I spent 4 days in the hospital following my c section, they kept me an extra day because I wasn’t handling the pain in the way they expected.  I sure didn’t want to leave.  Being a first time mom everything was terrifying. “Why did she just projectile vomit all over me?”  “Is something wrong?” B and I had no clue so we just pushed that handy dandy nurse call button and someone came and helped us, calmed our nerves and lets us know she was perfectly ok.  I would like to say that my anxiety went away, or at least lessened being in a hospital surrounded by doctors and nurses, but considering a baby had just been kidnapped by a nurse (in a different hospital) it was nearly impossible.  Any time I was sleeping and I heard someone come into our room I would jolt awake, I don’t think I slept more than 2-3 hours a night, in total!

I chose to breast feed, and I wasn’t going to let anything (short of medical reasons) get in my way.  Nothing can really prepare you for breast feeding.  Sure you go to the class, they tell you it won’t hurt if your baby latches right and in the video some baby of about 3 months of age is latching perfectly and the mom is barely trying.  Well this is definitely not the case with a newborn, not only are you learning but so in the baby.  For me this equaled blisters, bloody nipples and me crying tears of pain so big they looked like gum drops.  This pain lasted just under 2 weeks for me.  It was a little embarrassing to walk around topless in mesh panties while I met 4-5 new nurses a day, not to mention when the in-laws came to visit trying to cover with my hospital gown but my poor nipples were too sensitive.  Sorry for the show everyone 🙂  Going topless and braless didn’t last forever and at the 2 week mark it was literally like I had new boobs and feeding didn’t hurt anymore.  If you are going to breast feed, try and make it past this point if you can, it all gets better.

The first 2 weeks with my lovely baby were like a honeymoon, she rarely cried, loved to snuggle and I could pretty much put her down anywhere to sleep.  Purple crying?  Well that obviously wasn’t going to happen to us.  I had my fiancé there for the first week at the hospital and for a couple days at home, then sadly he had to go back to work.  I was in full panic mode, how was I going to do this alone?  We survived that first day, and the whole week.

Week 3-now (8) – holly crap what happened to my angel? Purple crying (colic) has arrived!  We don’t have it as bad of a lot of people, she only cries for about 1 hour each night, but as a first time mom this is longest hour of my life.  You would be amazed by how many things parents will try to get their baby to stop crying.  The usual, feed, diaper change and snuggle don’t always work.  We tried everything, if you could have been a fly on the wall I’m sure you would have been laughing out loud at us.  What works for my little girl:  the tub water running on full (nope no the sink or shower, the TUB) her daddy holding her on her tummy and lifting her up and down, essentially doing bicep curls for hours at a time with an 8 pound weight on his forearm. Swinging her in her car seat, and I mean swinging, buckle that baby in and swing ’till your arms fall off.  And just to keep you on your toes each of these things will NOT work every time, once you got the routine down pat, she doesn’t like it anymore.

What made it all worth while?  Well other than the obvious love we feel for her and the desire to make her happy at 5 weeks she SMILED a real smile, not the usual “Hi mommy, I’m farting or pooping right now” no, a real genuine smile.  There is nothing more precious than a baby smile!

The positives: At week 6 we were giving her tummy time on the floor, not just on our tummies, now our angel has been lifting her head no problem since she was 2 days old, but seeing her lift her head off the floor and holding herself up was definitely a proud momma moment.  Listening to her start to coo and chatter with us was also amazing. At week 7 she responds to your smiles by smiling back and trying to copy facial expressions, she even lets out little baby giggles.  Week 8, to the day, she rolled over for the first time.  I never would have thought that watching a baby roll over onto her back could be so amazing, but I was so proud of her and so shocked that I nearly cried.  I whipped out my cell phone and put her back on her tummy again to see if it was on purpose or an accident, and caught her second ever roll on camera.  Im still watching it on a daily basis and its been nearly a week!

 

Now when you have been told for years the you can’t/won’t/shouldn’t have kids and you find out you are indeed pregnant and going to have a baby, a small amount of fear kicks in.  For me it became a huge problem.  I was terrified of losing this baby.  At the 9 week ultrasound I cried seeing my little lovely blob on that screen, and when that little blob moved its arm stub and looked like it was waving I was hooked.  I will do anything and everything to make sure I carry this baby to term in the most healthy way possible.  Crazy Momma Bear was born. I immediately cut out all caffeine, processed foods, no nitrates and I got the book “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”  shortly followed by “What To Eat When You’re Expecting.”    I cannot stress it enough, do not waste your money on these books!  All they did was add to the fear that I already had.  “Don’t eat nitrates, they cause neural tube defects.” “Don’t have caffeine it causes premature birth and low birth weight.”  “If you want more information buy our other book.” I hate fear propaganda, and I hate it even more when people use fear to get more out of others.  If you are Canadian and you want more info I highly recommend “Pregnancy Day by Day”  its more text book style, and has photos and medical information for every day of pregnancy, labor and a few weeks postpartum.  But I digress.

My pregnancy was fairly lackluster.  I did have hyperemesis g.  so I was incredibly ill the entire time.  For the first 4 months all I could keep down was triscuits and green grapes – don’t even try the red ones!  At 9 weeks pregnant I had to quit my job as a cook at my most favorite place of employment ever Black And Blue Restaurant due to being so sick and so sensitive to smells I spent my entire shift holding myself up or puking.  Not really great for business.  The rest of the pregnancy was great, I embraced my growing body. loved and adored my baby bump and really truly did not care about the number on the scale.  For one of the first times in my life I was actually happy with who I was and who I was becoming.

On new years eve B proposed to me with my dream ring.  Marriage was something we had been talking about before the pregnancy, so it wasn’t a huge surprise but it was amazing to be proposed to with actual fireworks in the background.  We toasted the engagement with grape juice in wine glasses.

At 20 weeks my women’s intuition was confirmed, I was indeed having a girl, and everything looked perfectly healthy.  All I had left to do was give birth, which I also ‘knew’ was going to happen early.

Sure enough at 38 weeks exactly, May 28th, 2014 went into labor.  I had started having labor pains about a week before.  I remember telling my doula that it felt like I was wearing hot yoga shorts of pain, because that’s where it hurt.  I won’t go into all the gory details but after 42 hours of labor, 36 hours of that being hard labor my baby girl was born by emergency c section.  She was transverse and face up, not ideal for a first pregnancy, to top it off I didn’t dilate past 5cm and the baby didn’t drop.  My dream of having a drug free natural birth was crushed (though I did go 36 hours drug free.) I got an epidural after 36 hours, at this point I was only 3cm, I knew I couldn’t keep going.   The epi relaxed me and in 1 hour I moved to 5cm, the doctors and were hopeful that things would progress.  They didn’t.  I got sent with B to go do my emergency section.  Once I was prepped the doctors started cutting, and I FELT EVERYTHING!  The anesthesiologist rushed to give me more drugs and they tried again and I could still feel them cutting.  Imagine the trauma for myself and for B.  This poor man has just watched his fiancé have contractions every 2 minutes for the last 36 hours, watched me cry in pain and beg for an epidural, now she can FEEL everything that she isn’t supposed to, the man was a mess. So now I’m put under general anesthetic, B is rushed out of the room and they proceed to take away even my back-up birth plan away from me.  I won’t get my delayed cord clamping, nor will I get immediate skin to skin.  It ends up being 4 hours before I recover enough to meet my baby girl.  When I finally do I cry, my heart explodes with love and I do the one and only thing I wanted that is still in my birth plan, I rip off that stupid newborn hat and let the oxytocin’s take over.   I snuggle my girl, get in skin to skin and attempt to breast feed her for the first time.  Success!

 

Ok I guess I did tell you all the gory details.