First Days With Mila

Mila is only a few days old now and after such a short time I can honestly say this whole parenting thing is definitely MUCH harder than I thought it would be! I have SUCH an appreciation for my parents! How do people do this?? How do people do this and then decide they want to go through this again??!

Mila's first week has been a bit rough. Mostly because of the sleepless nights! When people told me, "Get your sleep now, because after the baby is born you won't get any sleep!" I didn't realize they were serious when they said we wouldn't get ANY sleep AT ALL! Seriously, the first 4 days were more like 4 weeks! I didn't sleep a wink. Nothing. I don't know how I did it. By day five though, I was a zombie. I did get a bit of sleep on day 6 and 7, but minimal. Like 10 minutes worth it seemed! It wasn't because Baby Mila was difficult, it was mostly Jorge and I being paranoid about her sleeping without someone watching her to make sure she was ok.

Ok, let me catch you up: At the end of the day on Monday, we were moved to a recovery room. It was much smaller than our delivery room. Jorge had a pull-out bed to sleep on that wasn"t very comfortable. I slept in the hospital bed. Baby Mila slept in her hospital baby bed between us. That first night she spit up while she slept and we had to turn her so she could get it out. From that night on we were worried that it might happen again and we wouldn't be awake to see it and she might choke on her spit up. We thought we'd take sleep shifts, but I couldn't sleep. I'd just stare at her. I couldn't help it!





The other problem we were having was breastfeeding. When Mila first latched on after she was born, she seemed to have latched on wrong and it really affected me being able to feed her. I would do it, but it was so incredibly painful!! It wasn't until the following day, when I was able to meet with the hospital's Lactation Consultant, that we were able to fix Mila's latch, but by then the damage was already done on me. :( It would take weeks for me to recover, but in the meantime, the Lactation Consultant showed me how to pump. It was a bit awkward at first, but at least it didn't hurt! It does enlongate the feeding process though...

To make matters even worse, my mom was going to stay with us that first week to help with the baby. But she ended up getting a cold, so that first week she had to stay away! Jorge's sister Blanca was also just recovering from a cold, so we thought it was best to play it safe until we knew that she was better for sure. Thankfully, my amazing sister Cindy was able to get time off of work and she took the whole week off to spend with us! I can't even begin to tell you what a Godsend that was. She would come over in the mornings and bring us breakfast and then she'd spend it with Jorge and me. She was so incredibly helpful -- I mean, I was still recovering from the birth and I had stitches from the tear so it was a bit hard to get in and out of bed and to get around. And Jorge would be busy with the baby: rocking her, changing her, getting her to go to sleep or to stop crying, so it was hard for him to tend to both of us by himself! Don't know what we would have done without an extra set of hands! Cindy was just AMAZING!!!! Even just to have someone around to talk to and vent to. She was so helpful!

Blanca then was given the all-clear from her doctor and she was able to come over on the second day to meet the baby. She stayed overnight after Cindy had left for the night shift and helped keep an eye on Mila so we could get a bit of sleep. She was another huge help! We don't know what we would have done without our sisters!





During those days a lot of friends and family called during those first couple of days, but with all the sleepless nights and breastfeeding troubles we were having, it seemed like I was constantly feeding her and I just didn't have the energy to to really talk to anyone... it was really rough.

Tuesday and Wednesday we were recovering in the hospital and we were discharged Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday my uncle Ricky was in the area and stopped by to visit. A lot of my family wanted to drive up from Miami to visit as well, but we figured since we were 2 hours away in Boca, that we would just wait until we got home to have everyone over to meet her so we would be more comfortable. It was nice to have my uncle visit though! He held her for a bit and took these cute pics of her:











Wednesday we finally went home with our sweet little girl! It was both scary and exciting to bring her home. It was nice to have her to ourselves, but we wish we could take the nurses home with us! Especially the Lactation Consultant!