Hot Women American Perspective

Not much has changed since my last post. One step forward was that I followed through on my idea to bathe him at 9pm instead of during the day. I am usually dead-dog tired at that time of night and it's not my idea of a good time, but the plan was to experiment and see if he would sleep a longer stretch. It worked. He slept straight through until 1:30am instead of waking before midnight. *AND* he did it in his bassinet on his back, instead of prone on my chest. So much more relaxing for me to be able to sleep in any position and turn over. I had trouble getting back to sleep because dh and I are still getting over colds and coughing at night, but it was very successful. He then slept through 4:30am and after that nursing we stayed in the recliner and dozed until 6:30, when I needed to wake up ds for school. I did not want to get up at that point. It was raining hard (very unusual) and I was so cozy and warm with A all snuggled up on my chest. I do like dozing along with ...

Here are 2 pictures that illustrate what I have been doing the past few weeks. Nursing and caring for baby. The first pic shows A nursing. He is an avid nurser. I weighed him yesterday and he was 8.2 pounds with his clothes on. I am so proud of both of us. Proud of him because he is really a great nurser. He does not fall asleep after several sucks as some babies do. He can go 30 minutes on each breast while he is dozing, and continue to get more and more milk, especially the rich hindmilk, as the milk lets down again and again. And I'm proud of myself, because I am still struggling with soreness, and I don't let that interfere with nursing. The soreness is getting less and less, but at the first latch-on, it still feels like stepping into a hot bath with an open sore on one's foot. Ouch! Tomorrow is his actual due date. Yay! So from now on he will start getting more "mature" instead of going through his fetal development. I am looking forward to se...

Baby A weighed in at 7 pounds 3 ounces on his 2-week check up today. That is really good! If you recall, he was 6 pounds 4 ounces at birth, then by the 3rd day he was down to 5 pounds 14 ounces. They want the babies back up to their birth weight by 2 weeks. We exceeded that by almost a full pound! Woohoo! I must be producing cream. :-D

I forgot to mention that dd and her boyfriend dropped by last weekend while they were on their way back to Camp Pendleton to see baby A. They looked so cute together. DD is now 19 and her boyfriend just turned 21. He has been on 2 tours of Iraq since they started dating 2 or 3 years ago. He just signed on for one more year and another tour of the middle east. They look remarkably well rested considering they were out late the night before at the military ball in San Diego, then drove north to his parent's early the next morning for some sort of Veteran's Day observance where he was honored for his service (hence he showed up in uniform).

I forgot what my personality was like before I got pregnant. I don't do well with pregnancy hormones. The high levels of progesterone make me anxious and snappish, like a bad case of pms for 9 months. It is very hard to be nice around the house to my family during that time, especially at the end of pregnancy when walking around the house becomes a chore, much less bending over to pick up after everybody. But now everything is better. I have so much more patience. When ds asks me questions, it is so much easier to respond kindly and even to suggest ways he can "help" me in the kitchen, etc, even if his help means things take a bit longer. It is good for him and for the family. Maybe it is a mixture of lower hormones and higher prolactin. I'm a super-mothering machine. ;-)

I am finally feeling more organized, and like I can handle my life. What I mean is, I was able to run a few errands with the baby yesterday, and it wasn't as bad as I feared. He cried a lot less in his carseat than I imagined he would. And he was a picture of contentment in his sling, which I used when picking up the boys at school and at La Leche League. Speaking of La Leche, I had a moment there where I thought of my online friends. Well, a couple of moments. There was a pregnant mom sitting next to me who told me that she was due any minute. I asked her exact due date and she said November 18. I said, "oh my gosh! I was due November 26! You are due BEFORE ME!" Well hopefully her time will be here soon. She will be tandem nursing her baby with her toddler. But I remember feeling the frustration with my other pregnancies as time went on. I was so shocked to give birth early this time. Definitely not like me. But my fears did not come true about an early bi...

Here I am today, day 8, in my fat jeans. These are size 10. Two more sizes to go for the size 6'es.

with my left hand! A is nursing great. Still painful at latch, but improving. his bilirubin was 10.4 on day 3, which was good. anything under 12 is good. my cbc showed plenty of hemoglobin ans rbc's. thing is, the second day I came down with a sore throat. the whole family has a cold. great timing, huh? sunday is bris, or circumcision. tons to do here. no time for posting. i will update more later.

My milk is really coming in today. I think I might try to pump what A doesn't eat for himself. I don't want to lose my abundant supply because of his youth and inexperience. ;-) I passed a clot yesterday the size of a walnut. And there was one I found the day before the size of a pistachio nut. I wonder if there was retained tissue from the placenta. In 5 prior kids, I have never passed tissue like that before. The good news is that after that happened, the bleeding finally slowed down and the cramping is about 1/4 of what it was. The bad news is that I think I might have lost a lot of blood. We are going to get a CBC run on me today to make sure I have enough red blood cells and to make sure the white count is not too high. I also have night sweats, but that could be from the changing hormones, not necessarily a uterine infection. I have been a little dizzy the past 2 days upon standing up. Good thing I am not driving a car this week. My neighbors, MIL and everybod...

Here are some pics of A's birth. I guess those crampy contractions I felt on Saturday night into Sunday were the real thing after all. I went to the hospital to get checked. I was worried because I had a little bloody show and I realized I had not felt kicking for a number of hours. I drove myself to the hospital to get monitored. At that time the contrax were frequent but mildly crampy. That was around 9am. Got there and when they checked me, I was 2.5 to 3cm dilated with some thickness left in the cervix. That was a big change for me from long, closed and 3cm thick just 3 days prior. The nurse suggested I walk the hallways for a bit and see if things changed. They did. Next check I was 3+cm dilated and fully thinned out. I did more walking, and the contrax came closer and harder. I called DH to get the kids with grandma and get over and meet me in the hospital. I also decided to get medication. I think I was really not in the mood to be in labor. It was a complete su...

I had my OB appointment today. The uterus measured 39cm today, and so the doc and I looked at each other, and he seemed worried. I asked if he thought there might be too much amniotic fluid, and he decided to send me down the corridor for an ultrasound. The ultrasound was fun. Baby measured right on for the due date of November 26, 2007. He appeared to be 6.5 pounds. My cervix measured a full 3cm thick (cast iron, remember?). His head circumference was right at the 50th percentile. The amniotic fluid measured 18.8cm, which is a high-normal measurement. Over 20 would be polyhydramnios. {Edit: a quick read around the internet states that over 25 is polyhydramnios. Normal measurements are between 5 and 25} I asked the doc what that meant, where it came from and what it would change with regard to the treatment of the baby and delivery. He said polyhydramnios could indicate diabetes, and the baby's blood sugar would need to be watched carefully after delivery. My blood sug...