Two Weeks?!?!

Wow, time really flies when you're on-the-clock 24 hours a day with both a newborn and a toddler!

I've been meaning to give some sort of update, and as usual, I put it off until I can write up the "full" update that I really want to write, which never happens, and thus nothing gets written. So, these here are some random thoughts that I wanted to get down, and I expect that there will be more random stream-of-consciousness-type posts over the next month as well. You do what you gotta do, you know? I still need to write up Kermit's birth story, too. Later. I promise.

Kermit:
He's an eating machine! This kiddo latched onto my breast on his very first try and never looked back. He's so loud gulping milk that it's kind of embarrassing. Babies are supposed to regain enough weight to be back up to birth weight by their two-week appointment; at Kermit's appointment, we discovered that he was a full pound above his birth weight, prompting our pediatrician to point at my breasts and ask if I'd opened a Dairy Queen in there. (S was so amused by the question that he has taken to calling me his Dairy Queen. My Wisconsin roots make it that much funnier for him.) When he's not eating, or asking to eat, or complaining that he's hungry again, Kermit is a very calm baby so far. And very snuggly. I'm very much enjoying all the newborn snuggles.

Also, not to jinx it or anything, but Kermit just might be a good luck charm for my Green Bay Packers, since they haven't lost a single game since Kermit was born. We have photos of Kermit and LL both wearing their Packers jerseys and appropriately sized cheeseheads, watching the NFC championship game, and there is much excitement around here for the Super Bowl. We normally host a Super Bowl party for our friends every year, and I've dreamed about being able to host one in which my Packers are playing, but I'm not sure if I can pull it off with a one-month-old....

Lots of family visited during Kermit's first week, through his bris at 8 days old. The bris went wonderfully, other than Kermit waking up during the naming part of the ceremony and deciding that he was hungry again, and then bawling loudly for the rest of the ceremony, until I could whisk him away to be fed. Yes, that's right, he stayed calm through the circumcision part, then freaked out during the part where he was just hanging out in Grandpa's arms listening to the rabbi. We had a much smaller turnout at the bris then we had at LL's, which was disappointing (for example, not a single friend or coworker of mine, from my job or from school, attended the bris) but I kind of saw it coming. Second kid and all, eh?

After the bris, things quieted down, and everyone except my mom left. She's been staying with us since, which has been awesome, because I don't think we'd be eating without her. Or rather, we'd be eating pizza for dinner every night. Late.

LL:
LL has been a little champ! He's very attentive and loving, showering Kermit with kisses, telling us when Kermit needs to eat (every single time he cries, apparently), bringing him blankets to keep him warm while he sleeps, rocking the bouncy chair when he fusses. If only the kisses weren't full on the mouth, and the blankets smothering Kermit's face. It's a little Of Mice and Men, if you know what I mean.

I'm not allowed to pick LL up until my 6 week appointment, which seems to be the hardest part for LL to deal with. I've explained to him that Mommy has an owie (he investigated it himself to see how bad it was; he found the incision quite fascinating) and that I can't pick him up or carry him until the owie gets better. Every day, he asks if the owie is better yet, and looks a little sad when I tell him no. And today, he forgot and jumped off a chair into my arms; I caught him, but it hurt like hell, and he could tell that I was in pain. When I put him down, he walked away, then returned a moment later to ask if my owie hurt, at which point he told me that he was sorry and he kissed my stomach to make it better. So I guess he understands the limitations fairly well.

He has also caught on shockingly fast to the new rhythms of our household. Every time Kermit cries, LL runs to me and says, "Oh Mama! Baby needs to eat! Open shirt! Open shirt!" And then he attempts to help me pull out a breast. We haven't really gone out with both kids yet, but I'm really looking forward to him doing that in public.

The toughest times for LL tend to be when he's hurt and when it's bedtime (he wants to snuggle on my lap, but I can't lift him into his crib, so he cries when I need to hand him over to Daddy). All compounded by the fact that he got his worst injury ever this past weekend, when he tried pulling his pajamas off a wooden hook wall-hanging thing and the whole thing fell off the wall and hit him in the face. I was right there when it happened, and he immediately buried his face deep into my shoulder and wailed in agony, while I held my breath and wondered exactly how much blood there was going to be once he pulled his face away from me. He ended up with a huge gash across the bridge of his nose, tons of swelling, and two black eyes. He is currently very proud of his injuries, though, and stops to admire himself in every mirror he passes, and recounts the story to everyone, since everybody has been asking him what in the world happened to his face. (I like to point at two-week-old Kermit, shrug, and just say, "All brothers fight, right?") LL is definitely more clingy than usual, and he's been acting uncharacteristically defiant towards the end of the day, but overall, things have been more smoother than I expected. (I say, confidently, after only two weeks....)

Week Seven (November 7)

LL's first Day Light Savings! (How's that for an important milestone?) Other firsts this week:

• First Football Party: Well, first football party outside of the hospital. One of our friends actually built a Packers bar inside his house, so we watched the Packers-Titans game there. Sunday's party was quickly followed by LL's second football party, when we watched Monday Night Football at another friend's place. This week was also when we discovered that LL is a little football jinx. Every time he watches a game with me, my team loses. This trend continued all season. You can blame him for the Packers missing the playoffs this year.


• First Visit to Mommy's Lab: I already wrote about this here but the milestone of being on a university campus for the first time is at least worth noting. If LL is anything like his parents, that's the kind of first that he'll want to know about.


• First Election: S and I took LL with us to the polls. Despite all the reports of long lines in many precincts in our area, ours was surprisingly empty -- just the three of us and eight poll workers. LL totally charmed the workers, who posed for photos with us as we turned in our ballots, and they let him have his own "I Voted" sticker to wear. All day, when people saw the sticker on an infant, we told them that ACORN had registered him to vote.


• First Long Sleep: I will forever be convinced that this is related to the voting. The night of the election, while S and I watched election returns on television, LL had his longest stretch of sleep in weeks, from 6:00pm to 1:00am, the start of a solid pattern of good sleep to start each night. We think that LL was so relieved at the imminent change in presidential administrations that he finally relaxed and slept. The election was called early for Obama, which meant that S and I slept peacefully that night as well.

This week was also my post-partum checkup with Dr. M. I was still fairly weak and tender and bleeding at this point, but that all cleared up over the next two weeks or so. Most important was that Dr. M cleared me of all the restrictions I'd been under since the c-section. I drove around running errands all week just because it felt so good to be a bit independent again.

Week Three (October 10)

One grandma left, and another set of grandparents arrived. S's parents were around this week. They did a little shopping and cooking as well, but they were much more interested in holding their grandson. S's mom also had the habit of running and picking him up every time he made the smallest sound, even if he was still sound asleep (which, inevitably, would wake him up). The result was that, outside of nursing time, I barely saw my son at all this week, and only when he was hungry or crabby. The stress of having people in our house, constantly, was starting to get to me. Not being able to spend any time with LL was even worse. This week was probably the post-partum low point for me. We were relieved to have the house to ourselves after this week was over, so that we could start establishing our own routines as a family.

The one time that we did have together: Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, for which we again attended the family service. (Yom Kippur also added to the post-partum blues, I think, since it's a very solemn day and always makes me rather melancholy.) When we told Dr. K, at LL's two week checkup, that we had brought him to a Rosh Hashanah children's service, she was a little shocked. ("Normally I tell patients to avoid large crowds and places with lots of kids until Baby is 5-6 weeks old. You went to a place crowded with children with a not-quite-two-week-old? You're awfully brave for first-time parents!") So we did have a bit of a discussion on whether to attend Yom Kippur services at all. Ultimately, though, we decided that we needed to teach LL what we value, right from the start. It felt good to be celebrating such a holy day as our little family of three.

More mundane milestone: LL's umbilical stump fell off! This achievement qualified him for a full bath, though we waited a bit and stuck with sponge baths for a while.

Week One (September 26)

LL is 13 weeks old now, a full three months. I should really be updating on a weekly basis what he's up to, how he's doing, things of that nature. He's changing so fast! I've been really sucky about updating so far, so I'm doing summaries of each week, and posting them all in quick succession over the next few days. My plan is to give a quick accounting of what was going on that week, highlighting important milestones and cute stories that I want to remember. Some of them are probably going to be pretty short, but some of the weeks so far have actually been quite eventful, so no promises on lengths. These might get tedious, since there's (hopefully) about to be 14 of them in a row, but I want to get this all down before it's lost forever.

We start with Week One, which was mostly spent in the hospital. Blech. Nobody enjoyed that. On the positive side, when LL was only two days old, he saw his first Green Bay Packers game. Grandma and Grandpa were already in town, and they brought LL an infant-sized cheesehead for the occasion. Grandma and Grandpa and S and LL and I watched the game from my hospital room, and the nurses even let us order in pizza. (The pizzeria manager was so tickled that we wanted a pizza delivered to the hospital maternity ward that he delivered the pizza himself, then stayed to ooh and aah over LL; it was very cute.) Too bad the Packers lost to the Cowboys.

People who flew or drove in from out of town during Week One: all four grandparents, Great-Grandpa, Uncle M, Auntie S, and Great-Uncle S. They were all here for the bris, the grand culmination of Week One. Considering that, between me and S, we have exactly one blood relative living within a several hundred mile radius, it was amazing to have over 60 family and friends at the bris.

One thing LL is going to have to get used to: our family is incorrigibly into puns and word play. This conversation happened the day before the bris:

Me: The mohel said he might be late, if there's traffic.
Great-Uncle S: If there's a line of cars ahead of him, can't he just "cut in" ?
S: He should be careful, though -- he wouldn't want to get "cut off."

Puns aside, the bris went great. LL didn't cry at all, and in fact we have some very cute pictures of him looking downright serene while the mohel was working. Probably because he was drunk on the baby bottle of sugar water and Manischewitz he was given before the ceremony -- yum! Our little drunkard gets his start.

It's Not Simple Like Knee Surgery

For today's topic, I'm going to briefly turn from the adorable newborn pretending to sleep in the next room, and instead focus briefly on me and my recovery from major abdominal surgery (as I am constantly being told), which has been a bit up and down.

My L&D hospital stay marked the first time I'd ever been admitted to a hospital for any reason, as well as the first surgery I'd ever had. To put it mildly, I was impatient to get home, get recovered, and get busy developing my new "normal." In the hospital, I was up and out of bed as soon as the nurses would let me, and I never looked back. I had horrible swelling in my feet and ankles, even worse than during my pregnancy, probably because I flatly refused to get back into bed and elevate them. The swelling didn't go down until somewhere around week two. (On a related topic: I have no shoes that fit. My entire pre-pregnancy shoe collection is too small, and my pregnancy shoes are about half a size too big. It sucks. But I digress.) Also, I hate how I feel when I take strong pain killers, so after the c-section, I was only on Advil. In retrospect, not my smartest decision.

For weeks after LL's birth, I felt okay when I was just sitting still, or even walking, but "transitioning" between states really sucked -- standing up, sitting down, shifting in a chair, getting in and out of bed... those were all excruciatingly painful for the entire first month. I also developed a horrible rash across my abdomen from the tape used to hold down the surgical sheet during the c-section.

Anyway, I apparently over-exerted myself during that first week, which caused repeated bouts of increased bleeding until my family intervened and ordered me to sit down already. (Or so I'm told... my labor and delivery are clear as a bell in my mind, but the two weeks immediately afterward are really blurry.) We had a rotation of family members staying with us for the first three weeks, and between them and S, I was carefully watched and kept from even pretending to do anything remotely strenuous. (Driving, lifting things, carrying things, bending over, sitting on the floor, kneeling.) There were advantages: I probably wasn't as exhausted as I could have been, and my incision seems to have healed quickly. Also, S got very good at changing diapers, since I had a hard time bending over to do it, so he's still handling the majority of the poop in our household. There were also, however, disadvantages: my abdominal muscles are completely non-existent now. The result right now is that I'm practically incapable of doing anything with my abs, and my back is really sore from compensating.

I had my 6-week post-partum doctor's visit this week, and I'll admit that I expected to be healed by the time this visit came along. Instead, the area between my incision and my belly button still feels really really tender, I'm still having a lot of vaginal discharge and bleeding (making me continually anemic, which is adding to the fatigue), and I still have to steel myself a bit to stand up out of a chair, get up off the floor, or roll over in bed. Dr. M says all of the above is normal, and when I asked when I could expect it to go away, he kept shrugging and saying, "A few more weeks." Sigh. But at least I'm now cleared for any and all physical activity, so I can start trying to build my abs back into shape. Never before in my life have I been excited to start exercising!

Also, good news: I've lost 23 of the 28 pounds I gained during my pregnancy. The bad news: once I lose those last 5 pounds, I get to focus on the 12 I gained during fertility treatments. And after that, I should really address the weight that I should have lost before even trying to get pregnant. But, um, yeah, one step at the time. For now, the frustrating thing is that, despite the weight loss, I'm still not really fitting into any of my pre-pregnancy clothing. My shirts are too tight around my breasts, which are huge from breast feeding, and my pants are tight around my hips, which is ironic, considering that my hips weren't wide enough to birth LL. At the same time, my maternity clothes are all way too big on me -- the shirts balloon down around my belly, and the pants continually fall down off my waist. Given the continued tenderness around my incision, I'm preferring the too big over the too small, but I feel hideous in everything I own. Blech.

Okay, enough about me. Next post returns to LL: his bris, his ongoing parade of admirers, and our attempts to get him onto some sort of sleep schedule.

Eat, Poop, Sleep, Repeat

Today's topic: our healthy boy

Other than a few small glitches, any of which would have been even easier to deal with if breast feeding had gotten off to a better start, LL has been in excellent health. (Being almost 9 pounds at birth will often do that.) He lost a lot of weight early on, but that was more my breasts' fault than his. All newborns lose weight immediately after birth, but he lost as much as they would "allow" him to lose before medically intervening. Then, he plateaued at that weight, refusing to gain. His pediatrician said that she wanted him to be back to birth weight by his two week appointment, and at that appointment he was... exactly at birth weight. Since then, he has gained weight admirably, averaging exactly 1 ounce per day, as recommended by the AAP. (He's quite literal, our LL. No overachievers here!) Now, at 6 weeks of age, he's well over 10 pounds, and quite comfortable in 3-month clothing.

LL also flirted briefly with jaundice, but we managed to quell the problem before it got too serious. His bilirubin levels kept rising for the first week, but never quite got high enough to merit intervention. Each time the pediatrician checked his blood, she'd give me a number above which she would be concerned, and each time, his number came in just a hair below. They told us the levels would drop if we could get him to poop more, which is accomplished by getting him to eat more, which wasn't happening because of the latch problems... so you can see why there was a lot of frustration and tears early on. The only "treatment" recommended for him, though, was sun-bathing, which is how we discovered that LL loves lying naked in the sun. I envision a future conversation with teenage LL about the dangers of skin cancer, but for now, this kid is quite the sun baby. The sun kept away the more serious jaundice long enough for us to solve the breast feeding problems, so it all came out well in the end. (And yes, he is now a champion pooper as well.)

There was a day or two there when we thought that he might be having problems with reflux or tummy upset, but it went away, so I'm hoping that it was just something I ate (spicy Chinese shrimp?) or a transient reaction to the thrush medication.

Overall, he's doing great. I am much relieved, because his sleep patterns are, um, not as great, and I was feeling so physically icky for so long after the c-section that I'm not sure I could handle it if he had health problems, too. So, after spending the first several weeks of his life focusing mainly on eating, we are now turning our attention to Newborn Issue Number Two: Sleep. (Thankfully, he's overall a very happy baby, so we've been able to avoid focusing on that other big newborn issue: crying.) Our attempts to get him to sleep are a whole other topic, though, so for now, we'll just say: healthy baby! Yay!

Got Milk?

I haven't posted in a long time, mainly because every time I wanted to write something, I'd think, "Wait -- I should get caught up on posting about the last 6 weeks first!" And then I never posted. So, rather than try to do a boring chronological story about everything that's happened since LL was born, I'm going to slice things a little differently. We're going by topics. Today's topic: breast feeding.

Week One was all about latch. Turns out I'd never really examined my nipples, so never discovered that they were both relatively inverted, which made it hard for LL to grab hold. After getting advice from every nurse who walked into my hospital room, and three lactation consultants (LCs), we were left with a bunch of conflicting advice and a whole lot of frustration. The first few days home were up and down -- one feeding would be great, the next feeding he'd never figure out how to latch. Then suddenly, at one week, things clicked. Weeks two and three showed awesome improvement. Then in Week Four, one breast started to hurt a little when he latched. By Week Five, I had shooting, burning pain in my right breast, the start of similar pain on the left, and it would ache even between feedings. I self-diagnosed thrush, got me and LL both on medication for it, and set about sterilizing everything in sight, but the problem kept getting worse. Today, we met with yet another LC, who confirmed the thrush, gave me additional advice on dealing with it, corrected some lingering latch problems, and answered a whole lot of questions. Things are again looking up.

Overall, despite the intermittent problems, it's actually not been as bad as I imagined. Many friends had told me horror stories about hating to breast feed and feeling near-constant pain in the early months, so despite the current thrush infection, I'm glad that the experience has been relatively pain free and rewarding. I haven't had to supplement at all, so to date, LL has only ever consumed breast milk. And Manischewitz, at the bris, which he loved. And, now, thrush medication, which he also loves, so clearly he doesn't have a very discerning palate. But, you know, mainly breast milk. I've also managed to pump a fairly large stock for the freezer, so that S can occasionally feed LL a bottle in the middle of the night while I sleep, though to prevent the thrush from reoccurring, we're going to have to trash much of that supply, which breaks my heart.

I can't leave this topic without a word about lactation consultants. I had heard stories from several friends about lactation nazis -- LCs who do little more than make you feel horrible and guilty about everything. So, I was initially hesitant to meet with one at the hospital. The nurses convinced me, though, that it was absolutely necessary to meet with an LC in order to figure out LL's latch problems as quickly as possible.

The first LC was bad -- she came into my hospital room and told me that she didn't have time to meet with me. That instead of wasting her time, I should just attend the hospital's breast feeding class, which meets on weekday afternoons on the maternity ward. I pointed out to her that I had given birth on a Friday afternoon, it was now Friday evening, the next class wouldn't be until Monday afternoon, and the nurses were convinced that I needed immediate help to correct my nipples. So, the LC glanced at my breasts, then told me that she definitely didn't have the time to deal with a problem like mine. Then she left. Yeah, you can imagine my state of mind for the rest of the day. ("My breasts are so bad, even a LC can't face dealing with them!")

The second LC was even worse. The nurses, horrified that the first LC hadn't actually worked with me, requested that someone else come to meet with me as soon as possible. When this LC showed up the next evening, she immediately started berating me for my bad manners for insisting that she see me that day, when she had many more important patients to attend to. When I finally got the chance to explain that LL was losing weight at an alarming rate, unable to latch, and my nipples weren't shaped right, she gave a big sigh and agreed to take a look. She then gave me a speech about how I should expect excruciating pain for a while, but I should just suck it up, because that's what mothers do. Um, yeah.

The third LC came to my room on the day we were to be discharged, following hospital policy. She was nice and calm, but mainly just negated everything everyone else had told us over the previous five days. ("The nurse told you to do WHAT? Oh dear. Well, it's not your fault, but really -- don't do that.") When she left, we were mainly just frustrated and confused.

When we got home, I sat down with The Nursing Mother's Companion, which had been recommended to me before giving birth. Reading that book and picking and choosing among the advice we'd gotten at the hospital eventually got us to the point where LL was eating well, but it was a frustrating week.

Which is why, a month later, I grimaced when S suggested calling a LC to figure out why I was suddenly in so much pain. But, LL's pediatrician recommended a particular LC to us, and we met with her this morning. And she was fabulous. Comforting and supportive and helpful. She met with us for an hour and a half, way beyond the call of duty. She answered all of my questions, and explained everything so that I know not just what to do, but also why. Awesome.

When we were in the hospital right after LL's birth, S told me that he got a lot of advice from friends and coworkers about what his job would be after the baby was born. Today's experience notwithstanding, he says that he definitely knows what the best advice was. I now pass it along to you, keeping in mind that I am a committed breast feeder:

The husband's number one most important job after his wife gives birth should be protecting his wife from the lactation consultants.