Baby

6 c-section recovery tips

Sep212012

Our Hayes was born via c-section because he was breech, and because I’d had such a horrible time with Hudson’s delivery. I ended up really liking the c-section.

I know, who says they actually like major abdominal surgery? But since I’ve delivered babies both ways, I guess I can say that I liked the c-section. The pain was manageable and I felt prepared for the recovery. I received some great tips from women and figured out a few things for myself during my experience.

1. Bring lots of pillows from home. You’ll have very limited use of your abdominal muscles, if you have any muscles at all! Having lots of pillows to prop yourself up, will make it easier to reach things in bed and easier to get out of bed when it’s time. You’ll need as much support as possible!

2. Belly wraps are helpful! Having a belly wrap will help hold everything together. It keeps everything tight, so when you laugh or sneeze or stand up, you have just a little bit of extra support in your belly.

3. When it’s time to get up and walk, do it! I was required to be hooked up to the IV for a full day, but the morning that the nurses came and unhooked my IVs, it was time to get up and take a walk. The first walk was to the restroom. I can just remember being so relieved to have gotten the two scariest things out of the way: 1. standing/walking and 2. going to the restroom. Check and check!

4. Walk often. Actually just go ahead and take at least three “laps” around the hospital floor per day. This will help build up your abdominal strength again. It will be so difficult to stand and move without the use of those muscles, but it does come back. Walking often also helps you feel better a lot faster.

5. Other than your couple of times per day walks, take it easy. Let people bring things to you. Don’t lift anything heavier than the baby. You want to heal quickly without complication, so just listen to your body and take it easy.

6. Take a shower as soon as possible and put on your own comfy pajamas. Getting clean will just make you feel so much better. Make sure you have someone there to help you, because standing is just difficult. Bring pajama pants with a low, loose waist band that won’t hurt or irritate your incision. I brought all my favorite toiletries from home and my favorite maternity pajamas that were easy to nurse in. It just felt so good to get clean and comfortable.

I really had a great c-section experience. The pain was manageable (thanks to about four days of pain meds) and I was up and back to normal after about a week. I’m thankful that other moms gave me so many great tips to use as I prepared for my surgery and recovery.

What tips would you add to this list to offer to a new mom recovering from a c-section?

Check out the Huggies Mommy Answers Facebook app and find more posts from bloggers sharing their experiences of motherhood on the Huggies page on BlogHer.com. †

not your mama's pregnancy

Filed Under: Baby, Pregnancy

Sep172012

My mom and I are really close, and we talked all throughout my pregnancy. We’d discuss symptoms and crazy cravings. I’d call her and tell her things about what my body was doing that I’d never consider telling another person because it was just too crazy! And she got it.

She’d listen and comfort and make me realize that I’m not the first or the last person to be pregnant, so I should just chill out. It was funny, though, because sometimes when I’d tell her about a doctor’s appointment, she’d tell me that she had no clue what I was talking about.

Things have changed so much in the time since she was pregnant with my brother or me. There are so many more dietary restrictions and things to avoid. And when the baby came? Wow. We just had to educate each other.

I’d fill her in on all the new stuff and she’d tell me that was a silly idea. And then she’d get on her iPhone and start coming up with random advice from random bloggers about what to do when your baby won’t sleep through the night.

Throughout my pregnancy, I heard some of these things.

“Back when I was pregnant….”

“We didn’t worry about deli meat.”– There was no listeria concerns. Why is it that all we want is a cold turkey sandwich? I’ll admit, I had my share of sandwiches.

“We didn’t get to find out the sex of the baby.”– I still think this would be a lot of fun to not even have the option to find out. Maybe if we have a third baby, I’ll try to avoid finding out just for one great surprise on delivery day!

“I drank two cups of coffee a day and ate all the chocolate I wanted.”– I guess the restrictions on caffeine have changed a lot, too! I still had my cup of coffee each morning and the occasional Diet Coke, since it was the only thing that settled my stomach.

“Back when my babies were newborns…”

“We didn’t swaddle. You slept on your tummy.”– When my mom found out that swaddling can help calm a crying baby and help babies sleep, she was fascinated. My mom became the swaddle master.

“We didn’t use schedules. We just fed you when you cried.”– This is another one that we didn’t stick to, and both boys ended up on a decent 2-3 hour schedule, but we also just had to feed them when they cried. I can remember one day that Hudson was so upset, and my mom was just Googling all kinds of parenting books to help us figure out a good option for Hudson.

“We didn’t have big swings or a pack n play.”– She definitely didn’t have her house overrun with baby gear everywhere. Swings, play gyms, pack ‘n plays, bouncers. There’s stuff everywhere! “We didn’t have bottle warmers” – That bottle warmer really wasn’t all that useful anyway.

Some of the changes are so interesting. Some are obviously more serious than others. But it’s fun to think that with or without all the baby gear, and add in a cup of coffee or two or three, we’re all just raising our babies and learning as we go.

And I can’t think of anyone more excited for the arrival of a sweet new bundle than a grandmother.

What are some of the things your mom or veteran mom friends said to you about the new pregnancy rules and new “trends” for babies?

Check out the Huggies Mommy Answers Facebook app and find more posts from bloggers sharing their experiences of motherhood on the Huggies page on BlogHer.com.

the sweetest sound I've ever heard

Filed Under: Baby, Pregnancy

Aug312012

In the fall of 2008, I can remember sitting at my desk at work and just feeling “off.” I’ve blogged about this “off” feeling before. I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach, tired and I was just starving. And I just knew what the only explanation could be.

I left work early that day and walked across the street to the drug store. I snuck back to the right section of the store, and saw that there was a huge selection of home pregnancy tests. I’d never taken a pregnancy test before.

Do you buy the kind that says “pregnant” or “not pregnant” or do you buy the one that shows you a plus sign or minus sign? Or what about the one with two lines? Isn’t this supposed to be a relatively easy, fool-proof process?

I was straight up terrified. I didn’t want to be spotted buying a pregnancy test. I felt like I was still a young girl and I wasn’t supposed to be pregnant yet. But I was a married woman of about five months. We weren’t “ready” for a baby yet. If I avoided taking the test could I stay in denial that things were changing?

(those two care-free newlyweds were about six weeks pregnant didn’t know it)

I picked up three different types of tests and picked up two boxes of each one. Just in case. In case of what? I don’t know, but I’d never taken a test before, so I didn’t want to mess it up.

I went home and decided to go with the “pregnant/not pregnant” test first. I took the test and sat on the bathroom floor waiting for the results. And about twenty seconds later the word “pregnant” showed up on the screen.

My heart started racing and I went through a whole bunch of emotions before calling Todd and asking him to come home from work. The next day I called the doctor to schedule an appointment. They determined that I was probably about seven weeks pregnant and they wanted to see me around 9 weeks.

So I had a couple weeks to just wait and sit with this information. I started taking a prenatal vitamin, started being more mindful of what I was eating and drinking. I cut out the caffeine and read all about what my dietary limitations were.

About a week before my doctor’s appointment, Todd was out of town on business. I went to the restroom and noticed that I was bleeding. A lot. I started to panic and really had no idea what to do. I stayed in the bathroom for a long time waiting to see if it would stop, and it never stopped. So I called the on-call doctor. Through tears, I explained to her what was happening, and she told me to just lie down and come in the next morning.

Todd drove through the night to get home to take me to this appointment that would end up being my first appointment. I told Todd to prepare himself for bad news. I’d been heavily bleeding for twelve hours and I just couldn’t imagine that things could possibly be okay with our baby. We were solemn when we went back to see the ultrasound technician. We told her what had happened, and she told us she’d just take a quick look before we met with the doctor.

And, there, on that huge screen, right next to my face, I could see a little flashing dot…

I immediately knew it was a heart, and there was no doubt that the heart was beating. She turned on the sound and the sound of our baby Hudson’s 8 week old heart filled the room.

And I just lost it and sobbed right there. I believe my exact words were, “I’m stunned! I’m so happy!”

I had given up all hope in those 12 hours that our baby would be okay, and there was his strong, healthy heart just a-beating and his tiny little gummy bear- shaped body, wiggling around on that screen. And in my belly.

What an incredible moment. The moment we first saw our first born and got to see his little heart beating. And hear the sound of life just echoing in the room.

Because of my little scare, I was able to have frequent sonograms and they checked on my little “bleed” spot at every appointment. I was fine and my sweet baby was fine.

Do you remember how you felt when you saw your positive pregnancy test? And how did you feel at your very first doctor’s appointment?

Check out the Huggies Mommy Answers Facebook app and find more posts from bloggers sharing their experiences of motherhood on the Huggies page on BlogHer.com.

interacting with your newborn

Filed Under: Baby, Faith

Aug152012

When I was pregnant with Hudson I got the best unsolicited advice I never knew I needed. It was from my mom’s client at the time and she had recently had her first baby. Her baby was about six months old, and she wanted to pass along some pearls of wisdom from another new mommy.

One of the things she said to me was, “Talk to your baby.” I thought this was funny because, obviously, I would talk to my baby. Don’t we all expect to talk to our babies?

But she was right and her words stuck with me. When Hudson was so tiny that he was just kind of lying on his play mat or sitting in his bouncer, I realized it was up to me to give him some meaningful interactive time.

So I talked to him. When I was cooking supper and he was in his bouncer just looking at me, I’d tell him all about what I was doing. Of course he didn’t understand anything that I was saying. He didn’t know what I meant when I said I was chopping onions or when I told him that the onions are white. He didn’t know what I was saying when I’d tell him why I was washing my hands, but I told him anyway. Just so I could talk to him.

And he’d just look up at me with wide eyes and give me the occasional grin. Eventually he started to “coo” back at me.

When we’d go to the grocery store he would be in his infant carrier and he’d just be looking at me. We’d walk down the canned foods aisle and I’d talk to him about pasta and green beans. When we got to the produce section I’d show him that the cucumbers were green and the carrots were orange. I’d tell him how many carrots I picked up.

I can’t say that this taught him how to count or helped him learn his colors, but it just gave us some interaction with each other. Because he was my buddy. He was my constant companion for outings. He was my cooking buddy and my walking buddy. So I wanted to talk to him about our day and what we were doing. I wanted to tell him all about where we were going and let him look at the dogs we passed on our walks.

At first I thought it sounded silly that this girl advised me to just “talk to your baby.” But it turned out to be a great piece of advice.

But my most favorite way to interact with my babies happens at bed time. When we’re sitting in the rocking chair in the nursery and reading bedtime stories, singing songs, and saying our prayers. Those little moments will be in their memories and especially mine as something we always did together starting when they were just newborns.

What are some meaningful ways that you interact with your babies?

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