It’s so hard to believe already a week has past since Madeline graced us with her presence!  This time last week I was lying in a hospital bed, numbed with an epidural, waiting to become fully dilated.   We were discharged from the ward on Monday evening and finally allowed to go home.

Being on the ward as a new mom is hard.  Visitors were instructed to leave at 8:30pm, leaving us to fend for ourselves in this new state of being.  Nights were long, and oftentimes I was awoken several times an hour by various babies crying on the ward.  If it wasn’t the cries, it was the anxiety: the need to watch Maddie to make sure she was breathing, or to check her to make sure she wasn’t too hot or too cold.  To be in that position, a new mother with a new baby and left to simply “get on with it” was very scary for me.  My mom was in town to help me and teach me how to do this but even she had to leave with the other visitors.  Mornings were a relief as the midwives started coming around again and visitors were allow back on the ward.

Monday we got to come home and what a relief that was.  And Maddie is such a good baby.  She feeds twice during the night, and my  mom wakes up for each feeding with me to lend support. Maddie and I had a bit of trouble with breastfeeding initially, but got it down to an art by day 5 and eliminated the need for formula completely.

It’s amazing to watch her look at things and try to figure them out.  I love looking into her little face and her big blue eyes and kissing her little cheeks and nose. I love the little flirty faces she pulls when looking at you. I love the soft coos she makes when feeding.   And I am in such awe at just how big a change this has been in our lives, and grateful my mom has been here to help me get used to it.

I am still healing.  To use mom’s terminology, I ripped “from bow to stern,” which makes walking and going from sitting to standing painful.  I have my emotional ups and downs, and my body is still forever changing as my uterus continues to shrink.   It will take a while still to heal but she is so worth it all.

Click the photos to enlarge.

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Posted Being a "mum", Madeline |