Frustrations Upon Frustrations

I'm STILL healing. It's so frustrating! And when things seem to start getting better, I go back to square one. I tore a stitch, and because it's a "dirty" wound, it can't be sewn up again. So I have to wait for it to heal on its own. Then I seem to have an infection again. It has been almost five weeks! It's so hard for me to just sit lay around and wait. But it's what I have to do in order to heal fully. So I'm just really really frustrated.

So In Love

I am in love with this baby. I am in love with my husband. I am in love with my family :)


I'm reposting a note I wrote on Facebook about my husband, because he has been so incredibly supportive and helpful during this time.

I normally don't put such personal stuff here on Facebook (that's reserved for my blog, lol), but I want as many people as possible to know how special my husband is.

My water broke on Thursday morning, and we went to the hospital later that afternoon. After laboring for hours, our son was born on Friday morning. Labor was incredibly difficult, and the birth itself was gruesome, to say the least. The baby's head came out sideways, and tore me up badly enough to where a surgeon was called to be on standby and I was very close to needing a blood transfusion. The doctor spent over half an hour sewing me back up. Everything happened so fast, I wasn't able to have any big pain medication (as far as an epidural or anything), just a local anesthetic to be stitched back up. I don't say this for any sort of sympathy, it's just how things went and it brings me to the reason for writing this.

After everything happened, I was unable to move around at all. We were discharged from the hospital yesterday afternoon, and as of today, I am still on a sort of modified bedrest. I haven't been able to get up to change my baby. I haven't been able to sit up to hold my baby for long periods of time. I shuffle to the bathroom and back, and it takes a solid minute or two to get in and out of bed. Whenever the baby cries, I can't jump up to get to him. Everything is slowly getting better, but it's taking a lot of time.

My husband, Steve, has been doing all of these things for the baby. Not only that, but he has been taking care of me as well. He has been the one to change the diapers in the middle of the night. He has been the one to jump out of bed at a moment's notice to get the baby. He has brought the baby over for me to feed him, and stood by to make sure we were both okay. He has held me as I have shuffled to the bathroom and back. He has held me as I struggle to get in and out of bed.

He has done all of this with absolutely no complaints. He is incredibly sleep-deprived and tired and stressed, but all he has shown to me and our son is love and patience and compassion. We are blessed to have our son, but my son and I are blessed to have Steve in our lives.

This is one of the hundreds of reasons why I love this man so much, and why I felt the need to make a small piece of our personal lives so public.

My mother has been another person who has done so much for not just me and the baby, but for my husband as well. She has cooked us meals, helped with advice (reading as much as I could about newborns hasn't been as much help as my mother's experience!), and just been there for us. She has shown us such love, there is no way we can repay her. I know having the baby around is enough for her, but it is really overwhelming how much I love her and how grateful I am for her help during this time.

The baby is three weeks and three days old today. He is amazing, and I couldn't be happier with him. He has gone through a tough little time, though, but I know that there will be bad times with the good. This past week, he has had a little bit of a cold. He was badly congested for a couple of days, and then he got a bad cough and sneeze for another two days. We couldn't give him medicine because of his age, so we had to let him ride it out. It was so hard to watch him struggle to breathe and cry because of it, I ended up crying with him because it hurt me to watch him in pain. Since Saturday, he has been constipated as well. So he has been crying and struggling to use the bathroom since then. The doctor said it was fine for babies to go a few days without having a bowel movement, as long as they were urinating frequently. So we have to just let him ride that out as well. 

As far as myself, I am still healing, unfortunately. I went to the doctor a few days ago, and was told everything was going well. So that was good. But I still can't get around like I would like. I would say I am at about 70% as far as mobility and no pain goes. It gets really frustrating, because I have never been unable to move around for this long. Over the weekend, I got most of the symptoms for mastitis. So that knocked me down a few more notches. Being in constant pain and being unable to do everything I'd like to do is really hard for me, and I'm trying to take it one day at a time. I've come a long way from the first week, and I am finally able to change the baby and walk with him a bit. But it's still hard to stand for long periods of time (as in more than 10 minutes at a time), and it takes me a minute to get out of bed. Just little things. But I am definitely getting better, so I'm thankful for that.

I will definitely write my birth story in a few days, when I have a bit more time. We are still feeding the baby every two hours, and I'm usually doing stuff during the breaks when he naps (napping, laundry, eating, etc.).