Ramblings of a pseudo intellectual

There’s so much that can go wrong when you’re breastfeeding.  You start out with those idealistic fantasies.  You know the ones that you have in your head:  you and the baby, nursing together, snuggled in a chair, stylish Boppy pillow, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, ethereal glow around you, birds tying ribbons in your hair.

Trouble is, for a lot of people, it doesn’t quite go like that.  First of all, I ordered those ribbon-tying birds in advance and they couldn’t even do a simple square knot, let alone a pretty bow.  All they did was crap all over the place.  Total ripoff.

I personally have dealt with a lot of obstacles — blistered, bleeding nipples, milk imbalance and an overactive letdown, a couple biting phases — and somehow managed to nurse Lane ’til she was about 3 1/2, and Jake’s still nursing strong at 15 months.  These things can be overcome!  Not ALWAYS, but usually.  Your best bet is to be prepared with some information in advance.  Read about some of the common problems at Kellymom.com.  Find yourself a La Leche League meeting BEFORE the baby’s born, and attend a meeting while you’re still pregnant.  Get the leader’s phone number.  Read a couple good books before the baby arrives.  Read this article at CNN.com and bookmark it.

So, I’ve had my share of issues; let me tell you what I personally did to overcome them.

1)  Blistered, bleeding, sore nipples.

Lane came out of the womb READY.  TO.  BREASTFEED.  She got latched on an hour after being born, and nursed like a crazy little sucking machine for a half hour straight… while I was completely prone on my back, legs in stirrups, getting a mystery tear in my vagina located and stitched up.  It was not a position conducive to getting a well-positioned latch, and despite assurances from the OB nurse that she was latched well… she wasn’t.  It didn’t hurt that much, but that first nursing session she sucked a pencil eraser sized blister on my right nipple.  Yeeeow.

Then it popped and scabbed over.  Double yeeeow.  But having done my homework, and very personally vested in making breastfeeding work for us, I knew it was important to let her nurse on that breast, despite the discomfort.  (Did I say discomfort?  Ahh, how time dulls the memory.  It was like a hot poker being jabbed into my nipple.)

So how did I manage?  Ibuprofin to cope with the pain, and Lansinoh brand lanolin cream.  (Lansinoh is AMAZING.  I cannot say enough good things about this stuff.  It is dreamy on sore nipples… not only does it help heal them, it also serves as a lubricant to prevent irritation in the first place.  And it is great for so much more than nipples.  It kicks diaper rash to the curb.  It softens hard, dry skin on your feet.  It is the only thing I’ve found that doesn’t sting to put on a chapped nose when you have a bad cold.  Spend the $10 and get a tube; it will last forever and you’ll keep finding new uses for it.)  Anyway… despite Lane’s near-constant nursing during our first few days, the nipple was all healed up in about three or four days.

2)  Milk imbalance & overactive letdown.

Let me take a minute to explain what this is first.  I’m going to be brief and if I’m any way unclear, you can always read a longer explanation.  Basically, when the milk starts flowing, it’s like skim milk.  It’s got more protein, not as much fat.  This is called “foremilk”.  As baby nurses, the milk gradually becomes thicker, more opaque, more fatty.  Like whole milk, really, and maybe even more rich than that.  It gets downright creamy.  This is called “hindmilk”.

So, you know how if you eat a meal that’s a lot of meat and little else (basically a lot of protein) it sort of messes with your digestion?  You get gassy (and STINKY) and get gas pains and let’s not even talk about the resultant ugly bowel movements.  Well, if a baby gets all foremilk and no hindmilk, he’s getting almost all protein in his diet… not too much sugar and like no fat at all… and boy do you know it by the diapers.  Breastmilk bowel movements are yellow and almost pleasant-smelling.  When you’ve got a milk imbalance going on, the poop looks green and frothy and loses that pleasant smell.  And baby gets gassier, and grumpier as a result.

This happened with Lane, starting around the time she was about 3 weeks old.  I had an overabundance of milk, and she was satiated on mostly foremilk, without getting to the creamy, fatty hindmilk.  The solution I found, and what worked, was ‘block feeding’ - basically, nursing on only one side for a few hours at a time.  I think I did four hour blocks, where Lane only nursed on one boob.  After four hours I would switch to the other boob.

Related to this issue, I also had an overactive letdown.  When my milk starts flowing, it REALLY starts flowing.  My letdown could shoot milk 4-5 feet and soak an entire burp cloth.  Eventually I started catching it in a bowl, and it would often equal 1.5-2 oz. in 20-30 seconds’ time, which is a crazy amount if you think about a little tiny one-month-old baby trying to keep up with this onslaught.  Lane simply couldn’t nurse that fast and would gag… so we learned that as soon as I felt that letdown coming (it is a distinct tingling sensation) I would unlatch her and let that initial letdown pass.  She didn’t get that I was doing it to help her and she’d get all pissed off for those 20 seconds I wouldn’t let her nurse, but it was worth it to not have her gag.  (Either my letdown eased up with Jake, or he was just more capable of keeping up, because I don’t recall having to go through that rigmarole with him.  Each baby is so different!)

3) Biting.

Both my kids have experimented with chomping down on me… and funny, both went through the phase at about six months old.  When Lane was six months old, she didn’t have a single tooth.  Jake, however, already had four.  OUCH!  Don’t think for a second that Lane didn’t hurt me though… that little baby could gum you to death!

The solution that worked best for both babies was simply creating a negative consequence to the biting.  With both, if they bit, that was the end of nursing for a minute or two.  I said, “Ouch, that hurts!  No biting!” and immediately stopped nursing.  Also what helped was simple attentiveness.  I always got bit when I wasn’t paying attention… trying to do other stuff while we nursed, daydreaming, talking to someone else.  I reverted to making breastfeeding that intimate, bird-ribbon-tying affair for a while.  Once my baby didn’t feel like he or she didn’t have to vie for my attention, biting became much less of an issue.

Tapeta lucidum and all!  (OK, not really.)
Jake decided 7:00 pm. was a good time for a nap.  He took a long-ish nap in the early afternoon, so I thought today would be a one-nap day.  (Most days are two-nap days.  But not all days.)  And now, it’s a bit after midnight and he just will not fall asleep.  And I can’t say I’ve tried very hard, but when you do the sure-fire things like lay in bed with him and nurse in a dark, quiet bedroom and every two minutes he pops up and starts giggling hysterically and shows absolutely no sign of needing sleep, like, ever, you kind of throw in the towel on the effort pretty quickly.

So now he’s up, waddling around the living room while Frank watches whatever he’s watching, eating Goldfish and saying “Dog” over and over again.  Oh, and the giggling too.   The nonstop, joyous, beautiful, endearing, adorable giggling.  I only wish I sort of didn’t know the giggling meant he is nowhere near tired.

The unfortunate bit is that Lane has already been asleep for two hours.  I swear each week these two make a schedule.  “Ok, Jake, you want to stay up late Tuesday and Thursday, and I’ll cover Monday, Wednesday, Friday?  Sounds good!  Go Team!”

I haven’t been writing the last couple (few?) days, and it’s not from lack of desire.  Life has just been busy!  There’s been lots of running around and playing with offspring and dinners at the in-laws’ and Frank and I actually went on a date on Friday.  It’s been months.

And, to my amazement, I went on a run Saturday morning and didn’t die.  Now, please keep in mind that for me, running is not “running”.  Running is intermittent jogging and walking.  But I like doing it and it makes me dodge that feeling of inertia you get when you don’t exercise for awhile.  I prefer to do it outside, but I’m sort of wussy when it comes to weather, so if it’s too cold, or too wet, or too windy, I won’t be out there.  I totally enjoy running on a treadmill but since right now I don’t have a gym membership, and don’t have a treadmill, that hasn’t happened since October when I did have a gym membership.  We have a gym picked out, and/or once we’re in a house we’ll probably buy a treadmill.  But I ran, honestly for the first time since October.  Egads.  I’ve started the last couple springs with the idea that I want to be able to run a 5K.  Three springs ago, I started out decently enough, and then got three different really bad colds right in a row and that sort of took the wind out of my sails.  Two springs ago, I ran for a couple weeks and couldn’t figure out why I was sucking wind so badly… and then I took a pregnancy test.  Jacob’s pregnancy had me sucking wind if I just looked at a flight of stairs, so any sort of serious working out made me feel lightheaded and ill so that didn’t happen.  Last spring I did pretty well.  I didn’t get to 5K levels, but I was able to increase the jogging intervals from 30 seconds apiece at the start of the spring to 5 minutes at a stretch by the time October and the total life upheaval came about.  Hopefully, I’ll find a way to stick with it again, and maybe push myself even more.  Again, I’d love to run in an honest-to-goodness 5K race, and actually run the whole thing.  Someday!!!

The running got started with me when I stumbled across this training plan, called the Couch-to-5K plan.  It is sooo for me.  I did find that I needed more than a week at each level, so I spent 2-3 weeks at each “week” until I was doing 5 minutes at a time.  Hopefully with a gym membership here, and/or a treadmill, plus the resolve to get outside to run whenever I can, I can get to a point where the idea of running in an actual race won’t seem so daunting.

In other news, Jake’s language has started happening.  Up until now, his communication has pretty much centered around our dog.  He would say “Duh” for dog, and if he saw a dog, or heard a dog, or played with a stuffed dog, he would go “woo woo” which was him barking like a dog.  In the last couple of days he’s gotten the hang of signing “milk” when he wants to nurse, and has also started saying “mum mum” for me, and “ba” for ball.  He may have also said “car” too but it only happened once and I couldn’t get him to repeat it.

Patty is participating in a contest where you share your birth stories, through this blog. Well, I love my birth stories, and I love contests, so why not?!? Here are the birth stories for both Lane and Jake’s births. Enjoy! (Just note, they aren’t terribly graphic, but they are a little graphic… so don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

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Jake’s birthday is imminent.  In just a few days he will be one year old.

It’s so cliche,  but I cannot figure out where the last year went.  It’s been a year of a lot of changes — sold our house, moved back to NY state, quit my job/career thing.  Through all that Jake’s been happily along for the ride.  I spent five months of maternity leave just loving on him as much as I could, and he made it so easy.  He practically came out of the womb smiling.  And once he learned how to laugh, man, it barely stopped.  He is one happy guy.  His smile lights up his whole face and is, in a word, infectious.

After the maternity leave, I went back to work three days a week, and Jake went to day care with his sister.  He seemed to instantly win over the girls who worked in the infant room.  They would light up when we arrived in the morning, and gushed continually about what a wonderful baby he was.  He didn’t sleep much for them - he is and has always been incredibly sensitive to noise when he sleeps - but no matter to them, because his demeanor was always cheery and easy-going.

Then we sold our house, and moved, and I gave my notice at work, and my notice at day care, all in late September/early October.  At that point Lane had just started in a new classroom so her teacher wasn’t much attached to her yet or vice versa, so that wasn’t an issue… but because Jake was still a baby he had remained in the infant room, with the girls who doted on him without remorse.  But regardless, the two center managers knew Lane since she’d started there at six months old, and Lane’s previous teacher was now the teacher in the classroom Jake would graduate to once he mastered walking.  They all cried when I told them.  Cried.  I cried, too.  As much as I was looking forward to my days with my babies, it was emotionally very difficult to remove them from an environment where they were so well cared-for and loved, and where I knew they were safe.  I had about 15 minutes of sentimentality about leaving my job… leaving that day care center was so much more difficult for me.  I still miss them, and Lane still talks about a couple of her friends and asks to see them.

Of course, being home with them isn’t all gumdrops and lollipops.  There are times, like right now, where Frank just caught Lane smacking Jake and put her in time out and now she’s wailing from on our bed for me, like I’m going to go easier on her for being mean to her brother.  Or when Jake fights having his nails cut so hard I’m tempted to duct-tape him to a chair to get it done.  Or at the mall today when Lane decided listening was optional so she lost the privilege of visiting the Princess Store (a.k.a. the Disney Store) and she became a wet noodle and I had to carry her to the car wailing and wet-noodle-like.  And the times, which really occur nightly, where Jake refuses to sleep more than two or three hours at a stretch.

But mostly, really, it’s fun and amazing and awesome and fulfilling. I love watching Jake and Lane interact and love on each other, seeing them learn, seeing them play and playing with them, and more than anything feeling like I can be a better mother because I’m not trying to cram all that motherhood into the too-small window after work, when everyone’s tired and cranky from a long day.  Though I suspect Frank thinks I’m tired and cranky all day anyway, because that’s mostly what he sees when he gets home from work every day.  Two kids are a lot of work, especially when one of them is a three year-old with a body capable of sustaining a constant fusion reaction… because seriously, she barely eats, so cold fusion is the only way I can think of that she has as much energy as she has.

And her constant state of motion provides such a contrast to her brother.  He’s a cool, content dude.  Happy to be in a sling, happy to be in a stroller, happy to be in the playard, just happy.  Crying from Jake means one of three things:  he’s tired, he’s hungry, or his sister has him in a headlock.  Though, that’s becoming less true nowadays, since the boy is walking.  He’s hurt himself as much as Lane has injured him over the last couple weeks.

He’s not just walking either… he has a veritable inventory of skills.  He claps.  Oh, does he clap!  He claps after he walks, he claps when he hears anyone else clapping, even if they are on TV.  He claps when you laugh.  He’s quite a pointer, too.  He has one word, Dog, though it sounds like Duh.  I think in the last day or two Lane has been designated “A”.  He points at her and says “A”.   One of his most recent additions is tickling.  We’re big on tickling, and when I tickle Lane he tries to, too.  If you say “I’m gonna tickle you!” he wiggles his fingers at you.  He’s also waving with meaning, which is just awesome.  And, he knows the sign for milk, which we use for nursing.  He doesn’t use it to ask to nurse yet, but when he knows that breastfeeding is imminent he starts signing “milk”.  I think, though, his most impressive skill is climbing.  Given he’s spent most of his mobile life in this 2 bedroom apartment which completely lacks stairs, he can sure get up a flight of stairs awfully quickly.  Or get on a step stool.  Or on the padded ottoman in our living room.  He can nearly get himself into the bathtub by himself.

He’s just such a little person now.  I love it.

I turned 32 today.  Much to my surprise… for some reason for most of January I thought I was already 32, and then I did the math.  Duh… so this is what it’s like to be old.

We are celebrating in many festive ways.  Mother Nature decided today was a good day to lay down more snow than we’ve had all winter.  Frank has a veritable booger rave going on in his face (seriously, I think his sinuses are on E), and is running and on-and-off temperature.  Because of that, my birthday festivities, supplied by my in-laws in the form of cooking us dinner and providing cake, were postponed.  Our plumbing joys have returned, bigger and badder than ever.  Flushing the toilet or really using any plumbing is thus off-limits until the plumber gets here tomorrow.   I went to the mall to escape the flu-fest in the house (I didn’t even know about the plumbing until Frank called to give me a status).  Lane managed to walk right into a table in a store and has a good bump on her forehead to show for it.  When I went back to the car the escalator to where we were parked (our mall has underground parking under the mall) was shut off, so I had to negotiate the escalator stairs with two kids and a stroller and various bags, during which my Old Navy bag ripped and vomited all my purchases all over the the stairs.

But there were some highlights.    A nice teenage boy helped me pick up the vomited clothes while the rest of the kids he was with kept Lane from scurrying off.  (Teenage boys being generally nice and doing kind things somehow renews my faith in humanity.)  I got a free birthday gift at Sephora because I’m on their mailing list.  I bought some great stuff for the kids and Frank and me for our upcoming vacation to Aruba in April.  Jake got his first pair of big boy walking shoes, because each day he chooses to walk more and crawl less.  I figure by the time his first birthday rolls around in a week and a half, crawling may more or less be a thing of the past.   He’s pretty sure of himself when he walks, but the new shoes must have felt weird and heavy and he got even more zombie-like in his gait than he normally is.  (I want to groan “BRRRAAAIIINNNSS!” every time he walks.  Sometimes I do, but usually only when nobody else is around.)  Jake also had his first foray into chicken nuggets today for dinner.  He had one and-a-half.  This thrills me to bits because Dino Nuggets, I am somewhat ashamed to admit, are a staple around here, so it opens that as a dining option for him when he won’t eat what I make for dinner.  I also got a Wii from Frank (thank you again, honey!), and I CANNOT WAIT until the kids are asleep so I can hook it up and try it out!!!!

So I didn’t get any cake, but I did have a Frosty at the mall, so that almost makes up for it.  I know my in-laws plan on supplying ice cream cake when we celebrate my birthday after Frank’s well enough to participate in the festivities.  It will probably be a Carvel cake which is totally acceptable, but I hinted that they could also get one from Cold Stone Creamery.  Oh my, if they come through on that one I will be oodles of happy.