*Disclaimer: This post will contain TMI, so if you don't want to know, don't keep reading.
From the beginning, breastfeeding has been a nightmare. Besides Beckham being born tongue tied - my milk took four days to actually come in ...and then it was gone the next day! That alone was a crazy emotional roller coaster. I was producing some milk so I didn't want to give up like it was never going to happen. (Plus formula is so expensive I would've had to get a job lol) So I just kept trying. A friend suggested lactation cookies and I'd heard of taking fenugreek pills, so we did both! Matt stayed up till 2am trying to make me these darn cookies. one of the ingredients is brewers yeast, which is actually a pill and we don't have a blender so Matt used the ice cream scoop and spent an hour just trying to smash them into powder! Eventually the cookies were made and besides being delicious, along with the fenugreek, they totally worked.
Needless to say, it was stressful. But stressing meant no milk which meant more stressing.
[Dad & Beck hanging out]
The next hurdle was sleep and eating. Along with not stressing, I need to get rest and food in order to produce milk, or keep what I had going. However if I was nursing 20min each side, then burping, diaper change, pumping, and rocking Beck to sleep.. that left a pinch of time to pick one. Was I going to eat, sleep, or shower?
I've learned that once you have a baby, you also have cold food. By the time you heat up or cook what ever it is you're going to eat, usually something baby related happens, so by the time you eat it's totally cold haha but by this point you just don't care.
Speaking of not caring - I've noticed that since giving birth I totally don't care about anything anymore (privacy wise). In the last two weeks I have tried to regain some of the "mystery" but unfortunately not so much for my sister, mom, and Matt. I was on too many drugs and in too much pain to move or get up. So if the kid had to eat well he at. And if you didn't want to see that or see me pump, then one of us has to leave the room and it's not me haha. If Beck spit up (in a bigger amount) or peed on me, well I lost my pants.
I guess after almost three days of a ton of random nurses coming in to see my top, and my bottom and my middle, and whatever they wanted basically.. I just lost all sense of caring. My first pp check up, I wasn't nervous at all about getting up on that table and being checked, BUT lucky for me (and probably the doctor) I didn't need to show off the downtown quite yet!
So now that we're on to the downtown. Okay. First, let me just say, omg, that first poop has got to be the scariest thing. No one talks about things like this (probably because it's gross haha) so I'll be the one to share. I went to the hospital early Wednesday morning, so from then until Saturday afternoon it was all just in there! I had some family over and we were focusing on my gigantic feet and legs and getting compression socks on, and then all of a sudden I was like Oh no! NO! Ah I'm too scared! I need to go to the bathroom and I can't get there, and when I do, I don't want to poop!!!! But besides wanting to or not, it happens. Wow, can I just say, other than feeling like your delivering a bowling ball, it smells. bad. I mean it makes sense, four days of being all trapped in there, yeah it's going to be bad.
I went to town spraying that numbing spray you get from the hospital. But besides all that, any regular bathroom trips were so long! You spray this bottle of warm water just to get through it and to avoid using extra toilet paper, all you can really do is "dab", and ps if you're going through this soon get some of those charmin wet wipes! ..and hemorrhoid cream, and stool softener, and those long pads. Yep, that all happens. I didn't know you could bleed from four places! I think the catheter went wrong somehow, because I was bleeding from there, where baby came through, from the stitches (episiotomy), and yes from my butt! It was... no fun.
But anyway, back to not caring about much. After having a baby, puke down your shirt, poop on your legs (baby poop this time haha), and pee on your hands.. and arms.. and the wall sometimes, none of that is as disgusting as I once would've thought. And about the cold food, sometimes it's because there's so much going on every time you think you're going to take a bite, and sometimes you just want to keep that cute little guy in your arms, because who can resist this!?
[My mom gets the best smiles from him]
For about two weeks after birth I was all of a sudden ridiculously swollen. I went the whole pregnancy without swelling ( in my feet anyway, everything else blew up! haha) and just like that, the day I got home my legs were so full I was literally afraid my ankles were going to pop open and spill all this fluid everywhere! Even my lips were swollen, it was the weirdest thing.
I feel like the pictures don't even do them justice.
The first week home I was feeling sad like I missed out on "bonding" with Beck. I thought maybe I should've held him first in the hospital rather than almost an hour later. But at the time My thoughts were, "Stay cool, you get to have him forever and later when everyone else has to leave so just let everyone take their turn and just wait." and I was fine then. I was even fine when I had that same mentality at home. We are super fortunate to have had lots of visitors and help, and I did the same thing, "just be cool, let whoever wants to hold him hold him for however long they want." So to distract myself from being one of those moms I'd seen so many times before, you know who freak out at any move or don't "share" baby. I would try and hobble around and clean things or be in a different room than Beck so I wouldn't be over protective, or had to just tell myself "They all raised multiple kids who have all turned out fine, if anything they can do whatever I was trying to do better!"
But then his baby breath was gone.. And then he would spend all of his cute open eyed awake time with visitors and not me and that got me as well. So I felt like I had missed out on all of that and I couldn't help but cry. However thinking back on this now (at almost 6 weeks postpartum) I feel silly and dramatic. I think I just had too many emotions going on haha.
Another thing that contributed was when I did get him it was because he was hungry and I'm the only one who could feed him since I come with the boobs! But since I didn't really have much milk he would still cry after he ate half the time. I felt like he hated and me and it was because we hadn't bonded. Turns out I just needed more food for him!!!!
My tip to any future moms, read breastfeeding books and first year development books BEFORE your baby comes. That What to expect when you're expecting book is great and all during pregnancy but then bam! the kid is out and you're like shoot I only read about pregnancy and now I hardly have time to Google things let alone read a book! The other thing is TAKE THE HELP! Let people help you when they offer. Cooking, cleaning, changing a diaper, bringing food, running errands.. just say yes!
I'm sure there's more that I just can't remember, but for now I think I've shared what I didn't know before birth!
It's fun and exhausting and exciting and scary and happy, babies are a weird new adjustment but in the end you get a cute little person that is half you and half the person you love most.
Beck is now over a month old (5 weeks 4 days), and no longer fits in his newborn clothes or newborn diapers! He is at a healthy weight and in the 99th percentile for his height! Poor kid, Matt says Beck is going to have a hard time finding clothes that fit just like he did until about his junior year of high school! So far that holds to be true. Beckham is too tall for newborn clothes but too skinny for 3mo and some 0-3. Or there's those things that fit but the footies are too small for my giant (and now bald) child.
Link to his birth-day slide show in case you missed it! https://youtu.be/iR-QartuUFQ
