Day 3 – such a different experience

Chris and I keep remarking to ourselves about how different this all is. Day 3 of Ethan’s life involved fighting with hospital staff about letting us take our barely jaundiced son home that day, getting home by 9pm (almost 3 entire days in the hospital) and then spending the whole night crying and scared and offering our son our finger to suck on while pumping a few drops of colostrum into a syringe to feed him so he didn’t get nipple confusion from a bottle but didn’t nurse on my bloody (literally, not the british “bloody!”) nips. Oh. My. God.

Today I woke up after several bouts of 2 hour sleep sessions during the night where I broke a fever from 102 to 100 with lots and lots of sleep sweat. I felt so much better in the morning!

I’ve been up all day today with a bit more energy, and I even got dressed and walked to the coffee shop with Verity in her moby wrap. My milk came in today (holy BOOBS!) which is some gawd awful pain, for real. I am hoping to get Chris out to People’s tomorrow for some much needed engorgement herbs, like peppermint, lavender, chamomile, marshmallow root, so on, to make a compress for them. Oh and Lacey brought home a little gift for me of nipple calendula lotion from a local company called Wild Carrot Herbals. I’ve tried many a nipple soother, and this one is definitely the top of my list! I’ll be sending it to all my nursing friends from now on! In the meantime, I’m missing like half of my stash of cotton pads that I had accumlated nursing Ethan 3 years ago, so I’m cutting up fleece blankets to line my playboy nursing bras and stuffing the rest with chopped cabbage.

Isn’t motherhood grand?! Yeah, baby!

On day 3 with Ethan, I could barely sit, my lady bits were so sore. Today I am walking down the block. One woman asked me about the Moby wrap at the Max station (okay, okay, I also hopped on the max and did some shopping at New Seasons… shhh, don’t tell my midwife!). This lady peaked at the baby and then couldn’t believe when I told her I had her at home 3 days ago. It was pretty funny to me.

I also keep going over and over Verity’s features. She’s so precious, so little, so elvish and truly cute only to mama, lol. Chris pointed out an incredible proof that her hand came out by her head, and must have been squished in by her head for sometime – her earlobe has two little finger indents in it! SO funny.

Also, at first I thought she looked a lot like Ethan. (Chris still thinks so, lol). But when I got a better look at her, I realized the resemblance ends at the crease in between her eyes. Her ears are wider, her eyebrows are lighter, lower, and straighter. Her nose is more up-turned, bigger, and rounder. Her lips are thinner. I can see the making of a GIRL! I found a picture of Ethan on day 3, in his take home outfit, and displayed it for Chris as proof, and he had to concede that they were quite different on day 3. I’ll have to showcase my comparison sometime on the blog… when I get around to it.

In the meantime, I’m going to take my dosage of remedies to ease my recovery days, and I’ll encourage Chris to keep up the blog when I’m away!