Boobie Problems.

Over the weekend I had surgery to remove my wisdom teeth, and it has thrown an SUV-sized monkey wrench into my way of mothering and way of doing things for the past 6 months.

Obviously, after surgery I wasn't able to nurse Gavin. I tried either the night after surgery or the morning after, I don't remember which. It went just fine and I was happy. The next couple days I slept most of the time, was in a lot of pain, and my mom and aunt took over with most of his care so I could rest and recover. Once I felt better to try again, Gavin began acting like he forgot what to do. He'd try to gnaw and chew (which he does A LOT these days, probably a clue that he will start teething very soon), and he keeps biting me. He'll do 2-3 sucks like normal, then he'll stop and bite. Then try to suck more, then bite. Or he'll just open and close his mouth on me, trying to gnaw. I try the gentle "No", but he's really so young that I don't think it means anything to him. If I pull it away from him, he just looks up at me like I'm crazy; he doesn't understand why I'm doing it.

I just don't know what to do with him. I keep trying and just end up frustrated and in tears. I'm not ready to give this up yet. These few days of a different routine and not nursing really screwed everything up. I can tell my body is messed up too, since this morning I discovered the return of Aunt Flo. I've read that changes in routine such as nursing less and switching to solids can make her return, so I think my body is getting into the idea that we're done nursing.

I need to get Gavin back on track and try to reverse my body thinking it's time to wrap up with boobie time. I know the best thing is to latch Gavin on and keep him there, but it's really hard when he won't do what he's supposed to and honestly, biting fucking HURTS. Fuck that. I'd rather go through this surgery again than have him bite me all day trying to get him to nurse properly. I'm just praying Gavin snaps back into it and we don't have to end nursing yet. I never imagined I'd feel this way before becoming a mother, but I have truly grown to cherish this closeness and nurturing experience with my booboo.

Gearing Up For #2...

DEPLOYMENT #2.. not baby #2. oh my god. haha. I felt the need to clarify.

It's summer and I'm facing one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced in my life. Nick is deploying VERY soon and Gavin and I will be missing him for 7 long months. It's so incredibly difficult to even think about. Yes, we did a deployment in 2010, but it was just us two. No baby to think about that will miss his father, and be missed by him even more. I'm glad Gavin is so little, he won't remember his daddy being away from him. If our current plans don't change, this will be our last deployment.

Those are a couple slightly comforting thoughts I'll have to work with. Otherwise I'm just a little terrified. Motherhood is difficult, plain and simple. I'd have collapsed into a giant heap of stress, fail and tears a loooong time ago if I didn't have help from family. Sometimes that need for a short break is so strong, I don't feel like I can go another day. So with Nick leaving, it's going to be so much more difficult on a daily basis. I can't be in Maryland the entire 7 months, though I am planning  to be there a lot. I'm trying to work out if I can stay in Maryland for several weeks at a time, though I have the cats to consider. My mom has a dog so I can't just bring them there with me when I go. No matter what, I'm going to have to rely heavily on the wonderful friends I have when I can't be with my family. Like for instance, I have a few miscellaneous doctor's appointments I'll need to schedule this summer and fall. You can't bring children without someone to supervise, so I'll have to try to find people to sit with Gavin while I get these things done.

Deployment is such a challenging, stressful experience. Nick and I have done it before; it didn't defeat us then and it won't defeat us this time. I hope one day Gavin is proud of his parents for what they did for him and our family. Just gotta do our best to be strong for him!

P.S.

On the fitness front, I'd like to update that I'm doing awesome. I do 45 minutes or more of cardio, and have a calorie goal of about 400 per workout. I've got the resistance on the elliptical up to anywhere between 10-12. I haven't been near a scale to see what pounds I may have lost, but I think I'm making some progress. A couple weeks ago, I got the biggest boost ever when curiosity led me to try on some pre-pregnancy jeans, and by god they FIT. Like, I can button them and not be super uncomfortable. SO exciting! I decided to measure my progress like this. I'll know I'm losing weight as all my clothes begin to fit better again, haha.

Refocusing

OK! Ever since making the transition from preggo to full-time mommy, the aim and original purpose of this blog is well, outdated. I've blogged a bit here and there the past 3 1/2 months but I'm looking to pick it back up with a different focus.

Two weeks ago, I officially started my fitness regimen. I'm finally committing myself to losing all this weight I put on over the course of Gavin's residence inside my womb.

It isn't easy to get started with something like this. However, after spending weeks inside taking care of the little one, still looking pregnant, hating my reflection, I know any misery that comes with pushing myself will be so worth it. I waited so long to get started for a couple reasons. Of course, the recommended 6 weeks to make sure I'm healed and capable of exercise. Second, I was just. SO. TIRED. It took a long time to get Gavin sleeping at least semi-decently, and there was just no way I could get into a gym. I HATED sitting at home all day, but I would ask myself, "If I had to get up and get to the gym in the next hour, could I?" and the answer was always a big fat resounding NO. I was exhausted. One day around 13 weeks postpartum, I decided enough being fat. Enough of hating every picture of myself and just ENOUGH of sitting around with all these extra pounds I don't need.

I texted my friend Nancy, and met her at the gym the next day to get myself signed up and started into a routine. I chose the Y for a few reasons, and am so completely happy. The biggest thing is they have child care, which was a big concern of mine. I can drop off Gav and get my sweat on with no worries. Also, they have so much to offer in terms of activities, classes and support. I think once Nick deploys I'm going to start their 6-week "Y Change" program. It'll force me to have so much accountability so I won't fall off the wagon.

So far, I'm doing pretty well. I started with 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical on a low resistance. My endurance and starting point were pretty damn low, and I know I don't need to be pushing myself too hard in the beginning. After 2 weeks, I already have extended my cardio time to 45 minutes, and moved up the resistance from wimpy 1 to a respectable 5. I'm not seeing results yet, but I am off to a good start. My endurance has improved, which will be great for my metabolism.

I'm also excited to transition to a healthy diet. Last night I found one of the best resources I could imagine, a blog by a very inspiring lady called Undressed Skeleton. She has a great story, and even sample menus, grocery lists and all kinds of great tips. I feel so motivated after cruising around her blog for a couple hours last night. 

So here it goes. Before I ever stepped into a gym, I was down about 20 pounds from my peak pregnancy weight. I have more to go, so let's see what I'm capable of! yay!

Did Mandy just blog?

So I've somewhat abandoned the blogging world. Not on purpose. I'd say it's because the exciting-ness of pregnancy is over, but that can't be right because having the baby here is way better and way more worth blogging about. 

Gavin is growing and changing all the time now (obviously). He's hitting all his milestones, learning how to do new things all the time and it's so amazing to watch! It took about a month for him to stop crying at EVERYTHING and realize life on the outside isn't so bad. He'd cry when he got a bath, a diaper change, clothes changed, almost anything really. Nick and I used to say if he's awake, he's crying. He had days and nights reversed. It took weeks to get him to be able to sleep anywhere but on me. I slept in the recliner with him for weeks and was 15 shades of miserable. It finally got better and I do not miss those nights one bit.

A few weeks ago, he surprised me and actually slept through the night! Nowadays if he does it, he'll usually sleep something like 10-11pm til 5 or 6am. then I can usually get him to go back to sleep until a more reasonable morning hour. He doesn't sleep through every night, but I'm totally stoked that he does it at all while he's still this young!

Gavin is already a traveling fool at 2 1/2 months old. We took him to Key West to meet my grandparents in the last weekend in April. he did awesome on the plane, thank goodness. Then the next weekend we went to Ocean City for Springfest, and we've just generally made a bunch of trips up to Annapolis, especially while Nick's been out on the boat.

I kinda wish I'd been tracking when he specifically reached each milestone, but honestly I can probably just look back on facebook. haha. I know he started smiling around a month old. I remember Nick got to see him smile a few times before going out on the boat on April 20th. I know it was a week or two later when he started cooing and "talking", which is the cutest shit I've ever witnessed in my life. I swear, this child melts my heart so much. I LOVE that when I greet him when waking up, he smiles BIG and says good morning back :) I LOVE that he knows his mommy.

Today he got his first round of vaccinations. It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be! I didn't cry and he only cried for a minute or two until I picked him up. Of course he got all redfaced and screamed but then he was only a bit whiny until I got him back in his car seat and in the car, then he was fast asleep. He did great, and all his development was on track too. He's a tall boy, 81st percentile in height at 24 1/2 inches and 46th in weight at 12lb 5oz! I can't believe he's almost doubled his birth weight!! How is my tiny babyboy growing so fast? His feet hang off the boppy pillow now when he nurses!

Despite the frustrations that there's inevitably been, I love this little booger. He's such a joy. I see more and more how he resembles me as his features are becoming more defined. I see Nick and myself in him and it's incredible we created this little person. He's so loved by so many people and he doesn't even know it yet :)

Welcome to the World, Little Gavin!!

So, I'm finally sitting down to try to punch out a good birth story about my little Gavin-nugget's arrival into the world. I may end up writing this over several sittings, so we'll see how much I can get down at one time. Pre-warning, this will be completely long-winded and full of all kinds of little details but #1, I know my mommy friends will enjoy it and #2, I know I will appreciate it as time goes by as I might not remember all the details. Read only if you have the time and patience to take on this project! Seriously. This thing is going to be like, novel status. Let's get started. Readysetgo!

So everything kicked off at the fantastic time of 3:47am on Monday, February 20th. I was sound asleep in bed, and kind of awoke on my own. Not really sure why. Although, while pregnant, I woke up in the night ALL the time to pee and just went back to sleep, no big deal. This time I awoke, rolled on my back a little and felt a trickle down below, that INSTANTLY I knew wasn't pee. Didn't feel like pee coming out at all. I jumped up, tried to cup my hand underneath and ran to the toilet. By the time I got there, my underwear was soaked. My water broke and was not fucking around!! I was just staring in disbelief, just thinking OMG. I knew that this was definitely it, not questionable like when I thought my water might have broke back at 35 weeks.

I thought for a few minutes about going back to sleep. I had stayed up really late just watching tv, until about 1am. So for it to be only 4am was no bueno. I stayed sitting in the bathroom since the fluid just kept coming. I decided to call my mom to let her know. I felt bad waking her up but if this was it, I knew she wouldn't mind and she needed the heads up to get on the road down here to VA. Afterwards, I called Labor & Delivery to ask how long I should wait to come in if my water had broken. They said to come in right away, even though I wasn't having any contractions. Next, I busted out my handy list of ship phone numbers and called to let Nick know it was time. OF COURSE, this was a night he was on duty so he wasn't home. I asked for him and found out he was asleep but they had no problem getting someone to go wake him once I told them the situation. :) He called me back shortly later and said he'd be home soon.

While I waited, my mind was freaking out! In a good way though. I was like omg, what do I do? My hospital bag was packed except for things I used daily, like toiletry items and such. So I tried to figure out what miscellaneous things I needed to grab. Then I thought things like maybe I should get dressed, maybe I should brush my teeth. I'm pretty sure I even straightened my hair since I'd went to sleep with it wet from showering. I was still relatively calm since I wasn't in any pain. My water was still coming out pretty consistently this whole time, but thankfully I had bought some heavy duty pads a couple days earlier. Nick finally got home and we finished getting ready to go, including packing him an overnight bag. We left the house around 4:30 or 5 and were on our way! During the drive there, Nick said something that made me laugh and with that laugh came a huge GUSH. Oh my god. We were just a couple minutes from the hospital but I was like omg! We gotta get there NOW so I can get changed or set up with something or just.. I dunno!!! I was afraid of dripping all over the place on the way to L&D on the 4th floor. Once out of the car, I asked Nick if it looked like I peed my pants and he said yes. Dammit. At least it was ridiculously early and no one was around to see!

We got to the triage window and got taken back to check me in. I got out of my poor wet pants and in a gown and on a table, where I continued to leak, haha. At least they're used to these kinds of messes! I got checked in, got my IV put in and my cervix checked, which was still at 1cm, or a "loose" l cm/almost 2cm. Not bad I guess! After what felt like a long time, we got our room where we settled in for the long haul, however long it would take. We were both exhausted, and I wasn't contracting so we tried to lay down and grab some sleep before my mom and Aunt Lorri arrived. They got there at about 8:30am, and I still wasn't contracting so I was relieved they got there without missing anything.

Now, I don't remember every little thing that happened, let alone the order everything happened but I'll do the best I can. I know it was around 9am when I started contracting. To help me dilate more, they inserted a foley bulb. She said it may be done getting me to 3cm in a few minutes, or may take much longer. I remember laying on the bed trying to relax and suddenly it popped out and fell on the floor. It startled me and I gasped, cause for some reason I thought I'd done something and it wasn't supposed to do that. Once the nurse came back she told me that just meant it was done doing its job. It only took about 10 minutes so that was pretty sweet.

 They offered me a painkiller through my IV, and I was all for it. The nurse warned it may make me feel loopy and wow, she was right. I got a rush of feeling spinny and loopy but felt pretty good. Also, I'm not sure what time I noticed, but I know at one point I was tracking the contractions by the clock on the wall and they were 3-5 minutes apart. So me, Nick, mom and Lorri all hung out and just generally passed time, especially since the hospital didn't yet consider me in actual labor. At some point in the day, around 4 or 5 people came in the room and rushed to all the monitors, and the nurse asked me to change sides I was laying on. Things were really calm so when they pulled an oxygen mask over my face I was wondering what was going on. They were all really good at not being frantic and making me panic. I think the issue was the baby's heartrate dropped. He was a little turd cause several times throughout the day I had to change how I was laying, although this was the only time people rushed in like that. My poor aunt didn't know what was happening and cried a bit once things calmed down, poor thing. This was probably the biggest drama of the delivery, thank goodness. I was calm when it happened but I don't know if I would've been if it happened again!

 Around 2-3 pm is when I believe the contractions started getting bad. This was probably around the time I got my epidural, cause I was utterly miserable. I had weathered the contractions for around 6 hours so I was ready. Around 5pm is when they considered me in active labor. I was feeling the contractions, which thankfully were painless, but I certainly felt a deep pressure, which felt like the baby was pushing himself straight downwards. By this point, I was 4 cm and disappointed in how slow I was progressing. Was I in for one of those 24+ hour labors?! Oh boy. My disappointment didn't last long, because my next check at 6pm had me at 5cm!! They must've felt I was progressing super fast, since they checked me again 20 minutes later and I was 7cm!! I started freaking out a little bit at this point and teared up a bit because it hit me how close I was to him being born. I can't even describe it. Crazyness.

This fast progression was a little short lived, since my next check almost 3 hours later was only 8cm. Pretty far dilated, but it took me 3 hours to get there. I couldn't help feeling a bit discouraged again. I could tell though that the contractions were getting more intense and we were gearing up for little nugget to be ready soon. Ohhhhhh man.

At 11pm I had my final check, because I was 10cm. I heard the doctor say I was "complete". However, they said we would start pushing in about an hour, to give Gavin more time to get as far down as possible, so I wouldn't have as much work to do. During this time, I was so miserable. I'd begun feeling nauseous, so I was munching on ice and at some point the nurse gave me a popsicle cause I was STARVING. I was nervous cause I noticed I had a little more feeling on my right side, and was feeling contractions on that side. I was really scared that I'd feel too much during the actual birth and that I couldn't handle it. I pushed the button for my epidural as many times as possible to try to help. My right side never got back to the same level as my left, but it didn't end up being a big deal, thankfully. My left side ended up being annoying anyway, cause I remember being in postpartum with my left hip still numb as can be, and itching so badly, yet I couldn't relieve it. ugh!

Anyway, the time finally came. The doctor and other medical staff came in, maybe about 7 or 8 in total. It was awkward to have so many people staring at me all spread eagle, but I knew they do this every single day, and I was nothing unusual. Still. My lady parts on full display isn't really something that had happened in front of so many people before that day. At around 12:30ish am, they said we were gonna start pushing. I was really nervous!! In between contractions were my little rest periods and I would ask the doctor if I was doing it right and things like that, haha. I wanted to be sure I was doing the best work possible to get Gavin out. I didn't really feel much going on down there the first couple sets of pushing.

Finally, I started feeling the intense, intense pressure and one of the personnel let slip that they could see the baby's hair. I guess this shocked me or freaked me out, cause it was in the middle of a push and it made me let my breath out and kind of ruined the momentum of the push. I heard later that the Doctor got annoyed and didn't want me to hear those kinds of things. She was absolutely right, cause the Doctor was great. She knew the perfect things to say to motivate me, reassure me and I think each thing she said to help honestly made the delivery so quick and successful. She was great cause she also had Nick do the counting for most of the sets of pushes so he got to participate. Although he was a turd and counted reaaallllyy slow. I was just thinking ugghh I can't hold my breath that long!! He was wonderful; he helped hold my head up and stroked my hair. :) He didn't want to see the carnage of Gavin coming out, and I was ok with that. I didn't want a mirror to see either. Nick was there and that's what was most important to me.

After a few sets of pushing, I was SO ready for it to be over. I don't remember feeling pain, other than some stings on his way out, but I remember how incredibly intense it felt as he was RIGHT THERE and being born. At this point, my motivation was to just make it be over with ASAP and the fact that the doctor said we'd need to use forceps or a vacuum if this final set of pushes didn't get him out. Screw that, I didn't want to have to use any of that so I made those 3 pushes count.

There's not really much to say other than I pushed super hard, everyone was cheering me on and I felt the most awful intensity and then he was here. I think he was just head out when my mom said "look!" and I was like "I dont wanna!!" hahaha. I really didn't want to see my parts down there during everything, although obviously I wouldn't be able to, my logical thinking at that moment didn't realize that. I didn't know right then, but the Doctor cut the cord herself and took him to the little bed to be assessed right away. I'm glad I kind of didn't realize, cause I didn't have the chance to think that anything was wrong. Apparently he just wasn't liking the labor too much and they were concerned about his heartrate dropping. But baby boy was fine. Luckily, no one stood in the way so the whole time he was being wiped off and checked out I could see him and watch him cry. I saw Nick holding his little hand and standing by him and it made my heart melt.

The moments feel all blurred together of the doctor getting me all fixed up and ready to hold my little guy once he was ready. All in all, I pushed for only 25 minutes. He arrived at 12:59am on February 21st weighing 6lb 14oz and 20 in long. And I only needed two little tiny stitches, which the doctor described as not even on the scale that they use to describe severity of tears. So nothing gross like an episiotomy was needed either, thank goodness. I did really well and I'm so glad, since my recovery has been pretty good and I feel great. I'm glad I didn't need any intervention, since any of that could've made recovery a horrible experience. If it wasn't for the epidural making my legs all wobbly, I could've been walking within an hour or so (I was able to walk on my own after about 4 hours).

Anyway, I think this may be a good place to end. I could always do another entry with postpartum related things later. I just definitely wanted to get the delivery down for those who want to read about it and for myself before I start forgetting things. I just hope I didn't already forget anything that I wanted to be sure was in the story. If you read this whole thing, congrats. If not, then I at least still have my long winded recollection of my first baby boy's birth :)