Fri., Feb. 27th – I woke up with breasts the size of soccer balls and hard as boulders. Putting Emily on the breast was torture, as I’d fallen asleep with her breastfeeding the night before and she’d fallen asleep too, lost the latch and scraped up my nip. Owie. So no relief there.
As reluctant as he was to do so, John took me to get a breast pump. I was in so much pain I couldn’t even pump correctly. My right breast couldn’t get any relief, no matter how much I pumped. And to top it off, I felt like a failure because these huge things would only make half an ounce to an ounce of milk together after an hour to an hour and a half of pumping. That wasn’t even enough to feed her because she drinks anywhere from 2-3 ounces of milk!
The whole next week and a half is a blur of pumping. I spent most of my days feeding Emily breast milk from bottles and supplementing with formula when I didn’t make enough. I’d just lock myself in the bathroom with New Moon open on my lap and pumped away. I will always associate New Moon with Emily. I read the first half at my doctor’s appointments, a fourth of it while I was in labor at the hospital and the last fourth while pumping :).
Our income tax refund came in that day and I couldn’t even go anywhere to celebrate, heh. I really wanted to go to Chili’s and Mario said let’s go for it, but I still couldn’t walk around very well. We decided to just stay home. I was quickly feeling cabin fever set in.
I was so exhausted and ready for sleep (while the girls weren’t) and in such immense pain in my back, chest and incision that I just broke down and cried while I was changing Emily’s diaper on the sofa. Mario had no idea what was going on. I just told him the truth: I was tired and in pain. I was so glad it was the weekend and that he was home. He helped me so much that night. He stayed up entertaining a restless Alaethia while I slept with Emily. My incision felt like it would rip apart every time I tried to get out of bed and he saw that, so he volunteered to prepare Emily’s bottles when she’d wake up. He’s such a good husband and daddy.
I woke up with chills again that night. It was so weird. I’d felt hot when I’d first fallen asleep and woke up with my teeth chattering and feeling really uncomfortable, just like the night before. I was worried that my incision had gotten infected or maybe the pain in my right breast was Mastitis.
Sat., Feb. 28th – I woke up to Emily gagging and gasping for air. It was the 3rd time it had happened; the first two were at the hospital and when I asked the nurse about it he said it was something newborns did—along with constant sneezing, which she was doing–because their neurological system was still developing. I don’t remember the other three kiddos doing anything like that, which made me even more paranoid while she slept.
My boobs were still really sore and my incision was really starting to bother me. I noticed that it looked pink around the area and the incision looked weird—nothing like it did just the day before. I even made sure to take a picture, just in case it started to get worse. I’ll spare you the gore.
Mario’s Tia Amelia came by around noon to meet Emily. She held her while she shared some wisdom about taking care of myself and what to do for my aching boobs and so on.
I had a coupon for 10cent prints from Walgreens and had every intention of using it. I’d let all the other good coupons pass me by. So whatever chance I had, I uploaded pictures.
AVOID THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU’RE SQUEAMISH!
Emily woke up around 9:30 or so for a feeding so I prepared one and sat with her on the loveseat in the living room. I couldn’t sit anywhere without feeling this horrible tugging pain in my abdomen, but the weirdest thing happened when I sat there talking to Mario: I felt relief. I told him, “Woah, I suddenly feel really good, Babe. My stomach doesn’t feel that painful pull anymore.” And that’s when I felt my shorts completely wet from the front and something dripping down my thigh. The darn incision had popped open and was oozing all over me. That was the relief and wetness I felt. I was surprised by just how much liquid came out of that tiny bubble. I tried not to panic and called my doctor’s answering service. I get a call much quicker than I thought I would and speak to a doctor who’s on-call since Dr. C. is out of town. He asks me to describe the wound and then tells me to wash it with soap and water, put Neosporin if I want and cover it up with some gauze and tape. If the pain was unbearable, the pus turned green, or I got a fever I should go to the hospital. Great.
I always made fun of Mario’s emergency kit (or as I affectionately call it, his End-of-the-World-Kit) but I was so grateful he had it that night. He had every single thing we needed. He sat me on the sofa and told me not to move and prepared everything, keeping everything as sterile as possible. He washed me up and covered the wound as the doctor suggested. I tell you, I love this man.
This reminds me: everywhere I went I was being asked if I had a C-section, probably because of the way I was walking. I would tell them nope: 4 kids delivered vaginally and then I got the tubal. The ladies would make a face and then say, You poor thing! I hear that’s worse than a C-section! or I had 2 C-sections and the pain was nothing compared to the tubal! Had I known this lovely piece of advice I wouldn’t have done it! When I was doing my research while I was pregnant everyone told me it felt like a little pinch and only hurt for a few days, or that it didn’t hurt at all. I would have seriously rather been on birth control the rest of my life and risk getting pregnant for missing a pill than getting the darn tubal had I known it was going to cause me so many problems.
Even after that ordeal I finished uploading my pictures at 11:20pm and, with 10 minutes to spare before the deadline of 11:59pm, I entered the order for 316 pictures for $32. Woo! Pictures always make me feel worlds better.
