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!