I feel like a first time mom.

Esther is one week, four days old.

Seriously, I feel like I'm on my first baby. Recovery from a vaginal birth is that different. The stitches, I think, have dissolved. But I'm still kinda achey through my pelvis, & I found out the hard way yesterday that my perineum is still bruised. (I never manage the six weeks of "pelvic rest.") The lochia is different as well. I guess during the c-sections the amniotic fluid was suctioned out or something, and that of course didn't happen with the vaginal birth, so for the first few days I was apparently still leaking amniotic fluid along with the blood. So I thought it was a lot milder than it really is. Still, the bleeding is much less than after my c-sections. It's nice. I have to wonder if I won't get lucky when it comes to duration as well; might be nice not to bleed for eight weeks straight.

In other news...

Esther has the greatest 99-cent wardrobe in existence. There's a thrift store we go to, Saver's, and they have some things priced at 99-cents. I only buy that stuff; the rest of it is pretty expensive. It takes some digging, but you can find some very nice stuff priced so low. I even managed to find two different pieces that were the half-off color; like I told Bobbie Catharine, it's like getting one thing free. I am so damned cheap.

Rob checked off leave today, but he went in the afternoon since he was getting charged for today no matter what, so he was really only gone for about an hour. And tomorrow of course he will have off. (Kind of hard not to give the military Veterans' Day!) So it'll still be vacation until Monday, effectively. And then I'll have to really adjust to having three kids!

I'm trying to get my eating back on track too. It's odd, because for pretty much my whole pregnancy I never had any "hungry/full" signals. And so I'm not too trusting of the vague ones that are returning. And it's frustrating, because I really had that down before I got pregnant, and now it seems that I have to totally relearn it. I was joking today that I gained a lot of baby weight in my butt, apparently to balance out my humongous stomach.

You know, I didn't give Esther's stats with the birth story! I totally forgot. She was my biggest baby in more ways than one. Weighed in at 8lbs 0.1oz and was 20.75 inches long. Heaviest and longest! Explains why I was so much bigger. She's 2 pounds heavier and more than an inch longer than Bobbie, who was the bigger of the other two.