The recovering

I have a 3 week old! She's precious, sleeps a lot--in her bed (actually a rock and play, but close enough), nurses like crazy, and burps herself. I mean, did you catch that? I can put her down! I couldn't put Hunter down for two years straight. She drinks pumped milk from a bottle too. This means that Jeremy can feed her while I sleep or maybe exercise. 

See?

Speaking of exercise, I'm being super careful and slowly beginning moving again in the form of walking. Ok, I've jogged a bit, but so slowly my strava app thinks it should auto-pause me. Suddenly my yucky hip and SI pain from last summer has reappeared, my pelvic pain from pregnancy has disappeared, and my abs don't really work like I expect them to. I'm just giving them a hard time, since only 3 weeks ago they were stretched out to here. This time I am really working on strength training. Have I said that before? Because I mean it now. 

It may not be obvious to everyone, but recovery from a vbac is so so much easier than recovery from a cesarean. Unless, of course, you enjoy not getting out of bed or sitting up on your own for a few weeks, and there is someone to wait on you hand and foot. That's just not me. I was lightheaded and fatigued for several days after Josie's birth, but apparently I tend to be a bleeder and lost a good bit of blood right after she was born. They actually gave me a bag of pitocin to help stop it some, and not just as a routine measure. 

Besides that fluid, I had no other, so I got home from the hospital about 11-12 pounds down in weight, and I fluctuate from 2-4 pounds over my prepregnancy weight now, depending on if I ate Jeremy's helping of supper the night before or not. In these last 3 weeks, I have eaten approximately 7000 calories per day just to suppress the massive hunger I have. Making milk for a chubby baby and a toddler who only wants this new extra creamy stuff has me eating ridiculous amounts of food, like entire blackberry cobblers and full jars of cookie butter all at once. Honestly I only ate 2/3 of the jar of cookie butter in one day. I did the math on that one and saw that I consumed somewhere around 1600 calories from it alone, and that's certainly not all I ate that day. It seems I'm making up for 9 months with zero appetite. 

While my milk is very sought after usually, above is a picture of a kitten who begs for cows milk every time we go to the fridge but flat out refused my pumped milk. I was desperate in the middle of one night; Josie was too sleepy to nurse much, Hunter rolled over and went back to sleep, and I was busting at the seams, so I pumped into a dirty bottle knowing I'd have to throw it out. Trying to put it to some use the next morning, I poured it for the kittens, who turned up their little pink noses at my delicious creamy treat. Really, everybody?

 Look at that belly!

She actually laughs in her sleep and has smiled at all of us in the absence of gas troubles.

Thankfully someone helped me eat the rest of the jar of cookie butter