One Week Postpartum!

Woohoo, we made it to one week! Well, not "officially" I suppose, since Harmony didn't make her entrance for 10 more hours 1 week ago today. But mostly we're there.

Today the midwife is coming to weigh her and take our vitals - I'm curious to see how much she weighs. I was reading alot in my blog about when Jack was born and how worried I was that he wasn't gaining weight. I don't think I'll be AS worried this time, since he is now a very husky, bouncy boy who is very healthy. It's nice to look back and compare.

But even still, I'm not taking any chances - I'm trying hard to take in 1 lb of greens per day, and also am taking 9 tablets of Fenugreek, 6 cups of Mother's Milk Tea, 1 dose of natural postpartum Mommy pills, and 3 cod liver oil per day. Along with, of course, eating as raw as I can - and a variety of food including some fat as well.

The variety part is a bit hard, since I seem to get stuck in ruts and eat alot of monomeals of the same thing, every day. Like right now I've been eating watermelon only (along with the supplements) until about 4pm! I don't mean to, it's just that I am napping alot and being up all hours of the night, my "morning" doesn't even start until about 11am usually.

Then I have something else like cherries, or avocado pudding, or like yesterday I had a big taco salad with lettuce, salsa, tomatoes, sprinkling of cheddar cheese, and 8 olives. It was yummy! Then I'm also trying to have the green smoothie as well. DH bought a big case of bananas so I need to remember to have some of those for at least one of my meals too. And I wish so much I had a juicer! I would love to start my morning with vegetable juice, especially carrot juice. I'm watching craigslist for a good one but don't have money to spend more than $20 right now.

I bought the belly bandit! LOL cuz I just wrote that I don't have money to spend on a juicer, yet I managed to squeeze $70 out of our budget for a belly bandit. But not really, actually - I'm expecting a check on the 3rd for royalties from my ebook that will pay for it. And no, LOL again, I'm not a huge accomplished author - I do sell copies every now and then...this particular check I've been "saving" and decided to have them cut it now rather then let it accrue more.

I'm so excited to try the belly bandit, though!! I'm a bit bummed that I'm going to have to start wearing it 10 days postpartum rather than immediately after birth, but it's better than nothing for sure. My tummy is shrinking every day and that's without any type of wrap. I remember how frustratingly long it took after Jack to get a flat stomach again - I had this annoying bump right in the middle of my tummy that made me look pregnant for months afterward. And of course, comparing with my SAD pregnancies, the tummy never went away until I exercised HARD for like 6 months.

Speaking of SAD pregnancies, I have this paper where I've measured myself periodically for the past 4 years, at different stages of my life. Like postpartum, after/before the Master Cleanse, etc. So I was looking at the difference between my very last SAD pregnancy (baby #5) and this one (baby #7, 2nd raw pregnancy). I wrote the following:

Before delivery: 191 lbs
10 days postpartum: 174 lbs
2 months postpartum: 181 lbs
3 months postpartum: 165 lbs (this is after 23 days on the Master Cleanse)
7 months postpartum: 151 lbs

Isn't that crazy? Seeing as, I am now 1 week postpartum and I weigh 3lbs LESS than I did 7 months after my SAD pregnancy. So if I look at things in those terms? I'm doing pretty awesome!

Two things I'm noticing that have been consistent with the 2 RAW babies as opposed to the 5 SAD babies. All 5 SAD babies have had bad, bleeding diaper rashes by this time. The baby wipes for some reason just rubbed them raw. The only solution I could find (lathering diaper cream never helped) was to go to Walmart and buy a big 18-pack of the kitchen washcloths, and use those to wipe their bum instead of baby wipes. It always cleared right up within days.

Second thing, is that will all 5 SAD babies my engorgement has been long and painful. I'm talking at LEAST 2 solid days of rock-hard, painful lumpiness that nothing would help. It hurt to nurse, hurt to touch, hurt to sleep. About 2 1/2 days of that. With BOTH RAW babies? Not a problem! Yes there was about 24 hours of engorgement but never as hard and painful as the others, and it went down quite rapidly. It was never painful to nurse!

These things I noticed with Jack, but wasn't sure why they happened --- but to have it happen with both babies? Too coincidental not to be for a reason. Yay for raw!