Labor and Babies.

Okay, so I'm still into the whole being-an-informative-blog-while-sharing-some-life-experiences :) I am so past the labor story already but here are some tidbits :D
-All I can say is, it's not painful as long as you have epidural. Epidural makes you feel nothing, or rather it won't make you feel anything. That's it. The recovery part is still needed though, around a week of 'slight pain', then that's it.
-The three signs of labor, pain (the poo poo feeling/dysmenorrhea feeling) - contractions or pain 5 minutes apart, bloody show, or water bag breaking. If you get one of those, go to the hospital right away.
-Eat and drink water before you go to the hospital. Once I set foot on the hospital, I wasn't able to drink or eat at all. Since medication will make you throw up later on. So imagine my last meal was dinner, the next meal I had the next day was at around 1ish PM. I was so cranky.
-I was planning to enrol to a prenatal class, but it was every Sat or Sun in the morning, and I'd rather sleep, so decided to skip it. I'm sure it's helpful, but I didn't attend one but I was able to give birth -normal delivery. So it's not really a must? But (I think) a 'nice to have'

Now we move on to the more important part :)

There was only one friend who was around 2 weeks or a month ahead of me, so I've been asking her questions and asking her about her baby, then the rest of the babies came/are coming after Aleksa. And I have been repeating the same stuff to friends, so while I'm at it, I'll blog about it. So future moms will just have to read my blog entry (the same way when friends ask about my suppliers, I usually just give my blog entry on the wedding)

Okay first one, breastfeeding. I've had my mind set on doing this :) My mom didn't breastfeed us because she said she didn't have milk. The thing is, the milk, actually comes not on the day you give birth, but on the 3rd or 4th or 5th day. So moms really have to wait for it. Some really don't feed the baby from the bottle until the milk 'comes', but you have to 'feed' your baby from you so it will stimulate the milk production whether the baby is getting milk or not. So how do you know if you have milk already? One day you wake up, then your breasts feel full, painful, and heavy. You'd really know :D

Next, the feeding part. Well at the start, even if I didn't have the abundant supply of milk or the actual supply of milk, I had to wake up Aleksa every 3 hours :) Eventually she wakes up on her own. There isn't much but there's colostrum produced on the first day . On the second day, since she was crying really hard, we fed her with the bottle, just 1 ounce of formula milk. Some moms really wait it out though. Anyway, we were ones of the lucky few, since on some babies once you feed them with a bottle, they'd have what they call 'nipple confusion' where they don't want to nurse on their moms anymore. Aleksa's versatile, she'd be okay with the bottle or me (which was good).

Breastmilk is easily digested by the baby, so for a while, I was feeding round the clock, every 2 hours. Formula fed babies get hungry every 3 hours. So after going back from the hospital, I was really tired and sleep deprived for a month. The technique is go to sleep when the baby is asleep. Oh, and you have to teach your baby the difference between night and day, since they have it mixed up. We usually don't talk to Aleksa at night when she's awake, then during the day we talk to her. She finally figured it out that nighttime is for sleeping and not for playing. I know someone whose baby wakes up at 3am to play until 7am, and her baby is almost a year old! It's been like that since her baby was small so it carried over. So babies can really get used to a schedule :)

Some milestones I want to blog about and remember, on Dec 31, New Year's Eve, she was almost 2 months, she slept for 6 hours straight. And then on Feb 14, 3 months or so she started sleeping for 8 hours straight before her next feeding at night. Well, the thing is, she sleeps at 8pm or 9pm, then still feeds at 4 or 5am. That's still a lot of sleep for me considering she used to feed every 2 hours round the clock!

I'm not sure if Aleksa had her real smile at 2 months and she started to really laugh/chuckle when you talk to her. Then now at 3 months, she can already hold her head without support :)

So there, I can only blog so little about it since I only have 3 months experience. Oh another thing I've learned, don't panic whenever there's something 'wrong', like Aleksa had cradle cap and baby acne, oh and the time her neck's red and has rashes. When we brought her to the doctor, the doctor said that there are no medication needed and it will eventually go away.

I just usually Google and there are really informative websites. I hope I can find a blog with entries for 4 month babies onwards :)

Here are some helpful articles in understanding babies:
Wonder Weeks - Fussy/Sunny Weeks
Cluster Feeding - When babies cry,feed,cry,feed for hour/s before sleeping

Our pediatrician is Dr. Suratos of Asian Hospital, he's really nice and he's a good doctor. (I'm including it in my blog so when other parents try to Google and research :p)

On losing weight, breastfeeding burns 500 calories a day. So I lost some of the weight easily, the thing is, I was 7 lbs away from my original weight when I went back to work. Since I only breastfeed nowadays only in the morning(the 4am/5am feeding), I actually gained weight. I gained 2-4 lbs. (Include the holiday indulgence here.)According to an article I read, moms are supposed to give it 6-8 months before you reach your original weight so you lose the extra lbs the healthy way, and not through a crash diet. So I'm planning to go back to the gym really soon :)