Today was a fussy day...it seemed from morning until 8 p.m., Caleb needed to be carried, held, and tended to non-stop. His naps were mostly taken while being held, and once we tried to put him down, he'd fuss and wail. He did the holding breath yell a couple times...not as extreme as before, but still...

Since around 7-something after his feeding, though, he's been calm and quietly observing his surroundings. We were even able to put him on his tummy for a little bit so he could exercise his strong neck. He sat around with us, looked around, and let us talk to him...thank goodness. We'll see what tonight has in store for us...of course, it's our first night when Dave has to go to work tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes.

I was talking to Leish today and I told her that I'm sure other mothers feel this way, especially first time mothers, but dang if this hasn't been the toughest 4 weeks of my life. I know it's probably "uncool" or "unmotherly" to say this, but sheez, I've never been so frustrated, depressed, fearful, hopeless, anxious, and lost as I have been in these past 4 weeks. And that's WITH the help of a wonderful husband and my mom!

Everyone says that you "forget the pain" of childbirth once the baby is out...I'm gonna chronicle right here the many pains that were felt after Caleb was born...I'm not saying I don't love him to death, cuz I do and I wouldn't want life without him, but I'm honestly putting forth so that I remember later on all the trials and pains of our first 4 weeks...

• pain of labor pre-epidural - intense, worst cramps times 50, brought me to tears, writhing in bed, squeezing the life out of Dave's hand...2 minutes apart excrutiating pain in my back, stomach, entire body!
  
• pain of pushing - not physical pain, but mental exhaustion of pushing for 2 hours...wondering when his head would actually pop out and why it wasn't coming faster...wondering how I could push "better" and trying...blowing a vein in my head (and, apparently, a couple in my butt)
• pain of hunger - I don't deal well with not eating for long periods of time, and I was STARVING because I hadn't eaten since lunch time and he wasn't born until 1:30 a.m. the following day
• pain of tearing to my butt hole - self-explanatory
• pain of fat hemrhoids (I can't spell this word to save my life) - nothing, nothing, nothing soothes the pain of two fat veins in your butt...sitting hurts, standing hurts, lying down hurts, everything hurts
• pain of pressure "down there" - from the previous two bullets
• pain of the first few doodoos - took me forever to even attempt it, then needed Dave rubbing my back and lots of time to get the doodoos out, even with stool softener
• back pain - they say it's your ligaments readjusting and your spine realligning itself after curving to accomodate your big stomach...whatever it is, it hurts big time...and lifting and carrying a heavy little boy doesn't make it any better
• emotional pain - probably even worse than all the other physical pains put together...crying because of breastfeeding, crying when I can't pump enough milk, crying when Dave tries to "encourage" me to breastfeed, crying when Caleb won't stop crying, crying cuz I can't understand why I'm not better at being a mommy, crying cuz I'm crying so damn much

I think that's about it...so to those of you who "forgot" the pains...more props to you...maybe in time, with my short term memory loss, I'll forget too...but I haven't yet...