Postpartum reflections

I had my 6 week follow-up visit today, which means technically my postpartum time frame is up (although as many mothers will tell you, it can last much longer than that). As for the appt. itself all is well, my incision is great, I'm about 8 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight, got my pap taken care of as well because it was due, and got my prescription for the mini pill since Thomas and I want to wait about 2.5 years to start trying again (plus if all goes well I am starting my MS program in the Fall, so no baby during that time). However, I started thinking today of how my postpartum has been, and have a few reflections about it.

First of all, I would have to say that my pp has been fairly easy compared to many I have seen/heard/read about. My milk came in 2 days after delivery and except for the whole engorgement phase BF has been great and I really enjoy it (although pumping I'm not so crazy about), Cullen has never been a fussy baby and except for a rare night here and there has slept in 3 hour increments at night from the beginning, my husband took off 3 weeks in the beginning and really was/is such a great help, and I never really felt that "off"/bluesy feeling that usually correlates with the postpartum time, but there are a few things that make me sad or stress me out....

1.) Talking about/listening about the state of our economy. It just flat out makes me sad, and it makes me feel like I am bringing my son up in a failing country. It makes me feel like I won't be able to provide for him completely and family vacations may be cut short.

2.) My house...Thomas and I desperately want to move, but again that poses a problem if you refer to sadness number one.

3.) My job. I was almost at my wits end before I left and now that I have been gone for 6 weeks (with 3 more to go.....woo-hoo!) I really, really, really, REALLY don't want to go back.

4.) Child care. We still have no idea what we are going to do. We are on several waiting lists, but haven't heard a thing yet, and I haven't found an at home day-care that will work. I am working on finding a part-time night job that will allow me to stay at home with Cullen and bring in the money that I would be bringing in with my full time job sans the amount needed for day care (which is 500-800 a month depending on the facility). This means I need to bring in about 1000 a month, and yes for anyone who can add I just gave away my crappy salary. So much for that piece of paper hanging on my wall that is supposed to mean something huh?

5.) Being pregnant. This is my last item that makes me blue sometimes because I truly, truly miss being pregnant, and it does make me sad (please don't interpret this as I don't love my son on the outside because it is two completely different things). I loved it (the whole pregnancy thing that is)! I took a bath tonight and realized the last time I took one was 2 nights before I delivered so I was still very pregnant. I used to love bathtime with the baby bump because Cullen would always respond to the water I poured over my belly; it was so awesome to feel. There are times when I get a muscle twitch or a small gas bubble and think "wow, that is what it used to feel like in the beginning". I put my hands on my abdomen and am just in awe of what it did for 9 months and what it looks like now. It is so bittersweet to have that time period of my life over right now, and it is something I will truly cherish.

Also (this isn't a sad thing), the one thing I find myself doing as a new Mom is love talking to first time pregnant Moms. I feel so empowered to be the one on the advice giving part of this subject now =) However, I always make sure the person on the other end actually wants it or as asked for it, because didn't that crazy, unwanted baby info from everyone else drive you crazy? ;-)

As promised

Ok internet world, I am keeping with my promise and making up for lost time here. First of all, I am really bad at updating (which is a bit ironic because I LOVE it when people update their blog with pictures and such)....so bad in fact I don't even remember the last thing I told you or all the great things that have happened since then. I am bad about this in real life too. I have one of those "Baby's First Year" memory books and have yet to start filling it out....=/ This is why scrapbooking is so not for me. Overall though, things are great....baby is great so let's run it down.

~I think I love him more everyday which I didn't even think was possible.
~He loves his rocker and swing and is just starting to actually care about toys.
~He follows the dogs around the room with his eyes and just recently started socially smiling at Thomas and I. Actually, I think he has been doing this longer than I realized, but because he randomly smiled so much the transition was a bit hard to decipher.
~He doesn't really cry a lot but he is a huge grunter, which is what I've learned to interpret.
~He's a great eater, and loves the boob.
~He loves it when we go places.
~He is losing his hair from front to back.
~He's growing like a weed, and I have pictures to prove it ;-)

So, in lieu of that, let me flood you with pictures....I honestly don't know exactly how old he is in each one (told you I was bad at this) but they go in order from younger until now....these are a few of my personal favorites....

This outfit is completely too big for him now

A group shot with my younger cousin and her son, Tanner, who is Cullen's older cousin (by 18 days)
Crazy eye shot! (Oh, and it looks like my son has red hair here doesn't it?)
I had to put this picture in there. Apparently my son and I are not the only ones in the house who likes his boppy.
"Good Morning Daddy....What's up?"
I call this his angel pose....it's so sweet!
I loved this outfit.....can you read the characters?

Sleepy boy....

~Pictures with other people~

Sleeping with Dad

"Hey Charlie....we match!"
"Whoa, It's Gayle!"
The family
"Hi Mommy! I think I like looking at you more than the tree!"
Aunt Diane....she called herself Grandma Diane...I loved it, my MIL would flip if she knew though.
And Uncle Jerry (btw, Diane and Jerry are literally the only sane people in my husband's family)


So, there it is....the last few weeks in review =) Oh, and I purposely left off pictures from Christmas because that is a completely different post (and another opportunity to post more pictures ::wink::)

Ahh...Mommy time

Right now I'm enjoying some Mommy time sans baby. Don't get me wrong, I love my son, I love spending all day with him and honestly right now I want to be a SAHM if I could, BUT in the evening after 2 hour feeds and just as frequent diaper changes during the day I need some time without the responsibility of baby and this is where my wonderful husband comes in. Usually after the 7ish feed I hand Cullen over to Thomas and do anything I want without worry until the next feed (usually between 9 and 10)....take a bath, read a book, cruise the internet, blog...whatever. It's MY own time and I thoroughly enjoy it. Plus, I think it serves another purpose by building my husband's parenting confidence, and as Nancy talks about in her post here he must actually DO the baby thing without being ASKED to do the baby thing from me.

Random thought: I love Ice Breakers Pomegranate Lemon-Aid Restore mints, and my dogs love the new pigs ears we bought them (but they really stink AND come from some really huge pigs....I bet they are actually hogs' ears).

Lastly, I realize I have been royally craptastic at posting pictures and updates about my little man so tommorow I will create a post jammed full of all things Cullen =)

Power Shopping

Well, needless to say with all the excitement and changes in my house since Thanksgiving I haven't exactly been Christmas shopping. In fact, up until this morning I had bought exactly .5 gifts....yup, that's right...half of one person's present. So, today after Cullen's one month appt (which btw he weighed 9 lbs and 13oz and was 21 and 3/4 inches long....yay my happily breastfed, 50th percentile boy!!) Thomas and I decided to take care of business and in a matter of 2 hours we were able to buy gifts for both my SIL's (we drew names this year so they were all we needed to buy for between the adult "children"), my parents (one each and then one together), my youngest neice and nephew, one gift for Cullen and half of my older nieces gifts. If you divide it out, we spent about 12 minutes per gift AND ate lunch at Chick-fil-A, lol. Oh, and we managed to get Cullen's picture taken with Santa =D

Now all we have left is Thomas' Mom, a few more gifts for Cullen and the remainder of my nieces things. I think I'm feeling very accomplished right now ;-)

Fear

Becoming a parent comes with a huge host of fears (duh, no?), and these fears start from the moment you see that double pink line. Mainly the overriding question of fear is "Is my baby or will my baby be okay?" and this question increases 1000 fold when the baby actually arrives into the world. However, pregnancy and a baby cause personal fears as well....."Will I be a good mother?", "Can I afford everything?", "How will my body change?", etc. For me, my biggest fear involved sex. As many of you know, my husband and I have had "issues" in this department. We used to have awesome chemistry in this department, but after years of planned baby-making sex and then attempts at conception sans sex at all, the whole idea of sex really went downhill. Thomas and I could go over a month and never even attempt to do the deed, and worse yet, not even care that we hadn't done anything. Also, even when we actually attempted sex it was, quite frankly, predictable and boring and more of an obligation that anything and we also swore that when I got pregnant it would be different because the pressure would be gone....

But then I got pregnant and things didn't change. We didn't have sex for the first 12 weeks because of our previous m/c....we were just cautious, then we just didn't have sex for no reason in particular.....we had sex 1 time around 18 weeks and then never again. I found out later my husband thought sex with a pregnant woman was weird, especially once we found out his son was in there. It is December and all I need are two hands to count how many times we have had sex in 2007.

Do you know what happens when you don't have sex with your spouse? Well, I will tell you......you start feeling really unsexy, then you become a bit resentful, then you just don't give a crap whether you have sex at all....and that makes you sad. So, given our history and the whole no sex during pregnancy thing my main personal fear was that I would never enjoy sex again....that my husband and I would never be that couple with great chemistry again who has really good passionate sex (hell, I would just settle for enjoyable sex at this point)....BUT something has strangly happened in my husband. Maybe it was the years of bad sex, maybe it was the suspense of pregnancy or maybe it is the fact we can't technically have sex yet, but whatever it is my husband has all the sudden turned over a new leaf. He kisses me.....and I don't just mean any kiss, I mean deep, passionate, open-mouth kisses (which btw, he used to hate to do). He grabs me just to make out and is in control of it (which I find a complete turn on), and he is all the sudden willing to do "other stuff" that normally didn't play a role in our sex life to begin with.....um, what in the world happend to my husband?!? I swear it was like he took a pill or something and got his libido back after it being in suspension for so long.

Case in point...while I was writing this he just grabbed me and started making out on the couch....quite frankly, I LOVE it. If we could actually have sex now (yes, I am waiting the full 6 weeks even though I have stopped bleeding...plus my muscles are still a bit sore) I have no doubt it would be effin hot, because right now...well, my husband is hot as hell. His normally reserved attitude about sex has been liberated and returned to our dating state.

All I can say is....I am so glad I don't have to worry about THIS fear anymore. I am a month postpartum and I feel so freaking sexy....rock on to my husband.

A quick question

I have a few important and interesting (well, at least ~I~ think they are interesting, haha) posts to write, but right now I don't have the time as I am waiting for Thomas to get home from work so we can run errands for the day; however I wanted to ask a question to everyone....

For those with children, are you the sole nighttime caretaker or is it a shared job between you and your spouse? If not, what is your system? Also, did this plan change between the time you were just talking about what would be done (when you were pregnant or otherwise) and the reality of actually doing it?

Still holding steady and getting real.

All is holding steady in the Major household =) I actually got out of the house yesterday (yay!) and Thomas and I took Cullen to Sam's and the mall and we experienced our first public diaper change (as a sidenote: why in the world are those little changing areas so high up? I swear I had to change his diaper at boob level!) and our first public nursing session. The dogs are driving me crazy, but at least they are adjusting pretty well to the new person in household and ignore him for the most part.

Also, I must say that Cullen gave mommy quite a gift last night by allowing me to sleep 4 hours in a row....in a row people!!! Do you know how great that is?!?!? At first I freaked out when I woke up and realized what time it was seeing as he went 5 hours between feeds, but I was thankful for the sleep AND I have made sure he is getting his needed 8 feeds in today even with the large timespan last night.

Speaking of the nights, I have learned something about myself. I know I have pretty much been puppies and sunshine about this mommy and having a new baby thing, but as Nancy puts it I am still in the "newborn honeymoon" phase and Cullen IS a wonderful baby. He has a great temperment, has a good sleeping pattern and really only cries during diaper changes BUT getting "real" for a moment I do have my moments throughout the day when I get a bit panicky about being a Mom. Right around 8ish at night I go through what I call my panic hour. It's dark, it's after dinner, I've been feeding and tending to Cullen all day, and I start to get panicky/anxious about the fact I know I am going to be up with him in the middle of the night for feedings and diaper changes. There is no question that I will not be able to just go to sleep until morning...it is inevitable I will be up at least once (yes, I know I'm really lucky that it is sometimes only once at this point, but still). It is this time of night I need Thomas to take Cullen.....change a few diapers, play with him, just do something so I don't have too. I'm also slightly jealous of my husband because he hasn't gotten up once in the middle of the night since Cullen was born.....he actually doesn't even hear him! However, I ordered my pump today and as soon as it comes in we are going to introduce a bottle and I guarantee that even if I have to wake him up, he WILL do at least one nightime feed ;-)

But speaking of my husband.....regardless of his sleeping abilities, I have NO IDEA what I would have done these past few weeks without him. I know I am extrememly lucky that he stayed off work so long (he goes back next week) and honestly he has been wonderful. He helps me with Cullen whenever I ask, he gets the dogs out of my hair when I need it, he helps to keep up with the housework and he loves his son with a passion I have never seen from him....it's gentle, it's strong, it's protective....it's absolutely beautiful to watch. He is an amazing man and Cullen and I are very lucky.

An adventure in bra shopping

Seeing as I only had one nursing bra, my Mom and I went to Target sans baby so I could get another one AND being the courteous person I am I brought along nursing pads since I had to try said bra on (makes ya wonder how many women may not do this huh?). Anyways, I go in the dressing room and proceed with the trying on process and decide I don't like the bra so I take it off and lean over to get my bra and shirt back on. Low and behold the next thing I know I'm dripping milk onto my shoes (which by the way are STILL stained), and I don't mean a few drops...I'm talking about a flow of milk in which I grab my nursing pads and cups them over my very productive boobs for a good 5 minutes. Ahh....good times!

Case in point....apparently they are correct when they say you can let down by simply THINKING about nursing.....