PhiLLy RoLL

Like it Says on his Shirt

He is just getting cuter and cuter.

At least I think so. What do you think?

Lucas is all smiles in the morning after breakfast.

Relaxed and calm after a bath.

Mmmm, milk.

A Day in Life of a Two-and-a-Half Month Old

This week, things are starting to get easier. Of course, they've been getting easier all along, but this week is the best so far. Lucas is happier after breastfeeding and during the day he has more / longer periods of happy looking around and making little baby sounds.

Today was a typical day...

12:00 am
Lucas and I go to bed a little bit later than usual (I usually aim for 11 pm). We nurse on one side, then J comes to bed and we turn over to nurse on the other side. I always keep Lucas on the far side of the bed once J comes to bed so that he's between me and the co-sleeper; I don't want J can't roll over in his sleep onto Lucas.

1:30 am
While Lucas continues to sleep, I wake up and move him to the co-sleeper. I always think he's about to wake up when I make what is always a clumsy transfer, but he just shifts and goes back to sleep.

7 am
Lucas' grunting wakes me up. Usually this means he's about to wake up, but this morning a pacifier puts him back to sleep. I get up and feed the cats, have my drip of coffee (a half inch of coffee, the rest is milk), and work on a conference abstract.

7:30 am
Lucas wakes up for real. I change him and then nurse him while I watch a recorded episode of Angel.

8 am
Lucas is in a GOOD mood, as he always is after his first nursing of the day. I bring him to J who is still in bed, and they hang out while I shower.

9 am
Nurse Lucas again (and watch more Angel). Change him again. (J showers and gets ready for work.)

9:45 am
Lucas is in a good mood again and lays in the crib admiring the fish mobile, while I eat breakfast.

10:15 am
Lucas is bored with the mobile. I change him again and put him in the Baby Bjorn and walk around with him until he starts to get sleepy.

10:30 am
I move to the computer, where with a little bit of swaying, Lucas falls asleep. I manage to finish a draft of the abstract and send it to my bosses.

11:30 am
Nurse Lucas again (this time I watch The Office). Change him again.

12:15 pm
Lucas is in a good mood. Again! He hangs out in the swing in the living room while I cook lunch (steamed spinach from last weekend's farmer's market and pan fried seasoned wild turbot from Trader Joe's).

12:30 pm
Lucas is bored with the swing but is happy again in the crib looking up at the mobile. I eat my food while Lucas squirms and coos at the mobile.

1 pm
Lucas is bored with the mobile. I change him and put him in the Baby Bjorn and walk around with him until he starts to get sleepy.

1:30 pm
I move to the computer, where with a little bit of swaying, Lucas falls asleep. I check my email and start composing this blog post.

2 pm
I change him one more time and we head out the door to meet JCM at the train station to hang out before she heads home from work. We sit on the benches so she can eat lunch while watching the information board and I nurse Lucas (yes, again) while I sip an orange-pineapple-coconut smoothie.

As always, Lucas got a lot of attention while we were out. He was a real hit in the post office, where he was delighted with the bright lights overhead and the simple lines of the boxes and envelopes on display. If I thought I attracted attention when I was pregnant, it's nothing compared to now. Everyone loves a baby. (The other day, a guy on a bicycle even waved and called out "Baby!" as he rode past.)

4:30 pm
Lucas and I get back home and now he's fussy. I try changing him (multiple times) and nursing him (multiple times) and swinging him and lying him in his crib and holding him and bouncing him and carrying him around the apartment. Three hours later, just as J comes home from work, I've just given Lucas a diaper change (complete with a dusting of baby powder which he seemed to like) and brushed his hair (which elicited some smiles), and finally (of course - now that J is home) he's doing better.

8 pm
J makes dinner and just as it's ready, I am done nursing Lucas (again). Lucas is in another good mood (again!), so I lay him in the crib to admire the mobile (again) while I eat my dinner.

8:30 pm
Lucas is bored with the mobile, so J holds him and plays some Jobim, which is apparently Lucas' current favorite soothing music.

10 pm
Nurse Lucas again. Since he got home, J has been taking care of Lucas so I haven't had to do any more diaper changes and I have had a chance to process a few pictures of Lucas, finish writing this post, and continue to work on revising that abstract.

11:30 pm
Time to head to bed for some final nursing and hopefully another good night of sleep!

You're Doing the Right Thing

There is a lot to be said for the comfort and the power of getting confirmation from someone else. Mine came from two other mothers (who are not so new as me - their children are nine and eleven months) who listened to my current struggle with increasing my milk production so that I can exclusively breastfeed (i.e., no more formula supplement). One of the mothers exclusively breastfeeds and got to that point by constant nursing and making sure she was eating and drinking enough. The other never managed to exclusively breastfeed in spite of trying everything - constant nursing, using a supplemental nursing system, downing copious amounts of fenugreek and blessed thistle and kale smoothies, and eventually taking domperidone. The domperidone doubled her milk production, but still didn't get her to the point of exclusively breastfeeding.

So there's no right answer. These two mothers couldn't just tell me exactly what to do and promise that it would work. But they understood my frustration and my efforts and they just nodded and said, yes, you're doing the right thing.

I hope so because I'm not there yet. But I'm still working on it.

To start, we've really cut back on the formula supplements. Instead of automatically giving Lucas a couple of ounces after every feeding, we wait to see how he acts after nursing. If he's crying for more, then we give him some. But if not, then we don't give it to him and just stick him back on the breast when he acts hungry again. This week we're down to only giving him anywhere from zero to four ounces a day.

I've also been nursing as much as possible and have started taking Lucas to bed around 11 pm for a final night feeding. This lets him suck for as long as he wants, and if I get bored or sleepy, then I can just fall asleep. As a bonus, Lucas loves to lie close to me and he falls into such a deep sleep that I can then transfer him to the cosleeper next to our bed and he sleeps until at least 6 am (and sometimes as late as 9 am!).

Another thing I'm doing is trying to make sure I eat and drink at least a normal amount! It sounds like an obvious thing to do, but at first I was finding all of my time occupied by a baby who never sleeps during the day unless he's being held and I felt like I couldn't find the time to eat. But now I've been trying to make sure I'm eating enough, and today I stocked up at Trader Joe's on easy but healthy things to eat (like yogurt smoothies).

I've also had some beer, which is rumored to increase prolactin levels and so people think that it could increase milk supply. However, by "people", I don't mean doctors or scientists. I figured I would try it and so I had a couple of beers in the past week, and ... who knows. I'm not exactly isolating factors here and observing the effects one by one. So I really couldn't parse out the effects of beer, if any. Actually, reading about it more, it looks like there is evidence that alcohol actually decreases milk supply, even though it might make you feel fuller and you might think you are producing more. So, given that, I think I'll probably hold off on alcohol for now for the most part.

Finally, I've been taking More Milk Plus, which contains fenugreek seed, blessed thistle, nettle leaf, and fennel seed. I just ran out (I had about a third of a bottle from a friend who'd used it), but a friend picked up some fenugreek seed and blessed thistle capsules for me and I'll start using that tomorrow.

And what's the result? I really don't know! I kind of feel like I'm producing more, but not by leaps and bounds. I guess I shouldn't expect to be overflowing at this point, and that the truth is in however much supplement we still have to give him. And since that's going down, then I must be making some progress. But it's hard not to worry. I am trying to be aware of Lucas' needs and not be too driven by my own desire to exclusively breastfeed him - I don't want to starve him! So my current approach is to let him feed as much as he seems to want to when he nurses, until he finally falls off or falls asleep. If he's tugging and complaining, or if he cries a lot when we stop, then that's when we give him a little bit of supplement. Interestingly, this often happens at night - is he just being fussy? Or do I produce less milk in the evening and he truly is hungry after nursing? It's hard to know!

So you can see why hearing other mothers tell me I'm doing the right thing is nice to hear. I have enough of a dialog in my head about whether I'm doing this right. And although J is being completely supportive about my efforts, he also worries too. Neither of us want to be keeping our baby hungry!

(You might wonder why I'm not pumping in addition to nursing. Basically, I don't because I can't. If Lucas slept during the day somewhere other than in the Baby Bjorn, then maybe I could do it. But when it's just me and him, as it is during the day, then I really can't pump. The best I am managing to do is to pump in the middle of the night on the occasions I wake up due to Lucas grunting as if he is going to wake up but then he goes back to sleep. The last time I did that I got about twice as much as I used to get when I pumped. So that's a good thing, right?)

So I will continue to try. And now, Lucas and I are off to bed!

High Contrast Designs and Faces

This is Lucas right now - sitting on his daddy's lap, entranced by some simple black and white patterns.

From the beginning, Lucas has been fascinated by the ceiling in our living room, which has long dark (faux wood) beams with embedded ceiling lights in between them. When we carry him around the living room he cranes his neck back so that he can stare at the ceiling. Seeing how much he enjoys these simple high contrast patterns, J found Lucas the display patterns in the picture above and I found him the mobile below.

He also makes real eye contact now. (In the second picture below, I was standing on a chair, which is why they're both looking up.)

He's also starting to make cute coo noises, but we're still working on uploading videos so you'll have to wait to see that cuteness later.

Growing

I started writing this post two weeks ago, but taking care of a baby and having lots and lots of visitors hasn't left me with much time to blog. So I'll just post now what I written before and write an update at the end. (After this, I think I'm going to have to stop writing such long essays that take me weeks to post!)

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Today was Lucas' fourth doctor's appointment to check whether he's gaining enough weight. He's now 7 lb 15 oz - at six weeks old he has reached what was my weight at birth! But although he's small (5th percentile for both height and weight), he's growing along the curve that the doctors look for so he's doing well. This is good news and feels like a much needed little pat on the back for a breastfeeding job well done.

I've been meaning to write about my experience breastfeeding for a while now, but it's felt like things kept changing every day. Plus, it's been tiring and time consuming and is the main reason I haven't gotten much else done since Lucas was born. So keep reading if you're interested, but as with Lucas' birth story, I will warn you to stop reading here if you don't want to read all of the gory details. (Also, I'm partly writing this out for my own memories of this experience, so it's really, really long.)

Before Lucas was born I was already worrying about how breastfeeding would go because... well, I have what I will call "shy" nipples. Actually, shy is a bit too generous; these nipples were terrified of the light of day. I'd read that babies don't nipple feed (or well, they shouldn't, if you want to avoid pain), they breast feed and so I reasoned that I might have no problems at all, but at the same time, I also wondered what's the point of nipples if you don't need them? And really, having now tried breastfeed, I can say that it's not really true that the nipple is superfluous.

I had read some things about how to prepare your nipples for breastfeeding - things like trying to pull them out by wearing breast shells or starting to chafe them early with a washcloth. But I didn't try these things because, well, first of all I'd read that they don't necessarily work. And secondly, if breastfeeding was going to hurt, I didn't really want to tack on an additional one to two months of pain.

Happily, when Lucas was born, he seemed to know what to do. I did have some problems getting him to latch on correctly, but it wasn't impossible. We kept working at it in the hospital and on the third day a lactation specialist came by and offered a lot of help. However, what ultimately turned out to save the day was a nipple shield that a friend had lent me and which the lactation specialist showed me how to use. (Actually, the lactation specialist seemed sort of conflicted about it. On the one hand, she seemed to want to avoid resorting to accessories and wouldn't have suggested it if I hadn't brought it up, but at the same time I think she could see that it worked. In the end, she made sure I had one in a small size since Lucas was so small.) Once I had that nipple shield and once my milk started to come in, I was definitely in business.

However, just because I was now "successfully" breastfeeding doesn't mean that it was going particularly well. For one thing, the way the shield worked on me (and maybe this is how it works on other women, but I don't know) is that Lucas would suck and draw the nipple out of my body and up into the plastic shield. Does that sound painful to you? It really, really was. Every breastfeeding session started out with a screaming baby, and as soon as he stopped screaming and started sucking, I would start crying out in pain. But once past the initial sucks, the pain would subside and I was able to let him feed. And then, after every feeding, I would slap a whole bunch of lanolin on. This stuff is truly amazing. Within an hour, my nipples both looked and felt much better. It kept them from being dry and it helped them to heal when they started bleeding. (Yes, bleeding. It's gross.) I have no idea how women ever managed to breastfeed before they discovered lanolin - it must have been brutal.

Soon after my milk came in, I got a clogged duct. It showed up as a hard spot that was inflamed and painful. I looked it up online and discovered that the only way to fix it is to nurse (or pump) through it and keep trying to work it out, because if you don't get rid of the clog it can get infected and you can get a fever and you might even get an abcess that needs to be drained by a doctor. Eek! So I spent the day trying to work out the clog and when Lucas wasn't feeding, I tried to use a hand pump to work it out. Well, the hand pump felt so unnatural and I couldn't get the rhythm right and I only got a few drops out. By that night it still wasn't gone, so I just kept nursing Lucas for hours hoping that eventually it would clear and it did.

Some time after this I got another clogged duct. This one actually started out as a fever that had me feeling really sick. My doctor told me she thought it was the flu, but a few hours later I saw the tell tale redness. Once I finally nursed that clog out, the fever mercifully faded away.

Unfortunately, for all the effort I was putting into breastfeeding, on his first weight check we discovered that he had lost about 20% of his birth weight - he now weighed only 5 lb 5 oz! (And we discovered later than he'd been weighed with his diaper on, so he probably weighed even less than this.) Our doctor looked a little shocked and told us that we should start supplementing his feedings by giving him an ounce of formula after every feeding.

This was very hard for me to hear because I was convinced I was producing enough milk. I could see milk in the nipple shield whenever Lucas would pull away and sometimes there was enough that it would drip down his cheek. Also, I'd been working so hard at breastfeeding and I really didn't want to start doing something that would interfere with that. Breastfeeding is a perfect supply and demand system - the body produces milk to replace whatever is taken out. That is, every time Lucas nurses, my body resupplies about the same amount of milk. If he really drains it, there will be more next time, and if he leaves some behind, then I'll produce a little bit less next time. And if he keeps suckline even if there's no milk, my body gets the message that it needs to produce more. So what formula feedings do is that every time Lucas drinks any formula my body doesn't know it and so it doesn't work to make more milk to meed this new demand. And since newborns feed 8 to 12 times per day, that's 8 to 12 oz that my body should be producing, but doesn't know to do! So I really didn't want to supplement with formula.

But at the same time, Lucas' weight was a real concern and so we took the doctor's words seriously. The first time we gave Lucas formula, J gave him the bottle and I cried. But over the next week, it got easier to watch, even as I dreaded every bottle feeding.

By the next week, Lucas had gained a little bit of weight - he was now 5 lb 10 oz - but it wasn't enough. That is still 15% less than he weighed at birth and by this time he should have regained the weight lost immediately after birth and then gained some more.

So we kept giving Lucas what J was beginning to call the "evil brew". Of course formula itself isn't evil, but I regarded it as evil because of what it meant to my breastfeeding efforts. To make things more difficult, we hadn't bought a breastpump up front for reasons I hadn't really thought through. A couple of people had suggested that I wouldn't need a pump at first and so it didn't make sense to buy one, but I'm not really sure I understand that argument. If I'm going to need it eventually, why not have it on hand right away for as soon as it is needed? So J and I soon ordered this one and, even without paying the outrageous fast shipping fee, it still came within a couple of days. (Let me reiterate that if you're going to buy a pump, buy it from Hackley. Mine was $80 cheaper than at Babies R Us.)

I was a little nervous about using the breastpump after having already discovered how difficult the manual pump was. I'd also heard from a friend that she had had trouble with hers when she first used it and even thought it might be broken. So I was very happily surprised that when I first used it, milk started flowing right away! I was so relieved because now I had a solution to the milk supply problem. The idea was that every time Lucas was fed formula, then I should pump and that way my body would get the message that milk was being drained and more needed to be produced. However, this has ended up being more difficult that it sounds. After a feeding session, I felt like I didn't have more milk to give so what was the point of pumping right away. And if I waited to pump, then within the hour, it seemed like it was time to nurse Lucas again.

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Update April 22: Getting back to this post two weeks later... At today's doctor's appointment, Lucas weighed 8 lb 15 oz. This still puts him on the lowest growth curve they have on the chart, but as long as it lines up with any curve, the doctor is happy.

Unfortunately, we're still supplementing him with formula. Some days we only need to give him an extra couple of ounces, but other days it's as much as 6 oz. It has just been so hard for me to keep up. There are pretty much only two ways I can get my milk supply up to match what we're giving him with the supplemental formula - either I can just keep nursing Lucas as much as he's willing to do, even if he's not really getting very much, or I can use the breastpump to eke out whatever last drops might be left and encourage my body to produce more milk. The first one is difficult because Lucas sometimes gets frustrated when he's trying to nurse but there isn't any milk. (The sole exception to this was two days ago when Lucas was nursing almost the entire day, starting at 5:30 am and going until around midnight. I almost lost my mind in the process, but kept trying to remind myself that it could only help my milk supply.) As for pumping as a way of increasing my milk supply, this is difficult just because it's hard to find the time to do it. For one thing, Lucas doesn't sleep much during the day and isn't exactly self-entertaining at this point, so I don't have the chance to go hook myself up to a pump whenever I want. J isn't home during the day, so it's not like I can hand Lucas over to him. Also, we've had a steady stream of guests ever since Lucas was born, so that has also left me with less time to pump.

But I'll just keep trying. Either I'm determined and optimistic that it will work, or I'm just too overtired to see that I'm fighting a losing battle, but I'll just keep trying and I have to believe that at some point I'll be able to catch up. It would be so nice to finish nursing him and have him be happy and full afterwards. It's no fun dealing with a baby who's crying for more and then having to hold him or put him somewhere while I try to prepare a bottle.

But, I am actually optimistic about it because so much else is changing every day. Breastfeeding itself is almost painless now. I can hardly believe it! And I no longer need to sit propped up with multiple pillows for myself or Lucas. (Bonus: I got a glider and absolutely love it. As much as a person can love a chair, I love this glider.) I can even now walk around nursing Lucas if I have to. In fact, there are two instances I'm particularly proud of. Once, about a week ago, I was nursing Lucas while lying down on the couch, but wanted to go to bed. So I stood up, walked across the apartment, and laid down in the bed, all while Lucas continued to nurse. The second feat was this past weekend when J went across the street to check out an apartment in case we want to move. I'd stayed home to nurse Lucas, but J called me from the apartment to tell me that I might want to get a look at the place. So, all while Lucas remained latched on and nursing, I put on a nursing cover, got up from my chair, walked out of the apartment, down the building stairs, went out to the street, went into the other building and up their stairs, and checked out the two-floor apartment. (Although the apartment was really beautiful, we're probably not going to pursue it because the rent is the same as ours and there would be additional moving costs, plus it would be a huge hassle to move.)

So I'm thinking that if nursing has changed this much over the past two months, then probably it will just keep changing and I shouldn't worry so much when we have "bad" days and need to feed him more formula than I would like. (At least, that's what I say now while Lucas is taking a rare nap and, for the first time in weeks, I actually had the time to pump in the afternoon. Ask me on a day when Lucas has been awake and hungry all day and I won't be quite so Pollyanna about it.)

Picturing Lucas

People have been asking me if I'm taking lots of pictures of Lucas. The answer is yes, but they are not the careful and leisurely portraits I imagined I would be taking. Almost all of them are taken indoors under terrible lighting conditions. And most of the time Lucas is asleep in the pictures because if he's awake it's hard for me take pictures and hold him at the same time.

Of course, the sleeping pictures are adorable.

(Click the thumbnails to enlarge.)

          

But I'm also starting to manage to take a few pictures where his eyes are open and he's looking around. He's definitely starting to look around more purposefully than he did in the first couple of weeks, when his eyes would move from side to side, but didn't seem to be directed at anything. They just moved around until something would catch his attention, and it seemed like bright lights or contrasting darks and lights were especially interesting to him. He was (and still is) just enthralled by the pattern on the ceiling in the living room created by the (faux) wooden beams and the ceiling lights.

          

Now he looks towards things and I have the real sense that when his eyes are on me that he's actually looking at me. I'm also fully confident that when he's looks at my chest, he is knows what he's looking at and knows what he wants! (Of course, that doesn't mean that he always opens his eyes when I try to feed him. When he looks I can more easily guide him on, but sometimes when he's really hungry he scrunches up his whole face so that his eyes are closed shut and he flails around and it's a much more difficult endeavor.)

So now that he's really looking at things, I think it's time we finally get around to hanging up a mobile. Unfortunately, most of the mobiles I've seen have a bunch of plush animals that hang with their feet pointing down, so that if you are looking at the mobile from below all you see are feet. I really don't understand this! Well, I did buy a mobile at Ikea that I love, with colorful fish that hang with their faces and their giant eyes facing down. But unfortunately it didn't come with a mobile arm so we can't attach it to the crib. In the last picture on the right (above), you can see that I placed the fish on a blanket and Lucas was clearly entranced by them. Since then I've taped the mobile up on the crib railing but it's really not high enough to have him lie underneath it. ... Oh, look! I just found a mobile arm. Well, okay, that problem is solved now!

Recovery

It's now been over a month since Lucas' birth, and I am feeling almost entirely recovered. Of course, there are other reasons I'm totally wiped out most of the time (lack of sleep, breastfeeding). But other than a flabby belly, weak abs, and occasional twinges of discomfort, I would say that I'm totally recovered. (I have a doctor's appointment in a week and a half to confirm this.)

I'm going to start writing about what life has been like since Lucas was born, but there's a lot so I'll just start with the next three nights after Lucas' birth, while I was in the hospital.

Immediately after surgery, I was moved to a room where they could monitor me. I was totally numb from my chest down and my hands were shaking. My doctor suggested that I try breastfeeding, but I felt so clumsy that I asked her to help me do it. I'd already hit myself in the face a couple of times by accident and really didn't want to do that to my newborn! So she helped me out my putting him up to my breast and somehow he started sucking, though I really couldn't feel it because of the numbness.

I don't think we were doing that very long before my parents showed up. I'm sure they were surprised to have missed the whole thing, though given how it had all gone, I was glad they hadn't arrived any earlier. When I was pushing and had the leg cramps, I don't think I was especially pleasant (I actually apologized to my doctor later, though she says I wasn't nearly as bad as most), and then of course, they couldn't have been there for the surgery.

Sitting there in the hospital bed, I felt strangely floaty and when I moved my body from side to side on the bed, I felt like I was swaying on water or something. I also noticed pressure on my calves that would come and go periodically. It was strange enough that after a while I mentioned it to my nurses and they told me they had put compression boots on me - these boots periodically compressed to keep blood flowing through my legs. But since my legs were covered by a blanket and I had no real feeling in my legs, I had had no clue that those boots were there. In fact, whenever people would leave the room for a little bit, they would give my foot a sympathetic squeeze, which I found sort of amusing because although I could see what they were doing, I couldn't feel it at all.

But eventually I started to get a little feeling back. At one point I told my dad to watch and I was going to try to move my toes. I thought really hard about it and tried to move them and ... my thigh sort of jumped and twitched - it was so creepy that I decided not to try that again!

As I waited to be moved to a recovery room, where I would spend the next three nights, I started to get really thirsty. It was now around 5:30 pm and I hadn't had anything to eat or drink in the past 24 hours. However, because I'd had surgery and a variety of anesthestics, I wouldn't be allowed to eat or drink anything for the next twelve hours! They said that because my digestive system was slowed down that I probably wouldn't be able to process anything and I'd just get nauseous and throw up. So instead they gave me giant cups of ice cubes, assuming I couldn't eat through ice as fast as I could gulp down a glass a water. And it's probably true that it slowed me down, but I ate cups and cups of ice. Fortunately, I didn't feel at all hungry, so when J and my parents brought dinner back with them, it didn't bother me at all.

Finally, they moved me to a recovery room and I was relieved to find myself in a private room. I'm not sure if it's because I'm an employee of the university that the hospital is part of (they have a special program that I signed up for and one of the perks is that they will give you a private room if one is available) or whether it's because I had a c-section and would need to be there for three nights. Another perk of the special program is that I got free cable, but it turned out that I was much too tired to care about watching t.v. There was also a single pull-out bed in the room, so J was able to stay overnight with me.

Not much happened the first night. We had Lucas in the room with us most of the time. In fact, they told us that they couldn't keep a baby in the nursery unless we agreed that if the baby needing soothing that they could give him either a pacifier or formula. Since we didn't want them to give him either of those things, we almost always had him in the room.

That first night I was pretty much just counting down the hours until I would finally be allowed to drink something. I was so happy when, at 4:30 am, they let me have some juice - four little 4 oz cups of apple juice and however much water I wanted. It was then that I also learned that I had a catheter in from the surgery. They took it out (not painful at all) and told me that I could now drink as much as I wanted (though they advised me to go slow) and that eventually I would just pee on my own. I was so excited that I tried to take the drinking slow, but I did drink to my heart's content. (Wait for it, this becomes important later!)

As for medications, I learned that I was on pitocin (given through the IV they put on me at the very beginning) to help my uterus contract and shrink. I guess with the anesthesia that my uterus wouldn't be able to do that on its own. They also gave me oxycodone and ibuprofun as pain relief, which at first I don't even think I was really aware of. There were so many doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room, checking my incision, giving me medications, changing my maxi pads (yes, you bleed for days after a c-section too - it's because the placenta is gone but there are still blood vessels trying to feed it). The strange thing to me about the pain medications is that there was a definite schedule for when I could take them (6 hours between doses of ibuprofen and 4 hours between doses of oxycodone), but the nurses themselves wouldn't just bring them to me on time. They kept telling me that I needed to request them, but it was almost as if they didn't realize that I wasn't really able to keep track of when I'd had what. When I'd finally ask for more, they'd sort of admonish me for not taking them on more of a schedule and remind me that it's important to keep taking them, but yet they never tried to remind me. I guess they don't want to drug you if you don't need it, but at the very least, I would think they could check back in with me on a schedule.

But except for the strange impetus on me to keep to a schedule for the pain medications, the doctors and nurses were extremely attentive. In fact, it was almost hard to get any sleep because there was always someone coming in the room for something. I can't say enough good things about them; they were all very supportive and helpful.

By the next afternoon, now that my catheter was out, I was starting to feel like I had to pee. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to be able to go. I just figured that maybe I didn't have to go yet, but after a while it became clear that it was not that I didn't have to go, it was that I absolutely couldn't go. I guess there is a sphincter and the anesthesia hadn't worn off enough yet for it to let anyting out, so I was totally blocked. It was similar to the way I'd previously thought about moving my legs, but they didn't respond. I spent some time on the toilet, trying to relax, but nothing came out. The nurses eventually brought me a sitz bath (a pan of warm water that you sit in) in the hopes that that would trigger it, but it didn't help either. The nurse was reluctant to give me another catheter because she said that everytime they do it, it introduces the possibility of bacteria and they didn't want me to end up with an infection. But eventually I was in such pain from being unable to go that I was crying on the toilet and begging J to go grab the first nurse he could find to help me out. So my nurse came back, this time with a student nurse, to give me a "straight" catheter (one that isn't hooked up to a bag).

The student nurse made a couple of attempts to put the catheter in, but apparently this is a little difficult and she kept missing. It doesn't really hurt when they miss, but it just prolonged my pain of needing to go. I didn't realize at the time that it's a difficult thing to do, so I asked if instead of the student nurse, if the regular nurse could do it, and fortunately she got it on the first try. And then, sweet relief - I peed a whole liter and a half of fluids!

After that they left me without a catheter, telling me that it would likely be fine and that I shouldn't hold off on liquids just because I was afraid. Of course, I was afraid and so I didn't hold off entirely, but I also didn't guzzle down cups and cups of water. Unfortunately, a few hours later I needed to go again and was still unable to. I had a new nurse this time (they worked in shifts, so I kept having different nurses) and was just thrilled when she told me she would give me a regular catheter again. (Actually, she missed too when trying to put the catheter in at first, but at least this time it didn't feel as dire.) Fortunately, by the next day, I was able to pee without the catheter - what a relief!

Other than trying to pee, I didn't do much except sit in the bed and chat with my parents and J and some occasional visitors. Actually, we got a lot of visitors because I was in the same complex of hospital buildings were J works and just a block away from my office. I wished I could have been showered and more presentable when people showed up, but I wasn't and really, it's ok. I was just really glad that they wanted to come by to see us and Lucas.

Over the course of the three days, I went from being completely numb and weak to being able to walk with some support. At one point, my dad took me for a walk down the hallway to the nursery - normally it wouldn't take more than about two minutes to get from my room to the nursery and back, but it took me half an hour! (Well, we did spend a little bit of time looking at the babies.) And by the second day, I was even able to get out of bed and stand by myself (that first picture of Lucas I posted was one I took myself while J and my parents were out getting lunch).

On Friday morning, after getting final checks by various doctors and nurses, they let me go home.

dressing Lucas before going home

Since then, my life has been consumed by breastfeeding, but that's a story for next time...