Mild Cases

I promise today to take some pictures of Natalie. Or at least to post a few of the ones we have taken- later. I know I've written a lot but what people really want are sweet new-baby pictures to look at as opposed to words about my 'roids. But I will say that I pooped this morning and man I feel soooo much better. I almost laughed about it, but I still have a couple of little tears on my nether regions that really hurt.

My milk came in last night. OOOOWWWWW. Holy mother of all that is holy, I forgot how heavy your breasts can feel when they are hugely filled with the nectar of the gods. She has almost mastered nursing in the night laying down. Once my breasts (and nether regions) no longer hurt, I think life will be awesome. She has NO problems latching on. None at all. I love it but it also makes my toes curl. Not that I worried about that part. It was my obsession when I was pregnant with Gwennie, this overwhelming fear that she would be unable to nurse for whatever reason. But the thought only crossed my mind once and it was because I was in the bottle aisle at Target.

Natalie is almost perfect. But she was born with a couple of little things.

For one, she has a swelling on the right side of her head. It appears that labor was stalled a little because she was malpositioned. Her head was crooked in the birth canal, its called asynclitic birth. My labor wasn't long for most people, but it was long for me. Part of why homebirth appealed to me was that my labors don't last for days. I am lucky in that way. Gwennie's labor was fast, about 2 1/2 hours of pain. Natalie was 6 hours. The last 2 were non-stop though, there was barely time to get a breath before I was moaning like a cow in labor again and trying to keep the tension from making me clench up. (Watch Dirty Jobs, there is an episode that he is at a cow ranch and helping "birth the calves". I sounded just. like. them.)

Back to the swelling. I didn't notice it until she was almost 24 hours old because she had a hat on and her head was still gross from birth. At first I felt a little panicked. Its a swelling, on her head, that couldn't be good. But it didn't seem to cause her any grief as I prodded it, and its not on any of the suture lines of her newborn skull. Pam looked at it, and confirmed that my Mommy diagnosis was 100% correct. It was also probably why I wasn't dilating during early labor. Maybe she just wanted to be born on the 29th and not the 28th. The swelling is slowly going down.

The other little thing has to do with her feet. When she was still inside she found a position she liked and stayed there. She was LOA but apparently her feet were in a slightly off position. I had fears about her feet because I didn't see them during either of the ultrasounds I had. But also during the last trimester her feet felt weird. I thought that maybe it was her knees because that was how it felt. More angular.

As soon as I was holding her, I was checking out her face. No, I didn't try to look at her feet right away, I noticed that she had two of them but I didn't examine them. I looked at them much later when both she and I had been cleaned up a bit and we were laying in bed recovering. Her little toes pointed straight up, touching her shins. Both feet were like that. I could easily manipulate the feet down to the correct position, so once again I didn't worry. Plus I had been reading Baby Catcher in the week leading up to her birth (for inspiration I think) and in it, she delivers a baby with club feet, but when she calls a doctor about the club feet they mention feet like Natalie's and how its not a big deal. So I didn't give it a serious thought. I do plan on taking her to the doctor next week and will discuss that with them.

During internet research I found out that its called Calcaneovalgus and with just a little stretching, should go away all together. If not, the treatment is for her to wear stiff high top shoes. (I really hope that we don't have that! I love Robeez and the other soft leather shoes as well as bare baby feet!)

I slept better last night, too. So today I feel quite a lot better emotionally. Yesterday I cried a lot. I was weepy all morning and again right at dinner time. The pain was getting to me, as well as just being so tired, I felt miserable. I heated up dinner for the girls and myself and sat on the couch crying while I ate in front of the t.v. Not something I normally do, but I attempted to sit at the table the night before for dinner and it was so uncomfortable that I ate as fast as I could so I could get off my backside. I also spent some time sitting on an icepack last night. It seems to help a little. (I am getting ready to get it out again.)