Tag: BFing

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Ok, back to milk for a second

I know I’m done with the whole breast milk thing and all, and I know how much you miss me talking about my boobs, so I thought I’d throw you a bone. A while ago I linked to a post from What the Blog? where Jenny was asking readers to comment on breastfeeding recommendations, tips, products, etc. Well last week I saw that she has now compiled all the feedback she got from that post into one giant breastfeeding guide. Check it out here.

 

Her post got me thinking about what breastfeeding advice I would give, so I thought I’d make a little list for any of you moms-to-be who are planning on breastfeeding or interested. A lot of this is contained in Jenny’s post as well, so you might get a double dose.

  • Take the nurses’ advice on positioning the baby, positioning your breasts, etc., when you’re in the hospital after delivery and trying this out for the first time. I had no idea how to do it or what was going to happen, so having them there to guide me was essential. I never used a lactation consultant, either, so they were my main resource.
  • It will hurt at first, both inside and out. Having baby’s mouth sucking away on your nipple is a sensation that takes some getting used to, and it also causes your uterus to contract, which can feel like, you guessed it, mild contractions. It’s a little painful, but normal, and is key to getting your body back to normal. Contracting uterus = flatter stomach
  • Drink LOTS of water. I don’t know why, but nursing makes you extremely thirsty. I always had water with me when I fed D or pumped.
  • Make sure you eat enough. You need to keep up your calorie intake to make enough milk. Depending on how much you produce and how often baby eats, you can burn like 500 calories a day just by breastfeeding. Feeling ravenously hungry? Eat!
  • Feed on demand. Don’t try to put a newborn on a schedule, it won’t work. You might feel like you’re constantly feeding him/her for a while, but that will subside and more of a routine will emerge. The cluster feedings may return during growth spurts, but by then you’ll be used to them and know better how to handle it.
  • At first, feed baby on one side for 5-10 minutes, then the other. This helps get both breasts going right. After a couple days I dropped this pattern and just fed D on one side at a time, but this is what the nurses recommended right after she was born and it worked for me. Before your milk comes in and you’re still producing colostrum, this also helps make sure the baby is getting enough to eat.
  • Some people may yell at me for saying this one, but don’t wake the baby up to feed. He/she will wake up soon enough once discovering the hunger; you don’t have to worry about anyone starving to death. Yeah, it might throw that day’s schedule a tad out of whack for a little while, but honestly, in those first few weeks after baby’s born, everything seems out of whack. It’ll be ok. And if you get a surprise long stretch between feedings while baby decides to sleep, you should try to do the same. You never know when an opportunity like that will present itself again. (i promise i’m really not trying to scare you guys, i’m just being honest. it gets better, don’t worry)
  • When baby wakes up for those nighttime feedings (or even daytime ones, for that matter), a diaper change before feeding helps wake them up a little more. Being more awake will help the efficiency of the feeding. A baby who is still basically asleep can take for-ever to nurse, just fyi. And when you’re up 2, 3, a million times a night, a fast feeding will be very welcome.
  • Make sure you burp the baby often enough. Sometimes burping during a feeding as well as at the end helps get the air out and lets baby eat more comfortably. Along with this, have plenty of burp rags on hand. We burned through many every day when D was real little.
  • I always tucked a burp rag over the bottom part of my bra and let it hang down the front of me while D nursed. This saved many shirts from drool, milk, and spit up that would occasionally fall out of her mouth.
  • Having a watch or timer near where you nurse is very helpful in figuring out baby’s rhythm. I mentally kept track of how long she ate each time, and if you’re alternating sides during feedings you’ll be able to see when time’s up to switch. It also helped me keep track of how long it had been between each feeding. By the time I went back to work and R took over on parental leave, I was writing down D’s feeding times so he could see what her schedule was each day.
  • Determine which position is most comfortable for you for feeding. I always did the standard cradle hold with D.
  • I’m fairly indifferent on the boppy nursing pillows. I did get one, but pretty much never used it for nursing. I just found it easier to hold D in my arms than rest her on a pillow, or however you’re supposed to use it. It ended up getting used more to prop her up so she didn’t fall all over the couch when she was really little. And we did set her in it sometimes when she fell asleep, which I know you’re not supposed to do. Oops. She survived.
  • Get lanolin for your nipples when they get sore. I put it on after each feeding and after every shower for the first couple months. Watch out, though, because it will leave greasy marks on your clothes if it gets on them. It’s like a really thick vaseline type substance. I used Lansinoh.
  • Get nursing pads to protect your bras from leaks, dribbles, and lanolin stains. I liked the disposable ones best, since you’ll have plenty of laundry to deal with anyway. Again, I used the Lansinoh ones.
  • Comfortable nursing bras are a must. The ones I liked best were from Destination Maternity. Just their brand, not the expensive A Pea in the Pod ones. I got 3 – 2 neutral beige and 1 black. I wore them every day until I stopped pumping and they were lifesavers. You’ll also want some comfy sleep bras. I liked these, again from Destination Maternity.
  • Get some good nursing tank tops. These were especially useful for me, since D was born in the summer and it was HOT. But even if you deliver in the winter months they’ll still be handy and comfortable to wear around the house since you’ll be keeping it warm enough in there for baby anyway. I bought some from the Gap which weren’t the greatest and one turned into my sleeping tank, but I loved this one from Destination Maternity. I could put the nursing pads right in the cups and not even have to wear a bra with it. Sense a pattern with that place? They really do know their stuff.
  • If you’re setting up a dedicated nursery room for the baby, getting a glider or rocking chair of some sort is a good idea. I liked the kind with the matching gliding ottoman. Here’s the one we got, and I have spent countless hours in it. I still give D her morning and bedtime bottles in it, and probably will for as long as she takes them.
  • If you will be nursing in public, or maybe in front of people when they’re at your house, I highly recommend a nursing cover. I never ended up having to nurse D in public and would just go in her room to feed her if people were over, so I actually never used mine. But having it just in case isn’t a bad idea.
  • Get a good pump. Even if you don’t think you’ll need it right away, get it before baby is born. If you have supply issues, or baby doesn’t latch properly, or it just takes a while for the whole breastfeeding thing to click, pumping will be very important to get your supply going and maintained until baby will nurse. Or if you do end up with a long stretch between feedings, you might need to express some milk so your boobs don’t explode you stay comfortable. It’s also great to be able to have some bottles on hand if you’re going the breast milk route for those times when you have to go out somewhere with the baby or have someone else feed him/her while you’re gone or sleeping (sleeping? ha! i meant trying to sleep. or do laundry, or take a shower, or go to the bathroom, or eat…). I recommend a double electric pump. This is the one I got, and it worked like a charm. Medela also has a totally hands-free version that comes with a bra that holds the breast shields in place, but it’s obviously more expensive. I did get a little cheapie single hand pump for when I had to go places where I still needed to express but couldn’t take my big double pump bag. Like Camp Randall. Not kidding. Excuse me, what’s that in your purse? Oh that, don’t mind that, it’s just my breast pump. 😛
  • To go with that pump, get the quick clean wipes. Are you really going to want or have time to clean all the parts in soap and water after each use? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Neither did I. I did also get the steam clean bags, but I only used one once. I did use it again when I put the pump away for good (you can use each bag up to 20 times), but I don’t know if they’re really necessary or not. I think one even comes with the pump, so maybe just try that one out and see if you’ll need more before you get a whole box of them.
  • Get some extra bottles and nipples, preferably ones that are compatible with whatever pump you get. That pump above comes with 4-5 oz. bottles and lids, but only 1 wide base slow flow nipple, which is what newborns use. I got an extra set of the 5 oz. bottles as well as a set of 8 oz. bottles with medium flow nipples for ages 4+ months. Right now Medela only makes slow and medium flow nipples, so now sometimes D sucks the nipples flat trying to get milk out faster, but I think they’re fine. We have a whole bunch of other bottles that we’ve never even used. I asked for and received a nice set of BornFree bottles at one of our showers, which was the brand one of my girlfriends recommended when I was pregnant, but we’ve honestly only used one of them to put water in for D. The Medela bottles have been our go-to because they attach directly to the pump. This tended to be much easier for me than pumping into the storage bags, especially if I knew D would be taking the bottles soon after I pumped them (i.e., when I pumped at work and we would send those bottles to daycare with her the next day). I did, however, pump dozens, if not hundreds, of the 5 oz. storage bags full when I knew we would be freezing the milk instead. Medela has actually changed the style of their storage bags even since I started pumping last year, and they now come with an adapter to screw onto the pump instead of attaching the bag with an adhesive paper strap. Much nicer.
  • These were 2 sites I used a lot during the first weeks after D was born to help with breast milk guidelines:  LLLI, About.com.

 

Sorry, I guess that turned out to be more than a little list. But hopefully you find something of use in there somewhere. I know when I started breastfeeding I was like wtf?? Clueless. I’ll probably even have to look back on these notes the next time around myself.

 

(some of the links above are affiliate links, but every product i mentioned i either bought myself or was given as a shower gift, and i would personally recommend all of them)

 

 

 

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Cabbage patch

So this whole milk drying-up procedure has turned out to be much more painful than I expected. Remember how I thought that since my pumping had slowed down so much recently my risk of exploding boobs was pretty much gone? Yeah, I was wrong. Everything I read said that in order to get your milk supply to end you need to stop pumping/nursing entirely, so even my every-other-day pumping was making my body think I still needed to keep producing. I thought I was just teaching my body to produce less and less until finally it would simply get the hint that I no longer needed any milk. Apparently I was mistaken. So this weekend I decided it was time to stop for good, and I haven’t pumped since Thursday morning.

And I want to rip my boobs right off my chest. Actually just the right one; the left one has been behaving nicely. But righty? My god it’s being a turd. Full, hard, extremely sore, just all around unbearable. I’ve been popping ibuprofen like it’s my job since Saturday because I can finally take it again and it’s the recommended pain reliever for going through this process, but it hasn’t been doing much that I can tell.

What has been helping, though, is cabbage. What? Yes, cabbage. Everywhere I looked for how to go about doing this warned of the engorgement I would experience (they were right!) and recommended putting cabbage leaves on my boobs to relieve the pain of the swelling. Har – yeah I don’t think so. Raw cabbage leaves? In my bra? You’re crazy. Nope, you’re a genius! That shit saved my sanity this weekend. I’m not kidding, from the very first leaf against my skin I wanted to cry with joy and relief. For all the sites I read that suggested this I still can’t tell you what exactly is in the cabbage that helps, but I am now a believer. If Mr. Cabbage told me the world was ending tomorrow night at 6:00, I might actually listen, that’s how much of a cabbage convert I have become. You take raw green cabbage leaves, either slice off the top edge of the big veins in them or smash them down with a rolling pin (i chose the latter), and put them on your boobs for about half an hour or until whenever they’re wilted. I just wore a sports bra so they were easy to put in and remove, and I plowed through almost an entire head of cabbage in two days. The colder they are to start the better, and seriously as soon as you put the leaves on it’s instant relief. They don’t actually reduce the engorgement that much since they don’t do anything to make the milk dry up, but just like ice packs work, the cold compress on your skin does help take a little of the swelling down and provide some pain relief. And I guess women have been using this remedy since the 1800s, so who am I to judge? Bring on the cabbage!

I’ve also read that it may take up to a week or two for the milk to finally be dried up, and if that proves to be true too I may just have to be locked away by the end. I can’t even describe the level of discomfort, for although I’ve felt it before when I would go too long without nursing or pumping, knowing that I can’t relieve the engorgement or else I’ll have to start this cycle all over makes me a little crazy. If the pain gets too awful or I start running a fever I’m supposed to call the doctor at that point, so let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. I did have to express a little by hand last night before the right one exploded, which is such a fun endeavor all in itself. I tell ya, the human body? It’s a crazy machine.

To switch topics to try and take my mind off the boobage pain, let me tell you how my 5k went. I rocked it!! My original goal was to break 30:00, which, after I ran the route earlier last week I knew I’d be able to pull off. So then I had the 27:00 mark in my head. I secretly wanted to break 27:00, but the whole time I was running I kept telling myself I’d be happy with 28:00 something and felt like that’s the pace I was holding. Imagine my surprise when I crossed the finish line and my watch read 26:57!!! (it wasn’t an officially timed race so i used my watch instead of their clock) I mapped out the race route and it actually was 3.24 miles, so that’s an 8:18 pace! Holy shit. The whole time I was running I couldn’t believe my legs were holding in as well as they were, but I had no idea I was going that fast. Well, fast for me, I should say. So I was very happy about that.

Then Saturday night R smoked another scrumptious rack of ribs and we enjoyed 2 bottles of wine. These:

 

Kung Fu Girl Riesling
Leese Fitch Zinfandel

 

Both were quite tasty. The zin was pretty sweet for a red zinfandel, which I love, and the riesling was nice and light, tasting very much of pears. Last night R used his new pizza stone and pizza peel and made 2 homemade pizzas for dinner. They were both on whole wheat crust, and one was topped with his homemade bacon and cheese, and the other was topped with pepperoni and cheese. Need I even say it? Delicious!! Unfortunately he didn’t take pictures of any of the food this weekend, so you’ll just have to imagine the savory delicacies yourselves.

 

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Adventures in babymilking

Seriously, SM, another post about milk and your boobs? Yep, seriously. These things happen to have become a large part of me over these past 9 months and this blog is all about me, so it kind of comes with the territory. So there you go. A different version of my boob talk disclaimer. 🙂

But moving right along… Since we decided to switch D to whole milk sooner rather than later as she was not fond of formula in the slightest, I have been getting anxious about running out of our frozen breast milk reservoir too early. Which is kind of unsettling for me, because I’m really not an anxious person. But I just keep feeling like no, it’s too soon, I didn’t want her to stop breast milk completely this far before 1 year, I’m a horrible mom for not continuing to pump to keep up my supply when I probably could have, is she getting enough nutrition, is she eating enough other foods to compensate for the lack of good stuff she gets from my milk, will her weight be ok without breast milk since she was only in the 25-50% for weight at her 9 month appointment, and on and on and on.

I was talking to one of her daycare teachers about making this switch the other day, and she recommended mixing the breast milk with whole milk to start off, just to make sure she’ll take it and to help get her used to it. DUH! That most obvious of thoughts hadn’t even crossed my mind. I mean not even a tiptoe through the gray matter to clue me in on such an apparent notion. Here I was fretting myself silly about using up the very last drop of our precious breast milk then flat out pouring whole milk into her bottle. How can I bring myself to do that?? How can I possibly cut my baby off from my sweet river of milky goodness in one fell swoop, never to be drunk again?? Um, psst, SM, you don’t have to. Just mix them, and she’ll be fine. Whew!! Praise the lord and hallelujah all in one, I’m not failing my baby after all! That one simple wondrous tidbit of parenting advice just saved this first-timer from a possible nervous breakdown. Sure that may sound utterly ridiculous and unfounded, but such are the worries of a still relatively new mom. It’s not my fault.

And the best part? She loves the milk combo! She had it first at daycare yesterday and they said she had no trouble whatsoever, so I picked up a gallon of whole milk last night on my way home to give it a shot. I even splurged the extra $2 and bought the organic whole milk. R and I can subsist on the paltry contaminated regular milk, but nothing but the best for Queen D! I just pour half a bag of breast milk in her bottle, fill what would have been the other half of the bag’s amount with whole milk, shake it up, then warm it as we normally do. And she doesn’t even blink an eye. Success!

I know it sounds crazy, but this whole milk substitution half-and-half episode has lifted a weight off my shoulders. Not only is it just plain easy, but this should help extend our frozen breast milk stash out for at least another week if not all the way through the end of the month. Before I stopped pumping as often after D stopped nursing, I figured I could continue easily to the beginning of June, when she would be 10 months old. I knew I didn’t want to pump all the way to 1 year in August, but I did want to make it as far as possible with my milk reserves. Then once I realized how quickly that supply was dwindling as my pumping sessions became fewer and farther between, the double digit months became my target. So when I saw that we might not even be able to make it that far, I got nervous and started beating myself up mentally. Whole milk mixing has saved Mommy’s sanity.

As for the whole pumping routine, it’s pretty much finished. I can now go well over 24 hours between pumps. My last time was yesterday morning at 5:30, where I got one bag of 5 oz. and one bag of almost 4 oz., and I’m nowhere near feeling like I need to express any again yet. Plus I’ve noticed it takes longer and longer for my milk to let down, so maybe yesterday’s session was the grand finale of pumping. Gone are the days of rock-hard boobs that could spray milk like fire hydrants (i’m not kidding. on multiple occasions D got a face full of milk after pulling away from me while my milk was letting down). Gone are the days of feeling like my chest was literally going to explode after just a couple hours. Gone are the mornings of waking up with a soaking wet shirt because my boobs had gotten so engorged they leaked overnight. Ah, goodbye sweet full, leaking, perky boobs. It was fun while it lasted.

 

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Milkin’ mama no more (almost)

As you know, D decided to stop nursing a few weeks ago. And since then I’ve kind of been struggling with wanting to keep up my supply to get her to the 1 year mark on my milk vs. dreading pumping. I truly enjoyed nursing her, but I detest that pump. Not that it hurts or anything like that, but I’m just sick of doing it. I am now down to pumping once a day, in the morning before work, and I think even that may be phased out soon. So I’m only producing 2 bags of milk for her each day instead of the 4 I was making right after she stopped nursing, so we’ll see how long I feel like keeping that little bit up. I’m pretty confident that when I decide to stop now it won’t be as big an issue as I had originally feared. My body has learned to gradually produce less, so my nightmare of exploding boobs fortunately won’t be coming true. It’s pretty cool how nature just kind of takes over. Good thing, because you know I’ve been clueless throughout this whole pregnancy/birth/baby process. 🙂

At D’s 9 month appointment last week I tried to get her doctor to relent and say it was fine to switch to cow’s milk right now, but she just started laughing. 1 year is the steadfast guideline, but our pediatrician is so cool she wasn’t overly concerned about it (if anyone is looking for a fantastic ped, let me know. i highly recommend Dr. C). She said it’s definitely not her recommendation, but we can switch her now since she’s pretty close if that’s what works. I told her how I’m so sick of pumping, and she said well then stop. Ok, but I really don’t want to have to switch D to formula for only a month or two if I stop pumping and we use up the rest of the stockpile of frozen milk, and she said she honestly wouldn’t be surprised if D wouldn’t even take formula now. I never even thought about that, but her doctor said oh yeah, it tastes totally different. Ok, so what if I stop pumping and the frozen stash is gone AND D won’t take formula? Then what? Ok fine, then you can switch her to cow’s milk. But make sure you give her vitamins if you do switch, because the lack of iron in cow’s milk is the big reason babies shouldn’t drink it before age 1. Cool, that’s the answer I was looking for in the first place. 😉

She was right about the formula too. Sweet! So now I don’t have to lie to her at D’s 1 year appointment about when we switched to cow’s milk – D really didn’t take the formula. 🙂 She gave us a container of it to try so I didn’t have to buy one, I made D a bottle of it the next morning to test it out, and sure enough, she took one drink and then refused it. Maybe she wasn’t hungry, you say? No, I heated up a bottle of my milk for her right after that, which she promptly gobbled down.

Sooo, long story short, I may soon be a milkin’ mama no more, well before my goal of the 1 year mark. That’s ok. D’s happy and healthy, I will be very happy when I don’t have to pump anymore, and even her doctor said that it was very nice of me to keep pumping this long after she stopped nursing. She said 9 months so far is great, and it’s still continued past that. So I’m not worried. We’ll have about 1-2 weeks’ worth of frozen milk to use once I’m done for good, so D should be able to make it to at least 10 months on the Mommy nectar.

My other reason for writing this post was to guide you current or soon-to-be milkin’ mamas to a great post I found today on another blog I follow. Jenny from What the Blog? (over there —->) opened up a thread today for breastfeeding moms to leave comments with their suggestions/recommendations/tips for others based on their own experiences. I know every woman’s body is different, and one mom’s BFing must-haves may do nothing for someone else, but I thought it was a really good resource for anyone new to the milky boob game. She just has an excellent blog in general, too, so check it out:  http://jennandtonica.com/2011/05/for-to-be-breastfeeding-mothers/

 

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The end of an era

Well, we reached a milestone over the weekend. And it’s kind of funny, since I’ve been thinking about this so much lately and ended up not even being the one to decide how it was going to happen after all. D has stopped nursing. Wait, what, already? I thought I was going to tell her when we stopped, not the other way around.

Everything was going fine as usual Friday morning when I fed her before daycare, then R came in the room to get to his closet and she got distracted by Daddy. This always happens, so she stopped eating after just a little bit. But then when I tried to feed her when we got home from daycare Friday afternoon she refused, which was odd. Even if she’s not really hungry she’d never flat out refused to nurse before. Ok, no big deal, we’ll just try again later. Her cold was kicking in again, and we’re afraid her ear infection is back too (greeeat, gotta call the doctor again today to try to get it cleared up one more time), so I didn’t think it was totally bizarre that she wasn’t hungry. What I did find more strange, though, was when she refused to nurse before bed that night. She had eaten dinner at her normal time around 6:30, but she had no milk at all that afternoon or night, just some water from her bottle shortly before bed. I was convinced this wouldn’t cut the mustard and she’d be up at least once in the middle of the night, but I was wrong (not complaining on that error of judgment, mind you, just surprised). She slept through ’til her normal wakeup time of 6:30 Saturday morning, but then refused the boob once more. Now I was kind of perplexed – 3 times in a row of no Mommy eating? What’d I do wrong? She happily gulped down a bottle though, so at least it wasn’t that she had no appetite.

So, my friends, it appears my days as a milkin’ mama are drawing to a close. It’s pretty bittersweet too, surprisingly. I’ve become very ready to be done nursing lately, or at least be done pumping, I should say. Which is silly, since I planned on continuing to pump for a while even after D stopped nursing, just to make sure we had enough stockpiled in the freezer to last her to the one year mark on breast milk. She gets distracted so easily now too, sometimes nursing was almost a chore. Getting her to pay attention to eating without chewing on my necklace instead, or watching R as he walked by, or listening to R if he started talking, or looking up at me if I said something, was becoming a little tiresome, and I knew it would probably just get more so the bigger and squirmier she got.

But now I actually kind of miss it. That really is a special bond between mom and baby, something no one else but me will ever get to experience or know. Gazing down at my precious little angel, just a few inches from my face, knowing I’m the one providing for her. Even when she was a newborn and it happened all hours of the day and night, sometimes to the point where I was convinced there was no way she’d be able to get another drop out of there since it seemed like she had just eaten, yet always did. And now it’s gone. Just like that. I didn’t get that one last nursing that I expected to have and remember when I wanted to stop, it just came out of the blue. I thought maybe I’d still get the occasional nursing in if she woke up during the night, or possibly at bedtime if she was really hungry/overtired and the bottle just wasn’t cutting it. But she woke up last night and refused me again, wanting the bottle instead. *Tear*

8.5 months is pretty good though, so I can’t be too upset. And like I said, I was pretty much ready for this. I just didn’t think it was going to happen right.now. I was planning on nursing her through the end of next month, with just a few more pumping sessions after that so I was done with the boob milk factory by summer. I guess D had different plans. I’m still going to try to pump twice a day to keep adding to our reserves for that next month, but I can tell that only expressing once every 12 hours has already started to reduce my supply over just these past couple days. Hopefully my body is just getting used to a reduced schedule and I’ll still be able to produce enough to keep that going for a couple more weeks, because I really didn’t want to be completely finished with it all quite yet. That one year mark is a big psychological barrier for me – I’ve always heard before then babies aren’t supposed to transition to cow’s milk, so I really really want to get her there with my milk if at all possible. I counted up how many bags we have frozen, and right now we’re sitting on 57. I’ll have to do a little math to see how long this will last us if my supply does dwindle before I’d hoped. And hopefully as D starts eating more and more solids and drinking more water between meals instead of milk, she won’t need as much Mommy’s milk and we’ll make it through the summer for her.

I can’t help but wonder – why did she decide to stop? Was it something I did? I thought maybe my little “Stop biting!” shout Thursday morning scared her away from me, that she started associating nursing with me getting upset, but she did nurse fine Thursday night and Friday morning. I sure hope that wasn’t the reason why. I’d feel so horrible if I scared my baby away from eating from me because I tried to make her eat when she wasn’t hungry and then startled her when I got bitten, which was totally my fault. Ugh. Did she start sensing my increasing anxiety of a nibble with each feeding? That I was scared that as she sprouted more teeth the likelihood that I was going to get bitten when I fed her increased exponentially? I did notice when I tried to feed her Friday afternoon/evening that she looked like she was going in more for a nibble than a suckling, so I kind of shied away each time. I don’t know. Maybe she’s just ready to be done. I seriously do hope, though, that it wasn’t something I did that made her want to stop. Fortunately she’s happy as a clam when she takes the bottles still, so she does continue to get the great nutritional value of my milk.

8.5 months and she’s already asserting some independence. Aww, my baby is growing up so fast… *sniff, sniff*

I must admit, though, it was nice to not bring the pump to work today for the first time since I’ve come back. And I don’t have to wear nursing bras anymore, or worry about nursing pads for said bras. And I won’t have to tote the pump along everywhere we go if we’re gone for more than a few hours anymore. Maybe I’ll be ok after all.

 

 

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Back in business

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta. No, not really. But I was going to put “Ahh, it feels good to be back” to start this post, and then the Geto Boys lyrics popped into my head instead. 🙂

It does feel good, though, to have my new theme all sorted out. Kind of like being *home*. My old one just felt too sparse and blah, so I love the splashes of color and little extras I can do with this one. I am pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to manipulate the website code to change things, too. Last night when I was showing R the header I created and how I’d taught myself to change icons and stuff, he kept saying, “Oh that’s easy.” Well, yeah, duh, when you’re a web/computer genius, but to us laypeople looking at code is like looking at Mandarin Chinese – a whole bunch of random letters and symbols that don’t make any sense whatsoever. So I’ll just continue to pat myself on the back thankyouverymuch. 🙂

So this post is just gonna be about a whole bunch of random things, because all the stuff I have floating around in my head this morning doesn’t really have much connection. (see, that sentence right there didn’t even make a whole lot of sense) For starters, I feel like I look like a total frump. Since Winter has decided to come back, I have on a gray sweater, black pants (which would be great if they were a little truer black. they’re more like a black khaki, so i keep worrying that people are thinking they look too much like faded black jeans, which are disgusting), and a pair of hiking sneakers. Blech. These pants are new, and are the exact same style as a couple other pairs I have for work and absolutely love, but like I said the color is just a little meh. And since I’ve never worn them before, I realized this morning that I don’t really have any shoes to go with them. They’re not dressy enough to wear my cute black faux-patent leather flats, and I apparently have no other casual black shoes. So sneakers it was. Gross. *I’m open to all suggestions for good casual black shoes. The comfier and cuter the better.*

And since we’re back in the 40s today from the gorgeous sun and 60s yesterday, I had to get another jog in last night to take advantage. I decided my new rule is I’m not running unless it’s at least 50 degrees outside, because I hate running in cold weather. And I don’t see 50s in the forecast again until next week, so I made my butt get in gear last night. I changed up my route again – went 2.11 miles in 18:56, which is 8:57 pace. Woo wee! I’m very surprised I broke the 9:00 pace, because it certainly felt like my slowest run yet. I was expecting to get slower from when I started before I get faster though, seeing as my body has to get back into shape after the weirdest, probably most traumatic thing it’s ever been through. So that’s pretty encouraging. I could feel it in my left knee and ankle by the time I got done, though, so a couple days off may be a good thing right now.

D has decided to be a little stinker lately and not take her afternoon naps at daycare. Hence, she’s tired and cranky when we get home and has to take an evening nap, which I was hoping she was starting to drop. Tuesday we were supposed to go to swimming, but she was so tired she fell asleep when I fed her when we got home and I didn’t have the heart to wake her – she ended up sleeping for an hour and a half. I figured she needed that more than being dunked by Mommy. 😉 When she doesn’t nap well she doesn’t sleep as well at night either. She’s awoken a couple nights this week, with last night’s wake up coming at 4:00. Fabulous. And since she ate then, I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to be hungry when she woke up for good this morning. I was right. I tried to feed her anyway, and paid the price. She bit me! Numerous times in a row! I know she obviously doesn’t do it on purpose – she’s not hungry but has something in her mouth, so it becomes a chew toy instead – but goddamn, does that hurt! And I’m afraid I scared her this morning too, because when she did it for like the 4th time in a row I pulled back and said, “Stop biting!” She looked up at me with these huge eyes and a tiny little frowny face and almost instantly started crying, big tears and all. I felt so terrible. I should have learned from the first nibble that she wasn’t hungry, but I kept trying. Poor little thing. Why is Mommy shouting at me? I’m just lying here looking up at her with my gorgeous gray eyes. 🙁 Oh man, I felt so mean. That beautiful little face was so sad; I don’t think I’ve seen her cry from fear before. Needless to say, she got lots more hugs before we left for daycare. Unfortunately, her lack of eating leaves me in the ever-so-lovely lopsided state. Bleh.

She loves playing in her playpen now too. How adorable is this??

 

Our little zoo animal

 

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Milkin’ Mama

Or Moo, as R likes to say. For you see, I breastfeed D. Wait, I guess I should put a disclaimer here:  ** This post is all about the wide, wacky world of my boobs since D was born. So if you don’t care for that subject, please turn back now. For the rest of you, let’s break on through…. **

To breastfeed or not is probably one of the first questions on most new moms’ minds. And sometimes, it’s not entirely up to them. The baby may not latch on right, the milk supply may not be there, and honestly, it’s just not for everyone. From the time I found out I was pregnant, though, I knew I would give breastfeeding a shot.

I was never one of those women who was adamant either way on the issue, but I just felt it would be right for me to try. I actually was somewhat expecting it not to go smoothly for me since I am not, how shall we say, well-endowed in the chesticles region. 😉 Why I thought that would be an issue, who knows. I’m weird, you should know that by now.

Anyhoo… Fortunately my worries were quashed practically immediately after D was born, for as soon as they got her out and cleaned off in the delivery room, they positioned her on my chest and she started sucking away. (see, if you were one of those who turned back, that image probably would’ve grossed you out. hence, the disclaimer) I kept thinking what in the world good is that doing? There’s nothing in there, I can’t tell if anything’s coming out, and these things are so little there’s no way they’re providing her any nutrients whatsoever.

The nurses reassured me, though, that even though I wasn’t producing milk yet, the colostrum she was getting those first couple of days (fancy medical term essentially meaning pre-milk) was basically liquid gold to her body and was all she needed. Ok, if you say so. I’ve never done this before so I’ll trust you guys.

Fast forward a couple days to a day or two after we got home from the hospital, so either 3-4 days after she was born, and VAVOOM! These babies filled up like you would not believe, and I was shocked to see myself in the mirror that day. I even made R come into the bathroom to take a look, because it’s nothing he’d ever seen with me before. 😉 I said look at these! Don’t they look like implants?! They totally did too – perfectly round, just stuck right on there all perky for the world to see. Hey, I could get used to this; now I see why some chicks get the surgery.

And ever since then, I have been Mama Moo. R jokes that we should just go up to the farm and he could hook me up to the cows’ milking machine. Um, NO! I don’t want them to get ripped off, thankyouverymuch.

Everyone has their own personal reasons for choosing whether or not to breastfeed their babies, but my main criteria were thrice:

  1. It’s free
  2. It’s the best thing for her, so if I am capable of producing it then why not give it to her?
  3. It’s been easy and pretty convenient for me

Oh real nice, SM, you decided whether or not to breastfeed based on economical reasons? Um, yes. Please revisit #1 – it’s FREE. Have you priced formula lately? That shit is expensive! So if I am physically able to provide my daughter my milk at no added cost to our family, why wouldn’t I?

And I know formula is not harmful to babies (duh, or else it wouldn’t be out there), but I have never heard anyone say that formula is better for an infant than breast milk. I do personally believe there is some truth to the saying “Breast is Best”, but again, I’m not one of those staunch exclusive breastfeeding moms who looks scornfully down upon anyone who formula feeds. No way, none of that crap going on here. This is just what I chose.

And as for #3 – breastfeeding has worked easily and comfortably into our schedule. For the first couple months that’s all she did was nurse, no solids yet. So it was great – she’s hungry, I’m full, let’s do this. And believe me, when I say full, I mean FULL. Man, if she didn’t eat for one reason or another or I didn’t pump for too long at a time we were talking some serious swelling going on.

Remember the implant day? Yeah, they tend to get back to that status after too many hours of no sucking, whether it be from D or the milk machine. And dude, it hurts! I never would have thought boobs full of milk would be a painful thing, just more like a squishy water balloon or something, but boy was I wrong. The only thing I can even think to relate it to, and having no personal physical experience with this I can’t confirm for sure, but is when a guy hasn’t, well, um, you know…. released?

The one thing I really haven’t had to deal with is nursing in public, thankfully. For the most part we’ve timed outings so she’s either fed before or after we go, or we take pumped bottles for while we’re gone, or whatever. If we go to friends’ or relatives’ houses I’ll obviously just nurse her there if we stay long enough, too.

And I have nursed her in the back seat of the car, but never just right out in the open in a public setting. I do have a nursing cover for such instances, but I still think I’d feel a little weird. I’m pretty private like that, and I don’t really want people watching when I’ve got things hanging out, cover or not. In fact, the only people I’ve actually nursed in front of are R, my mom, and one of R’s sisters-in-law. They’ve got kids, they don’t care. 🙂

I was a little anxious to see how pumping was going to go once I went back to work, but so far it’s been no trouble at all. I have one of the good double electric pumps, so I only have to do it once a day, and it only takes about 20 minutes total from the time I step off to the time I’m back at my desk.

And I don’t make a big deal about it with fanfare and an announcement that I’m going to go relieve by breasteses or anything like that, I just discreetly step away and return. I figure if anybody has a problem with it, screw them. D comes first now in every aspect of my life, and anyone with kids (which is practically everyone with whom i work) should recognize and respect that.

It works out perfectly, too, because we send the two bottles I pump at work each day to daycare with D for the next day. Actually, I pump 3 bottles a day, because in the morning I need to pump the side on which she doesn’t eat, too. Ok, so 3 bottles go to daycare, and then sometimes we get a backlog so I’ll freeze the morning ones. This kid gets lots of milk. 🙂

I actually started pumping and freezing milk a while before I went back to work, just in case my supply dwindled too soon, or pumping during the workday ended up being a bust (ha! no pun intended), or things just didn’t work out for whatever reason and we would need some back-up reserves. Fortunately we needed not worry there either.

When I said R says Moo about me, he’s not that far off. I seriously make enough milk for a couple babies. We have a freezer-full of bags in the basement, a freezer door-full of bags in the kitchen, and a couple bottles chilling in the fridge on a daily basis. Yep, I’ve got milk.

I’m planning on breastfeeding D for the whole first year, which, judging by how well my supply has lasted for almost 8 months so far, should be no problem whatsoever. It’s what I’m going to do when I want to stop that kind of frightens me. I don’t get quite as engorged after long periods of no relief as I did in the early months, but these suckers still get quite enlarged and painful if I do go too long.

So what am I supposed to do when it comes time to stop if I’m still producing this much? Do I just pump little bits at a time less frequently to trick my body into thinking I don’t need to make that much? Do I suck it up and just sit in pain for a few days until they go down? (that last notion scares the shit out of me, because i’m not kidding when i keep saying these things hurt when they’re full!) Eek, we shall see.

One nice side effect of BFing that I’ve experienced is that it has served as my *exercise* for going on 8 months now. I’ve read that it burns like 500+ calories a day, depending on how much you produce, and I believe it. Without substantially changing my diet at all (and actually eating crappier than usual sometimes) I’ve been able to lose all the weight I gained during my pregnancy and then some, and I credit 100% of that weight loss to BFing.

I haven’t worked out regularly since shortly after D was born, and even then I was just taking her for walks. Before that, it was a good couple months since I’d followed my normal workout schedule, so it’s pushing a year now that I haven’t exercised like I’m used to.

I haven’t gone this long without regular exercise since high school, and I really need to get my butt back in shape. I’m still contemplating trying a half marathon this summer, so I need to do some serious work to get my cardiovascular stamina back up. I’m not gonna lie, I am a big fan of the BFing weight loss, but I really am wimpy right now in the fitness category.

Oh, and I forgot to mention – nursing releases some hormone that has a calming effect on both baby and mom, so yeah, I’ll take that too. And now that I think about it, never once have I felt nervous or antsy or rushed or unsettled at all while breastfeeding D.

Moo.