Recovery and 2 Week Update

To be completely honest, I was more worried about what recovery would be like than what labor would be like.  There are so many horror stories online about how long and how terrible people's recoveries were.  I should have considered that everyone would have their own story, but for some reason it was just in my mind that it would all be terrible.

The worst part of recovery BY FAR took place in the hospital when the nurses "massaged" my uterus after I gave birth.  They came every 30 minutes and squeezed the crap out of me and it felt almost worse than labor.  The first pee after giving birth was a little rough just because I couldn't remember how to use those muscles for something as simple as peeing.  I also had a nurse standing directly in front of me, so who knows, maybe I was just a little pee shy.  I was able to make it happen after about 5 minutes of focusing on it, haha.  I also took a container of prunes with me to the hospital which made all other situations a breeze.  Not a big deal at all.

I feel pretty lucky that my recovery has been so easy.  On the second day in the hospital, I was going crazy being in bed.  I was SO glad to get out of there and be home.  I'm pretty sure I took my first walk around the neighborhood when Allie was 3 or 4 days old.  My mom and I took her to the mall with us when she was 6 days old.  I felt back to my old self as soon as I was home.  I wanted to walk around, move about, and LEAVE THE HOUSE.

I was cut in 2 places.  I'm not sure how many stitches I had, but they were all dissolved after about a week and a half and I quit using the peri bottle a couple of days ago.  The only time that I really experienced discomfort with the stitches was while watching an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos.  Excessive laughing does get uncomfortable.  I also found that I couldn't blow my nose for a few days but no big deal.

I made those relief pads while I was still pregnant and I've been using them just because I don't want them to go to waste but honestly, I didn't need them.  And I ended up only using the Tucks Medicated Pads that the hospital gave me once or twice because I felt like they were getting stuck to my stitches and I didn't like fishing them out.  I didn't have any issues not using them.

I weighed myself on Monday and so far I've lost 20 pounds.  I can fit into some of my bigger pre-pregnancy jeans but still not into what I was wearing on a daily basis.  I do still have about 20 pounds left to lose.  It'll happen, I'm not worried about it.

Allie is 2 weeks old today.  She's already getting so much bigger and I already find myself getting a little sad that she's growing up so fast.  (Too soon?)  We attempted to weigh her today and we think she might weigh about 8.5 pounds now if our scale is anywhere close to accurate.  I found a lot more newborn clothes in her closet so I need to get those washed so she can actually wear them.  I feel like she'll be out of that size really soon.

We're kind of obsessed with our little baby.  She's been a master at holding her head up since day one almost.  She can scoot around on our chests and when she's really angry, she straightens her legs and it's almost like she's standing!  She's incredibly strong.  She sleeps GREAT during the day.  We say that she doesn't sleep that great at night but really, she sleeps sometimes for 4-5 hour stretches, which I'd say is pretty good.  We're lucky to have that.  We're still just getting adjusted to not sleeping for 7-8 hours straight.

We haven't quite gotten the hang of breastfeeding just yet.  We both end up messy, but she ends up full so that's all that matters.  We also attempted a public feeding yesterday.  Thankfully, I was prepared with a jacket.  You'd think a dark movie theater would be a decent place to do that discreetly, but she makes SO much noise while she eats.  While I'm on leave, I'm hoping to go to some meetings to maybe get more comfortable and better at it.  Sometimes it feels like we're fighting which I was NOT expecting from a newborn.

So far, she's been an incredibly easy baby.  She's starting to stay awake for longer periods of time, which is getting fun.  It's fun to watch her take in the things around her.  Sometimes it still blows my mind that we have a baby!