La Leche Loser

Holidays.  Family.  Good heavens.  Yes.

We all go through it, so no need to go into it now.  I survived.

Anyhow, I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking how breastfeeding is going.  I’ve hesitated writing about it, because my feelings really change moment to moment.  Sometimes I feel really confident about it, sometimes I wonder how I’m supposed to make it even three months, let alone the recommended year.  Let’s recap, shall we?

At the beginning, Buddha Baby refused to nurse.  She was a sleepy baby and was impossible to wake up.  And I mean impossible,  If I did get her latched on, she’d fall asleep immediately.  I spent most of those early days poking her, tickling her feet, stripping off her clothes, and doing any number of things to keep her awake long enough to eat something.  It didn’t work.  By the time we were discharged, she’d lost a full pound and we were on the hospital’s watch list, which means we needed to come back and get her weighed and have them watch me nurse.

Twice.

You know how hard it is to breastfeed while being watched by a nurse?

Anyway, my milk came in, she picked up the pace and started gaining, and we were dismissed.

Then I became engorged.

Then my milk disappeared overnight and I had a crying fit at 2 AM because my boobs were empty and the baby was crying and there was no place to buy formula and those nurses were right, I was going to starve my child to death oh my god.  (This may have been fueled by hormones.)

Then I became engorged again.

Then both my nipples cracked wide open and started bleeding.  The pain, my god, the pain.

Then I got a plugged duct.

That went away and the right nipple healed and I started thinking it was all going okay.

Then I got a plugged duct again.

Then I became engorged again.

Then I thought I had thrush.

Then I figured we had latch-on problems.

Then I realized I didn’t have thrush or latch-on problems, I just gave birth to a barracuda and my generally sensitive skin can’t handle it.

That pretty much brings us up to today.  The milk supply seems to have levelled off, she’s gaining weight, and we are functioning well.  However, I am still in a good amount of pain and my nipples feel scraped raw all the time.  Oh, and the left one is still cracked.  The usual breastfeeding call is “Just wait six weeks!  It all gets better at six weeks!”

Well, I’m three days away from six weeks and I’m hoping for a miracle.  Perhaps Glinda the Good Witch will show up with magic boob dust, which she will sprinkle over me as I tap my boobs together and chant, “There’s no boobs like my boobs” over and over.

Hey, it could happen.

Month One

Yesterday the Buddha Baby turned one month old and I spent all day trying to figure out how I could mark this moment. A lot of bloggers, when they reach these milestones, write a touching tribute that waxes on about their child’s beauty, fun, and brilliance and about how this little critter has completely changed their life. I could do that, too, because it’s all true. But, here’s the thing, you know that it’s all true. Somehow nature has connived to make these little bundles of soft skin, milk smell, and wheezy breathing absolutely irresistible and they work their charms on us like they are born con artists. And that’s true for every parent, even those, like me, that tend towards cynicism. But, man, I hate being predictable. However, I also want to record these moments because this is the important stuff in life.

So here’s what I’m going to do. This is my list of memorable things from this first month, in no particular order.

Nicknames we have used: Milk Breath, Droolface, Crankypants McGee, Chunky Monkey, Stinky Butt, Sweet Muffin Face, Peaches McCheeks, and Smoochertons.

Most persistent habit: Shoving her hands in between her face and my breast, thus making any kind of feeding impossible, while screaming her head off because she’s starving. It’s like trying to wrangle a really loud and angry octopus.

She likes: eating, watching the dogs walk by, the swing, being snuggled in the rocking chair, the fleece swaddly blanket, and (thank god) sleeping.  Oh, how she loves sleeping.  Thankfully, she seems to have inherited her parents champion-level sleeping abilities.  Six hours, people.  She will go six hours at night!  Gift horse, I love you and will never look in your mouth.

She hates: the car seat, hats, baths, the cold, being read to (are you really my child?), and that nasty, evil, totally uncalled-for creation of the devil: Tummy Time.

My favorite single moment: The third night of her life when I lay awake with her in my hospital bed at 3 AM. For the first time she opened her eyes, REALLY opened her eyes, and looked directly at me. She stared at me for about half an hour with a seriousness and purpose that I interpreted as either, “Hi, Mom, good to meet you” or “Lady, what is going on with your hair?” It was the first moment when we connected, person to person, and it will stay with me forever.

My favorite repeated moment: The five minutes or so after feeding her when I put her on my shoulder for burping. Those minutes are always unpredictable. Sometimes they are heartbreakingly sweet, like when she snuggles her face into my neck and immediately falls asleep with a sigh of contentment. Sometimes they are comical, like when she keeps trying to hold her head up and look around but manages only to bonk her face into mine repeatedly. Sometimes they are peaceful, like when she lays there, mouth and eyes open, drooling a bit, looking for all the world like a little drunkard. And sometimes they are straight-up vaudeville, like when she manages a rip-roaring burp and gigantic farty poop at the exact same moment. And at those times, I have no choice but teach her how to do a high five.

Favorite conversation of the month:
Me: I think she hates me. She screams much more when I hold her then when anyone else does.
My sister: No, no, that’s just what they do.
Me: They hate their mothers?
My sister: No, it’s that they know–they instinctively know–that you are the mom and that you will love them no matter what. So they know it’s safe to totally lose it and melt down with you, because you aren’t going anywhere.
Me: So you are saying that this is a compliment.
My sister: An odd one, I admit, but yes. It’s a compliment.

Birth, Part 3: The C-section

So there I was, sixteen hours into natural childbirth, being told that I needed a C-section.

She was right. I knew she was right. Of course, I was so exhausted and in so much pain by then that I would have paid any price to get that baby out of me any way possible. Even so, I knew she was right because I could feel that the baby hadn’t moved a millimeter. I was at the end of my rope and I had no fight left. I asked how long it would take to get people there. It was now about 6:30 and all the surgical staff would need to be called in. “About half an hour,” she said. I took a deep breath and agreed.

The next bit is a blur. It took longer than half an hour. That much I know. As soon as I had the thought of that damn spinal in my head it made every moment seem like a year. I was like a starving woman who was promised a five course meal in just another few minutes now, really, just a little longer. 

I tried to sign the paperwork even though I was literally shaking from the pain in my back by that point. It seemed like everyone wanted to talk to me about the procedure. I was still having contractions, of course, and I kept having to stop whoever was talking to me so that I could breathe through them. While I appreciate all that “informed consent” in retrospect, at the time I wanted to strangle them all with my IV cord just so they would stop talking to me. It seemed to take four hours until I was transferred to a gurney, but it was really about an hour.

By the time they finally wheeled me down to the OR I had my non-IVed hand balled up under my back in an effort to apply a little counter-pressure. I was paying no attention to anything else besides surviving this back pain. (I do remember noticing how handsome Alias Father looked in scrubs, which in retrospect is odd, no? But such is the depth of my love.) They wheeled me up to the doors of the OR, where a surgical nurse and my anesthesiologist began a debate about whether the correct paperwork had been filed. And this is where I lost it. I felt like I’d been dealing so well for so long and I’d been generally helpful and pleasant and polite and I just thought it was so unfair that the pain relief was on the other side of that damn door and they were more concerned about red tape than the fact THAT I WAS WRACKED WITH PAIN FROM HEAD TO TOE.

I may have lost it a bit here. Actually, I know I lost it a lot here. I started yelling about my damn back and the contractions and didn’t they understand? I just wanted the *%&$ spinal. Stop taunting me with the spinal! If they were going to do it, then just friggin’ do it goddamn it all to hell. I must have scared them because they whipped me into the OR and things started moving faster at that point.

I finally was tapped for the spinal and, minutes later, felt blessed numbness spread throughout my back. I was like a spring that had been wound tighter and tighter all day long and then finally was allowed to unwind. After that, I didn’t care what happened to me. Before I knew it I was splayed out on the operating table with a drape at my neck. I wasn’t scared or worried, which surprised me. It’s possible they slipped a sedative into my IV, but if they did they didn’t mention it to me. (That’s what you get for yelling an anesthesiologist–illicit drugs meant to shut you up.) Instead of freaking out, I just pretended I was having an out-of-body experience which, frankly, wasn’t that hard. The whole day had been so long and surreal. I hadn’t really slept in two days. I hadn’t eaten since a piece of toast at 6 that morning (and the ill-fated popsicle). I was mentally and physically fried. And I really just wanted my baby.

The actual surgery was very quick. Before I knew it the anesthesiologist told me that I’d feel a tug, the surgeon announced, “It’s a girl!” and then I heard everyone on the other side of the drape gasp. There were murmurs of, “Wow, that’s a big baby.” Alias Father, who had been sitting on a stool by my head, shot up to look over the drape and he gasped, too. He looked down at me, wide-eyed, and whispered, “Oh my god, she’s huge.” I heard my doctor say, “Oh, this is at least a nine pounder,” and then she appeared around the drape and headed to the warming table. In her arms was the biggest baby I’ve ever seen in my life. She looked like a little naked linebacker with big meaty thighs and a huge broad back. And she was so long. She looked like a two month old. I was in absolute shock. There was no way that she came out of my body.

I just kept staring as they suctioned her mouth and nose, a particular concern because of the meconium, and then she was wrapped up and Alias Father brought her over to me. Suddenly she didn’t look so big. She looked sweet and shell-shocked with surprisingly dark hair and eyes and big, round cheeks. She looked like my little baby girl.

“She’s an Annabel, right?” he asked. It was one of a couple of names that we’d shortlisted. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “She’s definitely Annabel.”

He went with her down to the nursery while I got put back together. I was treated to a surreal conversation about my bladder (”Should the bladder feel this full? Here feel this. What do you think?” “Let me see…oh, yeah I see what you’re saying. Hey, can you check that catheter before we put this bladder back in?”) but otherwise everything went fine. My doctor called up from the nursery with the official weight and shouts of “10 pounds, 5 ounces!” went up around the operating room. I think they may have had a pool going. I was finally stapled together and wheeled down to recovery where I got to watch the clock until they brought her in to me, about an hour after she was born. I was still numb from the waist down and couldn’t move. But the nurse helped me latch her on for her first (short, ineffective) feed and we got to cuddle for a bit.

It took another 45 minutes until the spinal wore off enough for me to go back to my room. Once I was there, I insisted that the nurses bring her in. I had Alias Father take her out of the bassinet and put her in bed with me. I couldn’t move from my back, so I wrapped my arm around her like teenage boys do to their dates at the movies. And that’s how we stayed, all night long.

Birth, Part 2: The Pushing

It’s really important that I stop here to let you know how proud I was of myself at this point. I’d managed to duck induction and keep my labor going without Pitocin. I’d been in labor for twelve hours and managed without any pain meds. I’d walked and breathed my way through countless mind-blowing contractions and I’d succeeded in bringing this very reluctant baby almost out into the world. And now I was ready to push. The room was suddenly a hive of activity. I watched the nurses bustle around me while my doctor got changed and I felt ready to take on the world. At the very least I felt like I had gotten my second wind.

Then came pushing.

I don’t know what other women learn about childbirth, but all of my reading and classes gave great, in-depth information about almost every stage of labor. I knew what to do during early labor to move things along; I knew how to breathe my way through active labor; I knew about the mind tricks that your body plays on you during transition. And I knew that during pushing you…um, pushed?

People, it became clear during that first wave of pushing contractions that I hadn’t learned diddly-squat about pushing. Nobody told me about pushing. So let me tell you about pushing. Pushing is the easily the hardest, most painful, ugliest thing I have ever done in my entire life. One book I have said it was like having a bowel movement. Well, sure. If your bowel movements are the size of a small watermelon and you are trying to push it out after running a marathon. Oh, yes, and you are splayed out on a bed with a bunch of strangers looking at your hooha. One of the nurses tried to tell me that some people are better at labor and some people are better at pushing. I can’t imagine anyone being better at pushing. Pushing was a nightmare.

(Clearly, I was better at labor.)

Pushing is supposed to last between 15 minutes and two hours. I pushed for two before the baby reached my public bone, which is when my doctor told me the really hard part would begin. Excuse me? The hard part? My back by that point felt like it had red hot pokers jammed through it. In fact, my back hurt so badly that it made it hard to tell when actual contractions were happening. Since I wasn’t being constantly monitored, the doctor had to rely on me telling her when contractions were beginning. Strange as it sounds now, I was in so much pain from my back that the contractions were an afterthought. I would actually lay there thinking, “Is that a contraction? Should I be pushing now?” I never got the “urge to push” that you always hear about. I was laying down at that point, but they had installed the squat bar at the end of the bed and I was alternating squatting with pushing on my back. Squatting was more comfortable, but even I could tell that being on my back was more productive for me. I briefly thought about walking some more, but I was so tired of being on my feet that I decided to skip it. .

Emotionally I can only describe this time as whiny. I was really, really whiny. “I caaaannn’t dooo iiiitttt,” I whined every time I could breathe. This is when Alias Father became invaluable. He channeled his football-coach father and leaned over (lovingly) barking out orders. “Yes, you can too do it,” he’d say. “You don’t have a choice. Now, PUSH.” It helped, and I tried, but I started to feel like I was getting nowhere.

This is when we discovered that my contractions were slowing down. During pushing, contractions are supposed to be coming hard and fast. I had never gotten mine closer together than 4 minutes, and now they were stretching out to 7-8 minutes apart. This meant that I wasn’t able to get any momentum going and it was also stressing the baby. My blood pressure was steadily rising every time they checked. We tried several methods of speeding up contractions, including nipple stimulation, which I won’t detail further except to tell you that this is the LAST thing you want to be doing somewhere around hour 14 of labor. Nothing worked. My doctor was getting worry lines on her forehead and finally she leaned over and said, “I think we need to try the Pitocin.”

And… I didn’t care. For one thing, how much worse could the pain get? For another, I knew that I wouldn’t be laboring for hours with the Pitocin like I would have been at the beginning. Also, what other options did I have? I was desperate and was getting really concerned about the baby. Her heartrate was still strong, but this extended pushing couldn’t be good for her. And my vitals were showing that it clearly wasn’t good for me.

So they started the Pitocin. It managed to kick up the contractions back to five minutes apart and, people, I pushed like mad. Alias Father kept bullying/cajoling/comforting me into working as hard as I could, even after I started crying. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed…for another two hours. The worry lines on my doctor’s forehead got deeper and deeper and deeper, until she finally walked right up next to me, took my hand and leaned over. And I knew what was coming. I’d known for about half an hour.

“Honey,” she said, and I knew it was bad because this is a pretty no-nonsense woman and I don’t think she calls many people honey, “You haven’t made any progress. That baby is still at the pubic bone and isn’t moving. The Pitocin isn’t working. I’m getting worried about both of you. I think you need to have a C-section.”

Birth, Part 1: The Labor

I have a much better chance of getting this done if I put it up in sections. Plus it adds a nice element of drama, don’t you think?

So when I last left you, I was having minor contractions after my doctor had swept my membranes and applied the gel. As the evening went on, the contractions started getting stronger, but more erratic. I was getting them as far apart as 45 minutes to an hour and by that point was assuming that they were merely the signs of my cervix opening. I wandered upstairs around 9 to rest and read a bit and I drifted off to sleep. The contractions were no stronger than strong menstrual cramps at this point and were fairly easy to ignore.

At 1:30 I woke up to a very strong contraction. It felt different. More powerful and more….whole body somehow. I lay there trying to believe that this was a real contraction when I had another one. I realized that what I hoped to happen might actually be happening: the gel and sweeping had been enough to start my labor. All I could think about was keeping the contractions going. It felt like a kind of mission at this point. I would take on the system. I didn’t need no stinkin’ Pitocin! I immediately got up and started doing laps around the bedroom while timing the contractions on Alias Father’s old Seth Thomas pocket watch–the only timepiece in our house with a second hand. At this point the contractions were about 30-40 seconds long and about 6 minutes apart pretty consistently. I paced and timed until about 3, when I realized that I was starting to get confused by the clock. By the time one ended, I couldn’t remember when it had started. I figured that this was a good sign that either I was losing my mind or that I was definitely, 100% in labor. (Because I am such an instruction follower, I was concerned that because my contractions weren’t precisely an exact length of time apart, then it wasn’t really labor.) I woke up Alias Father–who so far had managed to sleep through my light being on, my occasional gasps with the contractions, and approximately 7,862 laps of our room–to ask him to help time. He did, though he actually fell asleep in-between several times (honestly? I think the man could sleep through a tornado). After about an hour I decided that trying to keep him awake and concentrating enough to let him know when one was starting was more difficult than just doing it myself. I dismissed him (he rolled over with a grunt and, yes, went back to sleep) while I decided to see if I could rest. It turned out that sitting or laying down through contractions was far more painful than walking through them, so I was soon back on my feet.

By 5:30 I had hit that magic 5-1-1 point of contractions: five minutes apart and one minute in length for one hour. I considered calling the hospital (we have to call in before arriving to ensure that there is OB staff present) but changed my mind seeing as how we were due in for the induction at 7 anyway. I figured I could call if things moved rapidly, but otherwise would just hang out. And by “hang out” I mean wander around and lean against walls during contractions for another while before waking up the sleeping dead and convincing him to get dressed and help me get ready to go.

There’s about fifteen minutes of bumpy roads between our house and the hospital. I had three more contractions on the drive and I forced him to pull over for each one, because I discovered that if there is anything more painful than sitting down through a contraction, it’s sitting down while strapped in a moving vehicle that’s hitting bumps at 50 miles an hour. We finally made it into the hospital, checked in, and headed right up to OB.

They were, of course, waiting for me with an IV of Pitocin ready to go. “I don’t need that,” I told the nurse. “I’ve been having contractions since 1:30. I don’t need the Pitocin.” She looked doubtful but I was being pretty clear about not getting the IV before they at least checked me out. She strapped me onto the monitor for twenty minutes, came back and checked my print out while watching me breathe through a contraction, and then grinned at me.

“I’m not giving you Pitocin until the doctor gets here and sees this,” she said. “I think you’ve dodged it this time.”

Sure enough, when the doctor arrived at 8:30 I was still in full labor. I could tell she was thinking about augmenting with the Pitocin until she did a cervical check and discovered that I was 4 cm dilated with a “bulging amniotic sac” (doesn’t that sound delightful?). She waved off the Pitocin and broke my waters, which let us know that there was meconium in the fluid but that it wasn’t too bad. She told me to keep up the good work, said she’d be back at lunchtime, and took off.

I remember reading somewhere that what’s surprising about labor is how much time you spend alone. And that was a shock. For that entire morning it was pretty much just my husband and myself. One OB nurse swung in now and then to check my vitals and hook me up to the fetal monitor for a contraction, but otherwise it was just the two of us. AF felt fairly useless because it turns out that, as I suspected, I am one of those women who doesn’t like to be touched, talked to, or massaged during a contraction. I pretty much want to breathe and be left the hell alone. But he was sweet and breathed along with me. (By the way, I wasn’t doing any fancy pants breathing. No “hee-hee-hee” for me. I was just plain old deep, meditative breathing. It’s all I could manage and it worked just fine.) I hadn’t had any pain meds at this point, nor did I see the point in taking any. I felt strong and that my breathing could carry me through. No one offered me meds either and the nurses assured me that I was doing great. I was. The OB nurse offered me a popsicle around 10 AM which I took to help keep my energy up. I threw it up half an hour later and that’s the last time I tried to eat all day.

By lunchtime I was seriously questioning my decision to not to take any meds. Each contraction nearly brought me to my knees and I was nearly crying from weariness. I began to feel like it was never going to end, like I’d be stuck in this hell forever. My back was beginning to ache something fierce. I still found it worse to sit down, which meant that I’d been walking or standing for nearly twelve hours straight. I could sit on the birthing ball for short periods but every time I did gushes of amniotic fluid would run out of me. I was still desperately trying to maintain a shred of dignity at this point and kept trying to clean it up myself so that Alias Father and the nurse wouldn’t have to.  (I often find myself being unreasonably polite to nurses, customer service professionals, and other service-type folks–generally to the point of ridiculousness.)  Basically, by this point I was an unreasonable, exhausted, paranoid mess. And I didn’t know how much longer I could do it.

This is when my doctor showed up. She laid me down for a cervical check and the pressure this put on my back took my breath away. I told her that if she told me I was only at 5 cm I would kick her (and I kind of meant it). She looked up at me, amazed, and told me that I was at 8 cm. I was so relieved that I can’t even express it. I asked about pain meds and she told me that my only option at this point was a spinal, but by the time they got it set up I would be very close to being ready to push. I knew that spinals made pushing more difficult, so I set my teeth and agreed that I could finish without it. Plus, it helped me to know that I was in the transitional phase and that all the doubts that I was feeling were normal. I was supposed to feel this way right now. My doctor told me she’d be back in an hour and half and on we went. And by “on we went” I mean a continuation of the whimpering, breathing, and mutterings of “don’t touch me.”

She was late in returning, which I know because at the point I was staring directly at the clock, watching the second hands tick by. What else was I going to do with my time but stare at the clock and stew? I was calling her very impolite names and feeling fairly murderous by the time she showed up. Seriously, doctors? If you have someone in labor and you tell them you’ll be back at a certain time, please be there. It’s for your own safety, really.

Anyway, she finally made it back and gave me another once over. She snapped her glove off, pushed back, and said those words I’d been dreaming of since 1:30 that morning: 10 cm dilated, 100% effaced, and ready to push.

Who knew that having a baby destroyed your ability to type?

Yes!  I am still here!  I kind of got myself into some kind of crazy logic where I thought I couldn’t post until I put up the birth story, but then I couldn’t finish the birth story because I couldn’t find the time.  (I have a rough draft.  I’m cutting out some of the blood and gore and adding in some humor–there was a little bit of that–and then it will be up.)  But rest assured that the Buddha Baby and I are getting along swimmingly, if by swimmingly you mean that occasionally I feel like she is draining me of my life force, which she then tries to return by barfing on me.  It’s an odd relationship, but so far so good.

I’m moving out of the zombie zone and more into my usual self, so I hope to be back up and running regularly soon.  As regularly as I can be on dial-up, which is the only internet access we can get at home.  Dial-up sucks out my soul even worse than little Buddha and it doesn’t even bother with the puking.  Or the smiling.  Or the cuddling and general cuteness.  But I will push through the pain as best I can in the five minutes every day when I am not needed as a milk cow, butt wiper, vomit-cleaner-upper, or entertainment center.  Stay tuned.