I'm going to get really real here today, because I think someone needs to be. I wish someone had been more real with me about some of this baby stuff before I had Catherine, if just to save me from some of the guilt and self-doubt I have experienced in the past three weeks. So here's my honesty:
1. No matter how good you feel the day after you give birth, you need to rest. A LOT. I felt fantastic in the hospital on Saturday, receiving visitors, trying to start breastfeeding, spending time with Catherine and Tony, even though I'd only had about two hours of sleep out of the previous 48. I should have slept more then, when a meal tray was showing up at regular intervals and there was a nursing staff to give me medication and help me to the bathroom. Instead, I wanted to experience every moment of Catherine's life at that point, so I stayed up way more than I should have, and started off my new life as a mom more sleep-deprived than necessary. So, sleep. And then sleep some more. The baby is doing that most of the time anyhow, so she's not that interesting.
2. In a related note, no matter how much you feel it is necessary to get back to work as soon as possible, going back to the office (even if it is in your house) the day after you get home from the hospital is a bad idea. I thought the world would end if I didn't work, and I spent the first 11 days home from the hospital desperately trying to balance being a new mom with working at least five hours a day. I was so tired at one point I was hallucinating. It wasn't until my midwife told me I was insane if I thought I could heal from childbirth, bond with my baby and be healthy while I was trying to work every day. So, now I'm taking two days off a week, plus weekends and trying to nap a little more. We'll see how it goes. At least the walls have stopped bleeding.
3. No one should have to handle night feedings alone. I told Tony after the first night that one of us should be well rested, so he went to sleep in the TV room and I handled the nights all by myself for a couple days. See above about the walls bleeding. I was so lonely and overwhelmed that all I did was cry on the baby while she nursed. After I completely lost my mind on Tony, he started sleeping in our room again. And he changes at least one diaper a night, which makes my life much easier.
4. Breastfeeding can be really, really hard. And it can make you feel like a total failure as a mother, as can all the propaganda surrounding it. As that same midwife put it, there are a lot of breastfeeding Nazis out there, and they can be very vocal. We had trouble right from the beginning. Catherine didn't latch and when she finally did, she did it wrong, bruising me terribly, I was using the wrong size attachments for my pump, I was bleeding and sore all the time, and I still can't let any fabric touch me without feeling like someone is rubbing me with sandpaper. I hated it. I hated going to the lactation consultant and having strange women look at me and poke me in the chest. I'm not a touchy-touchy person and it felt like a total violation. Add to that the fact that my baby was treating me as a human pacifier and nursing for an hour at a time while I vibrated with anxiety about all the things I should have been doing (this is when I was trying to work all the time) and we had the perfect storm of breastfeeding issues. I sobbed when it was time to nurse, I sobbed because it hurt so badly and then I sobbed the first time I had to give her a bottle because I thought I was failing her and she was going to turn out to be a damaged toddler with ear infection issues. Guess what? She loves the bottle. She loves that Grammy and Daddy AND Mommy can feed her. She loves that her mommy no longer sobs on her while she eats. She doesn't love that we don't let her have the bottle for an hour to chew on, but we give her a pacifier for that. Bottom line, she's happy, I'm happy and she's fed.
5. Pumping may not be any better. Nothing makes me feel more like a farm animal than hooking myself to that damn electric torture device eight times a day for 15 minutes. I get to sit there and stare out the window because both my hands are occupied, bored out of my skull and thinking about all the things I could be doing with my time instead of sitting in my room, in silence, alone. So, we are weaning off the pump. Catherine will get a solid month of mother's milk and then she'll have to survive the way everyone else in my family did, on formula. I have lost more sleep on this issue than anything else so far. I have cried more tears about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding versus formula and it is ridiculous. You do what is best for your baby, yourself and your family. My family is insanely busy. Tony and I both have to work in our business to keep things going. My mom works full time and helps us with the baby all the time. We are all making the best of a less-than-ideal situation. (I had a fantasy a long time ago about being a stay-at-home mom. That's not going to happen, at least not now, so I have to decide how to make my current situation feel more like that.) I'm tired of apologizing to myself and everyone else about not being able to hack breastfeeding or pumping. I'm going to take the two hours a day I spend hooked up to the pump and use them to love all over my baby. I'm sure she'll see the wisdom in that.
6. You will not get your old body back. At least not as quickly as all the celebrities do. I think magazines do women the world over a great disservice by plastering their covers with new moms six weeks post-partum in bikinis. Regular moms do not have trainers and personal chefs and baby nurses who can take care of them and the baby so they can crunch their way into a Victoria's Secret fashion show eight weeks after giving birth. We have late nights and an old box of Milk Duds that we scarf at 2 a.m. while pumping milk or nursing. We have stretch marks we can't afford to laser off. We have that saggy part below our belly button that even though we are wearing the proper post-partum support garment (that would be a girdle for the uninitiated) looks as though it will never stop being squishy. And it is worth it, but it is also disconcerting. You spend 10 months not recognizing your body because it is getting huge and weird and then you come home from the hospital not recognizing your body because it is smaller but still weird and your chest is radically disproportionate. Some day I'll look in the mirror again and say, "Okay, that's me." But I don't know when.
So that's the end of my being really real. Take it easy on yourselves, pregnant ladies and new moms. Cut yourself some slack. Realize that whatever works for you is what's "best." And buy the girdle. It seriously helps with the lower back pain.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Baby Stories
Well, everyone, it has been a very busy three weeks at the Coutsoftides house. Our daughter, Catherine Starling Coutsoftides, was born on March 4th at 10:27 p.m. She weighed 7 lbs 4 ounces and was 19 1/2 inches long. And she was three weeks early.
We have come to refer to her as our unexpected baby. We got pregnant unexpectedly last summer. We assumed she'd be late because all my mom's babies were late and that just felt like the right thing. We planned an unmedicated birth. We were going to name her Vivienne. None of that happened. Here's why:
I ended up with high blood pressure. After months of worrying about gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia started to creep in. In the last week before she was born, I gained seven pounds - a pound a day. I checked my blood pressure at home, only to find out it was dangerously high. After several trips to the midwives and one trip to the hospital for observation, we decided to go ahead and induce to prevent me from getting any more swollen, hypertensive or pre-eclamptic. We checked into the hospital on the 3rd at 8 p.m. to start the process because I was exactly 0 centimeters dilated. Fun!
After spending the night getting the medication to dilate me and not sleeping at all (I should have slept - it was my last chance) the good news was that I was 3 cm dilated and ready to head to the labor and delivery ward to start the real induction. Keep in mind that Tony and I spent hundreds of dollars and 10 weeks taking a natural childbirth class that made us believe that all of these interventions were going to make me miserable during labor and strip me of the "natural" experience I was after. You see, when you are being induced for medical reasons, none of that matters. You just want to not stroke out on the delivery table and leave a husband and baby behind.
At 7 p.m., after five hours of laboring on the pitocin, I was not progressing at all. The contractions really weren't bad - they were totally manageable at that point - but the exams to find out how far along I was were excruciating. Turns out the medication they use to dilate you makes every cervical check feel like someone is stabbing you repeatedly with a garden weasel. In the delicate bits. I've never experienced pain like that. And my blood pressure was starting to creep up again. After several episodes of me climbing the walls only to hear that I was still 3 cm, we made a group decision to get the epidural. BEST DECISION EVER. Ten minutes later, my water broke. Two and half hours of napping later, and I was ready to push. Twenty minutes of pushing and I had a baby in my arms.
During the two and half hours of napping, I also decided that Vivienne was no longer the right name for this little girl. I woke up and said to myself, "We should name her Catherine!" When I told Mom and Tony this, Mom said she'd been thinking all day that Catherine was a really nice name, but she didn't want to say anything because we'd already decided on Vivienne. I'm so happy we changed our minds. Catherine is the sweetest, most good-natured baby in the world, and her name fits her perfectly. This is why I never referred to her by any name when I was pregnant. I wanted to keep my options open and not confuse her or myself. I still mostly call her "Baby Girl" to be honest.
The takeaways from all this? Life is never what we plan. I thought having a "medicated" birth would rob me of the experience of giving birth. Turns out, I still had to do the work and I still got a beautiful baby girl at the end of the night. And I didn't have to suffer through the incredible pain and fear I was experiencing every time the midwife approached me to see how I was doing. I certainly tried a natural birth and it just didn't work for me. But the hypnobirthing classes did teach me about baby yoga and belly dancing and lots of other fun things, so I don't regret doing that. I also learned to say the word cervix without wanting to vomit, which I feel is a real accomplishment.
I can only imagine that this is the beginning of a long journey of unexpected things (For instance, breastfeeding has been miserable. Who knew?) in Catherine's life. But I wouldn't change anything about her, or her birth, or her life. She's absolutely perfect.
We have come to refer to her as our unexpected baby. We got pregnant unexpectedly last summer. We assumed she'd be late because all my mom's babies were late and that just felt like the right thing. We planned an unmedicated birth. We were going to name her Vivienne. None of that happened. Here's why:
I ended up with high blood pressure. After months of worrying about gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia started to creep in. In the last week before she was born, I gained seven pounds - a pound a day. I checked my blood pressure at home, only to find out it was dangerously high. After several trips to the midwives and one trip to the hospital for observation, we decided to go ahead and induce to prevent me from getting any more swollen, hypertensive or pre-eclamptic. We checked into the hospital on the 3rd at 8 p.m. to start the process because I was exactly 0 centimeters dilated. Fun!
After spending the night getting the medication to dilate me and not sleeping at all (I should have slept - it was my last chance) the good news was that I was 3 cm dilated and ready to head to the labor and delivery ward to start the real induction. Keep in mind that Tony and I spent hundreds of dollars and 10 weeks taking a natural childbirth class that made us believe that all of these interventions were going to make me miserable during labor and strip me of the "natural" experience I was after. You see, when you are being induced for medical reasons, none of that matters. You just want to not stroke out on the delivery table and leave a husband and baby behind.
At 7 p.m., after five hours of laboring on the pitocin, I was not progressing at all. The contractions really weren't bad - they were totally manageable at that point - but the exams to find out how far along I was were excruciating. Turns out the medication they use to dilate you makes every cervical check feel like someone is stabbing you repeatedly with a garden weasel. In the delicate bits. I've never experienced pain like that. And my blood pressure was starting to creep up again. After several episodes of me climbing the walls only to hear that I was still 3 cm, we made a group decision to get the epidural. BEST DECISION EVER. Ten minutes later, my water broke. Two and half hours of napping later, and I was ready to push. Twenty minutes of pushing and I had a baby in my arms.
During the two and half hours of napping, I also decided that Vivienne was no longer the right name for this little girl. I woke up and said to myself, "We should name her Catherine!" When I told Mom and Tony this, Mom said she'd been thinking all day that Catherine was a really nice name, but she didn't want to say anything because we'd already decided on Vivienne. I'm so happy we changed our minds. Catherine is the sweetest, most good-natured baby in the world, and her name fits her perfectly. This is why I never referred to her by any name when I was pregnant. I wanted to keep my options open and not confuse her or myself. I still mostly call her "Baby Girl" to be honest.
The takeaways from all this? Life is never what we plan. I thought having a "medicated" birth would rob me of the experience of giving birth. Turns out, I still had to do the work and I still got a beautiful baby girl at the end of the night. And I didn't have to suffer through the incredible pain and fear I was experiencing every time the midwife approached me to see how I was doing. I certainly tried a natural birth and it just didn't work for me. But the hypnobirthing classes did teach me about baby yoga and belly dancing and lots of other fun things, so I don't regret doing that. I also learned to say the word cervix without wanting to vomit, which I feel is a real accomplishment.
I can only imagine that this is the beginning of a long journey of unexpected things (For instance, breastfeeding has been miserable. Who knew?) in Catherine's life. But I wouldn't change anything about her, or her birth, or her life. She's absolutely perfect.
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