First Outing

When I sat down to write tonight, I was intending to write about the getting there portion of our Christmas. This post focused on my cat, and I wanted to upload some pictures of her from our trip to give you some visuals but, I got side tracked.

The memory card in our camera happened to be one that Eric had in his old cell phone, I am got taken back in time looking at over 600 photos of various memories over the last 2 years. Many of them were of Aaron. Pictures, I have seen in quite some time. And I was lost in time.

I never blogged much about Aaron when he was little. I had post partum depression and blogging was the furthest thing from my mind and I just didn't have the energy for it. A lot of his babyhood/new mommyhood memories have come flooding back with a vengeance and I want to document them before I forget. Hell, I still haven't written his birth story. I wrote half of it last March/April but I never completed it. I only did this little ditty.

Tonight I am going to focus on our first outing.

This is Aaron on his first day home from the hospital at 2 days old. On all of our outings, he would be done up like with candy cane receiving blankets, one covering his lap, another blanket on top and another one to cover him if it was raining. Going out was quite the ordeal.  

It was a Saturday and Aaron was 5 days old. My sister came to visit us and she asked how I felt about venturing out of the house. I was up for it. It wasn't anything to exciting, and Aaron was sleeping in 3 hour blocks at this point so it was safe to venture out. I was scared beyond belief that he would wake up and I wouldn't know where/how to feed him. This caused me a great deal of anxiety.

Sometime in the early afternoon we packed Aaron up in his infant seat and diaper bag and off we went to Wal-Mart. I remember my sister telling me I was taking too much stuff in the diaper bag, but being a new mom I thought the more the better. I hadn't left the house at this point except to run up to the drug store with a neighbour and I was gone for 15 minutes at the most.

So we went to Wal-Mart and trolled the baby section. I had Aaron in his infant seat in a shopping cart or a stroller. I think it was the stroller. My sister wanted to buy me a baby gift and I remember her getting him a Tigger outfit and a blue stuffie/blanky square thingy and I probably got a few other items and all was well. He slept through the entire time.

We then headed over to Superstore as my sister wanted to cook a gourmet meal for us (much appreciated!) but I told her I would love some fajitas. I had Aaron in the shopping cart in his car seat. Gloria needed to go off to get something and left me in the produce area. I thought she'd be going a a few minutes but it turned into a life time it seemed. She didn't have a cell phone so I had no way to get a hold of her. Superstore is massive!

I was literally having an anxiety attack although I didn't realize it at the time. I was sweating and panicking that the baby would wake up, and I wouldn't have a clue where to feed him. (He was breast fed and at that point I had only nursed him at home either on the couch or in bed with a breast feeding pillow.) I had to have everything just so before nursing could commence. She being a mother 3 had already been there and done that. ***TMI WARNING.*** (Any man or the squeamish may want to gloss over the rest of this paragraph.) I also wasn't up to using a public bathroom at this point either for fear of getting an infection and needing to use my squirt/douche bottle after every trip to the bathroom. After you give birth vaginally, you will need to douche with warm water after every trip to the bathroom for a few weeks. Not to mention urine stings your stitches (And I only had 4) and cried like a baby every time I went to the bathroom if my IB Profen had worn off.

After what seemed like a life time, and me scanning high and low while not leaving my area of the store for Gloria, she returned much to my relief. I don't know what I said to her, but she didn't think it was a big deal. If there was any indicator that I was headed for some pretty bad PPD, I am sure that outing was one.

Aaron slept through the entire outing, and my anxiety was not needed. He slept right up until we arrived home. We even had the pleasure of a road stop/seat belt check in our neighbourhood much to my surprise on way home. I think we got a chuckle out of the police officer as we explained it was our first outing and everyone passed with flying colours. Even Aaron, crammed into his car seat sans head rest with 2 rolled up receiving blankets wedged next to him like little candy canes.

Our second outing was less anxiety ridden complete with my first breast feeding in public experience. We went to a breast feeding friendly cafe where I knew some mom's. Here entered the new found fear of Aaron coming in contact with outside germs. That is another post for another time.