Breast Advice

All my life I've been certain that my breasts would be perfect for breast feeding. My husband even joked that his attraction to me was an evolutionary response to the fact that my breasts were big enough to feed a good sized family. Which is why I have been so frustrated and surprised by how many problems I've run into. I was prepared for the pain, for awhile. I knew it'd hurt some. I didn't know I'd bleed so much. Or that every minute of the nursing would be painful. I wasn't prepared for the wounds and blisters.

And I wasn't prepared for the experts. It started from Day One. Every nurse in the hospital wanted to check my nursing style. And every nurse had a different opinion on how I was doing it wrong. The last day I finally saw a lactation consultant and she declared "Perfect Latch! Stick it in a textbook!" Finally. I thought I was home free.

But then came the milk blister, and the crack, and the wound, some blood, an infection, more and more pain. I looked for help in the books, on the internet. I contacted the La Leche League - they copy and pasted the book. I contacted a LLL Leader - she told me my nipple was the wrong size for my daughters mouth. I contacted a Certified Consultant - she told me I had to have my breasts massaged Japanese style every week (for a hefty fee of course). I contacted another - she wanted to charge $200 to read the text book version of a latch over the phone. We started to call them the "Capital "E" Experts." But even so sisters, friends, other moms - they told me what the books said. They told me to pump. They told me to stop nursing. They told me it gets better in a few days, a few weeks, a few months. Some women told me it wasn't worth it.

In a moment of pain and exhaustion I declared that I hated breastfeeding - then latched Emily onto my cracked, open nipple for another hour long session. My husband sent me links to fix oversupply.

I spent every minute worrying if she was on right, if she should make the noise, if she was getting enough milk, if I was using the right side, or squeezing enough, too much. I wondered if I was too big or too little, or made too much milk. I wondered if I really was the wrong size and shape for my daughter.

Finally, I met with the last lactation consultant in stroke of luck. She looked at us and said "She's fine. Latch is fine. Don't listen to them anymore."

Breast - I mean Best - Advice Ever!

Vampire

Emily has been making all sorts of new noises lately. She coos and whimpers and sometimes barks in her sleep. But one thing that's been the same from day one has been the hungry cry.

It's a bit of a two parter. First she starts with a typical wah-wah. A few wah's and it's clear what she wants.

However, if she's super hungry the wah's link together and her mouth won't close long enough to wah properly. Then she sounds like a bad evil laugh. In fact it sounds exactly like The Count from Sesame Street. Wah-ah-ah-ah-aaaaah. She even gets the warble right. I keep expecting a crash of random lightening after each cry.

Instead I get one...one hungry baby. Ah-ah-ah-aaaaah.

My Yellow Wall

When we first moved into our house we knew we were going to paint. Choosing colors was horrifically painful, but we finally settled on a bright yellow/gold for our downstairs living room. A few people have mentioned that the walls are a little too bright.

For the last few days I've been looking at those yellow walls as my own personal yellow wallpaper. The trapping walls of a wife stuck in just a few rooms, ignored by a husband, tortured by her own thoughts. Only I don't have wallpaper and I do have a screaming baby in pain.

But last night I spent three hours with Emily staring at those walls while she tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. We started at 2am and she didn't sleep till 5am. Those few hours of sleep deprivation on top of sleep deprivation on top of sleep deprivation made my yellow walls seems lovely. Swaying back a forth till neither of us could see straight those yellow walls were a little bit of happy.

More happy because my little girl was looking at them with her much brighter blue eyes.

Look what I made!

Emily has been going through a phase where she eats every 30 minutes (for 30+ minutes). In between eating she either naps for 10 minutes (enough to tease Mom into thinking she'll get some sleep) or she fusses. She fusses about having hiccups, burps, gas, poop, dirty diapers, clean diapers, or just cause she's hungry...even though she just finished eating.

This morning was pretty rough. After a few nights of very little sleep and a lot of fussing we spent four morning hours of eating, rocking, eating, and rocking some more. Finally she was sated and I could carry her back into the bedroom and lay her on the bed next to my sleeping husband and my oh-so-cold (figuratively) side of the bed. I should have curled up immediately to catch some extra sleep, but I took a moment to admire what I had achieved through hours and hours of work:

A sleeping baby!

(And yes she woke up ten minutes after that to eat again.)

My Kind of Baby

The other day Emily started to snuffle as the sun rose. It wasn't an urgent snuffling, but it was pretty clear she wanted Mom to wake up. Which of course I did.

Instead of her big blue eyes staring at me, which is often what I get to see when she wakes me up (sometimes accompanied with a screwed up face ready to get red and angry) I saw a pile of white blanket. One corner was folded over nicely and when I lifted it I saw a grinning little girl peeking from under it. Emily had grabbed her blanket, covered her face with it and wanted Mom to see her new trick.

She's done this a few times. Usually during diaper changes. However, this time I wasn't awake to see her do it, so she made sure I knew how incredibly cute and silly she is. And how much like Mom, who also likes to cover her face with soft things (I've been known to sleep with a pillow over my face), she is.

There are other similarities in our blanket and sleeping styles. Emily also likes to cover her eyes with her forearm, a trick I've perfected in most napping positions. She likes to curl to the side, both arms pressed against her far cheek. Head propping on laced fingers is also a favorite of hers and mine. It is in fact one of the things that D. first noticed about me and one of the things I first noticed about Emily.

What kind of baby laces her long, thin, elegant, fingers together on her first day? My kind of baby.

Kick

Starting at week 7 of my pregnancy people started to ask if I could feel the baby moving. I understand why this is such a prevalent question. My Dad, for instance, was the first person to ask if I could feel it kicking. Because he likes babies and I'm pretty sure he likes me, he wanted to be a part of my first pregnancy (and his third grandchild). Babies and families are happy experiences (usually) so it is no surprise everyone wants in on the action. A baby kick is one of those things people who aren't carrying a baby can feel and touch and experience. So my Dad asking if the worm that was currently attached to an egg was moving around yes was really my Dad wondering if he could start connecting with his grandchild yet.

Nope. Not yet.

Then of course once you start getting close to the time when the baby actually has legs to kick with the books get really excited too. I can't blame the authors of these guides. They spend chapters upon chapters explaining and detailing all the really yucky stuff a pregnant woman has in store for her so finding a bright spot to focus on is probably a relief for the writer...and the mother.

Unless you're me. Around 18 weeks I'd had no movement, no quickening, no sense that anything was wiggling inside. At 19 weeks I was trying to be so aware of my belly that I didn't even notice when my legs were going numb. For weeks I'd talk to my belly, sing to it, pat it, rub it, do all those crazy "bonding positions" that make you feel like a very fat pretzel. And nothing. I felt nothing. I fretted that I was too fat to feel it, had gained too much weight, was perhaps not aware enough to notice, was a horrible mother-to-be because I wasn't paying enough attention to my child. I worried that maybe the pregnancy was really in my mind. Maybe there was nothing there. I honestly wondered if I had somehow lost or misplaced the baby and didn't notice. Like making myself check that I have my keys with me every 5 minutes, I felt like I needed to check if the baby was still there. Maybe I left it in the cab...on the subway...misplaced it in the laundry...why wasn't the baby moving!

Well I finally felt it. And it was as amazing and wonderful as everybody says it was. It was also a huge relief that whatever was growing in me was really alive and...well...kicking.

A lot.

More.

Again.

The books and the articles and my friends all remind me that the baby will move one day, then nothing the next, then some more later when you have a piece of candy. The idea is to just go with it and be happy. Unless, again, you're me. Pretty soon the bumping and jumping and moving around started to worry me. Now that I knew there was really something in there I wondered if it liked being in there. Was I giving my child the best accomodations? In a both totally awesome and totally frightening moment one kick was so strong it moved my laptop from against my belly to my thighs. I couldn't help but wonder if this was some protest from mini-me against the computer, or the way I held it, or the way I chose to sit.

So the past few days everytime I feel those kicks and somersaults (and there does seem to be a great deal of gymnastics going on) I worry that the baby is uncomfortable. That my belly is just too small, or too large, or too round, or not round enough. Perhaps the pants don't work. Maybe the dress is too loose. Maybe I should sit up, or lie down. Right side? Left? On my head? I wiggle almost as much as the little one does and by the end of it I'm terribly uncomfortable (and tired) and the baby is still kicking.

If some little jabs can send me into a tizzy now exactly how am I gonna handle it when this kid decided they really, really want to play soccer?

August

Mosquitoes: 50

Me: 1

One big, fat splat that is.