Kate in Monet's Garden: January 2014

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Dear Oliver,

More than anything, nine months sounds old. That's maybe because you seem old. You've been out as long as you were in! (Okay, not exactly. I have plans for a 39-weeks-out picture.)

You are growing--not just physically--by leaps and bounds. If I thought you were moving around last month, you are flying this month.

You took your first tentative hands-and-knees crawls right after Christmas, at about eight-and-a-half months. And now, two weeks later, you have mastered crawling. You can cover the downstairs in about the time it takes me to take a water glass out of the cabinet. Hands and knees, hands and feet, you don't care.

You have conquered the stairs. Going up, anyway. With one of us following behind you. We now have gates at both the top and the bottom of the staircase.

A month ago, when you started pulling yourself up to standing, you didn't know how to get yourself out of it. Standing, if it didn't end with you getting picked up, would result in a spectacular crash. If you were lucky, you'd topple onto your crib mattress or a pile of throw pillows. Sometimes, though, it was the hardwood floor downstairs. It didn't take you long to figure out how to sit down slowly, instead.

You got a tooth! The left bottom front tooth. It happened on Christmas Eve.

Your manipulation of objects is advancing. You can pick up little things, like pieces of banana or Cheerios, with your little pincer fingers, and then transfer them to the other hand's little pincer fingers, and then get them into your mouth no prob, bob!

I think you might be a leftie. But I'm not sure.

You're a thinker. You will pick something up and study it, scrutinize it until you're satisfied. You want to see and touch and taste and hold everything. And then you want it on the floor. What's this? A remote? With buttons. Lots of buttons. It has a back side and a top side and a front side. Tastes like... plastic. It should not be on the coffee table, it should be on the floor. What's this? A coaster?...

Speaking of tasting things, you LOVE TO EAT. You love to eat anything and everything. I don't think there's a single food you've refused. This month, you tasted almost everything there was at Christmas dinner, including turkey and Hawaiian salad. You've had salmon and cous cous, blackberries and grapes and beets. You love it all.

You say mamama, but I don't know if it's a name, or the thing you say when you're not happy. "Mamama!" Pick me up! "Mamama." I'm sleepy. "Mamamamama!" Stop making grown-up dinner and come play with me!

Your stats: You are 31 inches tall (off the charts, of course!) and weigh 21 pounds 10 ounces (70th percentile).

Your 9-month appointment was interesting. The doctor had me fill out a questionnaire. I have to admit something: it made me cry. Because it asked questions I didn't know the answers to, and it dawned on me that your daycare teacher probably does. Because when we spend time with you, it's mostly busy. We're going somewhere, walking the dog, running errands... or you're eating. We don't do a lot of just playing, and that is going to change. So I didn't know if you'd try to find a small toy I'd hidden under a blanket, because I'd never done that for you. I didn't know if you'd hand me a toy if I asked you for it without gesturing, because I'd never asked you for a toy. So we are going to spend more quiet, quality time together. I'm not sure how or when, but we are.

So, that's that. Nine months in, nine months out.

Love you, kiddo!

~Mom

Friday, January 10, 2014

On Breastfeeding (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here: That was at the beginning of September. And here we are now...

January

Two words: pumping sucks.

1. It takes time, and I feel guilty. It takes me 15-20 minutes twice a day at work, when I technically get two ten-minute breaks, so I rarely take a lunch to make up for it. I sneak-eat at my desk, instead. When I do take a lunch, it's usually to squeeze in a third pumping session.

2. I have four offices I work out of regularly, and not all of them have a private place to pump. In one, there's also a training center there, so I routinely have strangers traipsing through the "lounge" portion of the bathroom. (It wouldn't be so bad if it was just my female coworkers; strangers make it extra awkward for me, and probably for them, too.) I finally managed to get a shower curtain (which isn't fully opaque and only hangs down from the ceiling to about chair-level, covering only my upper half) approved and hung in December, which helps.

3. Meetings make things particularly tricky. Back to the timing and guilt over that. And the explaining.

4. This is the biggie. MY SUPPLY. In the beginning, I was able to pump 20-24 ounces over three pumping sessions: 5:00 am, 11 am, 4 pm. I send 15-20 ounces with Oliver each day. (He drinks 15, but I send 20 on Monday, and if he were to ever have that fourth bottle, I'd send four the next day.) In the last two months, I have been struggling to pump 15.

#4 has caused a lot of tears. A lot. It caused me to have a breakdown of sorts a few weeks before Christmas and I called in sick one Friday. I've tried Fenugreek and oatmeal and Mother's Milk tea. I've tried lactation cookies, breast massage, hot showers. I pump four to five times a day now, just to get to that magic 15 ounces. I pump on weekends before Oliver wakes up to stock up a few ounces just in case. I dread the possibility that Oliver will take that fourth bottle.

Especially because, at the beginning of December, Oliver's daycare teacher told me she thought Oliver needed more milk, that he would gulp down those five ounces and look for more. Fact #1: Oliver loves to eat, and almost always looks for more, regardless of what he's just finished. Fact #2: I'm not sure I could provide more than I do, period. So I'm sending a larger portion of fruits and veggies for his lunch, and hoping he makes up for any lingering hunger by nursing in the evenings. (His doctor assured me that 15 ounces during the eight-and-a-half hours he's at daycare should be plenty, and that he will make up for it in the evenings if he needs to.)

I have some freezer supply, which, until now, I've been mostly using just to mix in with cereal. Now, I'm rotating it in: mix 5 ounces into three bottles of fresh-pumped, freeze 5 ounces, a few times a week. All so that my freezer stock is fresh in case I need to use it to supplement what I can pump.

I want desperately to make it to a year with no formula. I have just about three months to go.

The worst part is that I don't think I'd be in this decreasing-supply situation if I was just nursing on demand. I think my boobs have figured out they're working for a machine, and they don't want any part of that! It just adds to my conflicted feelings about working and having Oliver in daycare.

I truly believe that pumping is the most stressful thing in my life. I think about it all the time. Every hour of every day. I want to nurse Oliver as much as possible when he's not at daycare to stimulate milk production. It keeps me from wanting to do things that would necessitate giving Oliver a bottle because that's another five ounces I'll have to pump.

Tomorrow, we have tickets to a play--The Lion King--and I'll have to leave at least two bottles with my friend while she babysits. That's ten more ounces I have to pump.

A few nights ago, I went to a Mom's Night Out to celebrate a friend's birthday, and when I got home (at 11pm) I planned to pump. I knew I wouldn't be able to fully replace the five ounces Steve would have given Oliver, but I was hoping for three. Something. But when I got home, Oliver woke up and could not be consoled, so I nursed him. And I didn't pump.

And that stressed me out.

Until I looked down at Oliver's fuzzy hair, the fan of his eyelashes on his cheeks, the swoop of his nose. Oliver had been crying, upset, and now he was calm. Because of me.

So, while pumping is one of the hardest things about parenthood for me, nursing is one of the best. Those minutes, however few they are these days, are precious.

That's why.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

On Breastfeeding (Part 1)

I started writing this post days before I returned to work, and then it fell into drafts. This has been a huge struggle for me over the last few months, so I thought I'd see what I had to say back then (Part 1), and finish it now (Part 2).

Early September

I always knew I'd breastfeed my babies. I'm not sure where it came from; it just was. And then I watched my friends struggle with supply issues and allergies and mastitis, and I started to wonder if I was doomed to failure.

It was hard at the beginning, at the hospital. Because of my C-section, I wasn't able to nurse Oliver right away. It was about an hour between his birth and the first time I was able to hold him. (To me, that was devastating.) By then, he was a sleepy eater. He'd latch on, suck a few times, and then his eyes would slide closed and his lips would go slack. I'd lift his arm, tickle his foot, and he'd open his mouth--eyes still closed--and latch on again. He'd get another few sucks in and then be asleep again. We'd go on like this for five or ten or fifteen minutes before I'd put him down in his isolet and swaddle him up for a nap.

Oliver had jaundice, and we had one scary nurse who scolded me that he wasn't pooping enough, that he was losing too much weight (not more than 10% of his birth weight, but too much just the same), that he wasn't eating enough. I had to make him eat.

I had one truly sleepless night of alternately walking around (to help me heal) and trying to get Oliver to eat, and one mostly sleepless night wherein the nurse handed Oliver to me once every hour to feed.

My nipples were cracked and painful and bleeding. I'd been saying to Steve that it hurt, but I think it really shocked him when there was blood. I asked for lanolin cream to soothe them between feedings, because Oliver's sucking was actually bringing tears to my eyes.

The lactation consultant had me pump and watched Oliver's latch. She asked if he had a natural dimple in his right cheek because it was visible while he was sucking, and that could be a sign of a bad latch. (I didn't know the answer, and that dimple made an appearance most feedings for the first few weeks, until his cheeks filled out. I don't know if his latch got better then, or if it really was a natural dimple.)

The pediatrician on call at the hospital prescribed me to supplement with one ounce of formula per feeding--after nursing--for Oliver's first weekend home, to help with his weight gain. I didn't like the idea, but I tried it. Steve went out and bought formula, and I think in three days we may have gotten two or three ounces into Oliver. We threw out more than that.

I'm glad Oliver hated the formula. I'm glad we kept going. I bought a pump and used it daily after Oliver's morning feeding to help increase supply. I ate lactation cookies. I used lanolin on my sore nipples. And sure enough, things started getting better.

One of my favorite things in those early days was the face Oliver made when he was trying to latch on. I called it the Angry Turtle. Eyes squeezed closed, mouth wide open, and he'd shake his head back and forth, looking for the nipple.

In those first weeks, I was spending over six hours a day--not including burping or rocking or little catnaps in the middle--nursing Oliver. As we stretched and eventually cut out a night feed, as Oliver got more efficient and nursing sessions reduced from 45 minutes to 30 to 20 or 15 minutes, the time each day I spend nursing shrunk to four hours, to three and a half, to two and a half.

Here we are, four and a half months in, going strong. Oliver doesn't need a nighttime feeding anymore. He's up around 6:00 for his first breakfast, goes back to sleep, and when he's awake for the day, he eats about every two hours until 8:00, bedtime. I pump almost every morning, in between that 6am feed and when he wakes up, and I now have about 250 ounces stored in my freezer. (I'd have more, but we've used some, and I threw away a bunch from the beginning, when I wasn't confident in my storage techniques.)

Oliver gets bottles of pumped milk occasionally, to get him used to the idea. (He doesn't like it.)

In the last few weeks, Oliver has become very active while eating. He flails and kicks, grabs my hair, my glasses, my shirt, my face. He squeezes my nose or my lips in his fist, punches me in the throat. Nursing like this has become a full-contact sport. He pops off, looks around, and gets back down to business. It's not always like that; usually he's very calm and focused. But the active sessions are difficult and memorable.

Even so, the time I spend nursing Oliver makes up some of my favorite minutes of the day. I love his little body curled against me, his fluttering fingers, his contented little sighs. I love that milk drips out of his nose. I love his Angry Turtle face. I love when he falls asleep, eyes rolling back, puffy lips pursed.

I've nursed Oliver in some unusual places. In restaurants, dressing rooms, on benches in the middle of the mall. At the county fair, on an airplane, at Navy Pier. I nursed him in a conference room at the bank when I took him in to meet some of my coworkers. Once, on the floor in the corner of a rock climbing gym. And one time, I was exercising on my mini-elliptical (it's more of a pedaler, feet only) when Oliver woke up unexpectedly early. I put him in the Ergo and went on with the exercising. A few minutes in, he wanted to eat, so... I made it work. I think that might have been the most unusual session.

Here I am, a few days away from going back to work. I'll be pumping and leaving bottles for Oliver. I'm not sure yet how it will go, but I'm determined. I'm aware my supply may decrease, so I have a bottle of Fenugreek ready, just in case. I may make a batch of my favorite lactation cookies, too.

I'm a little apprehensive about my first week back. It's only three days, and I was hoping to be able to fumble through this pumping exercise alone. As it turns out, my team has an all-day meeting Wednesday, then we're running a meeting for a group of employees in a conference room at a hotel on Thursday, and we're in an all-day training class on Friday. The office we'll be at Wednesday and Friday does not have a conference room with a door or even a private bathroom (just a big room with stalls), and the hotel, too, might be tricky, so I'm preparing to pump in my car. Not ideal, and I'm not even sure how it will work, but my pump came with a battery adapter and I have tinted windows in the back and a nursing cover.

My goal at this point is for Oliver to have breastmilk until his first birthday. I know we'll be adding in solids during that time, but I don't want him on formula. It was difficult at the beginning and we made it through; this transition to pumping might be difficult now, but we'll make it through this, too.

It's worth it.