Week 3 With Ellie

I am a day late with the post, but here it goes!

Things have been crazy as usual with Ellie, let me break it down:

Breastfeeding
She is nursing very frequently during the day - like sometimes hourly.  I am not sure if she is doing it for comfort or for nutrition.  It has gotten easier to get her to latch on - most times I put her in that general area and she does the rest.  There isn't any pain anymore when she latches, so that is awesome. 

She is still waking up every 2-3 hours at night to feed.  So that translates into me getting about 1-2 hours of sleep at a time.  Not exactly easy to manage!  Tonight Brian and I are planning on him giving her a bottle of breast milk for the first feeding so that I can try to get in a solid 4 hours at once.  I am interested in seeing how she does with the bottle since I have tried to give her a pacifier a few times this week and she just spit it out.  Maybe if the nipple comes with milk she will think differently.  I have found at night that is she is out longer than 2 hours that the breast that is "up next" starts to leak.  I think I will have to pump a little tonight to get rid of milk that Brian will be feeding her, or else I will probably wake up in pain or really wet from leaking. 

I went to a nursing mom's meet up that the hospital puts on.  It felt good to get out of the house with Ellie and be with other mom's going through similar things.  It was nice to be able to nurse out in public with the other ladies and not feel bad if my baby starts to cry during the session.  It was great to hear other ladies questions to the lactation consultant.  Sadly since the meet ups are on Wednesdays there are no meetings for the next 2 weeks due to the holidays.  

Ellie has been spitting up quite a bit after feedings.  She didn't seem to do this the first 2 weeks.  A couple times at night she spit up so much that I had to change both her and my clothes, not fun at 3 am!  Hopefully this is a passing trend while her stomach catches up with her desire to eat.  

Sleeping
I kind of covered this above, but I also wanted to mention her day sleeping habits.  She doesn't like to sleep between the hours of 7:30 am and like 1 pm.  She also doesn't seem to like to be put down during these hours either - which makes trying to do things around the house very tricky. She tends to nap pretty well in the afternoon then gets fussy between 6-9ish.  I feel bad because she gets fussy right when Brian gets home!

My Body
Aside from lack of sleep I am doing pretty well!  I try to get in a nap each day, but it never seems to work out.  Either Ellie doesn't want to sleep then or somebody calls during the nap, etc.  I am really looking forward to some longer stretches of rest.  

The weight loss has continued and I am now down about 6 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight.  Brian jokes that it isn't fair that my waist is getting smaller and my boobs are getting bigger and he can't touch me.  Ha if he tried to touch me right now I would seriously wack him.  Until I get more than 2 hours of sleep put together there is no way I am even thinking about anything else!  Not to mention the doc said no sex until the 6 week postpartum check up!

I am down to only wearing pantiliners so that is awesome!  No more big pads for me!  Hemorrhoids are still bothering me though - boo.

Holidays
 I am really looking forward to the upcoming holidays!  Brian will be home from work between Christmas and new years and his parents are coming up for a visit the day after Christmas.  It may be slightly awkward having house guests when I seem to need to breastfeed non stop - but at least there will be others around to soothe and hold Ellie! 

I am also looking forward to my family parties with my side of the family with all of the other kids.  

One thing that kind of stinks is that my friends are all getting together a few times over the holidays and we won't be able to join them.  They are going out to dinner in the city and I am not comfortable leaving Ellie for that amount of time yet and I am not comfortable taking her with us either.  Oh well, small price to pay for sure.  I am hoping some friends will stop by our house to see her. 

Below is a picture of our new little family at Ellie's first party and my brother and sister in law's house!