Info: Breastfeeding

Right from the very beginning of my prgnancy, hubby and I had decided to breastfeed exclusively. We requested in our Birth Plan that no formula or sugar water should be given at the nursery room unless for emergency medical purposes. We also requested that early breastfeeding initiation should take place right after the delivery. We were planning for waterbirth but ended up with a Caesarean section instead – hubby steadfastly stuck to the agreement and followed the nurses to make sure no formula was given to the baby. He even took it up a notch and brought the baby to be breastfed off me at the surgery room even before I regained my consciousness – the ob-gyn was still stitching up my lower abdomen.

At the first attempt, no milk came out for about 15 minutes, and Jojo cried angrily. After a short break we tried again at the recovery room, I wasn’t fully conscious yet so one midwive and one nurse held the baby while Tom hovered near me. This time the colostrum came out and Jojo had his fill for some time. And I’ve been breastfeeding ever since. To this day, baby Jojo has never known formula.

Info: Lotus Birth

Before Jojo was born, hubby and I had decided that we wanted to do Lotus Birth. Our ob gyn is a big advocate on gentle birth, and he was very supportive of our decision. So when I ended up having an emergency Cesarean surgery, we asked if we still could do the Lotus Birth and the doctor okayed it.

Lotus Birth, or non-severence, is the practice of leaving the newborn with his umbilical cord intact until it falls off on its own. The reason we wanted to do this practice is to let the baby get the full benefit of his placenta. The placenta is full of nutrients, by severing the cord after the birth we also cut off the nutrients from flowing back to the baby’s body. Instead of harvesting the cord for cord blood banking (which we couldn’t afford) we chose to let the blood and stem cells flow back naturally to Jojo’s body, giving him all the nutrients and immune systems as it possibly could. 

Info: Introducing The Baby to Your Dogs

I gave birth on Saturday morning and went home on Monday late afternoon. Since we had four robust dogs that had been severely under-exercised since my last trimester, we had to put up a strategy on how to bring the baby home safely. From Saturday to Sunday Tom went home a few times with Jojo’s dirty diapers for the dogs to sniff on to their hearts’ content. This would make them aware of the baby’s scent so they wouldn’t be as excited as seeing a totally new creature. It was a good plan, but we forgot the other excitement factor: they were elated to see me again after three days’ absence. I should have greeted them alone first before introducing the baby. Instead, I sat on the couch with the baby (my body was so sore and I could hardly move without pain) then we let the dogs in. They were beside themselves with joy from seeing me, they tried to jump on the couch to lick my face and nearly knocked the baby on their way! I didn’t think they even saw baby JoJo, they only saw me. I shielded JoJo as best as I could, and with hubby’s help we finally managed to calm them down – as well as calming JoJo’s frantic grandmas who witnessed the incident. Then the dogs started to sniff JoJo, but it wasn’t a new scent so they soon lost interest. JoJo was instantly a member of the pack.

First Month With Jojo – the horror!

There was a reason why the maternity hospital’s VIP room provided a mirror so tiny that it could only fit 3/4 of my face. It was to shield me and other new moms from the harsh truth.  The first thing I did when I got home (after greeting my dogs) was taking a long hot shower and hairwash (with hubby’s assistance since I was still wobbly from the C-section, plus the scar wasn’t supposed to get wet). In the view of my full-length mirror in my bathroom, I cried out in dismay. I was a total WRECK! With my unwashed hair and oily face, super wobbly stomach that looked and felt like pudding, swollen breasts that were just as wobbly, ass and thighs that were still as big as in my pregnant days, I looked a total fright. That’s not all, folks – I’ve developed ugly red rashes on my stomach from the tummy wrap AND scratches on my butt from the hospital bed’s waterproof sheet. Yuck, yuck, yuck. It was almost as if I wasn’t human anymore, just a broken package to be discarded.