The Days Following the Birth

A few pictures from the days after we brought Isabelle home from the hospital:

Chandler like to join her for tummy time:

My boys heading off to church on the Sunday before Christmas! Seeing as Isabelle was only like a week old, we couldn't make it...

2 days after be brought Isabelle home, we had to go to a doctor appointment to check on her eating and make sure she was gaining weight since she didn't do so well with eating in the hospital. When she left the hospital she had dropped to 5 lbs 11oz, It's normal to lose a little weight, but by the time we had our doctor appointment she had dropped to about 5 lbs 6 oz. She also had crazy bad reflux, so even when she ate she wasn't keeping it down. The doctor was worried that maybe she had a stomach blockage and sent us to the hospital to get her bilirubin checked and to get x-rays of her stomach. She handled it like a champ and even downed the gross chalky stuff she had to drink before the x-ray (seriously? she wanted that over milk?!) It was pretty intense to spend hours doing theses tests, shuffling around the hospital when I had just had surgery myself and being super worried about my baby. All the doctors and nurses were so nice and understanding. And thankfully, the tests came back showing no blockage. It did show that she had reflux going up to her collar bone. Poor baby! So we just had to keep coaxing her to eat as best we could. It was a little easier to force in down her with a bottle, so I started having to pump all the time and then just bottle feed her. I would still try to nurse her once or twice a day so she stayed used to it. And then we would just keep her upright as best as we could to help her keep it down. She finally began to gain wait and through the next few weeks I would just bottle feed less and nurse more until we got her exclusively back to nursing! One blessing that came out of all this was that I did not have the horrible time with breastfeeding that I did with Chandler. Slowly building up how often I nursed allowed me to toughen up before I had to do it full time.

Just like after Chandler, we stayed at my parents so Mom could help me out while Josh was at work. My last c-section was brutal, and I ended up staying at my parents for like 2 weeks. This time was much better! We only stayed for about 4 days and then I felt well enough to go home!