#fredspawn

[thunderheadfred]

Everything went just as planned and I had a fully unmedicated water birth thanks pretty much entirely to a two-hour Thich Nhat Hanh video on repeat plus a lot of primal screaming. Baby arrived at 3:42pm and everyone is doing great. No major tearing or complications for either of us. It couldn’t have gone better.

The nurses took about five trillion candid photos of us and these two snaps in particular made me die laughing. Sorry baby, your parents are just Like That.

Welcome to Earth, kiddo

[thunderheadfred]

Trying not to let it get to me but I’m not doing a great job. The chronic fatigue + breastfeeding combo is brutal. I can feel postpartum depression creeping up on me despite my SSRI and all the coping skills in the world. It’s a vicious cycle. No energy to enjoy happy baby time. Only awake for being screamed at or painfully fed upon. I’m so tired I don’t even wake up when baby cries anymore. Splitting headaches most of the time, whole body inflammation and soreness. Feeling like I am burdening partner with taking care of me and baby, like I’m barely doing my part.

Thankfully partner is helping with everything and isn’t an asshole, but it’s getting kind of nuts in my brain. Idk. It might work better for me to pump exclusively? At least that would be on a predictable schedule that I could try to sleep around? But I feel guilty, or like if I do anything except breastfeed, I’m doing it wrong and denying baby something critical. Which is nonsense I know. But. Just. Zero brain left.

I should be catching up on Dakota to go back to classes in the fall, but I can’t do anything except feed baby and sleep badly. I’ve done maybe ten rows of knitting since coming home from the hospital. I tried to cook breakfast today just to do anything different, and now I feel like someone beat me up and threw me off a Chinese squid boat.

[thunderheadfred]

Four weeks old and baby is already getting potty trained, lol. (Not really) but we’re trying elimination communication and so far it’s easy as can be. She hates wetting her diaper, so when she gets fussy we just hold her over a little potty and let her do her thing. Nothing complicated to it. She was already peeing whenever we took her diaper off and making a mess, so this just makes life way easier.

We’ve been using cloth diapers and using the potty also makes a huge difference in the amount of laundry; turns out humans are born with the “would rather not sit in pee” setting switched on by default. I’m shocked this isn’t standard leaving-the-hospital information. The potty isn’t as convenient as diapers for like, going out and about. But at home????? I wish I’d known about this from day one.

After a few days of minor constipation, Partner won the prize of getting baby to poo in the potty. He immediately devolved into Niles Crane, first bragging about his skills, and then absolutely panicking when she continued pooing (and puking) on the changing table.

She got a bath afterwards.

[thunderheadfred]

The amount of joy my baby’s little mushroom binkie gives me cannot be overstated

[thunderheadfred]

My out of state in-laws feel “left out” from our baby’s life but also won’t commit to come to her baptism and baby shower - even with two months notice. Somehow my partner is the bad guy for this. Make it make sense.

[thunderheadfred]

Baby is going through another cognitive leap (smooth transitions) and is in the fussy phase. Currently a velcro baby and a nonstop spit-up fountain. A sad, slimy little snail who shall not accept anything except snuggling in her own filth trail on one of her parents.

On the plus side, she's sleeping like a champion. A professional. NINE CONTINUOUS HOURS last night, without a peep. She doesn't even cry when she wakes up in the morning. She just... wakes up and wiggles around, sucks on her thumb, maybe makes a little creaky sound? Boobie please? And when I go to pick her up, first thing in the morning before the sun is even up... She's just BEAMING, smiling ear to ear with her eyes all crinkly, happy happy happy. Good morning!!! I love her so much.

[thunderheadfred]

Thích Nhất Hạnh (author of Living Buddha, Living Christ, as well as a peace activist and great teacher) got me through 12+ hours of unmedicated labor with just one Dharma Talk and a simple mantra for children to sing. This played on repeat in our delivery room. I was familiar with it already (thus why I chose it for labor support) but my partner had never heard him speak before and was really swept away. Even the midwives seemed to get something out of it. Maybe more of us can transform great suffering into great compassion, or at the very least understand that suffering does not have to beget more suffering. Even the Buddha suffers in his enlightenment. We have a choice,and we can make more of ourselves.

Anyway this guy single-handedly helped me have a baby from beyond the grave so that’s pretty cool and I appreciate the assist ✌️

[thunderheadfred]

God is good.

I will try to be worthy of this gift for the rest of my life.

I have no specific religion, but I am ecstatic with gratitude and love. The Creator and many loved ones have protected and guided me to this place. I am struggling to articulate it on four days with virtually no sleep and a flood of hormones, but. It’s there. Gratitude and awe. Awareness that my world has grown infinitely larger.

Once we finally settled in at home together, it all came out of me. Nine months of doubts and anxieties and bodily weakness. I cried and cried and cried my thanks while holding her in my arms, and she never even stirred. I am so grateful that she arrived safe and healthy and beautifully calm. She is peace and brightness and softness and light.

Thank you to the universe for upending my life last year, for guiding me towards this child. I never imagined I could feel this much love or hope or certainty.

For all the generations that protected us on this long journey, thank you for everything. What a gift to be here, now, with all of you. With her.

God is good. Thank you for my Alice.

[thunderheadfred]

I see pediatrician today and my doctor tomorrow and will talk about this with them, but in the meantime

I’m going insane. I’m at some kind of breaking point. All I do is feed this baby. Once an hour most of the day. Lucky if I get 2-3 hours break at night, maybe. She’s hungry all the time. I cannot be making enough milk. I tried pumping exclusively yesterday and couldn’t keep up. Went through all the milk I’d saved, and then all the milk I made that day. I had a few sessions where basically nothing came out at all. And all the advice is just “feed and pump MORE”

I CAN’T. It’s all I’m doing already. All I do is feed her and feed her and feed her. Now I’m in a nightmare cycle of feeding constantly and pumping between, and she’s still hungry. I can’t sleep. My entire body feels empty. I’m so fucking tired.

What the fuck am I doing wrong

[thunderheadfred]

lil tater tot

[thunderheadfred]

partner was taken aback when I randomly used Baby's feet on her chunky 5-note plastic piano to play the Choral from Beethoven's 9th and he choked on his coffee like "how the hell are you doing that???" and I said nothing, just kept playing with Baby while internally screaming that I was a musically precocious child who had a mental breakdown and hasn't touched an instrument in decades because addiction and mental illness took huge chunks of joy out of my life and I never figured out how to get them back and now I'm intimidated and embarrassed by what it might mean to regrow myself into wholeness for my child, I mean am I ready to do that work on top of caring for her? ha ha aaaaa look at her fat little feet dancing on the rainbow piano it's fine

[thunderheadfred]

the gummy bear to fashion model pipeline

(my uterus)

[thunderheadfred]

lil burp face

[thunderheadfred]

Chillin outside with fresh baby on a cool summer day 😎

[thunderheadfred]

Oh the agony of being a little baby

Fussing and crying, helplessly watching your fully grown adult caregivers run around at 2 am trying to figure out what’s wrong… listening to their increasingly desperate Simlish nonsense as it takes them two godforsaken hours to discover you just had one single booger in your nose

[thunderheadfred]

breastfeeding continues to go terribly. I keep trying it once a day because when I DO successfully breastfeed, my supply goes up, and I'm already struggling to make enough milk even though we're mixing 50/50 with formula. I have low production and we've never had a good latch on my left side; I've always needed a shield. Even that doesn't work sometimes. Meanwhile my right side is excruciatingly painful because of the biopsy tracker. Every time she latches successfully on that side it feels like she's sucking glass through my nipple.

I've never had a forceful let down until this morning, when an already upset Baby got sprayed in the back of the throat and detached screaming and frightened. She never cries like she does when I'm trying to breastfeed her. It's a pained, uncontrollable cry, and it is the WORST FEELING IMAGINABLE. It often brings ME to tears, because I can't help her. I just make it worse. All I want to do is cuddle and comfort her, and the only thing that will work is usually a bottle, which feels defeating, like my body is broken

I ordered a different kind of nipple shield (the haakaa one with a bottle-like shape) and I'm hoping that helps, but it won't get here until Monday