20160909
growth
emily is growing well despite how fussy she has become and what a struggle it has been to feed her.
we saw ceri (our maternal and child health nurse) again on wednesday, when emily was 1 month and 1 day old.
weight: 3650g
height: 51cm
head circumference: 35.6cm
thinking back to when we were still in hospital and she had lost more than 10% of her birth weight and was down to 2530g... she has gained more than a kilo since then! and 580g in the last 13 days, which is 44g/day (average is 20-30g/day).
she spits up a lot though, but ceri said she is probably just a "happy chucker." it just means more laundry for us...
postnatal depression
so ceri got me to do the edinburgh postnatal depression scale (epds) at that visit, and i scored 11. came home and did it again (perhaps more truthfully), and scored 13. 10-12 is the borderline range, so.... i was advised/ encouraged to see a counsellor. j thinks i'm just tired and overwhelmed. i suppose that is true. i prefer to see it as more of an adjustment disorder than depression... the anhedonia is very real.
and very aptly, yesterday was R U OK? day. was just saying to j that i don't think i have cried this much since i was a baby. he said yeah i haven't cried this much since he has known me.
in other news
my mil arrived last sunday and she looked after emily yesterday so j and i could go out for some alone time, which was a relief. we went to mordialloc beach in the arvo and went to watch the secret life of pets in the evening. it's a bit of a dilemma trying to decide if i want some of that sort of relief, or if i just want to sleep when i don't have to watch emily.
tomorrow is a big day for us. j has his GP information session in churchill in the morning, and then we're going for jon and aster's wedding in the arvo. was thinking of dropping by warragul on the way back so everyone at work can meet emily, but we'll have to see, depending on her feeding and how cranky she is. i hope i won't have to spend most of the ceremony trying to feed and settle her also. >.< haven't tried her wedding outfit out so i hope it fits ha. probably should bring a change of clothes as well in case... the nappy bag is going to be extra full tomorrow.
people say it gets better when they're 3-4 months old. 5 weeks down, another 7 to go...
2:03 pm
20160901
more new mum updates.
yesterday someone (who shall not be named) asked me why i was still fat. :( :( :( a rather insensitive question to ask, i thought... anyway. i gained 10kg while i was pregnant, which is on the lower side of normal for my BMI. i've since lost about 7kg, so i still have an extra 3kg on board, and a bit of a belly too... but it's still less than a month since emily was born, so i guess that's okay... right? :(
the last couple of nights emily has developed an aversion to going to sleep in her bed at night. so night feeds already take forever, and then after that she's wide awake and will refuse to settle in her bed. so that means i have to carry her or just let her lie on me until she's sleepy/ sleeping, then transfer her to the cot. sometimes unsuccessfully too. which means i am sleep deprived++ now. i think it's partly because we've been letting her sleep in her swing in the living room during the day. so now i'm trying to get her to sleep in her bed during the day too. and because j is sleeping in the same room as us, and he's working now, i kind of have to pick her up once she starts crying, as opposed to letting her cry a bit and see if she self settles.
signed up for a new parent group which is facilitated by the council. though i'm not sure if i will be able to make it in the end hmm.
the other day i was in kmart trying on a bra (my old ones all don't fit anymore). j called me (while i had the new bra on) to ask where i was, and i said i was in the fitting room and was going to come out soon. put down the phone, took off the bra, and there was milk literally spilling onto my clothes. my first thought was, what in the world is happening? then i realised that i'd had a let down for some unknown reason. sigh. this breastfeeding thing is a messy and painful business.
started feeding emily at 1.30pm, finished at around 2.30pm, put her in bed shortly after, and now, 40 mins later, she is still awake. zzz.
j is working today too so i will (probably) be going to lg myself. first time going out with emily on my own. sort of, if you can consider lg "out".
the families are organising a sort of full moon thing for emily when we're in sg (though she will be nearly 2 months old by then). j mentioned that he will leave it to me to meet up with our old hope church friends so they can meet emily... i think at the rate things are going, if anyone wants to meet em, they will have to come to me. i don't think i'm going to have the energy to organise meet ups and actually go out to meet people on top of all the administrative stuff i have to do (applying for her citizenship etc).
okay i think she is finally asleep. and i managed to not pick her up at all. yay. must be thankful for the little victories. the days are long but the years are short, they say. the days are definitely going by slowly, especially since she's become a bit more difficult to manage. but she's already 3.5 weeks old and in 5 days she'll be a whole month old. crazy.
oh yes it's the first day of spring today!
3:27 pm