Thanks everyone. We're home. Mom and baby are doing good. The epidural was not an option because of severely low platelets. And cesarian was absolutely the last ditch option because of HELLP syndrome. It could have killed mom.
The lack of sleep is already setting in... Feedings every 3 hours aren't THAT bad.. but when he takes 90 mins to eat... That's not a lot of sleep.
My only child was born without the benefit to my late wife of an epidural or any other artificial means of pain relief.
From start to finish, the whole process didn't take 12 hours, though.
I don't recall a time that my wife and I were both nearly as exhausted as we were in the days after we brought our one and only baby home, and it got even worse a week or so after, a result of us unintentionally getting our baby's days and nights mixed up, such that she would wake up at night and cry, wanting to be fed, then sleep during most of the day.
We were young and didn't realize the importance of keeping our baby girl awake for much of the day to ensure that she would sleep through the night, and out pediatrician explained our error to us when we actually took her in because we thought something was wrong with her when she kept us awake through the night, when we desperately needed sleep.
Our pediatrician's advice was to let her sleep only in short naps during the day, then keep things as quiet as possible and with as low light as possible at night so that she would sleep through the wee hours as she should.
Once we did that, it all went smoothly and we no longer (not joking here) felt as if we were going to have nervous breakdowns.
Just wanted to throw that out there because our pediatrician told us that our mistake was very common with novice parents.
Thanks everyone. We're home. Mom and baby are doing good. The epidural was not an option because of severely low platelets. And cesarian was absolutely the last ditch option because of HELLP syndrome. It could have killed mom.
The lack of sleep is already setting in... Feedings every 3 hours aren't THAT bad.. but when he takes 90 mins to eat... That's not a lot of sleep.