{"id":2966,"date":"2010-05-26T23:14:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T03:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=2966"},"modified":"2010-05-26T23:17:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T03:17:00","slug":"4-days-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=2966","title":{"rendered":"4 days old"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have sat down to finish this about 20 times. And it’s not that I don’t have the time, but I keep getting distracted with emails, photo editing, forums, etc etc. So much to say, so many places to post, so many people to thank! We both read all the comments left here and everywhere else and we are so very overwhelmed by everyone’s celebration at her birth.<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

Oh my gosh, I have so much to say. I want to write it all down so I don’t forget anything! But I keep finding myself staring at the baby sleeping on my lap rather than writing. This is, quite simply, the most amazing thing I have done in my entire life. I look back at the last 4 and a half years and can say, yes, it was all worth it. I look at my daughter and I just am overwhelmed with love.<\/p>\n

First, the update on me.<\/p>\n

Mentally I am doing wonderfully. People were right – once I got home it started feeling more real, like she really was ours. I started feeling something more than shock when I looked at her face. Suddenly the little faces she makes when she’s waking up are by far the cutest thing in the whole entire world. All I want to do is give her forehead little kisses. Her squeaks and grunts are just heavenly. Den and I just sit and stare at her sometimes – we are so glad we have a video camera! But then the thought occurs to me: she’s going to grow up way too fast. I desperately want to freeze time. I want her to stay my little 7lb newborn baby forever, and I get freaked out at the thought of her not staying this way. Yes, I want to see her personality, I want to watch her learn and grow, but oh, her little feet and her little hands… her little head with soft little hair.<\/p>\n

Physically, let’s see. I did get a bunch of stitches – I don’t know how many, though they said it “wasn’t bad.” I tore in the same place as last time, though with Devin I had only one stitch. This one was definitely more than that – the one downside to pushing for only a few minutes. However, it’s not stinging like I remember it doing last time. I’m using the squirt bottle and the witch hazel pad things they gave me and it’s more just a little uncomfortable. Although I did realize yesterday that being on my feet for any extended periods makes it all ache more!<\/p>\n

My milk came in on Monday, 2 days after birth. She hadn’t had any poopy diapers since coming home from the hospital so we were getting a little concerned (the visiting nurse, however, was not!), but then that milk came in and problem solved!! Kate loves the boob. I know that she’s nursing to eat and to soothe, but at this point I don’t really want to introduce a pacifier, though I’m open to the idea and have some just in case. But we just know that if she’s upset (like from being stripped naked from a messy diaper change) then I just need to nurse her and she falls right asleep. As far as feeding, she’s obviously doing really well. I can even feel my breasts being drained as she eats – a very strange sensation! I’ve also started leaking a bit from the opposite breast when she’s nursing. The whole “breastfeeding doesn’t hurt if you’re doing it right” thing – so not true. Granted it’s not a horrible painful thing, not unless she’s latched wrong (which she still does, and that makes me yelp!), but my nipples are definitely sore… some cracking, some blistering. I have to be very diligent about getting her latched on correctly – I have to manually flare her lips out after she’s on, she likes to suck them inwards – but I had the LC check it out while I was in the hospital and she said it’s pretty much correct. I did notice that she was far rougher on my nipples before my milk came in – her tongue was squashing them so hard trying to get something more out of them. Now that milk is flowing she’s gentler, and I appreciate it! The engorgement, now… that’s my biggest pain! My boobs did not grow at all while I was pregnant, but when my milk came in, whoosh. Today has been pretty bad, I made the mistake of interrupting one of her feedings (since we were out), and I paid for it. I’m still hurting pretty bad. Thankfully I do have a nice little vacuum extractor on hand… but I just need to wait for her to wake up!<\/p>\n

Also, Kate is only 4 days old and I’ve already nursed in front of a ton of people. LOL! Beyond my nurses and the LC in the hospital there’s been Den’s step-sister who happened to drop in right when Kate was screaming for the boob and we basically said, “As long as it doesn’t bother you, she needs to eat!”; there was a doctor who knows Den who dropped in while I was nursing; the home visit nurse arrived during mealtime, I was going to pull her off but we just sat and went through all the paperwork while Kate ate; and I nursed her in the pediatrician’s office in front of the ped, because I couldn’t hear him over her screaming. So mostly doctors and nurses who probably have seen a ton of boobs in their careers, but still strangers to me. It’s kind of weird to be holding a conversation at the same time, but you know…. I just don’t care really. I love it being treated like a normal situation, just going on about stuff while my baby eats. Then when we’re done she’s in a much better mood!<\/p>\n

We are indeed doing cloth diapers and right now my biggest annoyance is that even the x-smalls I have are pretty huge on her. We’re doing prefolds and covers, which seems to be working just fine. I have an assortment of different styles of covers, some fit her better than others. The Thirsties are way too big right now and don’t work well with her umbilical cord stump, but I think they’re going to be fantastic when she grows into them. My favorites are the ProRap classics – they have the umbilical scoop, which actually does work – and the Imse Vimse soft cover, because they have a huge soft velcro across the top so I can fold them down to make them fit her better. Den and I both have different methods of changing her (what wipes we use, what order we do things in, how we fold things, etc), but both seem to work just fine. And to be perfectly honest he changes her way more than I do. I feed her, which takes a while, then if she’s fussing and needs changing he’ll take her so I can go to the bathroom, take a shower, eat, whatever. The cloth is working out fine. In her room we have a white garbage bin with a lid, and a waterproof, washable liner inside. We toss all the dirty laundry in there. And we’re finding with the breastfeeding even the poops don’t smell – I am not kidding. I thought people were lying when they said that. Every two days we take that liner out and dump the whole thing into the washing machine. Even Den doesn’t have a problem with it, and that’s pretty impressive.<\/p>\n

The pets are doing really really well. When we got home Sunday evening Zeeke was an issue – the cats and Zoe were like, “WTF is this? And where’s my food?” Zeeke, our shepherd, was SO EXCITED we were home he was kind of spastic. He wanted to check the baby over – which is fine, but he’s 95 lbs and was hopping around and barking and just… no. Den and I both worried that he would never calm down, and we just couldn’t deal with that. But the next morning brought a much calmer dog. I think most of his craziness was because he’d been left home for a few days – Den would come home to walk them and feed them and everything, but he was SO excited that we were both *home*. In any case, once he was over that he’s actually done a lot better than we expected. Zeeke wants to sniff her all over, he follows us around and lays at our feet. But he seems to recognize that she’s a baby, he’s been quite gentle (with frequent reminders). Zoe is, as expected, happy to keep her distance from the new, strange thing. And the cats, once they checked her out, have decided that she is a non-issue, except that she tends to take up our laps. I’ve gotten a couple of dirty looks from Jo when he’s tried jumping up onto my lap onto to discover that it is occupied!<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

So far life honestly feels very normal. I don’t know, I guess we expected life to be dramatically different, but instead it feels more like… our life, with a baby. Especially since Kate is a fantastic sleeper – she’ll sleep through the TV, loud conversations, the vacuum cleaner, even the dog barking several feet away. So we make no effort to be quiet while she’s sleeping. She’ll just zonk out on our lap or chest or in her swing and then she’s out for a good 3 hours. So we’ve spent a lot of time watching TV, cleaning things up, surfing the internet and forums. Granted I do spend a lot of time nursing – during which I can do small things on the computer but it’s entirely frustrating to type one-handed!<\/p>\n

I’m waking up every few hours at night – which isn’t much different from when I was pregnant, except that I get to nurse my adorable little baby and stare at her for a while instead of just having to stagger to the bathroom and pee. I’ve figured out how to nurse laying on my side (though it’s a bit harder to get her latched correctly), which is definitely much nicer than having to get up or prop myself up with a million pillows. I’ve been letting Den sleep through the night while I get up to nurse and change her and go back to sleep. I have learned many times in the past that I do absolutely fine with getting broken sleep, plus I can easily nap during the day if I need to. Denis doesn’t. If he doesn’t get a somewhat decent night’s sleep he’s utterly useless during the day, which just serves to irritate me. And considering he has been absolutely awesome<\/i> I figure it’s all I can do to help things go smoothly!<\/p>\n

I’ve heard so many times about how parenthood stresses your relationship, but we feel so close. I guess we’re just sharing in this complete joy together. We’re both new at this parenting thing, so we’re both just figuring this out together. Trial and error in the little things. He’s been super supportive during labor, of breastfeeding, of cloth diapering… and I don’t mean just in agreeing to go with it, but he’s just a fantastic partner and support. I love watching him with his daughter – he’s utterly bursting with joy. And every time I look at him I think how amazing it is that he and I persisted through all of our challenges and somehow managed to make this beautiful baby… that she’s all ours, his and mine together.<\/p>\n

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I have sat down to finish this about 20 times. And it’s not that I don’t have the time, but I keep getting distracted with emails, photo editing, forums, etc etc. So much to say, so many places to post, so many people to thank! We both read all the comments left here and everywhere […]<\/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":[477],"class_list":["post-2966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966","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=2966"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2971,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions\/2971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}