Remember how I haven’t done a little 5-things-update for, like, months? Well, I figured it’s high time I’d better fix that, so here you go:
1. Five days after giving birth to Raven, I started having these odd chest pains. Sometimes they would just be dull and heavy–like I had a baby sitting on my chest instead of in my arms–and at other times, they would be sharp and cause me to gasp and close my eyes in pain. I called the nurse at my ob/gyn’s office in the early afternoon, and she thought the pains were just normal after-effects of having given birth, so I tried to ignore them.
Well, around 11:30 P.M., I could no longer ignore them because I couldn’t comfortably lie down in any position. So, even though it was the most inconvenient timing in the world (these are things you think about when dealing with a small human who feeds off of you every 90 minutes or so), Matt drove me to the ER. (Luckily for us, my mom was staying the night at our place, so we left the baby with her until further notice.)
Turns out, if you want to get checked out right away at the ER, just mention that you have chest pains–I had those EKG tape things stuck to me within about 80 seconds. While I was relieved to hear that my heart was fine after all of two minutes upon arriving, it took another 3 hours to get my official diagnosis and release—apparently, I have a huge gall stone that’s too threatening to let be.
And that is why on Tuesday, you will be able to find me getting my gallbladder removed in a same-day surgery that I’m kinda sorta dreading (although mostly because I absolutely loathe the feeling of out-of-control-ness that comes from being put under anesthesia–apparently I get really weepy and pathetic when coming out of it, which I discovered about a year and a half ago after my first encounter with the stuff).
I guess people live without gallbladders all the time, but it seems kind of strange that by tomorrow night, I’ll be running around (not literally) without one of my organs.
I hope it’s not one I’ll really need in the future.
2. Because of the diagnosis of gallstones, I was told to adhere to a strict low-fat diet until they pulled the sucker out of me. So ever since, I have avoided red meat of all kinds, mostly cut out the cheese, and only snuck a few fingerfuls of cookie dough here and there. Although I started craving a big ol’ steak after about 24 hours of that, I tried to look for the silver lining–this way, I could get a jump start on the whole postpartum weight loss business.
Well, THAT hasn’t happened (even after being on this diet for over a week AND after breastfeeding the whole time).
But that’s all fodder for another post a little more down the road.
3. Since the baby was born, we’ve been attempting to take at least one picture of her each day (which, doting parents that we are, is really not too hard of a task…yet). One of these days I’ll do a post of the first 30 pics or so, mostly just because she’s already changing so much, and I think it will be fascinating to see all those pictures side-by-side as proof of how much she’s already grown.
4. Raven has this thing about getting kisses–she usually doesn’t mind too much when I give her kisses, but whenever Matt tries, she’ll either take a swipe at him with one of her mittened little hands, or she’ll try to suck on his nose. It’s completely hilarious.
Also hilarious?
How she’s had numerous blowouts in the middle of when Matt’s changing her (like, on a daily basis), but only done that to me twice.
Looks like I’m the favorite…for now.
Until she finds out how much cooler (and how much more fun!) her Pops is than I am.
5. And the whole new-parent, sleep-deprived thing? Totally true. I have now woken up Matt on two difference occasions and asked him for help on completely bizarre tasks, including taking the measurements to make sure our baby is really ours.
So basically, between these waking-up-every-other-hour-nights and the anesthesia, Matt is going to have a heck of a lot of funny stories/blackmail in the near future…
