Mommy Days

It used to be so difficult to leave my son, Kevin, behind at home. Whenever I did he would cry and call out for me. It started the few times I tried to go out for a "mom's night out." The nights out were quite frankly a disaster anyway. I thought about Kevin the whole night, and was afraid to drink alcohol due to the fact that I was driving. That didn't sit well with people who do drink and they thought that I was judging them for drinking. Sigh. It got worse for Kevin and I when I went back to work. It broke my heart to hear him call out, "MOMMA," every time I left the house. And it continued while I worked at Giant and the bank. It was super stressful for both of us. I wished he would accept that I had to leave for a little while but then I'd be back.  I would try and get him to sleep before I had to go to work or before I went anywhere really. I know it wasn't the best idea but it helped.  He wasn't upset for the most part when he woke up and ...

When I decided to breastfeed, it was not to make a statement or to make anyone else feel bad. I didn't know how long I would breastfeed or even if I could be successful with it. It was simply what I felt in my heart was the right decision for my family. We hit quite a few bumps in the road when we began our breastfeeding journey. My son was six weeks premature, a mere three pounds and had a 15 day stint in the NICU. While in the NICU, he was on a set schedule that included pacifiers, bottles of pumped breast milk and scheduled touch times every three hours. He was also away from me for over 24 hours while I healed from surgery and was on magnesium sulfate for my extremely high blood pressure. He didn't eat for his first 48 hours of life and when they did feed him it was through an NG tube. He didn't digest it at first so we had to wait another day. On his fourth day of life he finally started drinking 3cc's of colostrum every three hours. They discharged Kevin from th...

Its been a while since I wrote a blog post and decided to take advantage of Eli and Kevy being out and Nathaniel asleep to give writing a go! Lately I have been thinking about how I felt about my body after I had my first son, Kevin. I felt like my body had let me down in many ways. I developed pre-eclampsia at 32 weeks, and I was on hospital bed rest for two weeks after that. I was bordering on major organ failure according to the blood tests I had done every 12 hours. So my first son was "evicted" at 34 weeks at 3 pounds, 10.5 ounces. He was so not ready to be born but my placenta couldn't last another day for him. He was in the fourth percentile for growth. I felt like I let him down and my body failed both of us. I did not look like myself at all as I had gained a lot of weight and was majorly swollen all over. This time around I gained less weight and carried my pregnancy to term. My blood pressure was very healthy except when I was in labor. I attributed my higher n...