himself trying to deal with it. The one thing he has been able to do that really feels like "bonding" to him is giving her little manicures. He's so careful and delicate, and it really makes him feel like he's doing something real for her. I think he will feel a little lost up until she's old enough to want to play, or do anything other than eat/sleep/poop. I have to hug him almost as much as I hug her, lol!

I am also really paranoid about dehydration/overheating. We've had a real heat wave here, and we don't have a/c. I know I can strip her right down to her diaper, but sometimes it doesn't feel like enough. She's darker-skinned too (her daddy is Indian) and so she turns this reddish purple colour when she's really warm. She looks like a boiled lobster sometimes. : But she has been peeing a lot. What else can I look for, you know? The paranoid part of me is afraid her poor little brain is baking while she sleeps. Ugh.

Oh, and my BadMommy moment: I managed to give her a papercut right across the bridge of her nose! I bumped her head on the lip of a cardboard box. When I saw the blood I thought I was going to cry, even though she didn't make a sound. A friend said it's like "the first dent on a new car" and that if all her problems are this little, she's blessed. I still feel like a giant jerk. I've been telling everyone else that she got into a knife fight with another baby - she looks like a little bruiser.

[JennaW]

HidaShara-

I know what you mean about injuring your baby, the first time I cut her nails I cut into the skin on her thumb She only cried a little bit but I was looking around for CPS to come take me away. It didn't help that DH got pretty upset at me. Of course when I started to cry my eyes out because I had cut my baby he felt like a big jerk.

Also, my DH got overwhelmed by the poopy diaper changes at first too. But I found that by just being by his side for the first few but making him do the work really helped. He is a pro now

I hope your pelvic floor is healed soon

[HidaShara]

Well, Maggie's nose is almost healed and I haven't injured her further since then. Actually, aside from the fact that she is having a growth spurt and I'm getting even less sleep than before, things are going pretty well. I'm healing, the state of the house isn't getting ahead of me (lots of family support!) and I'm finding time to make MDC posts.

I also wanted to bump this thread with a mini new-moms poll. I was the oldest of four kids growing up, and so I had a lot of experience taking care of babies already before DD was born. I'd changed diapers and knew how to carry and calm them; had done bottle feedings and watched my mom nurse endlessly. So a lot of the "newborn stuff" with DD has been old hat so far.

But last night I got to learn my first new mommy skill! DD had a stuffed nose on one side from puking milk through her nose a couple of times. :/ Because of it, she wasn't nursing well on my right side - it was just too hard to breathe. After a little consultation with the internet, I decided to try saline solution + bulb syringe to clear her nose. It worked perfectly! I made the solution with warm water and sea salt and it loosened the booger perfectly - it came right out. Now she breathes fine and is taking my right breast again!

So new mamas: What new mothering skills have you learned this week? Share your stories of new experiences with your LO!

[SpuglyRoo]

Originally Posted by HidaShara

But she has been peeing a lot. What else can I look for, you know? The paranoid part of me is afraid her poor little brain is baking while she sleeps. Ugh.

my mw told me that if they are dehydrated the soft spot will start being more visible because it will sink in. also, their skin will stay puckered momentarily after gently pinched together. (i would imagine on a small area of skin).

hope that helps alleviate some paranoia!

~katie

[RubyOrganique]

Originally Posted by JennaW

How is everyone doing with their new LO's? Recovery? Entering the new world of parenthood with their DP/DH?

It's been awhile since I last posted - trying to break my computer addiction.

Things here are remarkably smooth - like, so easy that I'm wondering if it's too good to be true.

Our daughter was born at home after 4 days or early labor and a mentally challenging, exhausting active labor with 5 1/2 hours of pushing. But that afternoon we all took a 4 hour nap and then she slept almost 6 hours straight. And the nights have continued this way! It's astonishing. And we're oh, so grateful after the 4 sleepless nights before the birth. BF is also going pretty well although I had one night of a clogged duct which was hugely painful. She's a super sucker and I have to be really good about getting a good latch otherwise there is much pain. She also falls asleep after 5-7 minutes, so we feed frequently!

I'm equally as paranoid about overheating or her getting cold. She's such a little hot box it's hard to put her in the sling without both of us becoming over heated.

The biggest challenge for me so far has been adjusting to always being needed, balancing the other things I do without feeling like I've put her down for too long and not really being able to go out of the house (it's just too hot right now.) But DH has been marvelous, from labor through to going back to work. He's even more amazing than I thought!

As for the finger nail trimming, I couldn't bring myself to use a clippers. Our ped suggested filing them instead.

As for recovery, I've been a little surprised at how long it takes to feel 100%. Why don't people talk about this more? I didn't even tear much and it's been a real shock. It's been 11 days for me and I finally feel like I can use the bathroom without it being too much of a production. My legs are gaining strength and my jelly belly is starting to retract. And I'm super excited to see my ankle bones again. But alas, my hands are still too swollen to return my wedding band. Sitz baths were a big help.

Is anyone else a little ADD like me having a hard time just being a mom all day and not doing a lot of stuff from your "former" life?