Two Weeks Old

These four sisters melt my heart. We did a two week photo shoot with Miriam and Holland in this same outfit. So of course we had to do one with Darcy. I feel bad that Ellie is left out, but I can't go back and change what I did with her. Isn't that the painful truth in so many ways? I just love all of my girls, and hope I don't make too too many mistakes. 

Sweet sweet baby. 

 Here is baby Miriam with tiny little Eliza too. 

And here is baby Holland. They all look so much alike. I wish I would have gotten one with Darcy with her eyes open like the other girls. 

Miriam and Eliza were so little too. 

We love our babies! And our big girls! 

Fathers Day 2020

This handsome guy is super dad. John serves us all so much. He is a full partner in all the things, which makes me feel like the luckiest girl. He is always so patient with the kids and with me. Ever since I got pregnant with Darcy, life has been tricky and challenging, and he has stepped up. I am sure it can't be easy to have a full time job at which they just want more and more of you, have a time consuming calling where what he could or should be doing is never ending, take on the bulk of the house work and shopping, have four girls to keep track of and meet the needs of, AND have a sick or in pain wife who needs physical, mental, and emotional support. And he does all this with a smile and patience. John's probably going to get translated soon. Not that I am saying everything has been smooth sailing for him--definitely a dad and a mom helping together is better. I think he would give that a hearty "amen."

So Father's Day landed 6 days after Darcy was born. Needless to say, it looked a little different than it normally would. A family in our ward brought in an amazing dinner (authentic Brazilian!), and I think he made his own brownies (they were delicious). We ordered some presents for him--yummy chocolates and a new game (Dice Throne). Miriam crocheted him this cute blue tie. She's adorable. We all think he is tops. Holland told him the other day that she wants to marry him when she grows up. I hope that they can find men that will live up to their wonderful father. 

Newborn Difficulties

When I see these sweet pictures of Darcy, it's hard to even imagine that things were so difficult for a while. She is so tiny and innocent. Even though she is perfect, the first while after she was born was very difficult for me. there were just a lot of health and pain challenges. It really makes me appreciate how well my body normally functions, and how pain-free I normally am.

First, there's just the typical stuff. Very little sleep with a newborn is standard, but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. Then, there's the pain from just recovering from childbirth. I couldn't believe how sore I was, especially in my back from all those hard-hard contractions.

Next there are the things that I expected but just made it more difficult. For example, trying to give all of my children attention and love while taking care of myself and a new baby. I also expected to feel more emotional than normal. But I did not expect quite the range of emotions that I ended up having. I think that was the closest I've ever come to postpartum depression. Fortunately two and a half months later it seems to be leaving, but there were just times where I felt overwhelmingly sad and hopeless. A lot of the sadness and hopelessness was because of the other challenges, but my changing hormones just magnified everything.

Then there were the things I didn't expect. When Darcy was in the hospital, the pediatrician there was very concerned about her lack of weight gain. It's interesting to me that I was not as concerned as she was. I just figured that my milk hadn't come in and she couldn't really be expected to gain any weight until it did. she was still having a lot of poopy and wet diapers and so of course her weight was going to decrease with every one of those.

The day after we got home from the hospital we had to take Darcy in to our pediatrician to get her weight checked. Fortunately, our pediatrician told us she wasn't concerned about Darcy's weight. Unfortunately, she was concerned about how yellow her skin looked.

Apparently jaundice happens when her kidneys or liver aren't mature enough to filter out the toxins yet. And she was not getting enough milk yet to help with that either. So we had to put her in as much indirect sunlight as possible. I also need to do a lot of skin on skin with her and nurse her as much as possible.

That made things kind of hard, but the worst part was that we had to go in several days in a row to get her blood drawn in order for them to test it. That wouldn't be so bad except it seemed like they had to take unreasonable amount of blood for the test each time. They pricked her heel and did milking movements on her skinny little leg to squeeze the blood out into a little while drop by drop. They even referred to it as milking her leg. It was just awful. Fortunately Darcy never really got upset, which was shocking. But John and I certainly were upset. she's such a tiny baby and they were worried about her fluids and yet they were taking so much blood. They can do all of these different genetic tests with just a drop of blood on the special paper, but they need a whole vial for testing jaundice every day?? It was pretty hard. I think we had to do that two or three times before they gave her the green light to stop coming in every day.

Nearly naked baby hanging out in the cradle trying to catch as many indirect rays as possible.

Because we were so focused on the jaundice and trying to get her as much milk as possible, I chose not to worry about trying to get her off the nipple shield that first week. But after we got the okay about the jaundice, it became a top priority for me, where it stayed for a long time.

The problem is that my nipples are so flat and inverted normally, that it's very difficult for a new baby to latch. Darcy is a lot more like Eliza as a baby when it came to being a sleepy lazy eater. No offense girls. With Miriam and Holland I was able to get them off the shield within the first two weeks, and it was a little stressful but not too bad. With Darcy I worked and worked and just wasn't getting anywhere.

And it got a lot worse before it got better. About two weeks in, I noticed that my pain was getting substantially worse. It always hurts at first because my nipples have to toughen up. They are also getting pulled out. So there's a lot of pain involved.

At first I didn't notice that the pain was increasing, but soon it was unmistakable. On my right side I started getting shooting pains that would go up my chest and over into my armpit and down my arm. It was so bad. I couldn't talk through it. I had to use my breathing techniques from labor. This was not normal nipple pain. Of course I went to Google to try to figure out what was going on.

I concluded I might have thrush. I set up an appointment to go see the doctor, but unfortunately thrush has to be treated in the mommy and the baby. So Darcy had another appointment as well.

At my appointment the OBGYN concluded that I did not have thrush, but I did have mastitis. So I had to get on a round of antibiotics. Then I took Darcy to her appointment because we could see the evidence of the thrush in her mouth. The pediatrician concluded she did have thrush. So she had a prescription for an oral and topical medicine for that. I also found out I could use the topical medicine on my breasts to help treat any thrush I might have. 

It was quite the medicine regimen. I had to keep track of all three different medicines but one they were supposed to be taken. My antibiotics were a little tricky because I had to take them on an empty stomach and then I couldn't eat again for a few hours.

Things started to improve within three or four days. It was a pretty miserable time though. My sweet sister sent some gifts to my older girls and Darcy. She also sent me some dark chocolate. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it was just the thing I needed. I needed to feel remembered by someone.

Because of several different issues and of course Covid, my parents did not come down to see the baby or help with the kids. And because of Covid we got really didn't see people outside of our house. It was pretty isolating, which didn't help with all of the emotional weight of the situation. I just remember crying to John because it just felt too heavy and hard.

Eventually the extreme pain started to ease and went back to the normal pain. But I still could not get that baby off of the shield. It was so discouraging!

My girls just loved the Picasso tiles from Kayla.

Cute Holland to brighten my day.

Eventually I ended up signing up for a virtual lactation consultant. It was $100 and a zoom meeting that was not very helpful. I remember it was on the 4th of July, and we worked for about an hour. I don't remember if we actually got anything out of it. But I do remember it was kind of a turning point. Not because of the appointment, but because the day previous was the first time I was ever able to get Darcy latched without the shield on my easier side.

I did do some of the suggestions from this lactation consultant, like revamping doing skin-to-skin. I guess it helps the babies sucking instinct. That was one of the biggest challenges. Darcy just didn't have a very strong sucking instinct. She would just give up or get mad without the shield. 

So things improved with the medicine for the thrush and the mastitis, for a while. During that time I was mainly focusing on trying to get her off the shield. But then it started to get worse again.

For some reason, I started to blister, crack, and bleed especially on my right side. It was so frustrating. I felt like I just couldn't catch a break. I had been nervous to use lanolin because of the thrush, but I started to use it again because of all this new pain. It took a little while for me to figure that out, but it was extremely helpful to get over that hurdle

Why was this so hard? Why couldn't I catch a break? All of these breastfeeding issues, plus all the other normal issues, plus dealing with the pandemic and trying to figure out what to do with our kids for the school year, plus the total isolation. It was all just so much. I still can't quite believe I didn't give up on breastfeeding. That blistering issue was so bad, almost more mentally than physically. I think the reason I didn't give up was because I'd already endured so much to make this work, I wasn't about to give up then. It is like that quote, "I didn't come this far, only to come this far." 

Eventually it all just worked! It's still just blows my mind to get her latched without trouble and breastfeed her without pain. It honest to goodness feels like a true miracle.

It didn't just happen though. It started out with her latching occasionally on my left side. Then she would latch fairly consistently on that side. Then she would latch almost always on that side except maybe first thing in the morning when I was extra full. 

Darcy struggled especially with my right side though. It was crazy to me that she had it figured out on the left side but not the right side. 

It was definitely a team effort to get it to work. John would help the stroke her cheek and help open her mouth big enough. I would hold everything in position. And we would both soothe her the best we could.

I think breastfeeding finally, FINALLY all clicked at about 7 weeks postpartum. 7 weeks doesn't sound like very long, but it was an effort in endurance.

It was such a hard time, but thankfully this sweet tender baby made it worth it. 

There's no way I would have gone through all of that, if I hadn't had such a great experience breastfeeding my other babies. I knew I could do it, it was just getting it going. I think it is interesting that despite having by far my roughest experience breastfeeding, Darcy gained weight the best as a newborn. Go figure! Every ounce which led to every pound was a sacrifice though. I think in some ways it really bonded me to this baby. I am 1000% invested.

I also had a personal revelatory experience. I really felt like the reason things were slowly, slowly improving was because of the countless prayers about the situation from me, John, and our children. It was like we pestered the Lord enough about it that we were blessed with it to finally work.

I do have to laugh though at the cherry on top of this whole situation. Normally there's some bowel issues that happen after giving birth. Sorry to overshare. But typically I get a small UTI after giving birth. Darcy's birth was no exception. After that I normally struggle with constipation in a major way while breastfeeding. Once again no exception. This time though it's been harder than ever, no pun intended. Sorry.

But then I guess I just couldn't resist adding one more thing to this crazy situation. I got salmonella poisoning! It turns out that salmonella was in some onions that came from California. I have recently started having onions as a topping in my salad. I think it's delightful. I still enjoy them but it is definitely never going to be the same. Also for future reference, expired Imodium does not work. Also you're not supposed to take Pepto-Bismol while breastfeeding, but you got to do what you got to do. Sorry Darcy girl. It was so bad for about a week. it'll eventually work itself out though and now we're back to the opposite problem.

Side note here. Sometimes her hair looks so red. And sometimes I think she might be a little blonde? I'm interested to see how she looks as she gets older. And who she resembles.

Going through all of these newborn photos makes me smile too. I love her preferred position of her head cranked back, feet and hands up. She's just so darling.

One side effect of all of these things happening in the first month and a half is that I really tried to minimize the other issues we were facing. It already felt like so much, I couldn't take on anything else. So, Darcy now has a bad habit of sleeping in the swing. 

Another thing I decided to postpone was trying to lose baby weight. You gotta pick your battles! 

Newborns = so sweet and so hard

One day that was a but of a turning point mentally was when we went on a drive up South Mountain. It was wonderful to get out of the house and do something as a family. We also drove our van for the first with it's intended use--moving our FOUR kids. Whoa, we have a lot of children. 

Baby girl growing like a weed. Learning to hold up her head. 

She nursed all evening long and way too late. Although at this age, she was a little more reasonable about letting us go to bed. 

Darcy started giving us a fairly decent chunk of sleep at night after a few weeks of life. We really appreciated it! Unfortunately, this was because she was sleeping in the swing. Not that the swing was moving, she just likes the more cradled position. She does not like laying flat to sleep. She'll wake up in about 5 minutes every time.

Because we didn't want to leave her downstairs in the swing by herself at night, John started sleeping on the couch downstairs. This lasted for a few weeks until we ended up moving the swing upstairs and putting it in Holland's room. It would have made sense to put it in our own room, but the way that the air conditioning flows in our room made it impossible to fit it in. She would have frozen.

John is such a trooper for taking the couch for so long. We both just did but we could to make it through that time.

Occasionally she still fell asleep in her bouncer chair. Head to cranked back of course.

Arms are okay too.

Laying flat will not do, even though this picture might suggest otherwise. She's such a skinny little baby!

Arms up, feet up.

I love her sweet nuzzles.

Skin on skin with mommy.

One particularly sweet moment for me was when I found this list that Miriam had written. She was carrying it around and just left it somewhere. It melted my heart. What an empathetic sweet girl!

Even though this time was so difficult, I was so blessed.