Welcome back ankles

One of the many unexpected things about post partum recovery* for me has been the amount of fluid I retained due to the surgery and the IV during labor. I've been keeping close track of my weight during my pregnancy, so I know how much I weighed the day I went into labor and how much I weighed the day I was discharged from the hospital (2 days after Zachary's birth). It turns out I lost exactly ZERO pounds. In fact, I gained a half pound! I delivered a 5 -1/2 pound baby, but I still managed to GAIN weight??

Turns out I can thank the fluid retention. Insane amounts of fluid, making my feet, ankles, and legs swell up to proportions I've never seen before. I took some pictures of my feet, but I'm a little wary of posting them: fat little sausage toes smushed up against and digging trenches into chubby feet, melting into my non-existent ankles ("cankles" are a serious understatement in this case) and then onto my elephantine calves and knees. Not a pretty picture.

I talked to the doctor after the swelling was getting worse rather than better, and she said that it will take about two weeks to go down. It's a normal part of recovery, and I will find myself losing the fluid through night sweats and frequent bathroom breaks. And that's exactly what's been happening over the past week.

After several nights of sweating profusely all night long, I lost 4lbs of water weight in one night, 3lbs the next night. Since Tuesday, in fact, I've lost 12 lbs! That's got to be the easiest 12lbs I've ever lost in my life. It's kind of crazy how it happens, but I'm just so happy to have my ankles back! And I'm looking forward to wearing a pair of normal shoes again (last week I could barely squeeze my sausages into my enormously roomy wool clogs).

OK, enough about me. I'll be back soon to post more pictures of the little prince!

*To be fair, everything about post partum recovery has been unexpected to me because I never got that far in the pregnancy books. It's kind of like how I learned US history -- we never made it past WWII in the textbooks before the end of the school year, so the Vietnam and Korean wars were a mystery to me until I read about them on my own in college.