I tell you, it really throws the medical community when they have to deal with someone who's had an out-of-hospital birth. I find it mostly funny, mildly annoying, and hope that it's a little educational for those we deal with. The woman who set up Kiera's account and made our appointment could not understand what I was telling her, and kept looking for Kiera in their system-until I finally told her to stop looking, we didn't take her to the hospital at ALL, not even "to be checked out afterwards" (her words). When we left today, the doc gave us copies of all their notes (which I thought was cool), and whoever generated it wrote "born before admission to hospital." I find that hilarious. Can't possibly have birthed at home on purpose. The doctor thought it was totally cool, even commenting that "less is often more" and that much of the time, that's the way to go. I thought that was pretty neat-o. I'd been nervous about meeting with an MD, as they are often anti-homebirth and chunk you into the "whacko weirdo psycho mom" category and that can be unpleasant to deal with.
Anyway, the appt went well, with Kiera receiving an A+ for being perfectly healthy. She weighed a whopping 7 lbs 1 oz, which-while still teensy-is up considerably from her birth weight and that's great. I'd be shocked if she wasn't gaining weight, since the child uses everything as an excuse to nurse--which unfortunately led to sudden engorgement for me, which caused several milk ducts on my left side to clog, which quickly turned into mastitis (a breast infection), which resulted in a very lousy Thursday as I felt like I had the flu and that's just, well, lousy. So I bit the bullet, called the midwives, and requested antibiotics. There are other more natural remedies I could have (and would have, in other circumstances) tried, but it came on so fast I couldn't risk it getting worse. As much as I cleave to natural medicine, I haven't treated mastitis before and couldn't guarantee that what I tried would work as quickly as a prescription would-but be assured that I will know exactly what to do should this happen again. I'm already taking a homeopathic remedy that loosens clogs so baby can suck them out more easily, which thankfully helped to free up the last stubborn linger-er that was still causing me pain yesterday. So now I feel infection and clog-free, and am making poor Kiera nurse in all kinds of crazy positions to make sure I stay that way.
And while life with a newborn is never "easy" I do feel like we're settling into a groove, Kiera is finding a rhythm to her days, and it is thus far pretty easy, relatively speaking. If only we could figure out how to keep her from getting the hiccups (she sounds like a squeaky chew toy), life would be a breeze. Oh, and if we could talk her into soiling less diapers-she goes through more than the other two combined. I think Troy's already washed them 5 times (I'm not doing laundry yet :) ). And if she'd stop pooping in her carseat, that'd be great too. Seriously, she's only been in the thing like 4 times, and has pooped in it 3 of those times. Thoroughly.
1 comment:
I like your updates, new babies can't be an easy thing to settle into. New habits take like 3 weeks to "take", so I'm sure you'll all get into the groove for real, real soon.
I'm giggling at the doctors and nurse's reactions to your "on purpose" home birth. Astounding that they react that way!
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