wheeee, first-night-home ick!

yeah, so i am again stalling writing this part of the blog because it's just a yuck yuck yuck time to talk about. but then i look at my lil baby and think that if it is even a teeny bit useful for her ever, even once, then i need to write it down. blehhh. it's also so different now. i'm not 100% out of the ppd, but usually between 90 & 95% out of it. and then i wonder if that 5 - 10% is just the new normal, meaning maybe my oversensitivity and snappiness and imagining horrible things happening to my loved ones, is just going to be around from now on. which is not good for anyone. i get on my own damn nerves and yet i can't stop it. sometimes it's just me reacting to something annoying that i would've let pass by before but now i'm too tired to ignore the nerve it hit. 

another reason it's so tough to write about the postpartum depression is that things are so much different now. thank GOD. in another post i'll go into all the wonderful support and love and prayers and positive thoughts that flooded my way from all my friends, especially through facebook. so i mean it that i thank God for the changes and improvements, because they're the result of so much prayer, by us and on our behalf.

but first, i need to record the ick. so. here we go.

sara catherine's first ride in the car, on the way home from the hospital

so, we're at the hospital from 4:30am wednesday through 3pm friday. we put the teeny now 6-lb 1 oz baby in the car seat, and it takes us about 10 minutes to figure it out, and i sit in the back with her. things were already a little twilight-zone-y at this point. i figured it was just the anesthesia or my medication dosage or delaudid, or something like that, but even the light outside felt weird. and looked weird. and i felt like i was walking through a fog. you know how sometimes it seems like your hearing in one ear just cuts off, and your perception seems skewed? ALL of my senses felt that way at once. we had been given a 10-minute "how to take care of the baby" lecture by the nurse, with enough info for about 4 full-day classes, and sent on our way. the 45 minutes home was surreal. then we were home and it all became real again, but with all my senses still skewed.

we have a 3-floor townhouse and i was planning to stay on the first floor in the living room, to heal, with the baby in the bassinet, for 6 weeks. but, GOODNESS, i didn't plan anything beyond that! i can't believe that was my whole plan, now looking back. i was going to breastfeed with no problems so i didn't need to research formula and we were going to lose SOME sleep but then everyone said, "sleep when the baby sleeps," so THAT meant, oh good, the baby will also nap at convenient times, in long enough stretches that i, also, can sleep, and she'll like the baby bjorn carrier so much that i can get any and all chores done that way!

how i prepared for mommyhood.

what happened instead was that andrew and i were SO. COMPLETELY. OVERWHELMED. neither of us had had any quality sleep in about 72 hours, and not the first real life-experience clue what to do with a newborn. oh those first few nights were some of the hardest ever. we had an air mattress in the living room for one of us to sleep on for an hour and the other would sleep next to the small bassinet (we hadn't set up the fancy gliding one yet) and wake up with the baby. i mean, we were IN THE SAME ROOM. how's anyone going to get sleep like that? and i was in so much pain. you know, they sent me home with some tylenol/percocet pills, and i tried to take just half of one while caring for the baby. they made my freaking EYES roll back in my head. i had to stop taking them altogether, and i had no idea where regular motrin was, so i just dealt with the pain. i would be lying on the couch and the baby would cry, and i would have to struggle so hard just to sit up and peer over the bassinet. i was still dealing with the lochia, and the pain of the incision, and the pain near my ovaries, but you're just not allowed to pay attention to yourself during this time. 

i remember hearing the baby at maybe 3am, and hoisting myself to the side of the couch and i reached in to feel her little hand, and it was so cold. i was just horrified with myself. i was SO. SELFISH to let myself sleep while my little baby's hands were freezing. i'd been a mother for 3 days and i had failed, i told myself on an hourly basis.

i was terrified to change sara catherine's diaper, because she was so tiny and fragile, and andrew or the nurses had changed them in the hospital, since i was recovering. whenever i tried to change her, she flailed and startled and cried. when we thought about trying to swaddle her when she screamed, i refused to attempt it - she was already upset enough and i obviously didn't have a mommy's touch even though i had been PROMISED it would just come naturally. i sat in the night with her when it was my turn on the couch, with andrew on the air mattress, and i cried while she did. nothing andrew and i tried would soothe her for very long. she cried seemingly constantly, and in my skewed perception, the poor baby was angry. angry with me for making her, for getting her all comfortable for 9 months, and then forcing her into this new cold, loud, too-bright world and she didn't even have any choice in being here. and i KNEW she thought that her new "mommy" had no business taking care of a newborn, when i couldn't even comfort and console her, and i was sure everyone else, including andrew, thought the same thing. i continually had the thought that andrew was spending every second regretting not only marrying me, but choosing me to be the mother of his child. 

so, that first night home was rough -- none of us got any real sleep, and my ppd was just gearing up to get worse in the coming weeks.

okay, enough of that for tonight. thank you for reading!! :)

RARRR!! daddy and sara catherine, with the awesome Breast Friend pillow from my awesome friend Lori!

thank GOODNESS we made a precious lil babymuffin

ewwwww, post partum ick!

okey dokey - i haven't posted anything in about 3 weeks - partially because andrew was out of town at ft knox for 2 weeks, partially because babymuffin eschews daytime sleeping and partially because i am stalling! the next part of this blog is going to be about post partum depression. it is still VERY recent and VERY raw and i'm honestly still afraid of it. afraid that the 15% percent or so of the ppd that seems to be clinging to me, fading, then reappearing, will never ever leave if i raise the spectre of the entire experience by writing about it. like it might GET me. but i know that i am already, consciously or not, blocking some of the worst emotions from those days. maybe maybe MAYBE if i do get this all down, it will be cathartic and will also purge this shit. my reasons for wanting to get this all written anyway are: a) if sc or any of our 5 nieces ever go through anything similar, maybe this will help and b) if it helps ANYone else experiencing ppd, then it's worth it.
sooooo. here goes.
back in the hospital -- i'm not sure which day this was, but one of the worst experiences in the hospital was one early early morning, maybe 5am? and it was apparently time for me to get all unplugged from the catheter, and have those compression cuffs removed, and have me get out of the hospital bed for the first time since the delivery. as i said, i had been sweating profusely for days, purging some of the extra fluids i retained during pregnancy, and that was exacerbated by the compression cuffs, which was good, but made me so freaking HOT. i didn't realize that i had the room at 55 degrees. so the nurse came in, and i had soaked through the gown and all my sheets and blankets with sweat, and some blood and other "leakage." you're welcome.
now, i'm pretty modest about being naked, for many reasons, but especially in front of strangers, standing up hunched over, with hair matted from sweat, under fluorescent lights, post-baby-delivery-shape plus bloating. the nurse helped me out of the bed and then had to go get me a new gown and sheets, so i stood there, as described just above, with my poor husband looking on, and i was SURE he was just absolutely disgusted with what he saw. i even imagined he was wishing he hadn't chosen me to have kids with because i looked so horrible right then. i was already in the first stage of the ppd, and the skewed thinking had started, but i didn't recognize it. i sat slowly in the piece of crap chair next to the bed, and then all that heat i'd been absorbing just disappeared. i swear, i felt colder than i'd ever been in my life, and i was naked and shivering violently. usually cold is good, because my ta-tas look better, but being hunched wasn't doing the girls any favors. then andrew did the sweetest thing ever, and came over around the bed, leaned over and around me, not so much to give me a HUG as to be a human blanket. he stayed there for several minutes, trying his best to warm me up while we waited for the nurse. over the next few weeks/months, andrew would do this for me, figuratively, emotionally, over and over. 
several weeks later, i related this story to andrew. keeping andrew's emotions private, i will just say that he was HORRIFIED at my estimation of how he had been feeling when he saw me so naked and vulnerable. he said that he was looking at me with love and admiration, amazed at how strong i was, going through all of this for our little family. thank God we talked about it, or that could've still been a thorn in my psyche even now. and yes. i did marry the most perfect man in the world. for me.




that's my quick post - feeding babygirl with one hand and typing with the other!
will post again soon! for my 3 awesome readers, woooooooooo!! :) y'all rock!

my first swaddling attempt.