Life with baby...

No one could have ever prepared me for having this baby. Nothing could have prepared me, not the stupid classes, not the advice and not the books.

After we had the baby and went home, thank god we had help from both of our parents for the first two weeks. My parents just left yesterday and I'm just now feeling like I can handle things on my own.

The first night home...was hectic. I was exhausted, emotional, and in pain. I hadn't slept at the hospital because I was so elated with the baby. Breastfeeding had taken a turn for the worst. It was very painful and my skin was getting cracked and bleeding from his vicious sucking. It was hard to get him latched on and more importantly I was so scared of how painful it was going to be I would resist it even more. The longer I waited to mentally get myself together for a feeding, the louder and harder he would cry and become fussy. This made each feeding last an hour. And he'd be up within another hour to eat. Around the clock of this behavior. I screamed at my hubby that I couldn't do it and felt like such a bad mom. I realized now that this was what people describe as the baby blues.

The next day his parents helped by giving him forumla to give me a break. I didn't know how bad that would make me feel. Inadequate to my own child's needs. I sucked it up and kept breastfeeding. The pain of him latching on would be so incredibly painful I would just have to breathe through the first minute of it like a contraction. My husband would even breathe with me.

This lasted the first week. We saw a lactation consultant (LC) who gave me a great latch on tips and showed me that when the baby opens his mouth you've got to shove that boob in there. She said yes it hurts--but it will heal quickly and you will feel better. She was partly right. It did heal quickly but it hurt like the dickens still. But I kept trucking with it.

The baby is so demanding. Nobody really informed me about that. How much time I will spend practically sleep walking, breast feeding, changing diapers, swaddling and doing it all over again within an 1-2 hours. I wasn't ready. I had about 2 more melt downs that week. Frustrations with breastfeeding demands, exhaustion, pain from my healing wound. That made things 10x worse. The fact that my stitches made me so sore, it was a pain just to keep laying down and sitting up to get the baby out of the bassinett right next to our bed.

On top of of it all-- I forgot to take care of myself. I barely ate. And I was already diagnosed anemic before I was discharged. This landed me in the ER two days after I gave birth, hooked up to an IV and shaking with the chills.

But alas---
I can look back on the last two weeks (plus my labor and delivery) and things don't seem as bad as they were. My monkey breastfeeding much better with the help of many LC's support (I called daily I felt like!). It only hurts now because we got thrush (ugh). I started pumping to build my supply and freeze bags of milk for my return to work.  We have in the making schedule with on demand feeding which doesn't take hardly an hour anymore. In fact he's done within 10 minutes per side, we're more effecient now!

Things are already getting better...not easier..but a lot better since I can cope and deal with his behaviors better than I could 2 weeks ago.

But man--wasn't ready for this. And didn't know how people my age or younger, single, or with other small kids do this! HAVING A BABY KICKED MY BUTT!!