Guess which one I fall into???
The first month is kee-raaazy. You are mental and it seems like your baby is mental. Together you make a cute couple. Neither of you speak the same language but you manage to get your point across in the end.
If I had to sum up the first month I would say it is all about Problem Solving. Recovery from major surgery, Crying, Feeding, Sleeping, Deciding whether or not you will wash your face or eat breakfast during the 15 minutes you have when the baby is having a nap, and how do you contend with this little creature who relies solely on you for its survival and happiness??
C-Section Recovery: when I first got home I was pretty much confined to the bedroom for the first week. Getting out of bed took about 3 minutes, even moving to rearrange your position in the bed took ages. I did everything in the bed - eat, sleep, feed Alvie, change nappies, and try to entertain her 'oh look it's the bed again! how exciting!' luckily they tell you babies are quite blind at this stage so the constant scenery of pillows and my tired head weren't doing her head in too much. I discovered that laughter at this stage of recovery is NOT the best medicine. No laughing allowed. which means no watching Arrested Development or anything mildly amusing. My flat has about a million stairs which made it even harder to do things like get up and go to the bathroom. Going downstairs was a major feat in endurance, as was having a shower. In the first week I was so crippled in the shower I had to sit down on the edge and let the water fall on me down there..pathetic showering... Now it's been a month and things are pretty much normal. The only thing that concerns me is my scar and the scar tissue and how I will deal with these. Having never had an illness worse than a gastro virus, or a scar of any sort on my body coming to terms with this one hasn't been easy. Plus you have to wear absolutely enormous underpants. Granny Panties. Huge Huge Huge Pants... so sexy.
Crying: there are a lot of tears this first month. All yours, considering babies don't have functional tear ducts till they are a bit older. They aren't tears of sadness as much as they are tears of dealing with the crazy hormones in your body. ie; bottle of shampoo accidentally falls on your head in the shower = tears.. accidentally make her bleed whilst trimming her tiny little nails = tears .. thinking about how much you love her and if anything bad ever happened to her = tears. The day where there was the most tears was Day 3 when a whole range of things align to really screw you over. If it were planets aligning they'd call it the 'Douchebag Eclipse'... first all your progesterone levels drop off - which was keeping you in a state of bliss whilst you were pregnant, secondly your boobs swell up to Pamela Anderson proportions and feel like bowing balls, they really hurt and you have no idea how you're going to fix them, and finally your baby goes feral because she can sense the milk feast that is about to ensue from your giant melons but has no way of getting to it - it'd be like living next to a Chicken Cottage that was opening soon. Ensue: tears of "I can't deal with this shit"... I found it's best dealt with by - showering and massaging your boobs to get the milk out, and then feeding all the time. Interestingly some girls in my Mothers Group did the uber trendy - make your placenta into tablets/smoothies and they had absolutely no tears or Day 3 dramas.
Feeding: get used to feeding yourself with one hand, in fact get used to doing everything with one hand, or if you are really stuck with your toes. Alvie is only breastfed which means I spend pretty much all my time camped out in the loungeroom watching netflix. Luckily she is a good feeder, we never had any latch issues and my boobs never had any milk problems either. At first I needed a pile of pillows around me to get her into the right position, and now I can breastfeed her anywhere. When it comes to feeding I would say this the biggest concern next to sleeping - how often she feeds, how long she feeds for, some people have babies that feed every 4 hours - Alvie was feeding every hour at the beginning, this means that you are really tied down. Now she is more like every 2 hours, but she does cluster feed in the afternoon every hour. If I want to leave the house I have to strategise her feeds - feed her up good before we leave and then make sure you are somewhere you can feed her if need be. Today I camped out in the romance section of the library as I was out in the street when she started screaming for food. It's a matter of sizing up all manner of buildings and open spaces when you are in public and thinking 'can I get my boobs out here?'
Sleeping: personally I'm not exhausted from lack of sleep, which probably puts me in the minority, I wouldn't say we have a schedule but if we feed her late in the evening (10ish) before we go to bed, it's likely she will sleep till around 2ish, then I can feed her again in bed and then she will sleep till around 7 - 8am. My sleep problems arise from the fact that Alvie is a cuddly koala bear in that she is on me allllll the time. She won't sleep if you put her down so I have her attached to me at least 20 hours a day, either feeding her, her napping on me, or just needing to be held. Apparently this will pass and you have to look at the first 12 weeks as a kind of '4th trimester' and get used to having your baby still attached to you like she was in the womb. I really love when she sleeps on me. At night however I would prefer if she slept in her crib. We brought one that attaches to the bed which makes it easy to put her in there once you can trick her to sleep so she is always within arms reach to pat for some reassurance when she stirs in the night.. is this a good thing? probably not but I couldn't be bothered having to get up and go into another room to deal with a screaming child. I think my parenting term could be coined as 'lazy'... At any rate if we can trick her into her crib - WIN! - otherwise she sleeps in our bed cosied up in my armpit all night, makes it easy to feed and I know where she is in the bed. I do have to sleep with one eye open and I am constantly waking up having to check she's still alive. Alvie doesn't like to sleep on her back which is what all the SIDS guidelines tell you to put them in, and co-sleeping is frowned upon too, but she likes what she likes and i'd rather her be happy than have her scream all night. I think at one month she is too young to instigate a sleep routine, she sleeps when she sleeps and then I sleep when she sleeps. Timezones are a totally new thing for her, I can't expect her to sleep at night just because it's 'bedtime'.. but luckily she kinda does anyway.
One of the hardest things to adjust to is lack of freedom, and i don't mean in a social 'going out for drinks and meeting up with friends' way, more of a 'I'd really like to throw that dirty nappy in the bin and get a drink but she's asleep on my chest and if I move she'll wake up so i'll just sit here annoyed at the mess and dying of thirst till she wakes up' way. As I said she is really a clingy baby who isn't content to sit in a bouncy chair or lie in a cot and amuse herself kind of baby, she only started going into the bouncy chair at 5 weeks and even then she will only sit in it for 20 mins max - but that at least is 20 minutes to do something. One thing I feel bad about is all the neglect Lenny is getting, he went from being Number 1 to Number 2 pretty quickly.. I try and spend as much time with him and making him feel loved too, but unfortunately I have to be really picky with how I spend my baby free time. He has been really good with her and only ever hissed once and since then he keeps his distance but still likes to be around. Sometimes I think he is just tricking us with his good behaviour and I will come into the loungeroom one day to see him sitting on her face. During the first month I only had 4 things on my list of things to do: brush teeth, deoderant, wash face, get into new granny panties/pyjamas... I can't say we ticked all the things on the list each day. The highlight of my alone time during the day is the 25 minutes I get in the shower. Bliss.
We've only just started going out and about which I think is important to try and do when you can, mainly because i'm sure she gets frustrated being cooped up inside all the time, unfortunately London had a 'heatwave' summer and going outside in 30 degrees was killing us - she hated it, and we were both covered in sweat from the sling I use to cart her around in. Now she is 5 weeks we have a pram and she is slowly coming to terms with that, but I still have to have the sling on standby - she loves it and I will put her in the sling/wrap when we are at home just to get her to sleep/give me two hands to do exciting things like vacuum and clean dishes!! (being an anal retentive clean freak and having no hands is hell I tell you!) The pram allows us to go further than the park at the end of the street and that's a nice change.
Now we are into the 2nd Month I can see how things are changing - she is interested in things besides boobs. I wouldn't say she is playing with toys but she has looked at them a couple of times and that is a milestone in my opinion. She smiles and laughs and likes to hang out and look at you and make noises. She's so adorable and growing so big! No more can she sleep on my chest in bed with her feet dangling in mid air and my nipple stuck in her ear. Now she has both feet planted firmly and her favourite place to put them is right in my caesarean scar. I love her so much that I just want to put her in a Rapunzel tower to keep anything bad away from her. Hopefully when she grows up there aren't stupid things like texting your genitals to people and mean girls in high school. I'll learn her in the ways of making a biting comeback if there are..
No comments:
Post a Comment