I'd love to hear your story!
I find the first 3 months so overwhelming. It does get easier, or rather we adjust?
Things are going great here. Both kids are growing fast and I went back to work last week. I'm struggling a little but thays typical after summer. DS starts preschool next week and is so so excited. I hope this year sets him up well for kindergarten.
Preschool! How exciting! My littlest nephew just started last fall, and he had typically been a Mama's boy with severe separation anxiety, so we thought his first day was going to be a problem. Well, they get to the preschool, the boy takes one look at all the toys and other kids, and poof! Gone straight to the fun. Could not care less that his mom was leaving him there to go to work. He made 2 friends the first day and hasn't complained once about going back, since. Haha
I hope it goes as well as that, or better, for your boy!
You're going to have to tell me all about your new LO too! So tiny in that profile pic!
AFM -- My pregnancy went by without a single problem until week 37. I woke up one night itching from head to toe! I knew that was a symptom of liver problems, so I went into the ER (and not just because the itching was miserable), and the docs there were like, "Well there's not a rash. I don't know what to tell you." I had to be the one to mention Obstetric Cholestasis. The said, "It's probably not that, but we will run tests anyway," and what do you know? Obstetric Cholestasis!
If you're unfamiliar with the syndrome, it's basically where your liver is overloaded with all the extra hormones, waste and other stuff dumped into your bloodstream by pregnancy, and stops being able to filter out the waste from your system. It can cause stillbirth if it's not caught in time, so I'm really glad I did! I got put on a drug called Ursadiol, which basically a supplemental liver acid that helps dissolve toxins in my bloodstream.
A few nights later, I started waking up with severe back pain. And I mean SEVERE. I have back pain every day of my life, so I'm somewhat inured to it. This pain was nauseating. It was so intense I had a hard time catching my breath. I was pretty certain it was back labor, actually, so I called and went into L&D, was hooked up to monitors, etc. Had 1 contraction a minute for ALMOST an hour, when they mysteriously vanished and didn't come back. I got sent home.
A few nights later, same thing again. Had what I was sure was back labor, headed into L&D, had contractions 1 minute apart for ALMOST an hour, then they stopped just short of an hour, and I was sent home.
The third time it happened, the OB on duty at the time said, basically, "Look, you've been 'almost' in labor three times, you have Obstetric Cholestasis that is not improving, and you're 38 weeks pregnant. I'm going to induce."
Thank god I'd insisted on packing my hospital bags into the car that morning. lol
So they started me on pitocin on April 10th at about 8am. Only I didn't really respond to it. I stayed at 1cm dilated and 90% effaced, with next to no contractions for THREE DAYS. I insisted we try everything. A foley bulb, cervix softening medications, labor balls, walking up and down the hallway.. you name it, we tried it. Not only that, but the baby's head never dropped either. If she had, her head would have put pressure on my cervix and helped it to dilate like it should have, but she was tucked up above my right hip and would not budge from that spot.
When April 13th rolled around and still no baby, we'd exhausted all our options. They told me at that point, all that was left was a c-section.
You guys, I was so upset by that news. I had mentally prepared myself for 9mos for a vaginal delivery and the pain and difficulty that would cause me, only to learn that my body had "failed" me and I needed surgery to have this baby.
The issue was that my cervix was so horribly scarred from my cancer removal surgeries and subsequent biopsies, it just couldn't function like it should have. And there was nothing the OB or nurses could do about that.
I just wanted to break down and cry, but I couldn't. My mom and youngest sister were both there, and they had both had c-sections themselves, and I didn't want to look like I was throwing a fit or being a big baby.
Anyway, Gwen was born at 1:37 on Friday the 13th, after the longest 3 days of my life (up to that point). She weighed 9lbs and 1.5oz! I thought, "No wonder she never dropped, she was too big!"
And the fact that she was so large meant that from the very start, I was unable to produce enough breastmilk for her. She lost more than 10% of her body weight in less than 48hrs. So we had to start supplementing with formula until she started to gain weight, which meant we were in the delivery ward an extra 2 days to make sure she was healthy. And even after my milk really started coming in, it wasn't enough fr her. No matter what I ate or drank, how often she nursed or I pumped, there just wasn't enough.
Now at 16 weeks, my milk is all dried up. I was really upset about that, too. I told DH that I felt like a failure. Not only did my body fail to birth our baby the way it "should have", it couldn't produce milk to feed her. The baby blues really hit me hard.
I'm doing better now though. It took a lot of reminding myself that the most important thing is that Gwen is here safe and sound.
Oh, AND -- My first mother's day was a little over a month after Gwen was born, and DH totally botched it. After all the months I'd talked about it, how excited I was to celebrate my first Mother's Day, all the gift ideas I had come right out and shown him and said, "This would be an excellent mother's day gift!" All he did was run to the grocery store the evening of Mother's Day, and grab the last bouquet of roses they had, which were brown and wilty. And then had the nerve to say, "They were sold out of everything, so I just got you these."
He cooked some chicken for dinner, supposedly so I wouldn't have to cook, and that was that.
You guys, DH planned ahead enough to send his mother a professional flower arrangement from 1-800-Flowers, how come all I merited was a wilty bouquet from the grocery store? I cried and cried. Then later, DH's parents came up for a visit and his dad asked what he did for me for Mother's Day. DH was like, "Oh, I cooked dinner." His dad goes, "... that's all?"
DH: Well it was a good dinner! Chicken and salad!
FIL: But you're going to do something better for her next year, right?
DH: ...?
FIL: Because it's her first Mother's Day and she deserves something special?
DH: But it was a tasty dinner!
You guys, it was like it never occurred to him that perhaps he ought to do something special for my first mother's day and couldn't understand why everyone was shocked! He had NO CLUE.
For Father's day, I got him a custom wooden, carved photo frame that said, "Happy First Father's Day 2018, Love Gwen" and had his favorite photo of her in it, for his desk at work. It wasn't anything super duper, but it was sentimental, required some forethought, and I didn't run out to the grocery store last minute to scavenge the leftovers.
Anyway, sorry for throwing up that wall of text there! Just so much to cover since the last time I checked in!
better luck next month
also started picking up some boy cloths 
) love the picture update. 
