Thursday, July 26, 2012

Baby Not-So-Blues

After Miles and Vivienne were born, I was extremely emotional.  I thought that maybe I was going to have postpartum depression.  Luckily, after about 10 days, my hormones seemed to balance out and I got back to normal.  With Evelyn, so far, this has been much easier emotionally and physically.  That's probably partly due to the fact that there is only one baby to care for, and a lot of the stresses that were there for Miles and Vivienne's birth weren't there for this birth.

For example, Miles was in the Special Care Nursery for 24 hours before we could bring him back to our room.  On his birthday, we weren't able to hold him in our arms - we could only reach through the isolette to touch his arms and legs while he had the CPAP machine on his face.

Each time I nursed Miles and Vivienne, we used a supplemental nursing system (SNS), meaning that we had to feed one baby at a time and wash the SNS in between.  After that, I pumped for 15 minutes after each feeding.  This added hours each day and night to the process of merely feeding the kids (hours that my body probably would have much preferred to sleep).  With Evelyn, she just wakes up in the middle of the night, and then I nurse her for about 12 minutes and she falls back asleep.

There are so many differences in having a single baby this time.  So far, I think it has been much easier on my mind and body and allowed us to integrate this precious little girl into our family so smoothly.

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