Lilypie First Birthday tickers

Lilypie Second Birthday tickers

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Postpartum Revelations

My precious son is almost 4 weeks old. Time has been flying by! I am going to start back up at work at the end of the week, part time for this week, and then next week will begin full time. I am glad that I was able to take a full month off after all. Turns out, I needed all of the time off that I could get! Here are some of my postpartum revelations! I figured I would talk about life after baby since I talked about life during pregnancy so often on this blog! It's time to share the after story!

It seems like lately I feel as if the story of my life is "no one could have prepared me for this". It's true. There are so many things to learn about being a parent, caring for a newborn, etc etc... Life has completely changed as I know it, and although I am so happy that my son is here, I am still struggling somewhat with the changes. For instance, I miss my husband! I am sooooo glad that we had so much time after we were married to enjoy each other. Not like we can't now, but it is sort of difficult to have alone time when you have a newborn! Especially when they sleep in a cradle in your room! ;-) Granted the time that we spend together is now with our son, which is amazing, so I really can't complain... it is just very different!

Luckily for me I feel as if I had a pretty easy recovery from delivery. I had labial tearing on both sides, but I feel as if my stitches healed nicely and were only uncomfortable for the first two weeks. I lucked out and did not have horrible pain. However, it is still frustrating the amount of bleeding that happens after delivery. I was not prepared for that! I didn't realize how long it lasted!

One annoying symptom has been the increase in sweating. I usually am not a big sweater... if you can make that into a verb! They say that it is your body's fluctuating hormones and your body needing to get rid of all of the water you retained during the end of your pregnancy. Either way it's annoying!

Lastly, since I am breastfeeding I've come to this realization... you must wear some sort of bra or shelf top at all times so that you can have the little nursing pads covering you... or else you will leak... all over the place! One morning my pad had slipped away and I leaked through my pj's and all over my sheets. Lovely. When your milk lets down it is terribly uncomfortable, and it happens all day and at random times. Supposedly your milk lets down when you hear your baby cry, or if you think about your baby... I think mine just does it when it wants to. haha! Breastfeeding has been far more difficult than I had imagined. I find it hard to try to force feed myself so that I am producing enough milk. I also find it difficult because Clayton gets very gassy and will latch on then detach over and over again during feedings. This doesn't always happen, but it is at least once a day. Plus, I don't like not knowing how much he ate. I know that as long as he ate until he detached on his own, and he's gaining weight and having wet/dirty diapers that he is doing fine, but it is still frustrating to not know. Especially since he's gassy after feedings. His gassy cues get confused with his hunger cues so I can't tell if he didn't get enough to eat off of me, or if he's just hurting. I'm not sure I'll make it to 6 months of breastfeeding as I had originally hoped... especially since I'll be going back to work full time. It'll be difficult to feed him or pump whenever needed. We'll see!!!

Soon I'll be updating on Clayton's first month of life! Can't believe how fast time goes by!

2 comments:

  1. Don't get too worried about nursing. It's definately a learning experience. If it's really important to you to make it to 6 months you can. I managed to work full time and nurse for 19 months with my daughter. Was it a pain to pump yes but it was so important to me that I did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't have much luck nursing either one of my babies. With my 2nd one I decided that instead of stressing out about the whole nursing thing, I just started pumping and gave it to him in bottles. I think it is great if you can nurse for 6 months or longer.....but I also think that it's very important to do what works best for you and your baby. Don't do it just because everyone says that you have to and they make you feel guilty for not doing it. It's not easy. It's even harder when you do work because you don't have the luxury of being able to feed or pump just at any time. One thing you'll start to learn as a mom is that you have to do what is right for "your family" and not what is right for everyone else.

    ReplyDelete