Motherhood & Nursing Update
My sweet Ellie belly is 4 months old already.. Don’t ask me how! The past few months have been filled with some of the most joyous moments of my life. I think the one thing having a second baby has taught me is patience and the one thing that breastfeeding/nursing has taught me is discipline. As I mentioned in previous posts, I was unsuccessful at breastfeeding my son. This time around I was determined to be successful. My husband and I attended a breastfeeding class before my daughter was born. One suggestion that was made to everyone by the instructor was to just take it one week at a time. I remember the first week of breastfeeding my daughter and thinking to myself “how do moms do this for 1+ years?!”. I was struggling because my daughters latch wasn’t always right. About a few days in I was flinching when she was going to feed, nearly in tears. Not to mention the inevitable night my milk came in, I was super engorged and leaking and tender.
For the first week everything had been going according to plan, she was eating well and VERY often. Exactly one week after she was born I ended up in the emergency room and it was so scary and stressful! The entire week I had been feeling pretty crappy but I chalked it up to having just given birth. I was sweating through my clothes pretty bad at night, and was having bad cramping. I was aching all week as well. These were not a total cause for concern because they are common with breastfeeding and child birth in general. The one thing that really had me worrying was how I couldnt stand for more than a few minutes at a time. I spent that week mostly sitting or laying down. Whenever I would stand up I would feel such pressure in my uterus as if there was a weight there pulling down, or as if it would just fall out of my body. I didn’t know what was going on but I just remember feeling so uncomfortable and always needed to sit down. Well about a week after my baby was born I started feeling cramping and bleeding and ended up birthing the rest of my placenta! It was horrifying. I went to the emergency room to get an ultrasound and they saw that there was retained placenta. Long story short they put my on methergine to help rid my body of the remaining placenta. Because of this I wasn’t able to nurse my baby while on this medication. I spent the weekend pumping and dumping. We essentially fell out of our routine of breastfeeding and I basically stuck with pumping exclusively from that point on. I was a bit disappointed because breastfeeding was actually working for us, but I was also secretly relieved because it gave me a little more freedom to nap since someone else could feed my baby. I will go into more detail in a later post since this one is already getting long.
These pictures were taken when we were staying in a hotel after there were gas explosions in my neighborhood. My husband and I spent the weekend with the kids just relaxing and waiting for our neighborhood to be cleared. Since everything happened so suddenly and we were rushed to evacuate I had to pack everything up for myself and the kids and my husband since he was still at work. Well, when we got to the hotel a couple towns over I realized that I forgot one of my pumping parts at home. There I was engorged and leaking and JUST realizing it. My husband was my hero and went back home to get that part (and no, it wasn’t one that I could just run to Target and get, it was specific for my particular pump). The next day after that we heard that the electricity in our neighborhood was getting shut off ! My heart nearly fell out of my butt, all I could think about was how ALL of my milk going to spoil. Once again, my husband drove back to the house to pack up all of my milk and bring it to the hotel so I could store my milk there (there was about 1,500oz which was why I just couldn’t give it all up).. LITERALLY MY HERO!
Side note, I actually got to donate some of my milk to a mom/baby in need that weekend and it made my soul happy. Her daugher was the same age as mine and in that moment I truly felt the strength in the tribe of motherhood. I was so happy to help another mom out in that way cause I know how stressful this whole process is.
My journey has been a roller coaster, nothing about it has been easy but honestly I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I have learned to stick to a schedule and prioritize my time and multitask. I am also just so happy that I can do something so special for my daughter.
XOXO