Today I am 18 days postpartum and things have changed so much in the last two and a half weeks.
I will start with the rest of our hospital stay:
After the delivery we had about an hour and half for recovery before we moved to the recovery/postpartum room we'd be in the rest of our stay. The Dr. and resident were busy stopping my bleeding and stitching things up down yonder and I didn't have a care in the world. I had a beautiful baby laying on me and couldn't have been happier. We did skin to skin and he latched on and fed pretty well for the first time. My husband fed me hospital pot roast and apple juice while I nursed the baby. The nurse helped me walk to the bathroom (my legs were still half numb from the epidural. I was walking like a newborn giraffe), got me cleaned up, and showed me all of the postpartum recovery goodies I got to use: tucks, dermoblast spray, epifoam, gigantic mesh undies and even bigger pads, etc. I wasn't able to take a shower because of a broken watermain in the area which kind of sucked. It also meant I had to use cold water in squeeze bottle for my lady parts and that wasn't fun at all!
Once I was cleaned up we moved to the recovery room and we finally had visitors come in. Our families had been waiting since 3:30am and were clamoring to see the baby (and us I suppose haha). I feel like the rest of the day was a blur of feeding baby and hospital staff coming in and out. We were in the hospital for only 36 hours and were sooo ready to leave by the time we were discharged. There were constantly people coming in for my vitals, baby's vitals, bathing baby, baby testing, food service, medication, hospital admin, etc. Even though baby was sleeping long stretches we didn't get much sleep because of the revolving door of our room. It seemed like one person would leave, we would try to sleep, but then an hour later someone else would come in. Not very rest full. And then with the no shower issue as well we were completely ready for discharge! We left the hospital at 3:30pm on Sunday and made our way home!
First Days Home:
The first week home was a blur of feeding baby and very minimal sleeping. We have a bassinet for the baby (Halo Bassinest) but he wanted nothing to do with laying on his back (and who can blame him...for 40 weeks he was curled into a tiny ball). My husband and I would rotate who held the baby. I would feed him and hold him for a few hours until the next feeding and then after feeding again I would go lay down and my husband would hold him for a few hours. We rotated like this throughout the night for the first week. Once the sky started lightening I felt such a sense of relief. Like, if I could make it through the night I'd be ok. Just make it to the next day. The hours between 2am and 6am were the worst. It seemed like the night would never end. My mom was staying for a few days and did grocery shopping. laundry, held the baby while we both took a nap, etc. Everything she did was incredibly helpful.
Breastfeeding:
Breastfeeding has had it's ups and downs for sure. The lactation consultant visited us the 2nd day in the hospital (why they don't come the first day is a complete mystery to me. It would have been much for helpful! She basically told me I was doing everything wrong. But after meeting with her I felt pretty good about everything. Until we got home. Baby would latch fine on the right side but then the left side was SO painful. I have no idea why it was so different but it was awful. I was in tears. I even pumped a few times and gave him a bottle because I just couldn't bear the thought of him latching on. I desperately called the outpatient breastfeeding clinic and they didn't call me back for days. SO not helpful. But luckily whatever baby's issue was corrected itself and I never bothered calling the clinic back because I was mad at them.
Since it took me so long to post this I have no idea if I meant to write about anything else. I will make another update now that we are 6 weeks post baby's birthday.
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