Through the pain

So pain sucks.

If you don't want to hear about the harsh reality of giving birth then stop here.

I am now slightly over 10 weeks postpartum and still not healed. The episiotomy I had did not heal well in one area and I had to go back in today to have that looked at. Luckily time flies with a newborn because it's hard to believe i've been dealing with this for this long, but I have and have tried to be patient. I called the doc at 3 weeks postpartum because I felt like an area wasn't healing right, and 7 weeks later it's not any better, in fact it's worse. At 3 weeks he thought another 3 would do the trick. At 6 weeks he gave me estrogen cream to help it heal, and at 10 weeks he had to do a mini repair surgery. That was today.

I have developed something called granular tissue, which I guess is "angry tissue" the body develops when it is rejecting something. Apparently my body has rejected the suture in that spot, hense the lack of healing. So to fix this he had to numb me (very painful but worth it) then cut away the bad tissue, singe that, and then glue me up in this area. Once I was numb it was fine, but I was shocked when I saw how much I bled. By the time I got home the numbness was wearing off so I took some ibeprofen, and after a couple hours I had Grant dig out the left over percocet I had been given after delivery. That is helping some, but I just have to say this hurts like nobodies business.

I figured I'd have to deal with more pain before this healed and here I am.

Hoping Ella sleeps well tonight and sleep helps the pain.

Organizing

So today Grant is finally able to get to the yard. After being on vacation things have been pretty crazy. He attempted Friday night but could not get the mower to start. Luckily his dad put 2 and 2 together and realized there was prabably water in the tank from the rain/flooding we had. It wasn't real bad at our house but enough that where we store our mower had sitting water.
After letting the tank dry out it's now working.
Me and Ella have had a nice day after a rough morning. She's been waking up more in the middle if the night and last night I heard that she was awake but she wasn't crying... but then she started choking. She was fine but that sure got us both up in a hurry!
Then after I fed her around ten I gave her her meds and she completely threw up. All over me and our living room rug.
The rest of the day has been nice. I finally decided to organize and file the scary piles of papers I've collected since early in my pregnancy, and she's been sitting next to me smiling.
We are headed back to church next week. Now that things are a little calmer and we are finally getting into a routine.

Scary piles of papers.



Ella next to me.


Note the taped up vent behind her... where the ants were coming in on Tuesday. That's another story!

Smiles!

I can't get enough of them.



- Sara

From my phone

So this post is coming from my phone and I'm very excited about that. Since Ella was born I do everything on my phone and posting here was the only thing I could not do. Grant reminded me that I can get apps that let you do things on your phone... and here I am!
So we are driving back from Guld Shores Alabama right now. We were there a week with my whole family. We rented a house right on the beach and it was fabulous.
Vacationing with Ella had it's challenges but overall it was great. She obviously likes her environment and schedule because I couldn't get her to eat well all week. It stunk because she was fussy and I never knew if she was hungry or tired. I guess that schedule keeps both of us sane!
It was all good though and it meant the world to me that Gram and other relatives were so willing and helpful with her. Thank you!!
Here are a few pictures from out trip.

Sleeping on the deck with Gram.



Sleeping with cousin E.



All decked out.



Going home with the outfit from Jenny. Although she messed in this before we even got downstairs.



Happy phone day!

Sara

Time Flies

So today Ella is 7 weeks old. Hard to believe!

Here's a picture Grant took while we were on a recent walk.

She is starting to sleep longer at night now and with that we are trying to establish night and morning routines in hope that she will get used to them at a young age. The problem is they are lots of work for mommy and I feel in some sense like we are taking a step back.

At night we have been keeping her up and in the living room with us until her late night feeding and putting her down afterwards when we go to bed. This means we are crawling into bed between 11 and 12 and for us that's fairly normal. We may fall asleep on the couch earlier in the night, I feed her and then we go to bed, also kind of our normal routine. Well I'm trying to put her down now earlier and doing a bath and reading time beforehand. So around 7 or 8 I feed her, bath her, and we sooth and read to her since she doesn't like baths yet and is screaming. Then we put her down to sleep. The first night we did this I woke her up for her late night feeding and then put her back down and she slept until 5 am. Sounds great right - except I hated doing that late night feeding in bed plus the middle of the night feeding in bed, when I was used to just doing 1 feeding in bed lately. I do not like feeding in bed. My episiotomy is still not completely healed and it's hard to get in and out of bed while holding her, plus I can never get her high enough with my pillow and it hurts to adjust how I'm sitting. But for some reason if I feed her in the living room in our recliner she wakes up more and I have a hard time getting her back to sleep. It may be worth another try though....

Anyway, last night I was too tired to wake her up to feed her for her late night feeding and decided to let her wake me up when she was hungry. (At this point it's totally okay for us to let her do this at night) She woke me up at 12 which was exactly 5 hours from her last feeding and then again at 5 am. So she's on a 5 hour routine at night which is actually pretty good I think. I put her back down after 5 and it's like she knows when it's 8 am because she's up and ready for her normal 3 hour feeding routine.

Today, I'm super tired. I'm not sure which way was better, to wake her up or let her wake me up for that late night feeding. Plus as she starts pushing 5 hours to 6 and 7 hours I'm not going to want to get up at 1 and 2 am to feed her so I'll need to get her up at say 11 and then let her sleep to 6 or 7.

I have no idea. I'm just thinking out loud here. Feel free to leave suggestions if you have any.

Here's a recent picture of her on her play mat that she loves. She starting to coo and smile and we found that she really loves this thing now that she can focus.

So cute!