Azra's first week

Azra is now 6 days old. She was born on the 5th July at 7.35am in the morning after a 24 hour labour (the active part only was 24 hours!). In order to give her the best possible start to life I wanted to have a gentle birth completely drug-free. Fortunately nature was on my side and I was able to do this. I did have to have some oxygen at the end as Azra's heart rate was less than ideal at that stage. I can't say that the birth was easy or pain-free. Although I am a trained hypnobirthing educator, honestly I was only able to use it until the last 7 hours of the labour whereupon I sort of lost it as the surges (contractions) were coming 2 minutes apart and that took me unawares. Actually the first few hours of Sunday morning the labour sped up incredibly. The labour was going really slow Friday night and Saturday, but after a 40 minutes walk outside at 11pm Saturday night it sped up amazingly. Pretty much all Saturday the contractions stayed 5-10 minutes apart with no improvement on the 1cm opening, although effacement was complete. Then just in a few hours opening was complete.
The actual birth itself conformed to gentle birthing principles, thanks to my doctor (Gulnihal Bulbul at Sema hastanesi here in Istanbul) and my midwife (Asude ebe, also here in Istanbul). There were few people present, the doctor just every now and then towards the end, the midwife, my husband, my friend who I trained to be my hypnobirthing companion, a nurse and a cleaner. The lights were turned down as Azra made her entrance into the world and she was given to me immediately to hold. That was amazing. We just looked at each other. For nine months I had been wondering what she was going to look like and here at the end I was able to see her. She was beautiful. I wanted to cry but all I could do was let out a strange cry like sound. My husband (who never cries) cried though as he witnessed her birth. At the top is a picture taken of her in the hospital on her first day of life. The hospital likes the tradition of dressing girls in pink!
We stayed in hospital for one night as the hospital likes to monitor babies for 24 hours. We left Monday morning.
She seemed quite calm, but of course mainly she was just breastfeeding and sleeping. When we got her home she was much the same for the first couple of days. Then we had a few problems as we couldn't quite get the feeding quite right. Was I supposed to feed her whenever she cried or less then that? She would feed for 10 minutes and then sleep for 10 minutes and then cry and seem to be want to feed again. That seemed too much. Then she was vomiting quite a lot. One person told me that I was feeding her too much. So I started feeding her less. That just led to more crying and problems for us. The we figured that maybe for Azra she wasn't feeding very well and she needed to feed more. The vomiting decreased and what I tried to do was let her feed till she finished (generally 10 minutes in the day) burp her and then try again. The made her happy, but sometimes she needs an extra feeding and then she might sleep for an hour or 2 if we are lucky.

What we also are trying to do is to keep her up in the evening so that she sleeps at night as she sleeps really well this way. We entertain her (!!!) to keep her awake and not crying, feed her and then bathe her at 10. Feed her one last time and then she is asleep at around 11pm. At the moment this keeps her asleep until about 4 am where I feed her again and then she falls asleep until around 7.30am, I feed her again and she falls asleep in our bed and then she will wake up again around 10ish. This to me is worth trying to keep her awake after 7pm!

In her first week this is all the has been really happening. She lost a little weight. She was born at 3.19kg and 50.5 cm. On Wednesday when she was weighed at the hospital she was 3.065kg. She has great facial expressions. She loves the sound of our voices, especially mine. I spoke to her a lot during the pregnancy. She seems to really hear my voice. I even sang to her to entertain her in that 7-10pm slot. She loved it! We are just getting used to each other now. Husnu has been home for this whole week which has been good. Next week though I am all by myself! Let's see how I cope!
Here is today's picture.

I just looked at her rising sign, her sign being a cancer is nicely balanced by the rising sign being a Leo!