The First Six Weeks

Dear Ruthie,

Happy six-week birthday dearest! Every day is a milestone, every minute something new from you, you are changing so fast. You have grown 4 inches in length and gained three pounds since you were born.

You at six weeks - almost 22 inches long and 9 lbs, 4 oz.

You're at six weeks now, but I've been meaning to tell you about the beginning of your life for the last month. So much has been happening, I've put it off, so we're going to talk about the last six weeks all in one long post! Here we go:

We spent a luxurious first few days of your life lounging in bed, nursing and sleeping. Your dad catered to our every need. 

Getting to know each other.

Your midwife Janelle came by at 24 hours and 72 hours after birth to check on us. She weighed you and took your temp, and talked to me about how I was feeling and how breast feeding was going, offering loads of pointers. 

Janelle weighing you.

Our midwives continued to treat us for six weeks after birth. They came to the house to check on us because under their approach to treatment, a mom and baby shouldn't go far from bed for the first couple of weeks after birth, even to appointments. I couldn't walk far anyway. I don't know if it's totally normal, but my pelvic floor muscles were so sore from birth that I couldn't be upright for more than a minute or two. But the first day I felt great, probably still riding high on endorphins, and your grandparents, your aunt and uncle, and my aunt and uncle all came over to meet you. 

Oma, Opa, Uncle Grady, Aunt Jamie, my Aunt Judy and Uncle David all came over on the day you were born to welcome you into the world.

You were barely 18 hours old. I was up, had showered, and we all had dinner together. Your Aunt Jamie and Uncle Grady brought you a birthday cake that said "Happy 0th!"

You and your birthday cake on your Birth Day.

We were all riding high on the thrill of your arrival, and had fun taking pics and spending time with family to celebrate our new addition.

18 hours of being parents and we're loving it!

I think I overdid it, celebrating your Birth Day, because the next day the soreness really hit me. It was a generalized pain, like a severely bruised muscle, and because it's the pelvic floor which supports the weight of my torso, it even hurt to sit up. Sitting caused it to throb, so lying down was the only way to go. I learned my lesson from being up too much the first day and obeyed midwives' orders better for the next few days. We didn't leave bed much after the first party.

Hanging with mom.

You have been such a lovely, happy, content baby. I'll admit, you have your moments, usually a squawk or cry when you have to burp or fart.

It's true, sometimes you cry.

You also have sweet expressions in your repertoire. 

You make us laugh all the time.

Napping in your Boppy pillow.

After a few days of staying in bed, I was driven out by boredom. You and I moved upstairs to the couch where we could better supervise dad's running of the household. The couch is where we camped out for almost two weeks, which is how long it took me to be comfortable standing for longer than 10 minutes. After a few days of lying on the couch I was going stir-crazy, so we decided to take our first car ride with you. 

Your first car ride, at about one week old.

We buckled you into the car seat, and you were nearly invisible in its deep fold. You seemed fine, but I wasn't. It was too uncomfortable for me to sit up and ride, so we took a five-minute drive around the neighborhood and soon returned home.

Soon riding in the car didn't bother me so much. So when you were two weeks old, we took you to your first restaurant. It was my first time out too, and before we ate, we walked around the block. That was the longest I had been on my feet since your birth! We dined with you on your dad's front in a wrap. It felt great to be out and about again.

Out to dinner: you spent it in the wrap.

As far as postpartum issues go, I felt pretty normal, no emotional swings or blues, and we were getting normal amounts of sleep each night. Maybe it was luck, or it might be because Janelle dried and capsulated your placenta, and I ate the pills. 

Your placenta made into pills that I took.

Sounds gross, I know. But the theory behind placentaphagy is this: the placenta is chock full of hormones like progesterone that it produces during pregnancy, and when it exits the body, those hormone levels drop precipitously. This sudden lack of hormones is thought to possibly be a contributor to postpartum emotional swings and depression, so re-ingesting the placenta is thought to help ease the sudden drop-off in hormone levels. Plus it's full of iron and other vitamins and minerals, so at least nutritious. Modern humans are the only mammals that don't eat their placentas, so I figured ingesting it must be part of nature's plan that we, for whatever reason, have discarded as unnecessary. I talked to a couple of other moms who said that they noticed a huge difference between pregnancies when they took placenta pills and ones where they hadn't. I figured it couldn't hurt.

I took four pills with each meal. My supply lasted a couple of weeks, until the dogs got the bottle and ate all my placenta pills while we were out at dinner. I was bummed, I liked taking them! 

You and I did fine with breast feeding, although it took me a while to teach you to latch so that my nipples wouldn't get sore. You gained weight rapidly the first week, but plateaued the second. Elizabeth thought it was a problem with my milk supply, so got me taking herbs, teas, and drinking beer. But my breasts were swollen with milk - that wasn't it. You just weren't eating as much. I learned how to keep you awake for a whole feeding, and to wake you up if you fell asleep by burping you or changing your diaper, then feeding more. Burping was a huge revelation for me, and I discovered you are a burpy baby. You must be burped part way through a feeding, or you won't finish. Once I learned how to burp you, you fed constantly (when you weren't burping) and started gaining weight quickly.

We saw your Oma and Opa almost every week, once at a dinner at Uncle Grady and Aunt Jamie's house, and a couple times they came and stayed with us. They adore you and when they are here, the camera shutter is constantly snapping. It's the source of most of our pictures of you. 

With your Opa Pete.

Your Oma Ruth has come several times by herself during the week to help me out with cleaning, shopping and taking care of you. She even came one day just so I could go get a haircut!

With your Oma Ruth.

Your Grandma Sharon from Portland came to visit too, when you were a month old. She could not wait to visit you. She spent four days of doting on you, interspersed with some Boulder highlights. 

Gram Sharon rocking you to sleep.

September colors near our home in Boulder.

All of us with your Gram Sharon.

Your Grandpa Barkley even called from his new home in the Philippines to check and see how his new granddaughter is doing. He visited you while you were still in my belly, when I was five months pregnant, to say good-bye to us before his big move. Maybe we will get to visit him there someday.

Your Grandpa Jim's visit before he moved to the Philippines.

You've had normal developmental achievements, like being able to follow our hand at a few weeks old. It helped if we held it against a bright window, and your eyes would track its movements.

Your eyes tracking my hand. Kind of.

You 'smiled' from your first days, but recently, at about five weeks, have been smiling back at us when we smile at you. It turns out this is harder to capture on camera than we thought, but we will work on it.

You at four days old: smiley baby!

We've taken you to Cheyenne a few times to stay with your Oma and Opa. About 50% of the time you can make the trip (1 hour 45 min) sleeping in your seat. The other 50% you wake every few minutes and scream and scream until we pull over and address your discomfort. Usually that is hunger, but sometimes we have trouble figuring out what it is. It makes for a long drive to Cheyenne, stopping that often, and now it is something we try to avoid.

With you in Cheyenne at four weeks.

When you were five weeks old,  a bunch of Oma's friends in Cheyenne threw you a Sip-n-See party, a baby shower with wine and tapas. It was your first major social event, and I asked Elizabeth about exposing you to the germs carried by 40 cooey and eager women. She said you should be fine with five weeks of my antibodies in you. You were quite the charmer, awake and alert, and not fussy at all.

Your first party: tapas and wine!

Everyone gave you such nice things.

Our appointments with your midwives continued to be a pleasure and source of much information. In deciding to have a home birth, one woman had told us that the care leading up to birth is the same as the medical establishment, but that it's the post-natal care that really makes the homebirth model stand out. Under state law, your midwives can care for you until you are six weeks old, and the continuity of care truly was magnificent. It was so amazing to have care providers who were so familiar with my pregnancy and birth to continue caring for us after birth. They made sure we had all the important bases covered, that we were establishing good sleeping, eating and nursing habits, and that you weren't developing any serious complications by checking all your vitals at each visit.  

Elizabeth and you at an appointment at our house.

We had our last appointment with them yesterday at Elizabeth's office. We gave them gifts and we all teared up, or at least all the women did, at our care coming to an end. But we did discuss family planning with them, so who knows, we might be back in their care soon.

Our last appointment with Janelle and Elizabeth at six weeks.

You sleep with us at night, which I absolutely love. You start off against your dad, and then wake up about five hours later to eat, and we move you over to nurse with me. I hook you up and am generally back asleep before you finish eating. We're all getting a great night's sleep, so haven't had any of the tiredness that people always talk about with a newborn. 

Falling asleep with dad.

I know my subconscious would never let me roll over on you in my sleep. In fact, I sleep better knowing you're near me. You seem to sleep better too. I imagine you get comfort and security feeling our warmth and breath near you. We'll see how the end game goes, weaning you off this, but for now I believe this is how it is supposed to be. We believe it nurtures you and provides you with a sense of comfort and security. I like the thought that you are growing up with the feeling that we are there for you. And of course we always will be.

Love, 

Mom