It's hard to believe Flynn has been with us for almost 3 weeks already. Time both flies and creeps at a glacial pace. Thankfully at this point my head has cleared enough to process how crazy the past few weeks have been.
There are several things I have often heard regarding adjusting to life post delivery. One is that if you have a c-section make sure you get up and start walking around as soon as possible to help speed up recovery. Immediately post-op and through the next day I was bed ridden to ride out my 24-hour magnesium treatment then spent a day in ICU but by day 3 I was up and about as much as possible, making sure to slowly stand upright and walk the halls for exercise as often as I could manage. I don't know if I was just incredibly lucky or if walking really does help that much but I must say I feel like my section recovery was relatively quick and easy. By the end of the first week I still had some discomfort but was otherwise moving around fairly normally and feeling pretty good. I consider myself blessed to have had a manageable recovery physically since the emotional recovery rocked my boat hardcore.
I've heard many a mother mention how crazy their hormones were in the weeks immediately following delivery but none of them could adequately paint a picture of the nightmare that was to come. I call it a nightmare, which might be a bit drastic, but it didn't feel like an overstatement at the time. Almost immediately I felt plagued with an overwhelming sense of fear, uncertainty, anxiety and dread. There was a tiny person that was relying on us to fulfill its every need and I felt completely unprepared for the task, no matter how much babysitting experience I'd had in the past. Clif was beyond amazing with his help and support and had a level of confidence that I craved desperately. Even though he was keeping it together, and trying to help me do the same, I spent almost every day for a solid 2 weeks internally begging for my mother to come help me get through the hormonal upheaval. Clif was doing absolutely everything right but sometimes there just isn't a substitute for Mom. I couldn't explain how I felt other than wrong, desperate to feel normal again. In addition I had exactly zero appetite and was forcing myself to eat a handful of bites of food for 3 meals a day to try to make sure I was going to be able to provide Flynn with some kind of nutrition from nursing.
In the mornings I woke up feeling ok, prepared to tackle a diaper change and feeding with Flynn. Then I would watch the clock, calculating when I should wake him up again and how the timing of the next feeding would impact the timing of the rest of the day. I was constantly counting hours, trying to balance between 2-3 hour nursing sessions but still give him enough time to sleep, especially if it took some time to get him back to sleep after the feeding before. Getting him back up to birth weight became an obsession when his pediatrician expressed concern that he was nearing the 2-week mark and still had several ounces to gain to get back to birth weight after not gaining anything over the previous 3 days. Life was all about checking diapers, nursing, pumping, supplementing Flynn with additional formula if he was still hungry and I hadn't pumped enough to cover the extra need and spurts of sleep. Several days it felt like I'd never do anything else but repeat this schedule again and again, much less ever see the world outside the walls of our house. I felt trapped, desperate, like a failure and fought waves of panic.
After the first week some days started to feel a little bit better and I had a mix of hormonal suffocation and moments of feeling sane and competent. Sometimes I could smile, feel comfortable and at ease with each moment of our day, other times I would burst into hysterical sobs for no reason at all. Mornings started out with optimism then later in the afternoon the dread crept back up, only to be washed away again during our pre-bedtime nursing. Now, at almost 3 weeks, after having a handful of successful extended trips away from the house, most days are positive and the hormones seem to have settled out significantly.
All things considered, Clif and I are pretty stinking lucky. Flynn (knock on wood) so far sleeps really well and we usually have to be the ones to wake him up to eat. Now that he has gained back and exceeded his birth weight we have changed to letting him wake us up at night instead of setting alarms, but still wake him to try to keep to a schedule during the day. This makes for still feeling somewhat chained to the house (nursing on the go is challenging due to the need for extra equipment) but we don't feel as much pressure as we did before. In addition, since Clif works from home and I get 3 months of maternity leave, we have lots of time together to adjust to having little Flynn. So many parents don't get that kind of time together and I can't express how thankful I am that we do. Clif changes most of the diapers and I do all the nursing but our greatest achievement has been our nighttime routine where I prep a bottle and pump a supply for the next night while Clif changes, feeds and puts Flynn back to sleep. This means we are both up together, supporting each other, and we reduce our time up at night by half. Getting us both back in bed faster helps with getting as much sleep as possible and means less opportunity for resentment if one of us is dragging our tails in the wee hours while the other is blissful in dreamland. Our mantra has been 'team work makes the dream work' and it is working wonders for us.
We've come a long way already but know that every day will be a chance for something new and exciting, an opportunity for us to grow and will have the possibility for everything we've established so far to change. Together we can adjust, adapt and make every new situation work, that is the fact that I will hold on to to help combat my worries and doubts.
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