We're home. Now what?

We were discharged on Friday, Dec. 4. Mark was DJing winter formal for my school, and Alicia had offered to come give me a hand. I was so grateful. She did a few things and helped me out.

You don't realize how much you rely on your nether regions until they are stitched up and recovering from a trauma, no matter how "normal" that biological process may be. I couldn't get out of the chair or bed. I had so much trouble shifting once I was seated. It was almost impossible while holding J. It got better as the days passed, but holy crap.

That night, I asked Alicia to be his godmother. She squealed and hugged me so hard that she bent my glasses haha.

We discovered that the baby swing was the key to us doing anything so quickly.

We decided that since it was so hard for me to get up and move, the best case scenario was to put him in the Rock 'N' Play next to the bed on my side. We are strongly opposed to the concept of cosleeping. ESPECIALLY at the newborn and infant stages. Don't try to tell me benefits and convince me otherwise. What works for you may not be what works for me. So back off and get your own blog.

Anyway, I barely slept all night. Infant breathing patterns are terrifying. They pause. They gasp. They breathe in different speeds. It's insane. And woke me up immediately every time. I managed to get some sleep and woke up to that beautiful little face staring back at me on Saturday morning.

When I opened my eyes and saw that little face, I melted. He was here. He made it home. He made it through the first night! This wasn't a dream.

People always complain about the baby keeping them up all night, but other than my own insecurities and terrors, he slept about six hours. We had the best baby everrrr. We thought.

That day I realized I could reenter the world of deli meats. I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't eat a lot of meat. I went through a brief period of craving meat and had Mark make a lot of meatloaf and burgers and tacos and chicken and stuff. It's weird how every pregnancy is different. One pregnancy had an aversion to chicken. This one couldn't get enough meat. That is highly unusual. It also made me grossed out by cheese. I always keep microwaveable mac and cheese that has a long shelf life at school just in case I forget my lunch. One day, I reached into my bin to grab one early on and was repulsed by it. I could handle shredded cheese or cubes or wedges or whatever. But melty liquidy cheese turned my stomach. I had to walk down the block to get a sandwich that day haha. Cheese is my favorite food. That was rough.

Anyway, I never really want meat. But because I wasn't allowed to have deli meat, I had Mark order po-boys for us. While we ate, the delivery men brought my glider and ottoman. We ordered it from a local store on Halloween and it took that long to come in. We had registered for a chair and then it was discontinued and we didn't get the email in time. It was the only chair I liked that I found comfortable and would be good for anyone to sit in with the baby. I didn't find out until the day we went to buy it. I was heartbroken. I hated all of the other chairs. We tried chairs in so many stores. None were good. But this furniture store had a great saleswoman who asked what chair we had wanted. They carried that brand but not that chair. She brought me the catalogue and we found one very similar and ordered it. She was my hero. I'm sitting in it right now, waiting for him to go back to sleep. I love this chair.

In addition, my friend Michelle dropped by with a gift. She had her third son in September and couldn't stay long. We also had a visit from my brother and his new girlfriend. They started dating about halfway through my pregnancy. She only knew me as pregnant. It dawned on me that a lot of people at work only knew me that way. Very odd to think about.

Most people never knew they knew me as pregnant. We kept it so low key. If you knew, it was because you saw us frequently or you were a relative. We didn't ever publicize it anywhere. After he was born, Mark took a picture of him. While we were enjoying our hour of skin-to-skin, he sent it to me and I finally got to talk about the baby on social media.

We blew a lot of people away with the news. They had no clue. Some people thought they missed it. Some people were a little annoyed. Almost everyone was surprised and ecstatic. When I shared his birth, I just explained that we had a hard time getting him here and that I never felt comfortable sharing it. That is 100% true. I didn't want it posted and have people see it, then have something go wrong, then have people not see the follow-up. I didn't want to be subjected to Timehop pulling those statuses up. I just didn't want any trace of it online. Almost everyone was very understanding and kindly did not push for details.

It has taken more than two years since giving birth for me to put any of this down. I wasn't sure I wanted to go public. But I think it is extremely important to do so. So many people suffer in silence. I want to be able to be there for them the way that my pen pal was there for me. Because try though they might, unless you've been through it, you WILL say the wrong thing. You won't mean it. But you will. I have a thing typed up on The Care and Feeding of a Habitual Miscarrier. I wrote it way before J. I'll dig it up one day and add it here.

Anyway, back to that weekend.

On Sunday, Mark had to go to work. Craig and Aryanna came to help me around the house for part of the time. We never truly had it ready for J because I was on bedrest, sort of. I couldn't lift or carry. Bending was no good. Sweeping made me bleed that one time. So the house just wasn't ready. Honestly, two years later, it still isn't haha. His room is finally complete, so there's that. But we moved my office into the back room, which is now the room where things go to die. Also where the cats mostly hang out. My office became the nursery. But because I couldn't do a lot, it wasn't really ready. He was sleeping in our room at first, so it was okay if it was not ready.

The Saints were playing (hence Mark having to work) and normally that meant going to my parents' house. But for the first two weeks, they came to me instead.

They lost that day, so that was disappointing.

Mark and my mom had both taken off the next week. I wish they had staggered things better. She was able to run a few errands for us, though, so that was nice.

The one week doctor appointment found that he wasn't gaining weight. When the doctor heard he was sleeping for six hours at a time, she put a stop to it. We had to wake him every three hours and feed him without fail in order to get his weight up. He hadn't pooped since the hospital and was a bit jaundiced. She said once he pooped, it would probably clear up. She wanted to see us two days later.

He still hadn't gained weight and still hadn't pooped. He wasn't constipated. He just was using up his food. The problem was me. I wasn't producing enough milk. He was sleeping so much because he was essentially giving up on eating because he knew he wouldn't get any more. We started using the supplemental formula in addition to breastfeeding. I was an emotional wreck. How could my body, which finally didn't fail by successfully carrying a baby to term, fail that baby in this way? How could I, as a mother, fail my child in this way?

It was decided that I needed to exclusively pump. That way, I knew what he was eating and I knew how much to supplement. The most I ever got in the beginning was one and a half ounces in an hour of pumping. That was a good day. I drank so much water and ate so many lactation cookies. I ate oatmeal and took fenugreek supplements. I drank that disgusting Mother's Milk tea (I hate licorice and it tastes like licorice). I massaged and hand pumped and everything. I was on a tight schedule of pumping. And it didn't help. Not. One. Bit.

But I wanted him to get what he could. I set a goal of getting him what I could for six months. I limped across that finish line. It didn't take long for it to dry up when I stopped. I'll revisit this later.

He did poop that afternoon though. Jessica and her husband and their 5-week-old stopped by to visit. While they were there, poop! We had a hearty chuckle over how excited all four of us were.

That following weekend was the first visit from my in-laws. In it, they said they planned to come every weekend. Mark didn't even have to see my panic-stricken face. He said that since he's only off on Saturdays, that was not going to work. We needed our four days a month to be a family and adjust to each other. They offered every other weekend. He gave them a "We'll see." He told me later that he had no intention of saying yes. He just wasn't playing all of his cards immediately. He didn't feel like an argument.

It took a lot of us telling them no and then a pretty major incident in February to get them to quit asking for that visitation schedule. I'll get there.

When they came to visit, they insisted on whispering. We kept telling them that we wanted noise. It's unrealistic to make a baby sleep in silence. Keep your normal routines and make them learn to sleep in chaos. They'll be better sleepers as a result. But they insisted on whispering. They bought a car seat base and had it installed by local police. We had already said multiple times that they shouldn't. They live an hour and a half away. We're not leaving him there without us. Save your money. But they didn't listen. Every sound this newborn made, his mom asked if he had a gas pain. Every. Single. Noise. No. No he didn't. You would KNOW if he did. There was one day where I snapped that at her. I said please don't say that any more. Why? Because she was holding him and he made a content sigh in his sleep. And she asked him "oh, do you have a little pain?" NO! Have you never seen a happy baby? Lord.

These little things were the first pebbles in a major avalanche that was on its way.