Life with two children

Wow, I have been a mother of 2 for two weeks now and let me tell you it is a roller coaster. I knew it would be hard but some days I have seriously had my doubts as to whether or not I could make it through the day. Here have been some of the many challenges that I have been facing:

-Now that things are starting to look up in this area I think I am more willing to talk about it. So this time around I was determined to breastfeed. With Audree she wouldn't latch on and after 5 weeks of pumping and trying to get her to latch on I gave up(and I wasn't very diligent so my milk slowly just went away) and just started giving her formula. Well after paying for formula I knew that I wanted to try harder so that we wouldn't have to spend all that money this time around. Honestly, that is my only beef with formula but there is an insane amount of pressure all around me to breastfeed and through all the pain it has caused me a lot of grief. I feel like I have to do it for Mark so that he doesn't have to worry about money all the time, I feel like I have to do it because my sister in-law does it and well she really knows how to make people feel crappy for not doing things perfectly and in her way, of course I feel like I should do it for Arya and I feel like I need to do it because other people manage to do it so why can't I?

Well the whole experience up to now has been a nightmare. The moment my milk came in Arya decided that she no longer wanted to latch on...so everytime we tried it was wrong and of course my nipples got raw and bloody and well just freaking painful(not to mention that for some reason everytime my milk would come in I would get freezing cold and I'd only have like 2 minutes where I felt normal and I wasn't cold or they didn't hurt). It got to the point where I just wimped out and pumped for 3 or 4 days straight without even trying to breastfeed her. After my nipples had a chance to heal I tried to pick it up again and realized that I had not been pumping often enough(I was doing it 3-4 hours when she finished feeding as opposed to 2-3 hours from when she starting feeding...OH MY CRAP all I do right now is breastfeed!!) So now we are not sure that my milk is coming in enough to sustain her. I am trying to do what I can to revamp the milk production but I don't know if it is going to work.

This whole breastfeeding experience has been one of the hardest things for me. Some days I wasn't sure if me, Audree or Arya had cried harder. I know that I definitely cried longer. But things are starting to look better in some areas. Today Arya has done really well with latching on. When we started it was like a 20 minute fight to get her on right now it only takes her a few tries, sometimes even just one. The pain is improving too, it's gotten to the point where it only hurts when she first latches on and then it gets better. Hopefully it will continue improving. As for the milk production...well I am not sure how that will go. My mother in-law is going to give me a homeopathic remedy that she has that's supposed to help boost milk production and I am going to try harder to drink lots of fluids and I may need to pump after Arya feeds for extra stimulation.

We went in for Arya's 2 week well baby check-up and my concerns about Arya getting enough seemed to be confirmed. She has not made it back up to her birth weight like they like. We have to go back in next week for a weight check and if she isn't gaining weight then we will discuss what measures need to be taken. But in the meantime I'm hoping this homeopathic remedy will help boost production and I need to make sure I am getting enough fats in my diet. It's possible that I am subconciously "dieting" when I am not supposed to be. I usually just eat when I am hungry but it's possible it isn't enough for Arya. Either way I am praying and crossing my fingers that this will work out. I've made it this far and it will just kill me if it doesn't work out after all the hell I feel like I went through to get here.

-Now onto miss Audree. Well she loves Arya, gives her kisses, likes to touch her and when we aren't looking she hangs out with her and does things she probably thinks are helpful but really aren't. Despite her love for her little sister she has become quite the terror. OH MY HECK there have seriously been moments that I thought she would cause me to lose it. Because I am pretty much nursing all the time Audree takes it as an opportunity to get into absolutely everything. And I mean everything. After about the 100th time of getting after her for climbing into the baby's swing I just broke down and cried. She thinks she is entitled to everything that is for Arya. We even got her her own chair to sit in and still she thinks she can sit in Arya's swing and bouncer :S If I am not watching her for like 3 seconds I'll look over and she's planted herself in the swing!! Sometimes I really think not the sleep deprivation or the sore boobs, but Audree will send me off my rocker. I love her but seriously she has become quite the terd. It's times like these that I really wish I had someone here to help me out and pay extra attention to Audree. Unfortunately I have no one and have to tough it out on my own. We'll figure it out though I am sure. As for now Audree's brain will just have to be mush from all the tv/movies until things get simpler and we all adjust(and hopefully the weather finally warms up so we can play at the park).

-Arya sleeps a lot better when she is either propped on our arm or laying on her belly on top of us. I usually can't sleep on my back but somehow I manage to fall asleep on my back with her cuddled on me like that. Seems sweet right? Well it really isn't because I know it's a bad groove to get into. I do NOT want her getting used to being in bed with us because after 6 weeks to 2 months she will not be sharing our room with us anymore. Also it causes me and Mark to have lots of shoulder and neck pains which is less then ideal.

-Sleep deprivation...need I say more? I was bad last night and went 6 hours without pumping or breastfeeding because I felt way to exhausted to get up. I know that doing that is not helping me when it comes to increasing my milk supply but somehow I just couldn't get myself up :( Doing stuff like this leads me to feel like I'm a total screw up. Which will lead me to my next challenge.

-I feel like a total screw up! I feel like I have made every wrong decision and it's my fault that everything is the way it is. It's my fault that Arya was struggling to latch on, it's my fault my milk supply is low and all I am struggling with was self induced and I really feel crappy a lot of the time. I'm hoping and praying that I didn't screw things up too much, I really don't want to disappoint anyone, especially Mark.

-(Just FYI it is possible that this next section will be TMI for some people, feel free to skip it if you don't like the topic). I hate my boobs! I feel like they are so out of proportion with my body. When I am not pregnant or breastfeeding I wear and A cup...well now that I am all milked up I had to buy myself a D cup!! What's worse is I can't wear my bra with the underwire and support because everytime I do I almost instantly get clogged ducts! And that hurts. So I have to wear my supportless, wireless bra and I feel gross and ugly and saggy and all that stuff that are the reasons I only wear bras with uber support.

I also hate that I can barely stand the flow of the shower running over my chest and how uncomfortable it is when anything touches my chest and really I just have to keep telling myself it will get better and the uber sensitivity will go away. Will it?

-My house is a tornado! And really that's all that needs to be said on this subject.

Those seem to be the main things I am struggling with. I don't know if it seems like a lot to you but it is a lot to me. But don't worry, it not all bad. In fact there is quite a lot of good. Here are the things I love about right now:

-I love how tiny Arya is! I love holding her tiny little body and cuddling it. I love her tiny little face, tiny little hands and tiny little feet. Sometimes I look at her and think I have never seen anything more perfect in this world. She is the only thing right now that really helps me realize why I wanted to have another child.

-Sometimes Arya starts crying so hard that her voice gets really high and I can't help but giggle because the sound she makes is so cute. Totally opposite of Audree, Arya loves her binky. She wants to be sucking on something all the time and since my boobs can't handle taking that much of a beating we give her the binky and it usually helps her fall asleep and calm down.

-When we change Audree's diaper we lay the diaper out on the ground and she comes to us. Well she has just started coming and sitting her butt right on the opened diaper. It's pretty dang cute! She's always been good with getting her diaper changed but the excitement she gets out of coming and sitting on the diaper is great! She's also gotten pretty good at letting us know when she has "poo poos"(which just means she wants her diaper changed). She's getting so big!

-I love dressing up my girls!
I mean just look at them! Aren't they the cutest?!?! I sure think so.

-And of course I'd be an ingrate if I didn't mention all that Mark does to help me out. He get's up in the middle of the night to feed Arya and lets me get some sleep. He's bought me lots of food when nothing around here sounds good. He washes all the bottles and pump stuff multiple times a day(though that is becoming less necessary now that we are figuring things out), he gave me a nice long massage last night and he's my emotional support when I feel like things are just a little too hard.

This has been an incredibly long post so I'll wrap it up with the stats from Arya's 1 and 2 week checkup:

Arya at 1 week old

7 lbs. 1 oz, 27th%
20.2 inches long, 70th%
14 inch head circumference 61st%

Arya at 2 weeks old

7 lbs 5 oz, 21st%
22 inches long, 95th%
14 inch head circumference 42nd%
(the doctor made a joke that somebody must have stretched her because her height shot up)