Two Weeks Later

It has been two weeks since Little E was born and much has happened to all three of us.

Little E lost more than half a pound after being born.  However, she gained it all back with frequent feedings plus she grew an inch in length!

J has been sleep deprived learning how to be a dad.  His mom just left today to go back home after spending a week with us taking care of J and doing a couple of night feedings each night.  I say she took care of him because well I was taking care of me including getting my own nutrition.  I'm not going to go into the issues there but the iron pills prescribed to be taken 3 times daily make it difficult to get in proper meals since they have to be taken on an empty stomach.

When I left the hospital on the 12th of July my hemocrit was 12 something and last week Friday at an appointment we went to it had dropped to 9.6.  Yeah not good.  I was ordered back to bed for the rest of the pelvic rest.  If you know me well you know that this is going to be nigh impossible.  For one, J has to sign in off of paternity leave tomorrow which means if he can't get regular leave I'll be alone with the baby and the house work.  Secondly, I'm not the type to let the house work go especially living in a southern climate where if you let the dirt build up you'll give bugs an invitation like you would a vampire into you house; "hey come suck the life out of me while you hunt me down!".

Little E can't latch on to me because my nipples are too big for her almost preemie baby size being born at 5 pounds 11.1 ounces.  She has a tiny mouth.  I am using the Avent Isis manual pump but the right breast, I think it is the one with the benign tumor, isn't producing much but a few drops of milk.  Tomorrow I'm headed to Savannah to pick up the Medela hospital grade pump I reserved with my credit card.  I'll speak to a lactation consultant while I'm there.  We are supplementing Little E's diet with formula and she is doing well on that but she loves getting the breast milk in a bottle when it is available.  Hopefully in a month or two she'll be able to latch on, for now we try daily to get her to latch when she is most hungry.  We do feed her every 2.5 hours a full 2 ounces of formula plus the breast milk.  Hopefully we'll be able to increase the feeding time and ounces soon as we hate waking her up to give her a bottle.  Sleep is important for all of us.

As for the weight I gained during pregnancy.  Here is where I'll be honest about numbers.  I weighed 224 before I found out I was pregnant.  I weighed 227 the day I delivered.  Yes, only a three pound weight gain.  Today I stepped on the scale and it read twice, I always check it twice, 200.4 lbs.  Almost 27 pounds lost in two weeks.  However, my size 16 jeans are snug where I have the incision mark from the hysterectomy.  The incision is still bruised and badly swollen.  Normally at 200 pounds I would be wearing a size 14.

With any luck I'll be down to a size 12 by Christmas I keep telling myself.  We'll see.  First I need to get strong.  Losing so much blood and a uterus really can wear a body down.  At least they saved my life and I'm here so I can once again complain about the trivial things in life.

Last night I asked J to tell me what happened after I blacked out from the blood loss.  I still have a hard time believing that I had a seizure.  I didn't know that a person going into shock would have a seizure.  I remember the people working on me calling my name a few times and seeing a bag valve mask on my face but not much else.  I remember J telling me that my blood pressure bottomed out too.  He said it kept dropping after he read to the staff the last numbers he saw which were 80/50.  I wanted to live so I did with the help of everyone and God's blessing.  Still it is scary to think about so I don't think about it much.  Maybe in a year when Little E has her first birthday I'll remember a bit more but I doubt it.

In just a few days I'll be turning 45.  Not sure what I'm going to wish for this year on my birthday candle.  I have everything I could want already.