Bringing Home Baby: The First 2 Weeks

So River is currently 11 days old. So far having two children has been a wonderful, amazing, frustrating, and tiring experience. As a Green Mommy there were many aspects of parenting that were very important to me with our son, and I hoped would work out as well or better with our daughter.
The first and most important of course was breastfeeding. With Bug breastfeeding went amazingly. Almost from the start he latched like a pro. He cluster fed his second night of life in the hospital and by morning my milk had come in. I never had pain, or sore nipples or even really ever had to use nipple creams. He fed constantly but my supply seemed to keep up. I was a first time breastfeeding diva. I stopped using covers right away almost within a few months of him being born. I was bold and courageous.
I just assumed with my baby girl it would go equally smoothly. So far it has not. Though she also cluster fed the second  night and brought my milk in, breastfeeding with River has been painful. Only now at 11 days old is she finally starting to latch right, after 11 days of latch, pull off and relatch, pull off and relatch. 11 days of sore nipples, painful almost to the point of being afraid to feed because of the pain. 11 days of cluster feeding at night. 11 days of answering the question "how is breastfeeding going?" with "we are working on it." And we are. River and I are a team and soon hopefully very soon we will master this. She already is doing so much better and my nipples are slowly starting to harden up enough so it doesn't hurt so much. I know that this is the most important thing I can do for her and I would do anything to make sure she gets breastmilk. I just have to get back into the swing of this. I am slowly learning though that though she may be the spitting image of her brother she is very much her own person.
Another aspect of Green parenting that I was actually hoping would go better than it did with Bug was baby wearing. So far with River this has been going amazing. She took to it right away and though she is still a tad too small for a ring sling or even really the mai tai wrap, we have been using a newborn sling wrap and she loves it. With Bug it took me until he was about 6 or 7 months old to really start liking baby wearing and carrying, with River we have been baby wearing almost everywhere and every day since I recovered enough from the c section to do so. If anything I have learned the second time around the same thing I learned later on with Bug, that given the choice between a carseat or stroller or a sling... I would choose sling every time.
The last big aspect of green parenting that was very important to me was cloth diapering. Bug was cloth diapered from the day we brought him home. This time around though I found she is really a bit too small for anything. We had 2 nb fitteds that actually fit her, 5 nb fitteds that are just a bit too big, 5 sunbaby pockets that fit ok but are a bit big also, and another 7 various pockets that are really much too big but kind of fit well enough to use in a pinch. Even prefolds are massive on her and we have no covers small enough to use yet. So our solution has been to simply wash her diapers every day. Once she is a little bigger (8-9 lbs) she will easily fit in many of the pockets as well as prefolds and covers. I am just hoping that day comes soon. I love being a cloth mommy, I love everything about cloth diapers, I just never imagined we would ever bring home a baby so small that she couldn't fit into them.
 So there you have it... our first 2 weeks as parents of two. I was going to go into the dynamics of the siblings interactions but I think I am going to do a whole separate post about that. All in all despite the breastfeeding frustrations, and the lack of small enough dipes, I am loving being the Mommy to two. I love everything about my daughter from her tiny nose to her tiny toes. Bringing home my rainbow baby at last is the best feeling in the world. Knowing my family is complete is just wonderful.