Every beginning is full of trials, tests and sometimes mistakes.
That was my biggest fear when I brought home our little daughter Alex.
I couldn't stay in a hospital for long, I wanted to be home in my environment, my bed and with my husband.
The hospital wasn't bad, don't get me wrong, I even liked the food we had there. Just the room there is shared with 3 more ladies. One waiting for the baby to come and two after C-sections, so they were there for a few days already.
When I arrived, I felt like my baby is the only one crying. The mums with the kids already knew what to do, but everything was completely new to me. I tried hard, but couldn't get Alex attached for her feeds. She was eating from me but just like for 5 minutes, then she let go and I wasn't able to get her back. I was lucky, I had plenty of the first milk and my real milk started to come after 3 days, but by that time I was home alone and much calmer. I wasn't under pressure to keep the baby quiet because somebody else was sleeping next to her.
It took me only a day home to get use to the breastfeeding and Alex was getting better in it too.
In a week or so, she was feeding regularly every 2-3 hours for about 20 minutes.
The public nurse visited us a few times and was very pleased with Alex's weight gain. So was I.
I did everything with my husband. He was a great help. I had the baby blues so I was a bit more emotional and he had to look after me as well. I know, I should have been strong, but say this to your hormones. The baby blues were a bit longer than what they told us in the hospital. I cried a lot, then started to laugh. I just had to look at Alex to feel all the love.
When someone told me she's beautiful, I cried, of course from happiness, but I also couldn't believe how well did we mix our baby :)
When we saw her on the 3D scan she looked exactly like me, but when she was born, she was completely different, I could see my hubby in her, he could see me in her and nobody was able to tell who she looks like more.
During the first weeks I was afraid of hurting her. I didn't want to change her clothes. Change the nappy wasn't a problem, but to put a body suit over her head was the problem. I was scared for a few days but got use to it, the stronger she become, the better I felt to do everything with her.
She hated to lie on her tummy, so there wasn't much of tummy time, she was able to roll herself back to back, well it didn't last for long, but then I had to go to physio with my little problem of stress incontinence and she checked Alex as well and said we have to do the tummy time more, that our little one wasn't holding her head properly, she had weak muscles.
I got stressed out, we supposed to go for another development check to the nurse and I was afraid what she's going to say about it.
I started to exercise with Alex on her tummy, even if she was on my belly, every free minute I tried. The development check was 5 days from the physio and surprise, Alex was perfect. She got so much better and we knew we have to continue, like this.
I was still breastfeeding. It was hard sometimes, especially at the beginning before my nipples got use to the sucking, they got sore, even bleeding a little bit. I bought the silicone cups to cover them during the feed, but I couldn't use them. Didn't know how and it was more painful with the cup than without, so I put it back into the box. The next day everything was OK, the pain was gone, the baby was happy and I was happy and calmer too. I used the Lanolin nipple cream and I think that was one of the things that helped with the healing.
During the growth spurts it was a different story. I was really exhausted, Alex was feeding nearly every hour during the day and night. I thought about expressing and let my hubby give her the milk in bottle, but then I remembered that the growth spurts last only a few days and are very important for the milk supply as the baby is adjusting the quality and quantity of the milk. The less she would feed directly from me, the longer is can take. The longest growth spurt we had with her was about 3-4 days. Once she got the right amount and quality of the milk she slept longer and sometime stretched during the night for 4 hours. That felt like blessing.
During the first 3 months we had some family visits and everyone loved her. She started to smile at us and searched for us around the room with her eyes. It was the greatest moment of my life when she found me the 1st time and smiled at me.
We even tried the communication nappy free technique. It was great at the beginning. We could recognise when she cried for food and when she wanted to use the bathroom, so we trained her to do her wee and poop to the toilet. Of course it doesn't work like with big kids or adults, you have to hold the baby above sink, toilet, bucket or outside as they do what they want to do. We saved a lot of money this way, because she didn't use so many nappies. Unfortunately towards the 3rd month she started to get very active and heavy as well, so we stopped. It was for better good of all. But I'm glad we tried it and we saved her from nappy rush etc.
Alex loved her bath time, we set up our bedtime routine with feed, play, baby massage, bath and another feed. It was great and she loved splashing in her bath. We were always completely wet after her bath, that most of the time we had to change as well. That time we decided that it will be great to take Alex for baby swimming lessons, but about this later.
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