Eight weeks postpartum

So, now I have an eight week old. It's nearly impossible to believe sometimes. There are moments when I almost forget she is here. I also am having a hard time realizing that a little more than eight weeks ago, I was hugely pregnant. I look at the pictures, and it seems like a dream. I understand why people say you forget these things and that's why you do it again.

I'm still having a hard time accepting that the c-section was the right decision. In my head, I know it's true, but my heart tells me different. I'm still physically hurting from it and still bleeding. DH and I did the PODO a couple of times before six weeks postpartum and it was excruciating. When I went to see Dr. H for my 6 week postpartum checkup, he said that we should wait some more, but that the pain was normal. It sucks.

Dr. H also said that I should not get pregnant again within a year of Bee's birth and c-section. That was hard to hear. I don't know that I even want another baby because Bee is challenging (thus why I haven't been doing blog posts), but to hear that I can't even try...it broke my heart a little. After trying so hard to get Bee, it would be nice to be able to "just" get pregnant if there is another one. Not having the option for at least a year feels lousy. It's another way the c-section robbed me of something.

Other than that, life is starting to get easier. We moved when Bee was 3 weeks old, which I would not recommend. It was very cold out, but I was outside nursing Bee in my Moby (yay for hands-free nursing!), directing the movers while DH was in the apartment putting things together while we had the movers' help because I was not able to lift heavy things. We are all unpacked as of a week or so ago. Eleven years in the Army make for organized people. Once everything got unpacked, I started to feel better.

I also gave up on trying to get Bee on a schedule. I had read all of these books about how to get your baby to be on a schedule from the beginning and really wanted to try it, despite multiple people telling me that it would take some time. My moment of clarity came when I had been trying to get Bee down for a nap for about 2 hours, and then it was eating time, so I was trying to feed her and she was falling asleep and I was trying to get her to wake up. It just clicked that that made no sense whatsoever. So, since then I've been trying to go with the flow. Some days it works better than others. I'm hoping that as Bee gets a little older, I'll be able to coax her on to a flexible schedule and not be subject to her dictatorial whims.

It's still really hard, and there are very few moments of reward, but occasionally she gives a little love back.