during one of my 3 am feeding, i started wondering why nature made it so that in mammals, females are the ones who have to carry a baby, go through labor and breastfeed. all males have to do is donate their sperm and they're done with the whole baby development process. why didn't nature allow males to participate more, maybe the feeding process at least? i suppose a female is more invested so that once the baby is born, it is instinctual to take care of the baby and not abandon him/her, although there may of course be exceptions. i guess in nature, males are busy hunting and providing while the females take care of the brood for the continuation of the species. so for humans, what motivates a man to take a more active part in the whole baby care-taking process? must be L-O-V-E.

Our baby is now almost 3 weeks old. Amazing. He's so cute. He's survived an earthquake and now Hurricane Irene! OK, I admit the earthquake was nothing to write home about but still what a week for natural disasters in NY. Earthquakes are so unusual that when it occurred, I thought I was having a dizzy spell or someone really heavy was bounding up the stairs of our apt building and shaking the toilet (which is where I was when the earthquake occurred). Our neighborhood didn't sustain that much damage after Hurricane Irene passed through, but we did see a few fallen trees and branches around due to the high winds. Since we are at a higher elevation, we had no flood issues. (I guess I shouldn't complain about having to walk uphill across the avenues to get home.)

So far, I don't think we've damaged the baby yet. Using the baby bjorn for the first time was a little stressful, but we did it. Baby in the pujtub seems to be working out well at bath time. The smaller tub makes it easy to handle the baby as the baby has no where to slip. I think I'm feeding the baby enough. It's not hurting as much to breastfeed anymore. Hopefully he is now at birthweight. He gets weighed in tomorrow if the dr's office is open (they shut down all the subways this weekend due to the hurricane so not sure if the trains will be up and running tomorrow or if people will be back at work).

can't believe summer is almost over and labor day is this coming weekend. time sure does fly. my maternity leave will be over before i know it. hmm my boss called me on monday to see how things were going with the baby, but he called on thursday for a work related question...he has no one to talk to anymore so he misses me already. i don't quite share the same sentiments.

easy peezy, eggs overeasy!!

Some free time while the baby sleeps.

I had a pee leakage fiasco this morning. I was feeding him at about 4:30 or 5 this morning, and I noticed after that my tank top was wet where the baby had been lying. Oh man - the leaky diaper strikes again! And then when I went to check on him this morning, his diaper leaked once again all over his blanket and shirt. So I went to change him and clean him up, and he decided to spray fresh pee all over me. Well, actually it was only all over my forearm and the changing table. But yowzas that's a lot of pee for one morning!! Pee is only the beginning. I know there will be leaky poo (I did experience some of that already) and the projectile vomit. All in the days work of a parent.

Speaking of leaky, yesterday I had an overeasy egg with fried rice and tomatoes. I haven't had overeasy eggs since I found out I was prego. Yummy! It was so good. Last week I had a ham and cheese sandwich, which also tasted real good. It's so nice to be able to eat things that were "banned"while pregnant, e.g. coldcuts, raw eggs, etc., without worry. I can't wait to eat a medium rare burger. That will be the ultimate. I mean not to say I didn't eat some deli sandwiches and medium cooked beef while I was pregnant but it wasn't often, and I tried to avoid these things as much as possible.

Also yesterday, we had a baby photoshoot. The baby had to be asleep while being styled in photos. He poo'd on the blankets he was lying on twice, which was kind of gross, but other than that it went pretty well, until he got grumpy after a few hours so we had to stop. But I think all in all, we got some really cute shots! I can't wait to see the final photos.

Today is the first day I am on my own with baby. My bf went to work today. He's so sweet. He made me breakfast and coffee before he left, and left me the above signage (shown in photo). He really knows how to make a girl smile. That's why I love him so.

I think so far so good. I should probably take advantage of this time while the baby is sleeping to eat lunch because you never know how long the baby feeds will last when he's awake, and then I find it hard to schedule in meal time for myself.

abc's of postnatal recovery

A is for voracious appetite. My baby is now 1 week old + 2 days, and ouch! All he wants to do is eat. He seems more irritable now that he's so hungry all the time. I must say breastfeeding is hard work and in my humble opinion hurts more now than my csect recovery. The latching must have been wrong from the very beginning and I've been sore since. Actually the csect recovery isn't as bad as I thought it would be. It still hurts now and then, and especially in the morning, to sit up and get out of bed when i've been lying down for a couple of hours, but once I get up and move about, I feel ok. My boobs are so sore right now, I sometimes feel like not doing the breast feeding thing because it's kind of torturous. Hopefully it gets better with time.

B is for my Brest Friend. Yes that pillow contraption is way helpful for all the feedings I've been having to do lately, as I have one hand free to flip the tv channel or drink water or get the burp cloth ready. Apparently, I heard through the grapevine that this is better than the boppy but I never used the other brand, so I can't compare.

C is for Cream. As in Nipple Cream. It definitely feels nice to put on after feeding. I haven't had issues with the lanolin Lansinoh cream they gave me samples of in the hospital. But I've been trying out the more natural Motherlove cream these past couple of days and it's easy to spread on, not as sticky and thick as the lanolin. It seems this brand is hard to obtain. They don't have it at Babies R Us and the one store where they sell it in my 'hood is out of stock, so I only have sample packets. My BF was nice enough to go out and seek my nipple cream the other day, but as mentioned they were out of stock, so he got me some sample packets, which they wanted to charge him for since he asked for more than 1 packet (come on, really?), but in the end he got them for free.

D is for Drip. The milk is a dripping out. Milk stains everywhere. I guess I'm lucky I don't have milk production issues and it is readily available for the little one but it's sometimes totally out of control. The pediatrician said this would soon regulate itself. I hope so. It's quite a mess. Yes I have pads - Medela ones, which work great. Thank goodness as it would really be a disastrous leaky mess without them. It's quite crazy how the body works and responds. A true mammal.

D is also for Diapers. Which ones are the best to use? So far we've tried Huggies and Pampers. Both seem to leak for us. But Pampers seem to be having the least leakage so this is our best option thus far. I thought Huggies would be good because they have the bellybutton cutout but maybe that makes it more susceptible to leakage?

Yesterday the baby did an unsuspecting pee while we were changing his diaper. I was like, hurry we need to cover it up but we just stood there frozen like deer in headlights, as the pee came shooting out. The funny thing was the pee didn't hit us directly. It actually splashed on the baby's face, hit a bit of the border of the changing table, but mostly fell on the disposable pad we put on the changing table. Those blue disposable pads do come in handy. I just ordered a box of 100 for future use.

Unfortunately with the diapers and these pads, we are massively contributing to pollution and landfillage. My BF's friends are so good. They are using cloth diapers with either a cloth insert or a disposable one. Cloth for at home, and disposable when they go out. I know it's environmentally incorrect, but I just can't imagine hand washing a poopy cloth diaper.

D is also for Dr. Our baby had his first doctor's visit this past Monday. And all was good! He lost weight since he was born, which is normal, but now he needs to gain back to his birthweight. Seeing how much he's been eating, I don't think it will be a problem. We have to go back to the Dr's next Monday for a follow up well visit. He already got a Hep B vaccine in the hospital so I think he doesn't get any other vaccinations until he is a month old.

And last but not least, D is for Drink lots of fluids. As a breastfeeding mother, you need to hydrate! I think I haven't been doing a great job of drinking enough water since my lips have been chapped for the past couple of days, which is usually a sign of dehydration. So need to be conscientious about this.

E is for expecting, as in I still look like I'm expecting to have a baby. They say the stomach will shrink down eventually. And the uterus needs to contract and shrink back to normal. Not sure how long that is supposed to take. While I was in the hospital, my dad asked if I was sure there wasn't another baby left inside me. Haha very funny. I think it shrunk down since the hospital, but I still look about 5 months prego. It's quite weird as my belly is not hard like when the baby was inside me. It's rather soft and if I were to lay on my side, it kind of flops to the side which makes it uncomfortable, as I feel like my intestines are being misdirected. While I was pregnant, I had to lay on my sides all of the time. And now postnatal, all I can do is sleep on my back.

F is for fish, raw fish! Today I just ate a salmon avocado roll. I haven't had sushi in ages and this lunch was very exciting for me. Can't wait to eat a full on sushi or sashimi meal. This was one of the things I truly missed. And our birth class instructor told us that we could eat and drink whatever we wanted after the baby was born...even if breastfeeding, and that sure was a load off of my mind, because while prego I sometimes got a bit paranoid about what I could and could not eat.

Well we've only been parents for a week and few days so that's as far down the alphabet as I am going. We have much to learn and experience and I'm very much looking forward to it. They let us take the baby home from the hospital last Friday, and so far so good. Almost a week at home, and the baby is still alive and kicking!

Labor of Love

Apparently in England they spell labor with a u. They call diapers - nappies, and they call a stroller - a push chair or pram. That's your English lesson for the day. :)

So my C-sect was scheduled for August 10, but I actually went into labor on August 9. I didn't even realize I was in labor. I noticed some spotting at 7:30am when I took my morning shower. I called the doctor around 11:00 to see if this was something I needed to have checked because I was still spotting but it was pink not red, or if it was ok to ignore. She was at the hospital and said I should come down and get checked just in case. I call car service, hop in the car and am at the hospital by around 12:15pm. I get hooked up to a heart monitor around 1:00pm. And low and behold, the doc comes in and tells me, "You're not going anywhere. You're having a baby today. You're in labor. You better call your husband." That was around 2:00pm. They said it looked like I was scheduled to get the c-sect around 4pm unless labor escalated. I was 2 cm dilated at the time. The "contractions" I felt were very much like period cramps. I was expecting something a little more intense so maybe that's why I didn't realize I was in labor. They brought me to the OR at 4pm exactly. I got a spinal injection to numb me from the waist down. I was really scared because I didn't know what to expect. Fiance wasn't allowed in while they prep you for surgery. So I was alone and very nervous. You basically hug a pillow, curve your back out and the anesthesiologist injects 2 things into your spine. And quite quickly your legs become numb. It's weird because you have all your faculties and you can sort of feel things happening to your body pressure wise, but you feel nothing at all. I was scared I would feel something, but I didn't. So after the spinal injections, they lay you out on the table, flip the hospital gown up so that you're barenaked from the ribs down. They put up a blue sheet so that you can't see what they are doing. They stick some sort of sheet on your belly so you're no longer exposed to entire room, with an opening where they will make the incision. And then once they set up, they call in the dad, so J was able to join me on the other side of the sheet. The anesthesiologist asked if I could feel any pain. I tried to focus, and she said you're not supposed to think about it. If you don't feel it, then you are ok. So no I felt no pain even though I tried my darndest to do so because I didn't want to feel anything when I heard something that sounded like a saw. And after a while, you just wonder what they're doing on the other side of the sheet. Eventually I felt pressure as they pushed on the top of my stomach. I had to guess this was when they started pushing the baby out. And then I heard a cry. It brought tears to my eyes. Time: 4: 26pm. Welcome to the world, baby Nico! I couldn't believe it. They brought J over to cut the umbilical cord. The attending physician cleaned off the baby, and J was able to hold him while I was lying there getting sewn up. It was pretty awesome to see MY son (as Joey from Blossom would say: whoa!) for the first time. Unbelievable actually. The thought of it still brings tears to my eyes. He was beautiful (mommy bias?). 18" / 7lbs 9oz. How adorable. J left with the baby to the nursery so they can do whatever it is they do. And I was left in the OR so they could finish sewing me up. The procedure was done an hour later, so by 5:30pm I was out of there and moved to recovery where my parents, sister and Mark were waiting. Actually no one was there when they brought me back in because they were all at the nursery. But eventually they went back into the room and it took them awhile before they brought the baby in because he had to sit under a heat lamp. It was torturous waiting and wondering when I could finally for the first time hold the baby in my arms. But the wait was totally worth it!! It was amazing to finally be up close and personal with the little one.

4 More Days!!!

Four more days until the c-sect. I'm excited and scared. Hope all goes without a hitch.

Last stats from the doc's on Thursday: I'm 140 lbs. blood pressure 90/70. Baby is estimated to be 7 lbs 4 oz. Still breech. Stubborn little one. Circumference of belly is verging on 40".

I'll be on maternity leave soon. I hope to enjoy every minute of it with the baby. Everyone says it goes by fast, and I am sure it will. Funny how random strangers on the street all guess that I'm having a boy. Actually they sound quite certain it's a boy when they see me waddling down the street. They don't ask me, they tell me..."It's a boy." I think it's because the baby is all up front and center like a big giant basketball. Some stranger told me he could tell that the baby already had a mind of his own, and I'll have to be running to keep up. ha.

Anyways, it's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and it's nice to enjoy the quiet time and relax. Might be the last time for awhile.