Monday, February 14, 2011

Two weeks in...

It's been two weeks since we brought the baby home! We haven't dropped him yet! The week went by pretty fast. To be honest with you, I don't really remember what I did earlier in the week - my brain doesn't seem to function beyond Wednesday.

Wednesday stands out because we had originally planned to go visit with my parents and Patrick's mom, but got a couple of miles on the freeway before the previous days' lack of sleep caught up with me, and I begged Patrick to turn around. There was traffic, we weren't going to make it at the time we'd planned for, and I was just exhausted and overwhelmed.

Instead, we called my parents and Patrick's mom, canceled the visits, and went home.

That afternoon we made an appointment for me to see the lactation consultant at Kaiser so that I could get a little help - Jules was doing okay but breastfeeding has turned out to be a little painful for me, so I wanted some advice. I realize that it does tend to hurt at first, and so I'm hoping that we will be able to past this, but on Wednesday, I was pretty upset about it. The lactation consultant is also, of course, an RN, and she eased my new mommy fears about a few other things that I had been (needlessly) worrying about. She advised me to "relax." Gee, where have I heard that one? She had a lot of good advice about the pain, and made some suggestions about positioning, and though it still hurts initially when he gets started, I'm hoping it will be better after this week. To aid in relaxing, I was advised to abandon recording the baby's feeding times (this was encouraged while we were in the hospital; I continued with it probably longer than necessary. It was making me nutso) and to 100% feed him "on demand." Understanding that I have maybe some anxiety about this kid's eating habits and my ability to feed him enough, she suggested we come back after the weekend to have him weighed and to determine I "did everything right." <-- Not her words. We do that later today.

We rescheduled the visits with our parents for Thursday, and it worked out much better. They all had a great visit, and I got Tito's for lunch. Thursday also happened to be my birthday, and it was a nice quiet way to celebrate.

On Saturday, my friend Missy and her daughter Hailey came to visit me and the baby, and Missy brought cupcakes from Hotcakes, my new favorite bakery in West LA. It was nice to see them, and to visit for awhile. Jules was perfect, and slept in Missy's arms for the entire visit.

Yesterday, Sunday, my family all came to visit and to really celebrate my birthday. My mom and sister helped show me how to give Jules his first bath, which was a little traumatic for him, but he was warm and cuddly afterwards, and he slept great last night, so all in all, it was a success.

This is Patrick's last week of vacation before he goes back to work... I've been so thankful that I've had him with me, he's been a great help, a wonderful daddy to Jules, and the best sandwich maker ever. After this week I'll have about 9 weeks with Jules before I have to go back to work myself. I'm not ready to think about that yet.

Here's me and Jules, from sometime last week. I think I took the photo on Friday.

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