Abigail Jeanne Cuy Castellanos

Abigail Jeanne Cuy Castellanos was born at 3:41 PM on Friday, October 7, 2011. I was confused for a second because I really didn’t realize she had come even out. They all helped me get up into a chair pretty quickly and started nursing right away, to help me more than anything because I was losing a lot of blood. A little later mom took Abi and Aunt Bren and Jodi got to work on me. I won’t go into details but I almost think that was worse than labor!

I had lost quite a lot of blood, so I was really weak and tired and unfortunately I did not really enjoy my first moments of being a mommy. I don’t even remember when people started coming to see us, if it was that day or not until the next day. When they helped me get in bed that night I remember telling Aunt Bren that I felt terrible, like I had been in a car accident (and I would know what that feels like!). After I got settled in bed, Aunt Brenda got everything ready to weigh and measure Abi. It was pretty neat; she used the same scale to weigh Abigail that I got weighed with when I was born 28 years earlier. Abigail weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces, and was 19 ½ inches long. She felt so small, like such a little peanut.

I needed help throughout the night getting up to use the restroom, getting Abi in place to eat, e.g. It was a pretty rough first night but mom stayed overnight to help so we made it through. The next day everyone started coming over to meet our beautiful girl. Ten days after she was born, my friend Jess Hekman came over to take Abigail’s newborn pictures. She is an awesome photographer, and the newborn session was my baby shower gift from her.

I was blessed to be able to stay home from work for three entire months; it took that long to get adjusted to having a baby and still living life. To be completely honest though, I really did not totally enjoy my time off. I was dealing with some pretty bad pain (from birth complications) on a daily basis that made it hard to enjoy much of anything. It was really discouraging that the time I thought I would enjoy being home with my new baby was spent in pain that kept me from fully enjoying her. I went to several doctors, who suggested as probably my only option. I didn’t really want to do that so I tried other more “natural” things, none of which helped. I also made the mistake of looking up my problem on WebMD, and based on what other people posted, I was convinced the pain was never going to go away. Thanks to God alone, at five months postpartum (to the day), the pain just stopped. I don't know why or how, but I was not going to complain! Thankfully I have not had any other problems with it since.