Posts from — May 2009

Okay, last night we got Verity to stay more or less wakeful through a late dinner and Lost night. I went on instinct and decided to take a warm shower with her, breastfeed in the shower, and then side-lie nurse at night (my saving grace with Ethan, to get some darn sleep!). She nursed to sleep at 11:30 and didn’t wake up to nurse again until 3! Then not again until 6am and 9am! Each time she only nursed for about 10 minutes on one side. If it weren’t for my incessant coughing, I would have slept almost a full 8 hours. Instead, I got in about 6 hours, but it was nice! And Chris got to sleep through the feedings since I wasn’t waking her up much and doing diaper changes and what not (unless it was particularly needed).

So I’m grateful to have found something that could work from now on. The latching of a newborn in side-lie position is a little trickier than with an older baby, but so long as I can manage to do it without hurting my nipples I’m happy to keep doing this so we all get some sleep! (BTW- all chapped scabs are gone! If I had known to just nurse through it with Ethan, we would have been able to skip all that pumping and nipple shield crap. With Verity I feel like months ahead in my recovery compared to Ethan. God bless second children- already SO much easier!)

Speaking of breastfeeding, I am also grateful that today I finally discovered what the h*ll is wrong with my nipples. I have what is called Raynaud’s disease! Based on what I have read, I can self-diagnose this without hesitation. With Ethan, my nipples were white on the tip and painful yet every one told me the latch was good. I thought for sure, after nursing for 1.5 years with him, that I would have NO problems this time around. Yet here I am, throbbing with pain. I took a hot shower two nights ago and again noticed the white tips when I got out and was cold again, and I thought maybe it was a clogged duct or milk still in the tips, so I tried to circulate the milk a bit and sure enough I was able to get them to turn to a normal color and the pain completely went away! I was puzzled and finally today I looked it up and quickly found that 20% of women have this. Now maybe my husband will believe me when I tell him my toes go numb in the cold weather!!! He always says I’m not wearing warm enough shoes and socks but I swear, the pinky toes go completely numb in just 40 degree weather inside snow boots! I never knew! (Forgive all the exclamation marks, its just exciting to know I have a TREATABLE nursing problem!)

So, I’m going out for B6 and Ginkgo Biloba, and will be taking my cal/mag too, the few herbal things that are suppose to help with blood circulation in the extremities. If that doesn’t help, I’m going to get a prescription for the drug that most women find relief with and for many the white nipples (called “vasospasm”) never return! Woo hoo!

Ok, heading out into the cold today doesn’t sound fun- my boobs are already hurting just thinking about it. But I gotta get to the bank and to the store so Ibuprofen will have to tied me over.

I have some pics to upload so I’ll be back later.

OH- update on the laptop- I borrowed a new cord and it still didn’t work. So the problem lies in the “jack” if you will, and that means I have to take it in to be replaced or whatever. But of course I can’t right now so for now I’m trying to find a good position each day that the cord keeps it charging and then don’t let anyone touch it! lol I should be able to get a few hours of work done this way, and I’ll be praying that this lasts a few months until we have my paychecks rollin’ in again and get back on our feet.

Ok, leaving now…

I’ve gone to bed early, between 7 – 9pm these last couple of nights. Verity all of a sudden is totally awake and cranky pants. Last night she woke up to nurse at 9. I nursed, burped, diapered, bounced around the house, danced, sang to her, kept her in the Moby wrap, made tea, made rice, gave her to daddy while I took a shower, nursed again, nursed again, etc etc etc – she did not fall asleep until TWO IN THE MORNING!!! She was awake for 5 hours!? Is that even POSSIBLE for a one week old?! Apparently so.

All I can say is thank God she slept til almost 6 so we got 3.5 hours of sleep for the night! And then the little stinker slept again from 6:30-10am! WHY can’t those long 3-4 stretches be like 10pm to 7am?!?! (And yes, we have tried keeping her awake in the evening- but she is just OUT. We’ll keep trying, I know the sleep routine takes time. Shoot, Ethan wasn’t sleeping through the night until he was a year and a half!)

I am coughing like nuts, my body trying to shed out the last of the gunk, so I’m just praying for a restful night tonight for both of us. (And probably our housemates too!)

Wow, we made it a week! And probably the most hellish one to come for some time, so I’m very glad to have it behind me and crossing my fingers that my flu goes away SOON!

All still ill- Chris might be getting it now too! Ethan getting much better though and I’m down to a low fever with an incessant cough. Oh the teas, herbs and essential oils that are blasting around our house!!! Not getting much sleep with this on top of infant-sleep-deprivation, maybe 4 hours a day, though it really could be worse.

Laptop still spotty. When we get the battery to work, we hurry on to check emails, possibly get a blog in, and then POOP its out! Some one at church is going to be getting us a cord we can use to see if the problem lies in the cord or the laptop itself, so we’ll see!

Here’s a few pics:

Had a good day today- first morning jugglin’ the tot and the teenie one, but it went pretty well! We even got a walk in to collect dandelions.

This afternoon we managed to get the four of us into a car and over to the midwife, where everything is “perfect”. Verity has already gained her birth weight back and lost her umbilical cord stump, and I am doing superbly, save this rough cold. Oh, and crisis averted- no pink eye! Just a terrible sinus virus that involves the eyes in it’s coarse. I’m doing everything under the sun to help me fight it and manage the pain, everything breastfeeding safe that is, so I just have to wait it out and try to rest. My midwife said that, for her, the upside to me being sick right now is that its keeping me from running a marathon until my body is actually ready for it Otherwise, my lady bits are all healed up and lovely (har) and my nips are doing better and its confirmed that the chapping is not due to faulty latching – just how mine roll.

I do hope the majority of my recent readers are female, btw. Sorry for all the powder room talk, fellas.

My laptop is going in and out of power because of either the charger/cord OR the laptop jack. So far we can jiggle it a bit and get it to charge for 5 minutes and then it goes out again. Certainly not a sustainable existence, so we are trying to figure something out. (Seeeeee, THAT was a fella friendly paragraph! I can whip them out from time to time.)

A sweet couple from church brought over a hearty supper for the whole household today, so I stuffed myself on it and I’m going to “bed” early tonight to try to get in a little extra sleep between Verity’s every-2-hour nursing preference.

I know this is all mighty boring to most of you, but oh well. Just seemed like an update from my recent doom-n-gloom conciseness was in order.

Before my laptop goes out again, I bid you farewell…

me – possible pink eye? (so disgusting- nothing screams sexy like a body that gave birth 6 days ago and eyes that are red and sprouting green goobers!!!)

Baby/mommy-wise, doing well.

Laptop cord no longer charging my laptop, so I’m on my last 10 minutes of battery before it craps out and I have to figure out how to afford and go get a new one. I’ll see what I can do and hopefully be back soon (esp since I need to start working this week- an impossibility without a laptop!)

Keep us in your prayers!

Flu sucks. Scabby nipples suck. Engorgement SUCKS.

But my little darlin’ is SO worth it!!!

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!

She’s awesome

and

she’s awesome.

THANK you guys, truly.