little feet, big sky

I went to the breastfeeding support group at the Pump Station on Vine this afternoon and was so glad that I did. I don’t think Spice and I are really having too much trouble, other than the constant spitting up and my worrying that it was something I ate, but it was so nice to be around other new moms going through the same things. More than I realized it would be.

The class at the Vine location is Mondays and Tuesdays at 1pm for 0-4 month-olds. The first class is free; after that, they’re $15/each. The women seemed quite diverse and there’s a lactation consultant running the meeting to answer any questions, etc. I have to admit, she did a good job of answering questions textbook-style and then opening the conversation for everyone else to offer tips or advice. It was great for encouragement and support, especially for some of the women who seemed to think their problem (ie. nursing constantly, milk supply, etc.) was theirs alone.

Almost three weeks and I’ve left the house only a handful of times. Spice is doing good, gaining weight well and such. Our pediatrician put it well; “medically speaking, she’s a very boring baby”.

Talked to a counselor today about the baby blues. She said I was very high functioning, and was a very mild case, which is fine by me. Anything to stay off of meds. I just need much more sleep and need to eat more. (I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight in less than two weeks.)

The spouse is exhausted, too. We’re considering hiring a postpartum doula to help us catch up on sleep and eating until we can get our feet back under us.

It’s strange, though. I don’t feel tired and yet I haven’t gotten more than one stretch of sleep longer than 4 hours in almost three weeks. Amazing what the mind can trick itself into…

I’ve figured out to play Aurora Feint one-handed while nursing. Great graphics, incredible play with the accelerometer and perfect for semi-mindless entertainment. Would love to blog more about it, but in the meantime, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you should check it out. Free, from the App Store.

Okay, breastfeeding is tough. Don’t be fooled by those idyllic pictures of bebe perfectly latched on in a cradle cuddle and peacefully nursing. Because for most women, myself included, that is so not how it starts out, at least.

Spice started out nursing from birth like a dream. Now, on days like this, it feels like our nursing future is headed for hell. She’s picked up this nasty habit in the last few days of opening her mouth and rooting back and forth frantically while the nipple is in her mouth. It takes a while for her to figure out to clamp down and start sucking and I have no idea how/why she’s doing this. Additionally, she sucks for maybe 20 seconds, then backs off and squirms, then starts over with the open-mouthed rooting over the nipple. It takes a good 5 minutes for her to figure out to stay latched on, and it’s driving me crazy!

Add to that she doesn’t burp easy and spits up almost a full feeding if she isn’t burped properly. That she has killer gas and almost every feeding results in at least an hour of the poor thing writhing in agony trying to get it out one end or the other.

From random googling, one possibility is that I have an overactive letdown, and while she starts out hungry, the milk is coming too fast for her and she backs off, then attacks again in hunger. All the advice for this mentions pulling her off for the letdown and letting it spray into a towel or burp cloth. But I tried this and I’m barely dripping during letdown. *sigh*

Failing that, I’m sometimes convinced it’s something I’m eating. We have a bad day (or night) and I swear I’m cutting out dairy and then we have a few great days and I stupidly cave in to rice pudding/yogurt/milk. This is followed by another bad day or night and I’m left kicking myself for not sticking with the no-dairy because it just makes it more confusing trying to figure out what’s causing her discomfort.

I’m going bats and on days like this, I’m left swearing to the spouse that I can’t do it, that it’s just not working, etc. I can see now why something like 40% give up breastfeeding in the first two weeks. Between the hormones, the sleep shortage, the labor recovery, sometimes it feels downright impossible to continue and that’s with having a complication-free labor and a healthy term baby!

On a slightly more humorous note, I learned the hard way just how all sorts of things end up in breastmilk. I was taking my prenatal vitamins and my previously-customary fish oil supplement and was rewarded with two days of fishy breastmilk and spit-up! Those of you that know spit-up know that rather than landing neatly in the middle of a burp cloth, it’s more likely to end up on the baby’s clothes, your clothes, bedsheets, etc. And about the same with leaking breastmilk. All we have for detergent is un-dyed, un-fragranced stuff, so it took about 3 hot water washes and indoor sunlight drying to get the smell out. Never, never again. *shudder*

Okay, so we’ve been partly doing the cloth thing for a week now, and I must say the easiest part is the washing. (Right now, at least, since breastmilk poop doesn’t need to be scraped off first.) The hardest/most frustrating part is trying to find a damn diaper cover! I had started with 4 newborn-sized Dappis, but I f&%king hate them! They make Spice look like she’s wearing parachute pants, they’re inches loose around the legs, the plastic-y bit feels awfully sweaty, she hates me for pulling up something on her, and just UGH!

I’ve knitted/crocheted two soakers and two of Little Turtle Knits ribby wraps. The soakers might be big enough to go over the infant indian prefolds we’re using, but after using the Dappis, the pull-up style on a newborn with changes every two hours is so not for me. The two wraps are cute, but too small to fit the bulkier infant prefold on her. *sigh* So annoying. BTW, I got both chinese prefold and indian prefolds and I like the indian prefolds much better. They’re softer and feel generally nicer than the chinese prefolds, and the not-white color appeals to me somehow.

I’ve ordered a few more things from Cotton Babies, like flannel wipes and wipes solution, but I also ordered a Bummis Super Brite to try it out. I’m desperate for a diaper cover that works, looks cute and doesn’t make her look like she has a rump the size of the Grand Canyon. Which usually means that I’ll just have to make it myself. I’m working on the Tickle Turdle wrap, and hoping that the newborn size will fit over the the infant-sized prefolds.

In the meantime, with only the Dappis-from-hell and waiting on the Cotton Babies order, we’ve paused in the cloth diapering saga. We’ve been going through the pack of Tushies disposables I picked up as “emergency backup” and I can say with confidence that I truly hate disposables. The Tushies are the best, IMHO, for one reason only: that they don’t have SAP, the super-absorbent stuff. They suck in that they’re still disposables, which means they’re crazy wasteful and creepy in just how much they still manage to absorb and look dry. Spice’s runny breastmilk poop looks almost dry sometimes, and that’s even with prompt changing. Add to this that their “convenience factor” is ruined by the terrible One-Chance-Only! tape closures and I really, really hate them.

So, I’m trying to use them up as quickly as possible, which is easy with a change every two hours, and I know that I’ll probably only go back to disposables when I’m truly desperate one day. In the meantime, I’ve also been trying out the gDiapers, which are really nice and easy to use. Their downside is that they have SAP in them, and that we don’t trust our pipes to flush anything unusual down them. Their upside is that you can use cloth with them! There are lots of parents successfully using cloth prefolds or inserts in them, as a cloth diapering system. Woohoo! I added two dozen preemie-sized indian prefolds to my Cotton Babies order so I can try it out. :-) The gDiapers look so trim and cute on Spice’s little behind, so being able to use cloth at home and grab a flush-able/compost-able/disposable insert for going out seems like a really efficient compromise. Here’s to hoping it works!

Oh, I also have two bumGenius 3.0. These are by far the Bentleys of cloth diapering. They were super-easy for even the spouse to put on and take off, and washed up with the rest of the prefolds like a dream. Their downside is the hefty price. At about $18 a pop, they’re disgustingly expensive next to prefolds. Considering that the 3.0’s are one-size and grow to fit, I’ll probably invest in a few more down the road for caregivers, going out, etc., but will probably keep them on-hand more for occasional use and swaying public opinion.

If you have any suggestions for good diaper covers, please, please comment and let me know! :-) (Especially any quick-to-knit/crochet patterns!)

Ahh. I have an hour free before the next feeding and diaper change. Not enough to take a shower such and such; if I wait until after the next feeding, I’ll have about an hour and a half, so I’ll wait! :-)

We’ve given her a name, but I’ll just be calling her Spice for the online world, as she is definitely the spice of our life! (Extra, extra cheese, just for you.) Here’s the postpartum rundown:

• Day 1 (Tuesday): Discharged from Cedars-Sinai. Had discharge orders for myself a few hours after delivery, but we needed to have Spice seen by the pediatrician before she could leave and he wouldn’t be in until 9am the next morning. Got home and the spouse had a hard time finding the house keys! Rummaged through all the bags and thought he’d left them in the hospital room. Called a nearby friend that had an extra key to come let us in. I must have still been on an epi high because I was totally chill. Took a shower, the first one since Sunday night. Blessed, blessed shower.
• Day 2: Technically an extension of Day 1, since Spice and I only catnapped between feedings. Not really tired-tired yet. Expected my nipples to be more sore than this. Maybe breastfeeding isn’t so bad… Midwife came by, everything looks good, weight in cloth diaper: 7lbs 8oz. Spouse headed out to pick up mother-in-law who will be staying for a month. Was gone six hours, running “errands” on the way home! Managed a pee break with Spice propped up in boppy, but that was it. Hadn’t eaten more than granola and milk for breakfast before he left and some Rowntree fruit pastilles that were by the bed while he was gone. (Tried to make an instant packet of seaweed salad, but that was a potshot.) Broke down crying when he got home. Got a huge apology and hugs and cuddles and a promise that he would try and be more attentive.
• Day 3: Have a routine at night: feed, change, put to sleep in bassinet setup in bed, sit and read through random things in the Baby Book and the Breastfeeding Book, eat bedside munchies, drink water, nap until next feeding, repeat. Milk/colostrum changing. Spice was a bit more fussy through the night, probably from the transitional milk. Wondering when milk will “come in” and about engorgement. Still-tired-spouse went to office for a few hours and then to Babies R Us to pick up breastpump to help in case of engorgement. Was gone again insanely long time. No tears this time, but had a talk that I just want him around for a day, lounging in bed, catching up on sleep, no work, no MiL, no visitors. Spouse agrees – will stay home for a few days.
• Day 4: Oh, god, this is what engorgement is – instant boob job! Hard rocks on my relatively small chest, this is insane! Talked to midwife and figured out to feed Spice, then pump off excess. Relief! Sister stopped by with noodles and dim sum, yay! Was really nice to see her.
• Day 5: Stayed in bed all day with the spouse. Ate watermelon. Change, feed, sleep, change, feed, sleep.

Day 6 (today). I plan on more staying in bed with the spouse today. :-) The MiL is fine by herself downstairs for another day or two, and with my mother coming later in the week, I want as much alone time with him and Spice as possible before then.

My sister and I just agreed last night that perhaps it would be better for my mother to stay with her while she’s here, than here with us. She can drive over during the day for as long as we’re up and then drive back at night. It’s strange how the best plans made while pregnant feel so wrong postpartum. I even regret agreeing to the MiL coming to stay with us for a whole month. With her, it’s just that she’s not quite my mother; she’s a bit more distant, not quite as helpful as I’d hoped, and it feels more like having a houseguest than family. With my own mother, I think she’ll be fine for short periods during the day, but if she was here at night, I could just imagine her charging up the stairs for every diaper-change-cry, wanting to “fix things” herself. Well-meaning, but combined with postpartum hormones, bound to set me off.

Speaking of which, I want to mention before I forget, postpartum “blues” are no joke. Just like the random bouts of pregnancy irritability, I feel this overwhelming grey fog from time to time that I just can’t explain or rationalize away. It’s frustrating because I love Spice and I love the spouse and I’m aware that it’s hormonal and there’s no logical reason to feel that sad depression, but it’s like I just can’t cheer myself up. I have some Eddie Izzard DVDs – maybe I’ll try watching some clips later today. They do say that laughter is the best medicine.

OMG. I have a baby girl! Pics to come soon, but she was a healthy 7 lbs. 8 oz. at birth. The home birth went well, but she was stuck at about +3 after about 3 & 1/2 hours of pushing. (Thank god I didn’t know I’d been pushing that long!) I was super active in labor (which was good), but so exhausted by then that the decision to transfer to the hospital for a vacuum-assisted delivery was an easy one. The car ride was sheer hell, but the L&D staff at Cedars-Sinai was great. I had five minutes to try pushing, and if that didn’t work, our doctor was for a c-section, so I agreed to the epidural. It took 10 minutes to kick in, I had 5 minutes of blissful relief, and another 5 minutes of pushing with the doctor’s help and she was born.

I honestly felt I had the best of both worlds and am extremely happy with how things went. Of course, finishing off the delivery at home would have been best, but this was a close second. She got little, if any, of the effects of the epidural, and my being pain-free for the delivery and after meant I could instantly put her to the breast, as well as advocate for her best interests myself in the hours later. Totally awesome.

More to come in a bit!