Lots of tmi and explicit body stuff behind the cut tag. I am recording this mostly because I am curious how it will be different with next kid and I know I won’t remember. (Friends-locked because uhm… this is graphic.)
I’m 8 days out and the bleeding is almost stopped. Right now it looks like the very lightest sort of spotting–I need a pantyliner, but not really a pad. All but one of the hemorrhoids are gone, which I’m grateful for. Even the one that is left is way smaller. I had one day where a bowel movement sucked, other than that everything has been fairly easy to deal with. Tucks pads are my friends. (The subject/verb/object agreement in that sentence bothers me.)
I’ve lost all but 1 of the 22 lbs. My body is very different though. I can’t figure out where all the weight has come off. I have a noticeable pot belly and the stretch marks are really distinct. Size medium shirts are snug, but very wearable. I haven’t gotten out fitted pants to see where my lower body is; I have stretch pants in medium, large, and extra large and they are all fitting fairly similarly. Ok, the medium is a little tight. 🙂
The massive swelling from engorgement is gone, but my boobs are still as full as they were in pregnancy. I’m happy that I don’t need to buy bigger than 36E bras. My left nipple is still a little sore when she latches on and it doesn’t like being poked in general, but my right nipple has already toughened up a lot. I realized today that I could see the wild punani jungle so I hacked away at it. It’s bugged me a lot in the last few months that I couldn’t do any *cough* self grooming of the region.
I’m having some weird pains in the general area of my side/fallopian tubes, mostly just on the left. It could be round ligament pain, but Sunshine isn’t sure. It doesn’t hurt all the time, but when it hurts it hurts a really lot. Right now I am treating it as my warning system for when I have been too physically active. It hurts like a bitch if I get up and move around for too long. I’m also more generally achey than I’ve been in a long time. This is worse than pregnancy and there are more areas with noticeable actual pain. My neck hates me. I should stop gazing down stupidly at my gorgeous daughter. 🙂
I can wear my wedding ring again and have been able to for more than a day. This indicates that I am losing the water that has been bloating me for months. No more pretending I’m an unwed mother. *sigh* I also no longer have the scary/weird massively dark pee. I swear to god I am drinking enough to pee clear under normal circumstances but for a week I looked like I hadn’t ingested liquid in about a month. I have weird guilt around not being hydrated enough so it was bothering me a lot.
My libido is back with a vengeance. This is inconvenient for me because I can’t receive much. It hasn’t sucked for Noah though. Or maybe it did. 🙂
I’m mostly doing well with the interrupted sleep. I got a little fussy with Noah this morning because he poked fun at me because I didn’t describe 4/2/2 as a good sleeping night. After I stopped being fussy and wanting to cry I explained that in that distribution I get one good REM cycle, so no… it isn’t that great. He apologized for poking at me. I’m being a mean mommy and encouraging her (I feel kind of bad at this age) to stay awake a bit more during the day so she sleeps longer at night. So far it seems like she gets in 3-4 four hour sleep cycles in a 24 hour period. I want two of them to happen at night if possible. *cross fingers* I can’t complain though because she really isn’t bad even when she wakes up more often. She usually latches on well and plays with my fingers and is cheerful about needing food. I have only felt a little irritated by her fussing once or twice so far. Normally I take a deep breathe and just try to talk her out of fussing. It works pretty well. Oh, and I get my boob in her mouth quickly. 🙂
Oh! I can bend over and put my palms flat against the floor already! Woo hoo! I like having my body back. 🙂
Have I been pregnant my whole life?
I could NEVER bend over and put my palms flat against the floor!
(At least not without bending my knees.)
I know you don’t want “you should do this!” advice, so take or leave what I have to say.
If I may comment on the sleep situation….
First, I totally feel your pain. Less than 3 hours is not a sleep cycle and gets really exhausting. I’m living it. (note to loving husbands…..do not, I repeat, DO NOT say first thing in the morning “well that wasn’t bad!” unless you’re cruising for a castration……it is usually the worst night ever for the keeper of the boob, and then you go and say something like that? Death.) Some nights are better than others. My Frogling sleeps for a very long time (7pm to 7am ish), but wakes frequently, and needs pottying/changing and nurses back to sleep (which leads to more waking to pee…..lather rinse repeat). The frequent night nursing is particularly needed for newborns. My baby does not realize she is not a newborn, and I don’t have the heart to tell her. 😉 I just try to imagine being on a liquid diet while tripling your size in a year….you gotta drink a whole lotta that milk. So it goes.
Keeping the baby awake will not lead to her sleeping better at night. Being overtired unfortunately tends to lead to poorer sleep in babies. This is based on my own experience AND everything I’ve read (and trust me, I’ve been reading, as my nearly 1 year old does not sleep “through the night” AND we cosleep so see above about less than 3 hour cycles). Sleep begets sleep. The more they sleep, the better they seem to sleep. When we pushed bedtime earlier to 7, we were amazed to discover that she’d go to sleep and sleep till just as late in the morning, but minus the 9pm freakout.
As for pelvis pain…..it takes a WHILE for things to settle back into place. All that relaxin does a number on you, and the SI and pubic symphasis can really be hanky for a while. Be kind while you’re tightening back up. And by “a while” I mean, like a year.
Neck pain – I SOOOOOOOOOOOO had that. Totally spent way too much time looking straight down at her lovingly while she nursed. Duh. Also, I really do suggest trying out a pillow supported football hold. It allowed me to relax my whole arm while cradling her head in that hand, and lining up her head with the great big boobie….saved me a ton of shoulder strain. Another great one I heard described was to have them kind of straddling your lap and facing you, upright, which when they’re really small, lines their mouth up with the boob, also eliminating some of the targeting problems. I didn’t like traditional across the lap hold until she got much bigger and able to hold her head up better.
Pubic symphisis. Stupid spelling.
I have a Boppy and she’s dandy on that for feeding. My problem is my lower back and the way I sit up.
ok…
so you just went thru a hellacious workout
that lasted months and months.
so you’re bound to be a little sore.
shit – i hurt in the morning just from sleeping.
having a baby *and* then sleeping would likely do me in!
don’t forget you’re making food for the little one.
you have to drink what she drink
and then drink what you need, too.
might you consider looking at the little one as having a “wake cycle”
and work those more towards your schedule?
we found that it wasn’t the waking up that bothered our sleep
it was the feeding (and subsequent, requisite clean-up)
that tossed us around so much.
to keep our sanity
we kept our twinlings on a 4-hour feed.
ours never nursed, though, because they were born too early
and their months were too tiny to suckle,
so perhaps it was easier for us
because either could be “deliverer of food.”
we used to take turns dozing
on the floor of their room
if they woke up before their
scheduled feeding.
we were there not to feed them
but in case they got too noisy
because one would wake the other
and *then* there’d be trouble!
my specialty was holding them
on my chest
and humming
sub-sonic
impromptu
waltzes.
but they were never hungry.
we found the babies perfectly capable of being alone
and feeling safe and quiet in the dark.
ours seemed to really enjoy it.
but it still wasn’t the best sleep in the world for us.
every photo we have of us and the kids
shows them happy and laughing
and us looking like death sucking on a onion.
it’s rough, but it’ll improve.
and someday
she’ll feed you and change your diaper.
and that’s the way the world works.
P.S.
tell that Dad that teasing of Mom is a Bad Idea.
she may be in a weakened state, at the moment,
but in a few weeks she’ll be able to kick yer ass
just like she could before…
and another thing.
that boob in the mouth trick
works good fro shutting up
many adults, too.
“Death sucking on an onion” is my new favorite expression.
i searched the whole internet for
“death sucking on an onion”
and didn’t find a single link.
i’d like to claim it.
but i confess
it was the favorite expression of a gradual skool pal -o- mine
who happened to be from New Jersey.
the Jersey side, not the Joisey sighed
if you know what i mean….
Thanks for posting about this, I was wondering about post-birth recovery and there’s just not a whole lot of information out there. I guess most women aren’t anxious to share the details, which is too bad for the rest of us!
I get the impression that most women are too tired/busy to stop and process. I’m lucky because Noah is carrying a lot of the load. The only time when things are really all mine to deal with is at night. 🙂
That is lucky! He sounds like a great husband, I’m glad you found him!
Oh! I remember that neck pain!
Also I agree with blacksheep who said that to little baby sleep leads to less baby sleep, but that said, I do do a lot pushing Rebecca’s sleep periods around while trying to make sure that she gets the right number of hours in the day for her. I do think that’s one reason she was such a horrible napper when she was young though, and a much better one now, because she wasn’t getting enough sleep. At some point we resorted to being geeks and making a chart of when she would fall asleep and how long she would sleep so we could actually figure out when her sleep windows were… But it doesn’t sound like you’re having that problem, so congratulations.
But anyway, Rebecca didn’t really stop waking up constantly until she was one and I got mean about night nursing. Yours is obviously too young to get mean about it, but I wish I’d started an earlier policy of at least, ‘no nursing before 2am’ with Rebecca. I think I would have gotten more of my brain cells back sooner.