She's here!

Baby P has finally made her arrival and she's perfect! I was a Nervous Nelly for the IV and the Spinal because I'm a baby when it comes to pain and needles, but I made it through with lots of chuckles from my husband. Because of the nature of the complications I had with Baby E, I was not a viable candidate for a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) so we had the day planned ahead of time and truthfully, I was okay without going through contractions again.

Three Surgeries In One

First, and foremost, I had the c-section but I also opted to have my tubes tied because my husband and I had discussed that this was our last pregnancy. I don't enjoy being pregnant and we also have plans to adopt from Africa at some point in the future, so we knew that we were more than okay with this permanent birth control method. 

The third part of the surgery that I hadn't anticipated was that I had another small cyst on my right ovary. Did I not just have a fist-sized tumor and part of that ovary removed in June?! My doctor said it's possible that there was a tiny piece left that they didn't see and the hormones from pregnancy has made it grow. He said that there may be more of these in my future but hopefully he saved me a surgery down the road. I'm not super thrilled that I'm possibly going to keep having cysts unless I remove the whole ovary, but at least we know they are NOT cancerous. That's really all that matters to me at this point.

Recovery

As before, I have been lucky and have bounced back pretty quickly in terms of how I feel. My nurse was impressed when I wanted to move around the day of the surgery. An interesting thing that I did not expect is that my incision does not hurt. It doesn't burn or anything. I didn't have a problem standing upright right away whereas before I walked pretty hunched over for a day or two. My biggest pain has been inside my stomach itself. All of my organs feel like they were used at punching bags and I feel some slight pain where I can only assume my Fallopian tubes were cut. Other than all of the crazy water-retention, I'm feeling really good. I get so swollen everywhere from all the fluids they pumped into my for the surgery. I could only wear my slippers for the first three days. I've been wearing a post-partem wrap to help squeeze out fluid, make my uterus shrink like it should, and to "hold things in". I used one of these with my last pregnancy and I loved the stability it gave me.

Our first family walk!

I will be doing photos at two weeks post-partem so that I can document my body's reaction to my approach to round two's "baby weight loss". Last time, I ran A LOT and tracked my calories and feel that I got too skinny too quick, which may have contributed to my having to cease breast feeding at 4 months. This time I'll be mostly doing CrossFit to gain/maintain muscle with some running mixed in. Instead of focusing on calories for my food, I'm going to focus on quality and make sure that I'm eating enough. It should be a fun journey that I hope you'll follow with me. :) Until next time, I'll leave you with an adorable picture of my girls!