the beginning of the new adventure

Last week, I nearly posted a very whiny essay about how frustrated and impatient I was for the baby to arrive. I was getting frequent false labour (a couple times I had contractions five minutes apart and when I called the hospital, they said it didn't sound like I was in enough pain for it to be real labour), I was exhausted, and, of course, highly emotional with it all. My due date passed, the clinic scheduled me for an induction a week and a half after my due date, and then that night, after I'd written down all the info about the induction and was not looking forward to the multiple hospital visits the next week, I woke up with more contractions. These ones felt a little different. They were regular-ish, somewhere between 3-5 minutes apart, and they did hurt. They didn't seemed inclined to stop, either. I waited a few hours, and then called the hospital. They told me to come in.

So now I am exhausted and highly emotional because we have a one-week old baby. E. was born about 11 hours after I realized I was in labour, and all things considered, it was an easy birth. I got my wish of no painkillers, but ended up with an episiotomy when she was in a bit of distress there towards the end. As the episiotomy was preferable to the forceps, I'm not too unhappy with that. Not happy about how much it hurts sometimes, but it's gotten to manageable levels.

J. was pretty impressed with how I did during labour, and has been really great. He goes back to work in a week, and I'm going to miss him badly during the day. As we're slowly starting to convince E. to sleep in her crib for extended periods of time, some things are getting easier. She has decided that it's a great idea to be fussy most of the night. I have no real idea of how often she was eating last night, or how much sleep I had. It's a blur of dozing and feeding and asking J. to take her for a bit because she was so grumpy she wouldn't eat. I can certainly see the appeal of formula-feeding, but as the adjustment to breast-feeding is mostly annoying because of the lack of me time, I think we'll stick with it.

For now, since she's stopped eating and dozed off, I'm going to go put her in the crib and hope she stays asleep for a while so I can get some sleep.