Thoughts on the hospital and coming home

Since this blog has become my journal, I am going to write some of my thoughts regarding the hospital stay and any other little tidbit that has gone through my mind that past week and a half. Warning, this post will probably be long!!

First off, I have really enjoyed having a newborn baby in my home. With Timmy, he was so cranky, never napped for more than 45 minutes and was difficult and I was struggling to heal for weeks which added to my disconnect. With Allison, I wasn't sure what to expect but she was an easier baby for the first month or so and then went on to nap only 45 minutes at a time also. I still didn't feel an instant connection to her at the beginning though. However, with little Mikey, I am so happy he is part of our family and I just really enjoy holding him and taking care of him. The last evening I was at the hospital Justin left early to spend some time with our kids and sleep over at his parent's house. I was a little lonely so I just kept the baby with me and snuggled him until it was time to go to bed. In the morning, I couldn't wait for him to come back and join me, he is so sweet!

This time at the hospital we didn't have as many visitors and I actually really enjoyed so much downtime to rest and enjoy my baby. When visitors did come, most of them overlapped so it worked out really well. I still love having visitors but it hasn't been as strong of a need this time around. With my past babies I got the baby blues pretty bad and needed people around me constantly to feel okay.

I just love Davis Hospital! The nurses were all fantastic in their care and concern. The nursery nurses were also wonderful and never made me feel bad for leaving my baby in their care for as long as I wanted, which was usually from 9:30 PM until 8 or 9 in the morning. I also love that you can order whatever food you want during your stay and get snacks for the evening. They also had a new spa service this time which allowed you to pick one spa service to be performed in your room for free. I chose a facial and shoulder/neck/face massage. It was fabulous being pampered for 45 minutes! Other services included a pedicure, hair cut or hair style. They really know how to treat their patients :)

I already wrote about my easy delivery, and I have had an easy time healing as well. I am not one to sit around and let everyone do things for me (I should probably take it more easy but I just can't seem to sit still for long). I do have to sit for several periods during the day to pump and to feed the baby, both which take about a half hour to do. So, I am forced to rest a little bit at least :)

So far Mike has been a really calm and easy going baby. He doesn't have to be swaddled to fall asleep, and he sleeps quite a bit. During the night he has already established a routine. He wakes up around 1 AM and I feed him and get him back down by about 1:30. Then he wakes up around 4 or 5 for another feeding. After that, Justin takes over until I'm ready to get up and face the new day. Overall, I am not that tired thank goodness!

I haven't lost very much weight yet. When I came home from the hospital I had only lost around 8 pounds. I guess I enjoyed my hospital food too much, especially getting dessert with dinner and lunch, ha ha! Since coming home though I have continued to lose some weight and I will probably be over 20 pounds lost at the 6 week mark. With my last 2 babies I lost the baby weight so quickly that I didn't really need in-between clothes. However, I am not losing it as quickly (too many treats including girl scout cookies being delivered the day we got home) so I am struggling to find something to wear every day. Jeans are out (besides maternity jeans) so I am wearing stretch pants and all of my more loose fitting shirts. My maternity jeans still fit really well sadly but the shirts are too baggy so finding the right shirts to fit low enough over the maternity jeans has been a bit of a struggle. I will do it though, I will lose this weight!

I have decided to pump again this time around instead of breastfeeding for 4-6 weeks. In fact, I have never even attempted to latch Mike on in order to minimize the damage done and so that pumping will be a little less painful. There are times when it really hurts, especially my right side, but other times no pain at all which is nice. I mentioned in my other post that Allie probably has RSV so I am definitely going to stick through with this pumping business so that my baby will be protected as best as possible. If any of you are reading this and don't know already, I have a yeast infection in my breasts from breastfeeding Timmy and it has never gone away and I am unfortunately always bruised. I also have an excess of the enzyme lipase in my milk which makes it taste metallic when stored in the fridge for more than a day or frozen in the freezer. To combat this, I have to scald my milk before freezing to keep it tasting normal - one more step, lucky me! When I try to feed Mikey those bottles that have been in the fridge for more than 24 hours, he usually rejects them and shakes his head when I try to feed him. My kids laugh and laugh at his shaking his head and I admit, it is really funny to watch! It is sad to throw out the milk that he doesn't like, I am in pain to bring him the good stuff! Oh well, my trials are not too hard to handle.

On Saturday my sister Sherri came to visit and I decided to go out and go shopping for a few hours without kids. I really wanted a new soft pink robe from Sears that I have noticed and wanted for a few months now but couldn't really justify since I have a nice robe already, although it is like 10-12 years old now. Well, with having a baby and being up a lot in the night, I decided I wanted the soft robe to put on to make the middle of the night feedings more comfortable. I went and bought it, yay! I love it! We did some other errands as well and it was nice to talk to her and just get out for a bit.

This time around, my Mom only stayed for a few days. She came Wednesday evening and left on Friday afternoon. She was a great help though and I was able to get some rest during the night and some naps during the day. She even made me her chicken soup so that I could have lunch for the next week which I love :) She just got married, and hasn't had much time to adjust to her new home in Wales so she was anxious to get home to her new husband and home. Since this time around has been easy, I agreed to her leaving on Friday. She said she would come back on Monday the 21st if I needed more help but I was doing fine so she just stayed in Murray to continue going through her old house.

The first night I got home from the hospital I got the baby blues really bad and I started crying and couldn't stop! I was soo tired and the baby was really restless that night. My Mom finally took the baby from 1-5 so I could rest and I did, but then felt really guilty for not taking care of my baby in the night. I checked on my Mom and she was so disoriented that she didn't know what time it was. She thought it was only 2 AM but then she felt a strong prompting from the spirit that she needed to get up and feed the baby. When she came upstairs around 5:45 AM she saw that I had been sitting at the table crying for the past 45 minutes. She didn't realize the whole night had past and she hadn't fed the baby once, just kept giving him his binkie. We quickly fed the baby and talked for a while. The baby went back to sleep so I went back to bed and started talking to Justin and started crying again, I was such a bawl baby! I slept in and went to see my chiropractor and started crying again. He suggested I start taking fish oil and overdose on them a bit. Instead of taking 2 like recommended, he said to take 5 a day. I bought some and started taking them and the blues went away almost like magic! I haven't been really sad or overwhelmed since then, they are great :)

Anyway, that's about it for my thoughts. If you read this whole post, then wow, I am amazed at you!