Thank you Buffistas!

Years and years ago, I used to run with a crowd known as the Buffistas, an online group of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans that formed the closest knit clique you ever did see. All these years later, the Buffistas are still going strong, and I still check in with them now and then, even though I don't have the time to post every day like I once did. I still count some of those folks as amongst my closest friends.

Tuesday afternoon the most beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered, courtesy of a number of the Buffistas. I wanted to show them off and say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the lovely people responsible.

Surviving Parenthood

We're doing well here, but the little bird is keeping me busy! She wants to be touching mommy every second, even if she isn't eating. She cries quite a bit, not enough to qualify as colic, but enough so we are losing our hearing! Her hearing, however, is good - she passed her hearing test the other day. She is also growing like a weed. She now weighs 4.5 kg (9.9 lb), and measures 56 cm (22 in)!! If she isn't eating, she is usually in the baby wrap, which she loves. Thanks to my brother and sister in law for the baby wrap, I'd never get anything done without it!

My wound is healing, slowly but surely. The nurses are coming only once a day now, and I am taking very few painkillers. I lost a bunch of weight, between the breastfeeding and being sick, but despite weighing less than I have in years, I'm all lumpy still and my clothes don't fit. I am way more mobile, though, and we've been doing a lot of walking, so maybe the exercise will help. We were out for several hours on Friday, and again on Saturday. We did some shopping in Sint Truiden, which went relatively well. Luna does pretty well on our outings, considering how young she is.

Geert started back to work today, which will be a big adjustment. He's been like a house elf lately, keeping the house in order and running all the errands. Being back to work will probably be like a vacation for him!

New pics and videos coming to Photobucket soon!

Sleepless in Belgium

Hey, did you all know that newborns cry ALOT?? :P Our adorable little one does not like to sleep at night, or ever, really, unless we are holding her. She also likes to eat ALOT, enough so that she drains mommy dry at times and then screams as though we are starving her. She is keeping us very busy! But she continues to gain weight quickly (4.25 kilo now, over 9 pounds) and she is very healthy, so I guess we're doing a decent job.

I am not better, unfortunately. The doctor says my wound is healing, and as of Friday it was only 2 cm deep, but a 2 cm hole in your belly is still pretty nasty, and pretty painful. The nurses continue to come twice a day to change the dressings, and we are hopeful that its healing. In the meantime I am still not very mobile - I manage brief walks around the neighborhood, but anything overly strenuous causes me a lot of pain. G continues to have to do most everything around here, which sucks for him.

We had our first visitors the other night - G's dad and stepmother. They enjoyed holding the baby (who behaves like an angel whenever she is around anyone but us!). I also met some old friends of G's the other day - they have 4 kids, including a little girl named Luna! They live just around the corner from us, and we ran into them on one of our walks. The next morning they brought over a big bag of clothes to hand down to our Luna! I was very excited!

I apologize for the less than frequent blog posts, but finding the time to be online is remarkably difficult. I also apologize for all of the still unanswered emails cluttering my inbox - I have loads to go through still! We appreciate the love and support even if we don;t have time to acknowledge it individually!

Home Sweet Home

We finally made it home yesterday. We have help coming twice a day (either a nurse or a midwife) to clean my wounds and change the dressings. Luna was NOT happy to come home, her entire world changed all at once. She slept through the whole cab ride home, but that was pretty much the last sleep she got for about 24 hours. She hated EVERYTHING!!! The only sleep that she managed last night was when I was holding her, which meant all I got was a little dozing with a baby in my arms. Combine the lack of sleep with the extra pain I have been in (I have less pain medication than I did in the hospital and I am also moving around more), and I had a very rough night and morning. But finally, by this afternoon, Luna returned to a semi-normal schedule and started sleeping in her cradle and in her carriage. I even got a nap! Hopefully the worst is over and tonight goes better. G continues to be super-Dad, doing everything from cleaning to running errands to changing diapers. I am trying to help out as much as I can, but he does more than his share. Hopefully I am healing properly and this nightmare will soon be over. I have a doctor's appointment Friday to check the progress of my healing.

I Have a Good Excuse!

I have a good excuse for not posting more often. I am still in the hospital. We were due to go home on Tuesday, but a couple of hours before we were to leave an abscess in my C-section wound broke open, and I have been pretty sick since. I'll spare the gory details for now, but it is a large abscess and the treatment for it involves twice a day wound treatments that are very painful. They did a CT scan yesterday to make sure it hadn't gone below the fascia and infected my organs, and so far so good on that front. But I am in quite a bit of pain, and they tell me it could be weeks before I am healed from this. In the meantime, we are struggling to take care of the baby (luckily, we got a pretty good baby!) and get me healed, and the whole family remains stuck in this awful hospital (I'll share more about my hospital experience once I am free of here). If I continue to heal and nothing new goes wrong, we will be allowed to leave Monday, just shy of two weeks since we checked in. Once we are home, a nurse will have to come to our house twice a day to continue the wound treatments. If I have not healed significantly by next Friday (a week from today, and also my birthday, coincidentally), my doctor said she will have to operate again to close it up.


The baby is doing well, though. She is breastfeeding like a champ (my milk has come in to the point where she frequently chokes and milk sometimes comes out of her nose! Poor baby!) and has already regained her birth weight, which they tell us usually takes two weeks. She is smiley and lovable, and most of the time she only screams if she is hungry. She had jaundice, but has been doing better since Tuesday. We are sleep deprived like any new parents, and its very hard to establish any routines while stuck in the hospital. People come and go from our room with no regard for a sleeping baby, and the rules about visitors are lax and downright bizarre compared to home (for example, as I write this, it is 40 minutes after visiting hours have ended, and there are approximately ten people in the room next door, all of whom have either a beer or a glass of wine in their hands. I know because they leave the door open so they can share the party with the whole hall.) G is a diaper changing champion at this point, though he calls himself "daddy baddy" because he gets all the jobs that make her mad, like diaper changing and baths. But until breastfeeding is solidly established and I can start pumping for bottle feedings at night, he can't exactly feed her. I am doing my job as milk factory, and I guess its going well, she seems happy. We can't wait to get her home and get routines established, but of course it will be difficult for as long as I am having trouble walking around and being mobile. Hopefully my wounds will heal sufficiently before G has to go back to work.

It is very hard to find the time to get online, so pardon the infrequent updates. I thank all of you who have sent emails, but apologize for not having had the opportunity to read them yet. At some point I will go through them all and respond, but right now I use most of my limited internet time to talk to my family, who are having a very hard time with this whole situation. I appreciate all of the get well wishes and congrats that we have received!

Check her out!

New pics are up on Photobucket! They aren't great, just some snapshots taken via Skype by my mom and a few stills taken with my camera. Stay tuned for some great pics Geert took on the good camera, we'll upload those as soon as we can find the time.

Welcome to the world baby girl!!!

Please welcome Luna Doris, born at 4:52 PM on March 31st. She was 8 pounds 3 ounces and 19 inches long. She is perfect and we are smitten!

It was a pretty awful delivery. I labored for 17 hours, and had plenty of troubles, from difficulties with the epidural to vomiting up blood (including a couple times on my poor husband!). Then after a solid hour of pushing, they decided her huge head was stuck and I had to have an emergency C-section. They didn't even wait for the drugs to kick in fully, so I felt everything during the surgery (I swore ALOT!!!). But it was worth every second.

My husband was AMAZING! He had been so worried he'd pass out, but he was with me every minute and didn't flinch at the blood or the slime or even when I puked on him (twice, or was it three times?). He even watched them cut me open! He is my hero!

We are both completely in love with this little miracle! We cannot stop staring.