a month past breastfeeding June 7, 2008

(Sorry for the general blog silence here.  I’ve been spending a lot of time getting my Little Four Eyes blog to look good, and while I’m quite happy with it, it’s kind of sapped me of inspiration for this blog.  Apparently I only have so much blog attention to go around).

It took nearly three weeks for my breasts to stop aching, but they’re back to normal now. I’ve put away all the nursing bras and pulled out my old regular ones. Zoe hasn’t asked to nurse at all since she weaned, but every once in a while, she’ll reach down and kind of rest an arm protectively on one of my breasts, or give one a loving pat. Or if she’s with me when I’m getting dressed and sees me take my shirt off, she’ll get this sudden flash of happy recognition and point and smile. It’s flattering, I guess.

In some ways, it’s felt like I’m needing to learn how to parent all over again.  I used to joke with Chris that when you have a milk-giving breast, every cry sounds like hunger.  Which isn’t quite right, but it’s true that nursing is fantastic for calming down a fussy baby, and can really make things easier.  Kid’s hungry? Nurse. Bumped her head? Nurse. Upset at leaving the playground? Here you go - nurse. Tired, but won’t sleep? Just nurse her to sleep.  Got shots at the doctors?  You guessed it.  So I was a little apprehensive of dealing with Zoe without the advantage of a boob, and, as I mentioned before, a little worried that maybe she just wouldn’t like me anymore without my milk.  But we’ve been very lucky, and she’s a very easy-going kid, though I’ve had to quickly study Chris’s techniques for distracting her and comforting her.

I like bedtime a lot more now.  It used to be that she was so ready for the nursing that she wouldn’t let Chris or me read her a bedtime story.  But now, we snuggle in the rocking chair for 20 minutes or so of reading - usually the same book over and over and over.  But it’s sweet, and I look forward to it.

And, it means that my period is back.  After 28 months, I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing it again, but there it was, back to normal.  Back during those first few months of trying, my period was a sign of failure, and I long for it’s absence to signal a pregnancy.  But then I stopped ovulating, it’s absence was an even bigger sign of failure.  Then, much more happily, a sign of pregnancy, and then a sign of my body providing nourishment for Zoe.  And now we’re here, back to normal.  Not an omen, or portent or signal of anything weighty or significant.  Just the normal passage of time.  I welcome the normal right now.

aches May 13, 2008

Sorry for the recent blog silence. I was at a conference in Massachusetts the end of last week, and then recovering from the conference. It was actually a good trip, but one of those deals where I kept forgetting that it was coming up, at it kind of caught me by surprise. In any case, it all worked out fine, and I had a lovely time except for losing my voice. It’s mostly back, but I still have a definite sultry timbre to my voice, which I would keep, if that were possible.

Before I left for the conference, Zoe had still been nursing once a day in the mornings.  Since being back, she hasn’t asked to nurse at all.  Tomorrow morning will be a full week since our last nursing session, so I guess that means she’s weaned.  It’s a bittersweet milestone.  My breasts still ache a bit, and my heart aches a bit, too.  And honestly, I miss the excuse to curl up with Zoe for the early morning nursing before having to face the world.  But I know, rationally, that she’s growing up, and I had been working towards weaning her, so I’m pleased that it went as easily as it did.  And in some ways, it’s nice to know that we still have a good relationship without the nursing. There were times when I questioned how much Zoe really liked me, and how much she just really liked the easy access to my milk.  But it turns out that she’s still just as happy to see me in the mornings, even if the morning wake up doesn’t come with a drink anymore.

I have a bunch of other posts that I’m working on, but I feel like I’ve hit a patch of writers’ block or something.

fertile thoughts March 13, 2008

The snow is finally starting to melt, after light rains yesterday and today.  I dislike this time of year, it’s too early for any green here, but what snow is left is dirty and grey, and everything just looks grungy and ugly.  But on our drive home from work I noticed the snow on the farm fields was mostly gone and underneath was the black, black Minnesota soil.  That soil is the first thing I remember noticing when I came to visit Minnesota for the first time, and it still catches me by surprise.  I’ve never seen such rich, dark soil.  Such lovely, fertile soil.

Later this evening, I was talking with a friend about houses.  She asked me if more kids were in our future.  Why is this such a hard question?  Why can’t I simply give the (correct) three little answer, “I don’t know”?  Instead, I always ramble on about how we’re thinking about it, but we haven’t decided, we’re still a little overwhelmed with this parenting thing, and we’d probably want to space our kids out by about 3 years, and oh yeah, ittookalongtimetogetpregnantthefirsttimeandIdon’tknowifIwanttofacethatagain.  Breath.  I wonder sometimes if we’d have the same uncertainty of whether or not to have more kids if we hadn’t had the fertility problems.  I’m sure that if there wasn’t the infertility, I wouldn’t have this looming sense of needing to decide soon, even though I don’t want to be pregnant or even start trying again right away.  I know that there are women who had trouble conceiving their first and then go on to conceive a second easily.  But I haven’t gotten my period again since getting pregnant.  I have no idea whether my body will decide to cooperate or not.  I feel pretty out of touch with how my reproductive bits are doing right now.

This has added to my decision to try to wean Zoe next month.  That will be 18 months of nursing - when Zoe was first born, I had planned on nursing a year and had no context for what it might mean to continue nursing past that point.  I’m glad we’ve continued, though we’re down to just nighttime and morning nursings now.  I’m proud of our nursing relationship, and that we’ve gone so far, but I’ve never felt the love for breastfeeding that some women talk about.  Still, I already know that I’ll miss our nursing sessions a lot and I’m not really looking forward to the weaning.  (But getting to wear normal bras again?  That will rock).

Nursing past a year November 27, 2007

Before Zoe was born, my goal was to breastfeed for at least a year. I knew that a year is what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, and I knew that breastfeeding isn’t always easy, so I figured I’d set that goal and see what happened. We were lucky, both in that Zoe was a good nurser, and that I didn’t have any supply issues. The first few months weren’t easy, and it was more painful than I’d expected, but we persevered. The next couple of months were great and then I headed back to work. Enter my new best friend, with whom I’ve spent countless lunches and other quality time over the last 8 months, my pump. Pumping at work was not fun, and it took a lot of time. While I read, and doing a little typing while pumping, it was not time that could be spent working with others, which happens to be a big part of my job. Plus, I was deathly afraid of forgetting to close the blinds on my office window, thereby exposing me and my new best friend to everyone in the reference room.

So while the nursing was going well, the pumping was getting quite old. Again, I was lucky, and was able to pump enough to supply Zoe at daycare, but I looked forward to being done with it. So when Zoe turned 1, we started weaning her from breastmilk at daycare. She took to it quite well, but it took a full month for me to be able to make it through the day without pumping or exploding. And a little part of me kind of misses having time set aside during the day to specifically daydream about my girl. But really I’m quite happy to have that time back, and to be able to leave my blinds open and look into the reference room again without fear.

We haven’t weaned Zoe from nursing, though, and currently don’t really have plans to do so. As much as I may have found nursing boring in the past, I’ve also found that I’m just not ready to give it up. Last month, things went great - on the weekends and days I was home, I would only nurse first thing in the morning, before naps, and at night. These last few weeks, though, Zoe’s been wanting to nurse all the time. All. the. time. I had been planning to follow the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” plan of only nursing when she asked for it. This worked all right at first since Zoe hadn’t really been asking to nurse that much. But then she learned, and has been celebrating her newfound communication skills as often as possible. And by “asking to nurse” I mean pulling the neck of my shirt, sticking her little hand down my shirt and then pointing to a breast. She’s not subtle, and it’s just not quite as endearing as her early ways of indicating hunger. The thing is, my supply is down now from not pumping, and her little teeth are sharp, and I’ve been enjoying the ability to go out and not have to nurse, so I sometimes want to refuse.

I went looking for information on weaning from the pump, but still nursing otherwise, and didn’t find a whole lot that was specific to our situation. There’s all sorts of good info for mothers starting to nurse, and those who are headed back to work, but not a whole lot on continuing after a year. Most stuff that’s written for Zoe’s age is all about weaning. It’s like they figure if you’ve gotten this far you either want to stop, or you don’t need help, but this is where I’m feeling the most at a loss. I did find a few places that mention that babies will want to nurse more often when sick, teething, or when there’s a disruption to their routine. All of which have happened in the past couple of weeks, so I’m hoping it’s just a phase and she’ll cut back on the number of nursing sessions soon.

thoughts August 2, 2007

It appears now that there are likely 12 dead (4 confirmed dead, 8 missing and presumed dead), plus 79 injured due to the bridge collapse. It’s a horrible toll, but far less than I had feared last night.

Seeing all the images of the 35W bridge has been surreal. That’s my city, that’s my river. What’s it doing on CNN and the front page of all these newspapers? But the image that hits me the hardest is the one of a woman holding her 3 month old daughter, standing in front of the bridge, with her car, crushed by a truck, in the background (it’s the first picture in this gallery). From what I could gather from the captions and articles about her, the woman was alone in her car when the bridge collapsed. Her husband came and brought her daughter to her. There’s something in the way she’s holding her daughter that’s so familiar, and I can instantly imagine myself in her shoes, and feel the need to hold my daughter close and just bury my face in her hair to convince myself that I’m ok. My favorite of part of the stories is the brief mention that in the aftermath, she “sat near the bridge, nursing her baby.” I don’t know this woman, but I know that were I in her position, I would have done exactly the same thing. And I can feel how, after the mind numbing fear during the collapse, the fear that I’d never see my daughter grow up, that she’d grow up without a mother, I can feel how holding her and nursing her would ground me, and calm me, and prove to me that I was still here and that we would be ok.

More thoughts on pumping June 24, 2007

My self-esteem seems to be very tightly tied to how much I can pump in a day. Zoe usually takes 12 ounces at daycare, and then we use another couple of ounces in the evening to make her cereal. So if I pump less than 14 ounces in my two pumping sessions at work, I feel like a slacker-loser but the last couple of days this week I pumped out a good 17 or 18 ounces each day.  I don’t know what led to the increase, but man does it make me feel good! I’ve been swaggering through the library like a bad-ass mother pumper. Oh yeah! Take that milk and put in your bottle! Whoo! When I got home and bragged about my accomplishments, Chris congratulated me on being a milk pumping machine. But then we realized that actually, it’s my pump that is the milk pumping machine.

On nursing June 22, 2007

Back in November, I wrote about how surprised I was to find that breastfeeding was, well, boring. It was one of the parts of parenting that I was really looking forward to, but at the time, just seemed time-consuming and not terribly fun or interesting. It’s gotten better. I can’t say that I agree with the woman who a year ago told me that breastfeeding gave her such a happy rush that she was sure it could be sold as a drug (that is, if it could be bottled up somehow), but it is one of the few times I get to quietly sit and snuggle with the girl.

One of my biggest fears with breastfeeding was what would happen once the teeth came in. I’d been told that I’d get bitten, and you just had to teach the baby not to bite. That’s scary. I’m tender there. Sure enough, two days after her tooth came in, we had a night of biting. Zoe would nurse for a few minutes, and then bite me. I’d pop her off my breast, tell her not to bite me, wait a moment, and then go back to feeding. Rinse, lather, repeat. Eventually, she fell asleep for the night, and I got to bed without permanent damage. But the next morning, I was nursing Zoe in bed when I was wracked by a coughing fit. She bit down, just as I jerked up. It was bad. There was blood. There was pain. She never bit me again.  I developed a newfound respect for sharp little teeth. It took about a week or so before I could stand to nurse on that side without cringing in pain. I’m not sure if we’ll go through something similar when she gets her top teeth, but at least I know I can survive it.  Barely.

The think I like least about breastfeeding is pumping at work. It takes a long time, and there’s a lot of things I can’t do while pumping. I am lucky, I have my own office that I can lock, though I’ve had people try to peek through the blinds on my window to see if I’m there, and once the custodian thought I was gone and unlocked my door so he could empty my trash. I have a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door now, though judging from the knocks and comments from others, it still doesn’t quite convey what’s going on. So I’ve decided I need a good euphemism for pumping. “Lightening the ladies” is the best I’ve come up with so far. Someone else must be able to do better.

Sniff February 20, 2007

There’s something so sad about a sick baby. Zoe’s just got a little cold, but it’s breaking my heart. She keeps trying to be her usual happy playful self, grabbing at toys and babbling, but then her nose will stop up, and she’ll get this confused look on her face, or she’ll start coughing and look hurt that the universe would be doing this to her. Just a bit ago, I was rocking her and she looked at me with an expression of “seriously, mom, what the hell is up with this? It’s really not cool.” The good news is that she’s sleeping well at night, and she’s better today than she was yesterday. But I really wish I could explain the concept of blowing your nose, and reassure her that this will go away (and hopefully sooner rather than later).
Updated - to add this charming story to illustrate how tough it is for Zoe, and how sweet she’s being despite that. I tried to feed her after she wokke up from her nap. The problem being that it’s apparently hard to nurse when you can’t breathe through your nose. So she’d take a few swallows, then pop off to catch her breath. But she popped off just as my milk let down and sprayed everywhere. There was milk squirting in about 8 different directions (side note: breasts are super cool). She and I were both surprised and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Zoe heard me laugh and got a huge grin on her milk and snot covered face. We grinned at each other for a minute before she leaned in to try nursing again and repeated the whole process. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

The view from here November 20, 2006

The most common sight for me these last two weeks is looking down over a billowing breast (I used to have B-cups - ha) and seeing half of a gorgeous face looking back at me. It feels like pretty much all I do is nurse, which is probably close to the truth. I love the fact that I can provide all the nourishment my daughter needs - she gained 13 ounces in the last 8 days and yesterday weighted 5 lbs, 13 oz. I knew that I wanted to breastfeed, and had tried to do some reading on the subject, and took a breast feeding class a couple of weeks before Zoe was born. From those, I knew that it wouldn’t be easy at first, and I knew that it might hurt a bit - both of which were the case, though we worked things out pretty quickly. What they didn’t say, and what I wasn’t expecting, was that breastfeeding would be so…well, boring. I mean, I can stare at Zoe’s face for quite a while, but it at some point, it starts getting monotonous. During the day, I can watch tv and read emails and webpages, though typing is still tricky, but at night, there’s just not much to do, and while she’s a very good nurser, she is certainly never in a rush to hurry up and eat. I may try listening to books or radio programs on Chris’ iPod.

I still plan on writing up the full story of Zoe’s birth, though it won’t be terribly interesting. For those that can’t wait, the short version is: Water broke on drive to work just outside Lakeville. Drive to hospital. Zoe is breech. Holy crap! reality of surgery and baby slowly sinks in. 3 hours later, Zoe arrives via c-section. The end. I love happy endings.

How to tell if Zoe is hungry November 11, 2006

In our breastfeeding class, they spent a long time going over how to recognize your child’s hunger cues - mostly sticking out her tongue and making sucking motions. Well I’ve discovered a new and far superior method for testing if Zoe is hungry: the nose test. The test entails putting your nose on her mouth and seeing if she sucks on it. If she does, then she’s hungry. For the more visual learners, I’ve put together a flowchart.

Due in no part (I’m sure) to this advanced technique of mine, Zoe has grown noticeably. And she’s growing cuter and cuter with every day. I do believe that Chris and I are going to be in trouble.