Sleep deprivation is in the house.

Both Hubby and I are exhausted! For the past couple days, little AC has been up and cranky from about 11 PM to 1 AM. It is a team effort to keep him soothed and and calm. And he is tired! The only good thing is that he is fairly easily soothed. When he is calm, he yawns and slows down. You can tell he is tired. He is usually back to sleep before 2 AM, which is small comfort when Hubby has to go to work for a full day. Both of us are hoping it gets better soon. I read several places that fussiness peaks at 6 weeks, and then it gets better. We are halfway there, as little AC is about three weeks right now.

We are fairly sure the fussiness is not colic because he does calm down within a couple of hours. The soothing techniques we are using do work, he just does not fall asleep. He may have his nights and days confused? Maybe I should try to wake him to feed him every couple of hours. That has worked the one day I tried it. Maybe it will work better if I do it for more than one day. It is difficult when you are very tired, though.

We suspect his fussiness is due to gas, so I am back to giving him simethicone to help him pass it. It does not help that I am crappy burper. It is difficult for me to get him to burp, and then the gas just builds up. I try him sitting up in my lap, and over my shoulder. Every now and again I get a small or medium burp, but that is about it. I have increased the forcefulness of my patting. Gentle does not seem to do it, I think. Of course, I am not having a lot of luck either way, so I am not sure how much it matters. He is breastfeeding, and supposedly takes in less air, though with my overactive let down, I suspects he gulps regularly which causes him to take in air. I wish there was an easy way to burp a baby!

I finally got to play with my pump yesterday. I pumped three ounces from one breast! Hooray! It works, and is easy to use! Now I can stockpile milk so that Hubby can feed the baby from time to time. Also I can try leaving the baby for a while, and getting out of the house on my own. I hope I will feel better leaving him if I know he can be fed. Maybe we will try a bottle this weekend. I am not really expecting too many problems. Keeping fingers crossed that it will go smoothly.

More snow here today. I decided to stay home, rest, and hide. Hopefully baby will let me nap this afternoon. I finally figured out the side lying breastfeeding position, so at least I can rest when I feed him. I just wish it worked between 11 PM and 1AM!

Becoming a Parent

I never thought I would become a mother. Hubby never thought he would become a father. Even during the pregnancy, the idea of us becoming parents just never seemed real. Our minds could not make the jump from pregnancy to parenting. Hubby told me that he thinks about the future with little AC, and he realized that there is a whole future to think about. I know that he will not be a baby forever. But we will get to watch him grow and develop into his own person. I think that is really neat.

Another thing that amazes me is that little AC is a fairly good baby. He gave me so much trouble in utero, that it is nice to have a fairly well behaved baby now. (And I hope I did not just jinx myself by writing that!) So far, he has been relatively easy to calm. Once his immediate needs for food and elimination are met, I find that the baby carrier and the Fisher.Price Rain.forest swing are really helpful. We also have a couple of glider rockers which help to soothe the baby. He really likes the rocking motion. And I went and bought some appliance sounds from i.tunes. It seems to help, and prevents a sleepy father from driving around with a baby in the car.

Breastfeeding is going well. Once he gets latched, for the most part, he does great. We do have some problems with over active letdown, though. Sometimes he does not like the fast letdown and will fuss at the breast after only a couple of minutes. I am trying to lean back farther when I nurse, and position little AC so that he has to work against gravity. I am also putting him back on the same breast for an hour or two so that he is more likely to get the hindmilk. He also seems to prefer a quieter space for nursing. I guess he still has to work really hard to nurse.

I forgot to mention that I got a call from a job I applied for in the fall. Apparently they are hiring now, and they would like to interview me for an adjunct teaching position. Hooray! If benefits come with it, I may jump at it. It may make my other job grumpy, and I may owe them for carrying me during my leave. Teaching would be much better for me right now with the new baby. Especially if it is part time! And there may be a full time position down the road. We will see what happens. Benefits are going to be the sticking point, I think. They should call me in a week or two to set up an interview. (At least that is what they said on the phone.)

Dogs are doing great with the baby. They do not get upset when he cries anymore, and we have let them back into the bedroom. That has made everyone happy. I missed our dogs, but I needed space from them just for a little while. It is really nice to have our family back together. We are still working on walks. Walks are easier with the sleepy wrap, though. When it is not snowing, I sometimes get to walk a dog! I have been doing some training with both Gertrude and Oscar, which I think helps with Gertrude. She likes the face time with me.

In baby development news...
Little AC was awake in his swing for a while today. It was great to see him looking around. He looked at the mobile above the swing, he looked at our dogs as they came up to look at him. He looked all around the room. Both Hubby and I loved watching him. It was better than TV! He is almost three weeks old, so he is not quite ready for play, just yet. He is still trying to understand the world around him. And that is all right.

All by Ourselves.

I finally got the birth story finished, but it posted strangely. You can find it here.

We have a week without parental help. My mother is off to have retina surgery in Charlottesville, and MIL has hurt her back and is unable to come down and visit. We were not expecting to be completely without help this week. I think both Wade and I are a little bummed that MIL is not able to come down. We were looking forward to having the help.

The snow and ice we are getting are not helping matters any. Not that I can drive yet, anyway, but it would be nice to get out if I wanted. Right now I feel like I am trapped by the snow and my recovery from surgery. I hate feeling so useless. I have to spend a lot of my time caring for the baby, I am unable to get other things done. I feel like I need help to do anything. Not to mention, I am very tired from being up in the middle of the night to do little AC's night feedings. He is in the middle of another growth spurt, so I have been nursing a lot! Hopefully a bath tonight will help him sleep better tonight. I need a night to recover and get better sleep!

I have to mention a baby carrier I started using recently. The Sleepy Wrap is easy to use and actually puts the baby to sleep when he is in it! I may start using it more often in the afternoons when I am not so tired and can walk around more. I highly recommend it. It really works!

Off to rest some more while the baby is sleeping!

Post Partum Stuff

A slight lack of sleep has affected me. I definitely have baby brain, and I sort of feel like I have been hit by a truck. Everything is changing, and little of it is within my control. This is really scary for me.

So far, the breastfeeding has been going well, except for fits of gasiness. I talked to the lactation consultant, and she gave me some things to do. She suspects the gas is due to an oversupply of foremilk. Little A is gulping the foremilk and swallowing a lot of air. She told me to change positions and lean way back or use the football hold when I breastfeed so that he has to work against gravity to swallow. If he pulls back, give him a chance to catch his breath, and then put him back on the same breast. She also said that I should only nurse one breast at a feeding, so that he is more likely to get the hindmilk that he needs. I may need to break out my pump soon so that I do not feel so lopsided. At the moment, I am living with it. It does not seem so bad.

I think I also have a touch of post partum depression. I cannot drive, I have a baby to take care of, and I feel like I am at the mercy of people who do not listen to me, or understand me. Or maybe I am just not communicating very well right now. My mother has been spending time with me as I learn how to mother, and recover from surgery. It has been wonderful having her around, as I am not sure of myself yet. But there are times when I feel like she just does not understand where I am, or how I want to do things. Or maybe I am just being post-partumish and only see what I want to see right now. I do not know. I do things much differently than she does, and it is an adjustment for me to be so dependent on someone else. I want to do things myself. I want my life back. I want to be able to go to the store and get the things I need to take care of myself and my baby. I also think I am mourning what my life used to be. I think I have a right to mourn that life. It was a good life, and life with the baby will be good, too. I just need to adjust to it.

I must say that despite all the depressing and frustrating stuff, I love the little guy to pieces. He is so cute, and I think I could stare at him for hours. Though I suspect that my husband is more besotted with him than I am. I love seeing my husband interact with little A. It is obvious Hubby loves his son. My son is extremely precious to me, and I do not have the words right now to express how much I love him. Both of us are head over heels in love with the baby.

I guess things are normal, or at least as normal as they can be right now. I know this will pass, and things will get better soon. I just need to hang in there.

The long awaited birth..

On Saturday morning of Jan 16, around 3:30 AM, I started having contractions which woke me up. I actually suspect that I was having contractions during dinner on Friday, but they were so similar to normal pregnancy aches and pains that I did not pay attention to them. Once the contractions started becoming more organized, we called our doula, who came over and sat with us. It was really comforting to me having someone there who knew what was happening. I think Hubby liked it, as well.

As the contractions started getting stronger and closer together, we finally called the doctor. I wanted to go ahead and move while I still could. Those contractions were getting harder and harder to deal with. I think we called around shift change, as the first name we got was someone neither the doula or I wanted. When we did not get a call back after 20 minutes, we called again, and got a different doc, which was a wonderful thing! I was so happy that this doc was the one to do the birth. She was fantastic.

We got to the hospital around 8:30 or 9 AM. I am a little unsure of times, because I was dealing with fairly regular contractions this entire time. And then my water broke right as we were leaving for the hospital. Unfortunately, fluid did not continue to leak, so they had to use a speculum to get a sample of fluid to check to see if my water did, in fact, break. That is not fun to have done in between contractions, by the way. Because my water broke, they went ahead and admitted me. The nurse I was assigned was the same one who took care of me the day I had the SVT incident. That was really wonderful, as I liked her. My doula liked her, too. It makes the hospital stay so much better when you have a good nurse!

Things actually progessed well until the afternoon. I was able to move a little, and they kept me drinking water because I had a hep locked IV. By around 2:30 in the afternoon I was dilated to about 8 cm. Unfortunately, I did not get any further dilated the next few hours. At some point, I felt the urge to push. Unfortunately, I was still at 8 cm, so pushing would have been bad. At this point, I was offered an epidural, and my choice of anesthesiologists. (One advantage of being an OR nurse!) I got a fantastic anesthesiologist to do my epidural, so I know it was done right. My doula let me know that this is an appropriate use for an epidural, as it would keep me from wanting to push. Thank goodness for drugs! It felt so good to have a break from the contractions. I was getting really tired!

Before change of shift, my doula asked if a particular nurse was on that night. Fortunately, that nurse was on, and the nurse was assigned to me. The night nurse would try everything possible to get me a vaginal birth. She flipped me on my belly to try to get the baby to rotate. She tried a pitocin drip to help get the baby moving. These things actually worked, and finally got me fully dilated. So I could try pushing now. Unfortunately, by this time, and baby was starting to get stressed. He was tachycardic, and he would have dips in his heart rate with contractions which was making the doula, the nurse, and the doctor all rather nervous. And he was not coming down any further.

I finally got to a point where I just could not do it any more. A vaginal birth would have meant several more hours of pushing, an increasingly stressed baby, and an increasingly tired mommy. At this point, the doctor was not even sure I would have vaginal birth. So I gave up on the vaginal birth. I just wanted it to be over. I had been in labor for about 20 hours at this point, and I was tired, and I knew that my baby was stressed. It felt like nothing good was happening to either me or the baby. It was time to head to the OR. Once I made the decision, I felt a lot better. I knew that it would be over soon, and I would soon have my baby. And all of us will have made it through the ordeal in relative good health. (Or at least as healthy as one can be after surgery!)

I do not remember much about the OR, other than being wheeled in, transferred over to the OR table, and I remember seeing my baby over the drape and hearing him cry. After that, I was blessedly out. Thank goodness for wonderful anesthesia providers! Anesthesia is a good thing!

After waking up in the recovery room, the nurses and my doula helped me put my baby to me breast for his first breastfeeding. He latched on immediately and sucked down the colostrum. He loves the titties!

One person I have not mentioned a whole lot in this story, but who was awesome the entire time is my Hubby! He was there through all of the labor. He was right at my side, encouraging and being a great cheerleader. He was also the first family member to hold the baby after he was born. Hubby got to hold little AC while they were putting me back together. (I gave him a pass on the OR. He has a hard time with needles in a hospital room. An OR would have been too much for him.) I think ever since, he has been over the moon about the baby. I am really glad Hubby got to hold him first.

There is no place like home!

I missed being home. There is no place like your own bed. Even with a new baby in the house.
I would like to apologize in advance for this post, as I am suffering the effects of sleep deprivation. I am sure that many of you will understand. I am also not up to writing the birth story yet. I would like to be slightly more awake, or at least able to function before I write it.

I had no idea how often babies need to eat! I feel like he is constantly attached to me. Though he breastfeeds like a champ. Once I get the boy latched on, he goes to town. I am also really happy I got the boppy pillow. It makes things way more comfortable.

Dogs are doing all right with the baby. Currently we have the bedroom blocked off to give me some dog free space so I can recover from surgery and nurse the baby in peace. (I just do not want me or the baby to be stepped on!) For the most part, the dogs leave the baby alone unless he cries. We bring the baby out to the living room for a little bit each day, to get everyone used to being together. They are still getting used to some of his noises. I also try to spend some time with the dogs in the living room without the baby, too. They deserve to spend time with me, too. Hubby suspects that they are worried about me, too. The dogs have been getting a lot of petting from me every time they see me emerge from the bedroom. We are slowly coming together. The current situation will not last forever, and I will be back to walking dogs soon, I hope.

We had a visit with the lactation consultant associated with my peds practice. Apparently the baby is doing really well. No jaundice, he gained 2 ounces since Wednesday, and he is having appropriate amount of dirty diapers. Things seem to be going well. We made our one month and two month well baby visits on our way out.

I am off to rest some more. I am sure that little A will wake up soon and want to eat!

Finally here!

Alton Carrick finally made his appearance early Sunday morning. After a 23 hour labor followed by a c section. Will post more after I am home on Wednesday.