Brief thought on motherhood

Maybe it's because I didn't have a lot of contact with my baby for the first week of life - I wasn't even able to hold her the first 24 hours or so. I barely caught a glance of her after giving birth until, after an hour of recovery, they wheeled me over to the NICU to look at her. Just look. Maybe it's just a natural thing. I wasn't immediately in love with my baby. Oh, sure, I "loved" her because she was precious. But... I don't know, infants take a while to develop an attachment with caregivers... perhaps it's mutual. I didn't have an immediate bond with this little girl. When she came home I dutifully got up every few hours to feed her, thinking that at least she was cute, even if I was exhausted.

I guess I sort of expected this great maternal instinct to well up in me and start making me superwoman, or especially Christlike towards my daughter or something.

I have a guess, though, that this is just what motherhood is: learning to love the small things and getting through the frustrating ones. Toughing it out through the spit-up and the nightly feedings and the fussing because it just needs to be done. Learning to love the little person that my daughter is in spite of all that.

And I do like what Glenn Beck had to say about it - cuteness is a defense mechanism. "Thou shalt not kill anything cute!"

Because at 3 AM when she falls asleep while feeding (again), I just focus on how cute she is.

Unprepared

Just so you know, this is a post about my baby's bodily functions. Possibly an unnecessary post, but it's for posterity's sake, right?

My husband graciously changed Baby's diaper while I was, umm, doing something to get ready to feed her. I was walking by our little changing station when all of the sudden.... she exploded. A stream of poo flew out her bum, leaving a six-inch streak across the changing pad and even flying off the changing table. It was so sudden we couldn't help but laugh, even though it was pretty gross (you probably don't need to know this, but most of the time her poo is bright orange). And then, while we were trying to figure out what to do and with no diaper handy, she started peeing -- at least this time it wasn't a big stream splashing all over everything, but just puddling underneath her. Oh man. It probably could have gotten worse - I mean, with her acid reflux, she could have started spitting up all over - but we fortunately were still laughing, because that was ridiculous. After the explosive poo, though, she was just quietly looking around like nothing happened.

Seriously... it was hilarious. I'm glad we could laugh.

She'd sort of poo'd out of her diaper when she was still in the NICU, but then it was just a little spot on her bassinet and while surprising, not a huge deal. This was serious. Oh well. She's still breastfeeding, so her poos aren't especially stinky. It's still poo; it just could be worse.

Sorry if you don't like to hear about bodily functions. I just couldn't believe that happened.

Not enough naps

After a rough night, followed by a fairly rough day (or at least a day with a bit of fussing and lots of intermittent eating), I come to the end and realize: I'm not sure I'm ready for another rough night. I mean... who is, right? She's been pretty nice to me lately and seems to have had alternated between good nights and bad nights. However, her days are usually pretty good, I think. What does that mean about tonight? At least after being awake with her for quite a while this morning my mom got up at 7 and held her for the next three hours while Gary and I slept. That was pretty nice all around. Also, I had a nurse with a public health group call me and discussed her acid reflux and things I could do that might help. I am super encouraged, now, though the reflux she said could last up to four months. I don't know if her suggestions have made a significant difference yet, since I only talked with her late this afternoon, though I have gotten more burps out of her than I normally get. And now that I think about it, at this very moment she isn't making quite as many of those funny throat-clearing-like noises as she made earlier. Could be because her sleep is deeper, though.

Anyway. Rambling paragraph over. I just woke up from a nap; perhaps that is why my thoughts aren't very collected, and why I feel so sleep-deprived (am I the only one with this sensation after a nap?). Almost time to feed baby again. :-)

Oh. And. A couple random notes: I have an idea why postpartum recovery is so long... the only time you go through the equivalent of a major surgery and instead of being told to get lots of rest, you are told to wake up every three hours. 

Also. I got peed on today. Big time. Like the diaper was still on, and I was feeding her, when suddenly I feel this warmth travel down my lower abdomen... not cool, Baby, not cool. Worst part is that I just had to sit there and wait for her to finish up. And that I had put her in this super cute onesie and had to change her... :-)

Nicknames

Compliments of my husband, our baby is now a "bug." I remember while changing her diaper in the hospital that I would say things like "hush-a-boo" and, you know, other soothing things. This may be compliments of my husband, or perhaps influential to my husband, who calls her "bug-a-boo." Which I think is ridiculously cute. So, here is an abbreviated list of things that I call her:

Bug-a-boo
Bug
Bug-a
Emmy-bug
Miss Emily
Squishy baby
Bright eyes

I like to call her squishy baby when she does that cute thing where she curls her legs up to her torso, especially in what one of the nurses liked to call the "second womb," up on my chest. It is soooo adorable, but it's also cute when we're just holding her and she pulls her legs all up and tucks her arms in.

Basically, we have a really, really cute baby. Even if we had a rough night, my husband let me nap a lot this morning (and... I might go take another one because the warmth from the oven is making me drowsy), so I'm quite enamored of her. I just hope all the sleeping she's doing now doesn't mean she'll be awake all night... However, I have a feeling she didn't just want to be awake, but that she was having a rough night with spitting up and having an ucky tummy, so she fussed every time I went to put her down. Poor thing. She is just so darn cute, though. And she's getting to be a little bit of a chunker. It's like I see her getting bigger every day. Two weeks old! And probably more than half a pound above her birth weight - she was 7 oz above it on Friday morning. My biggest comfort during her spitting up ordeal is that I'm pretty sure she's digesting because she keeps growing and, well, she keeps needing diaper changes.

Having a baby is pretty great.

Not sleeping makes you tired

Yep. Just making that discovery. Most of the time I don't feel too bad, just real drowsy at times, but early this morning I realized that being tired isn't always just feeling tired. I started to do some dumb things. Like think to myself, I'll just run these diapers over to the diaper pail WHILE MY BABY IS SITTING ON HER CHANGING TABLE. Yeah, not a great idea. I guess if for no other reason, that's a pretty good incentive to take more naps during the day. I shouldn't need incentive, yet here I am... blogging. It's only for a few minutes, right? After finishing my breakfast...

In other news, I think she decided to sleep for four hours. I'm not sure that's great, since she's not even two weeks old. Another reason I should probably sleep more? What if I just ignored her too long? Well, she's got some good lungs, so I don't think I'd be entirely to blame. She's the boss, right? Poor thing had a bit of a rough night. So did I. At least she is super cute. She probably is the best baby in the whole world.

Home

Well, I went in for a feeding yesterday around 2 and the charge nurse was there and basically told me she saw no reason to keep the baby any longer! So I fed her and we had a somewhat frantic chain of events as they worked to make sure they could get us all discharged. Gary (who had just gotten to work) got the rest of the day off and within an hour and a half, we were walking out the hospital with our little girl! It's been fun having her home, but it's been really hard, too. She fussed a lot at about 2:30 last night, which made mom and dad a little grumpy. I think she fed every two hours. I went in to the doctor today, and she weighed about an ounce more than she did at birth - and just the day before the hospital told me she wasn't quite back to her birth weight! Could be inconsistent weighing, but I personally think it's cause she ate so darn much. Which is okay, she just took a long time to feed at night (and I wasn't very quick to wake her, since I was falling asleep myself), and then I'd sleep for about an hour and she'd wake up and want to eat again.

I've come to the conclusion that she associates waking with eating. I almost always see some feeding cues when she's awake, but it's still fun to see her wide awake. The lactation specialist/nurse told me that I really should let her sleep a lot of the time she wasn't eating, so it's been hard for me to want to play or hold her for long periods of time (except... while she's eating...). I think, though, that she mostly needs it the next day or maybe two to make sure she recovered well from whatever was keeping her in the hospital.

I really should be napping, because I'm not really looking forward to tonight and waking up. Maybe she'll eat quicker and sleep a little longer? I can hope. :-) My consolation is that she won't do this forever.... I hope it won't last more than a week or two, or that we'll at least have more of an idea of her schedule pretty soon. I guess we were finally initiated as parents! I kind of miss that hospital sleep room, though... ;-)

Oh baby

I should probably shower right now, but it's nice to be sitting at home. I spent last night at the hospital in a sleep room (which is a wonderful idea for parents whose babies are getting ready to come home) and, aside from the first feeding where I just didn't want to put her down, I would just go back to the room, sleep, and they would call with the room phone and I would go down and feed her. What was nice is that she was mostly awake by the time they called me, so I fed and went back to sleep.

She's so on track to come home soon! We've done everything except all oral feedings for 48 hours, but we've done 24! Yay baby. Oh, and I still need to give her a bath, since they didn't do it last night. So excited!!

I admit, I'm a little bit jealous when I see people taking their newborns home or seeing pictures of getting home.

The good news is she's breastfeeding really well.

The less good news is she has to take all oral feedings for at usually 48 hours before we can take her home. Makes perfect sense. Isn't perfectly convenient. Gary wants me to see if a bottle would be okay once or twice a day - I'm really worried it will make breastfeeding more difficult. I want to see if I can stay in one of the sleep rooms at the hospital, but there are only two and I've always seen them occupied... and I don't want to wait for them. If the lactation consultant says she probably won't be hurt by a few bottle feeds at night, I might do it just so we can get her home.

And because I'm tired.

I'm anxious to breastfeed her, and at first I jumped and said I would drive over every three hours just to feed her instead of having the stupid tube do it for me.... but I also like to sleep a little, and I still pump after her feedings, so when I feed her I'm spending usually at least an hour and a half at the hospital. So unless I can find a place to sleep there, getting maybe two or three hours of sleep all night doesn't really sound all that appealing.

Maybe I could do it for just two days.... I used to do stuff like that for school, right?.... hah.

Really, though, feeding her is like magic and I love it.

We want her home so bad.

Sleep

This probably won't be a shocker to moms, but I decided today that I definitely sleep more now than I would be if our little girl was at home (which she should be soon!). I had two very successful feedings, which is a big deal, but they lasted at least 45 minutes each. Now, with the cleaning up and measuring and such that comes with pumping, I can take 45 minutes if I'm slow or if the pumping takes long, but usually I pump about fifteen minutes (thank you, hospital-grade pump rental). So sure, I wake up every three hours and don't love the sound of my alarm going off, but I'm usually back to bed 30-40 minutes later. Much as I love staring at my little girl (and a little aside here - having her breastfeed is possibly the most beautiful thing, especially since I couldn't even try until almost two days after she was born), it seems like a 45-60 minute feeding at three in the morning would be less than fun.

Oh sleep. How I will miss you. But it will be totally worth it if it means having our little baby home.