Most of what is going on is in the emotional realm. Some of it, however, is still happening within my own body.<\/p>\n
I was warned that my milk would come in 2-3 days later and recommended that I wear a tight sports bra and tuck cabbage leaves in it to encourage my milk to dry up. So on the way home from the hospital we stopped at Walmart to buy me a simple sports bra. (I did not own one.) We did not, however, purchase any cabbage.<\/p>\n
It was exactly two days after birthing Devin that my milk came in. Saturday evening over the course of several hours I felt things tingling and aching a little. Next thing I know I have rock-hard breasts that hurt like hell. “Engorged” is such a fitting word. I spent that entire night stuck laying on my back, because I couldn’t even sleep on my side without something pressing against my very tender boobs. And they seemed so huge! It’s like someone took my regular boobs and then stuffed them full-to-bursting. They ached, they itched. They drove me crazy<\/i>. (I hear so many first-timers worrying about how bad their vaginal area is going to hurt after giving birth. Now it’s quite possible it’s different for everyone, but for me the boobage hurts WAY more than anything else.)<\/p>\n
I did send Den to the store to buy cabbage. He was gone quite a long time, and I was wondering where the hell he went. Finally he came home and announced that he’d gotten cabbage… and bok choi. “Don’t ask,” he said with a sigh. Apparently he had no idea what cabbage looked like and ended up finding out at the register that he had just bought me bok choi. He had to go back and ask another customer which one of the many green leafy things was cabbage!<\/p>\n
Some hours I don’t notice much at all… other hours they just keep tingling in a very unpleasant kind of way. They are leaking only a tiny bit – as long as I wear my tight bra. I found out the hard way that switching to a looser bra (a normal, far more comfortable<\/i> bra) just caused me to leak all over. I really really wish I could wear a loose bra, this is just so freaking uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I can’t say that anything has really helped. Ice pack helped a little bit, but very short-term. Cabbage didn’t seem to do much of anything. Midol or tylenol doesn’t seem to do anything at all. I spend a lot of time fighting the urge to scratch… they are SO itchy. Sometimes they seem to tingle and itch at the same time… frequently that is linked to actual leaking, so some kind of let-down. I am just not fond of the random, strong aches that seem to hit for no reason while I’m just sitting here.<\/p>\n
It has now been four days of sore, itchy boobs. I am really hoping this ends soon. And yet… I told Den today that I think I’ll be sad when my milk goes away. Not an expected emotional response, but… in some ways I think having the physical things going on in my body still keep me connected to my pregnancy…. they’re an extension of it. And I’m feeling a little unhappy about the idea of going back to “normal.” It’s a double-edged sword; everything I feel reminds me of what we’ve lost, but at the same time I appreciate the reminders of what we had.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
One of the things I am struggling with right now is what to do with my life. I dedicated my life to this pregnancy, this baby. I immersed myself in it. I revelled in it. So what the hell do I do now with my free time? It is apparent that I need to find some new hobbies to keep busy. For right now I occupy myself with active grieving – for me that means writing, reading, and scrapbooking. One of the things I feel that I really need to do is put together Devin’s scrapbook. It is going to be huge, I know that already. I want to make sure I capture everything. Obviously I cannot print off this entire blog to put in there, but I do plan to burn it all to disc and keep with my scrapbook. I’ll print off some pivotal entries to include in the actual scrapbook, along with all the photos and notes and charts and everything else I’ve collected over the course of the last 9 months. But when I’m done with all of that? It can’t stay all about Devin forever.<\/p>\n
I guess I’ll figure it out as I go. I keep reminding myself that it’s not even been a week yet, I can’t expect to have everything sorted out yet. I somehow managed to live before being pregnant, before infertility, before wedding planning. I always managed to find something to put my energy towards. I’ll find something again while we wait to see what happens for us…<\/p>\n
One of the things on our mind through all of this is of course what we are going to do now, fertility-wise. One of the Midwives brought it up in the hospital before I was discharged. Thankfully they know our history, they know that for us actively trying involves doctors and procedures. She said that we need to abstain or prevent for 6 weeks after giving birth, to allow my body time to heal – but after that it is totally up to us what we want to do. We could prevent until we feel emotionally ready to get pregnant again. We could just “see what happens.”<\/p>\n
Den and I talked about it while in the hospital. I asked him what he wanted to do and he held my hand tight and told me it’s completely up to me, when and if I<\/i> feel ready to face another pregnancy… that it didn’t matter how long it took for me to be okay with the idea, or even if I decided I could never face it again, he would support me and be at my side. I quickly reassured him that of course<\/i> I wanted to get pregnant again… and I couldn’t possibly imagine preventing<\/i> pregnancy, I would take a pregnancy whenever we were lucky enough to be given one. I saw a huge wave of relief wash over him. I think he was terrified that losing Devin would make me too scared to every go through it again. And yet I do not doubt his word, that he would have supported any decision I made.<\/p>\n
So for now our plan is to hope that somehow pregnancy has re-set my body. That somehow we will be given a little<\/i> break and be able to avoid the huge hurdle of doing IVF again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of what is going on is in the emotional realm. Some of it, however, is still happening within my own body. I was warned that my milk would come in 2-3 days later and recommended that I wear a tight sports bra and tuck cabbage leaves in it to encourage my milk to dry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,69],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ivf-3","tag-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}