As the (W)rightlette rounds her way into her second month, life gets complicated. Work looms. Unwanted weight is lost. The (W)rights and EBF are BFF no more with a jolt. New nursing routines are rallied in a formulaic melodrama of pesky pituitaries, lost lactose, and a slice of gratitude.
Back to the Future Past Office Staycation
House cleaning day! After the little imp was squeezed into this world, we forewent our housecleaner's bi-weekly thaumaturgy on our home. Given the wreckage and my invalid state, it was necessary to leave the house in lock down mode for a little while. We don't really want to go that long between cleanings ever again. With my limited activity tolerance and all the one handed "cooking" and remodeling activity (plus just having three people around all the time peopling it up)... We were not cancelling this week's cleaning for anything!
But we're still both on leave and I'm now more than ever taking it easy in my quest to lose the lochia lurgy once and for all. What's a Wright to do? Hide out at the office obviously. After a highly traumatic ten minutes trying to adjust the carseat to fit our thumbalina, all to her rooting tooting hungry hippo chagrin... The howling carved my heart out a bit,. But we managed eventually. And didn't even find fit divorce in the process (though how apropos would that be given or destination)?
My first return to the old world, though that world has spiffed up as well! My office now sports more baby stuff than office stuff. A pack and play and a spectacular glider gifted to me by my mom and sister! With the treadmill in the other corner, Andrew took one look at the space and queried whether there was any room to work actually left. Not a bad question for the first few weeks, since I'm still unable to walk much or be very active with consequence. I may have to take up station in the conference room for this sitting while working nonsense.
But not yet. This was exclusively a social/exiled-by-cleaners call. Andrew went on a run (hence the gigantic bag on top of the diaper bag). And I lazed about with a baby on my bosom.
I did immediately reacquaint myself with the kitchen for some urgent noshing and break in the glider. A good step for wading back into work.
Work? The horror! Andrew goes back to EI next week. He's sooooooooooo much more than ready. Although he has yet to fully fathom the extent of sleep deprivation likely to arise with that 5:15 wake up time and long commute. We are weaning ourselves from an 8:30-9:00 wake up time at the moment. Have made it all the way to 7:00. But there's a ways to go. For me it matters slightly less. I start "bedtime" at roughly 8 though the beast doesn't usually settle until closer to 10. I am shaken and stirred every hour to the rare but exceptional three hours. I nap during the day. I usually have been going downstairs at 5ish to start coffee and so on during a Chaya feed. It's going to be tough having to be up and helping my loris get things together and get out the door that early, but it won't be a huge difference until my work schedule is more set.
Andrew comes to bed much later. Around 10:30. He needs that downtime and more or less had always taken it. Currently he is called in for diaper duty a few times reach evening. And I'm amazed to find him actually sleeping more lightly than the coma of narcosis that once characterized his sleep. Not to say he hasn't been dead to the world and/or hit me and Chaya with a pillow during his somnolent thrashing, but he also reacts more often when our baby cries or fusses. This from a guy who was so deeply asleep he didn't notice the night when I got out of bed ill, passed out on my way to the bathroom, konked my head on a door and woke up on a pool of my own bodily fluids (which I then cleaned). So yes lighter sleep, but not really the same non sleep I've been having. Going to be tough. Especially trying to deal with stress (which plagues him and those who truly invest in their career identities), the drowsy commute, and the desire to see his wife and kid with his desire to ride bikes and have down time.
I'm planning to continue easing back into working once he's off. At a reduced schedule which may or may not be the norm. This weekend made it clear to me that my recovering body doesn't take stress well, and my Beastie baby demands a lot of distracting boob time. But I am glad to have such a great home away from home all set and waiting for me! And a happy boba to help me on my way!
Chaya Papaya and Ms. Hide Your Milk Maids
The final day of paternity leave commences! Andrew's current "leave" projects are wrapping up thank goodness. Furniture is coming. Rooms are decorated. Wheelies are being practiced. And, we have waded through several hundred op options to identify the educational savings account to rule then all! GET can't be gotten. ESAs are shockingly pointless. Route 529 is the way to go and we'll be riding in the vanguard lane. Trust me that is the product of two days of intense research and an excel spreadsheet. It's sticking. Probably.
In honor of daddy's dwindling leave period, Chaya has bested her own records in mammary mayhem. She has excelled in several categories: sheer endurance suckling, best actress in a dramatic role for her performance in "This Boob Killed My Family And Besmirched My Honor, But I Still Must Suck On It Alone," most harrowing sobs, most creative goat grunts while feeding, fastest rooting jackhammer action on mommy's neck, thrashiest burp, best spitting up freestyle (double through mouth and nose while feeding and pooping was a perfect ten) and most effectively aimed at bringing mommy to tears with fake out peaceful slumbers resolving into mad rooting when mommy starts to move to comfortable position.
Supporting awards go to daddy for swaddling the beast before mommy gave up entirely and started trying to give baby the leftover passover wine under the sink. Hey, it's like formula right?
Yeah, kind of a day. Chaya was a sweet and alert little love much of the time. Other times she was an dear little snoozing cherub. But at other times she was a terror; she was fussy while feeding, grumpy afterwards, inconsolable in between and at random. Did I mention she recently acquired tears to accompany the howling?
It is particularly frustrating when she reaches such a state that the breast itself offends or comes short. As if my little one had suggest proclaimed that I have personally betrayed her. And yet just as often she is perfectly happy to linger on the bosom until exhaustion overcomes her and she drifts asleep.
And yes it causes a captive mommy to turn to the almighty Google machine!
There are a million possible reasons for today's behaviour. It could be forceful overactive let down and oversupply( kind of drowning my baby). Low supply (or I'm drier than the Sahara in summer) A foremilk and hindmilk imbalance (either forcing her to go all Atkins or very old school Snackwells). It could be GERD (reflux but really bad). It could be sensitivity to something I'm eating (basically everything I eat is a potential trigger from somebody's experience). It could be that I'm dispensing regular breast milk when she expressly requested chocolate milk on one side and fizzy lemonade on the other... With a bendy straw. Where is the bendy straw!?!
Oh yeah, it could also be just typical fussy newborn behavior, and/or another little growth spurt. The last time I felt this tapped by the Beastie, she did gain weight pretty quickly and my supply might have been scrambling last night but after that first hour of sleep, bit did I wake up uncomfortably full. So there may be some of that cluster-f-ing going on.
So far, if the weight increases as normal and the adequate inventory of dirty diapers are observed, then we're assuming she's a fussy hungry baby in the prime of her fussy baby window. And mommy will survive... Somehow. Because she loves the little Chaya beast and enjoys the little pockets of sweet that come in between raging milk monster.
Like our baths. Long overdue, Chaya had her first bath this week. She is now so fluffy and her hair of much fairer than orbitally l previously believed. Also we took it together, ensuring that mommy actually bathed for a change. Since Andrew was seeing, I let him dry and dress her while finishing off with a mommy only shower. Which was like liquid sleep!
And her little lucid awake moments. Which can strike at any time. And are more seductive than crack cocaine with a warm and fuzzy ecstasy hit the end.
And naps. Naps are the best. They are definitely on mommy's agenda for today!
Colicky Cutie and the Month o'Mayhem
One month of Miss Milk-Monster! She's no longer a naive newborn. No this gal is a pro newborn. She could serve as mentor to all those little pups still wet behind the ears. Ok she's a little wet back there but that's a combination of spit up and mommy's soda water (sometimes things do spill)!
So exciting to watch the differences emerge every day. And to race ever further away from life-as-we-knew-it into some surreal Lynchian excursion down the rabbit hole of the super normal and supremely surreal.
Nothing emphasizes how much has altered as a visit from the outside world. Yesterday we had a visit from my Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Vince to continue the tradition of weekend family festivities. My mom and her boy toy came as well. All for lunch and a glowing bask in the aura of Empress Chaya. Per the custom, they brought take out. My fortune cookie informs me that I am a leader and will be called upon in some manner. Not that I ever answer my phone...
Our Lady of honor spent lunch asleep in the boba before stirring and demanding a vigorous and vocal breastfeeding session in front of the entire company. They followed dutifully and were rewarded with a lucid and sweet farewell from the Beastie who became personable just before they were about to leave. She loves my auntie it would appear.
Mommy? We're not always so sure about.
Which is wise. Mommy's not the sort to be certain about. But mommy's milk? It's in high enough demand you'd think she'd think more kindly of it.
The fussy feeding fandango continues of course. No doubt I'm at the remotest extremity of what once was termed my wit. Then again, wit is an odd thing. More of an intangible spirit populating abstruse Shakespearean badinage then anything exhibiting patient prudence or slim sanity.
As babies are wont to do, our little pea pod persists in baffling me. On Friday evening she ended a long nursing siege (having racked up nine hours of nursing in a single day beforehand) by sleeping for genuine chunks of time. Over two hours a pop. She went to bed without an excess of fuss and even napped nicely on Saturday morning with me. The indulgence! The glut of sleep! The relief!
I had hoped this was a sign of turned corners and better chapters, but the afternoon featured revenge of the Beastie. An all out screeching buffet in which no offering was acceptable, no latch maintainable and no distraction sustainable or ignorable. Shrieky baby tears are a piteous thing. And cute as baby coos can be, I'd rather hear doves cry.
She'd emerge from an angelic slumber howling. Naturally she would carry on the upset to a struggling latch, settle on for anywhere between five and twenty minutes, then begin to thrash and recriminate and push off before begging to grab back on. Spewing plaintive little mews while finishing the feed.
Occasionally our raging rooter could be distracted into a taste of charming or zonked. But these respites only lasted so long.
Despite all that (or because), it was another evening of longer sleeping jags and more modest waking feeds. More two plus hour breaks at least we're appreciated.
I had maintained a good sense of humor about all of this before I dared to brave the baby scale. I ever so wanted to see signs of the growth spurt that would well have explained her recent rampage. Instead her weight gain over the last week was minor. A mere ounce and a half since last Sunday. Possibly a loss of an ounce of two since a hurried weigh in on Wednesday.
Ack, failure to thrive! Starving baby! Malnourished milk monster suddenly not a fusspot but a wastrel wasting away. Forget that she's gained more than a pound since birth. Forget that she's visibly chubby and growing out of her newborn clothes. My baby's needs are clearly not being met, and somebody will be placing a CPS call on my barren (or overproducing or gas churning or reflux churning or or or or) bosom!
Ok some sense of proportion merits that I wait it out a few more days and keep a watch. We're hitting the crescendo period for purple crying and still learning how to burp and handle hiccups and so on. Being a new mom whose sleep deprivation can only be matched by abstract guilt for even possibly not meeting all her needs, a watch might be a little hawk eyed. But I'm practicing my not-nuts.
Really. Because sleep deprivation goes well with not-nuts.
Survival of the Frenziedest getting by with a lotta help from my friends
First day of Andrew's absence was survived. There were flagging moments of doubt to be certain. A crying jag of a mammary morning with no respite for mommy's deflating brain and boobs certainly took its toll. Let's say we didn't start off on the right foot when she woke up screaming in her bassinet at five am, and it set her up for some seriously overtired baby antics. Which naturally included missing her morning sleeps entirely. A fussy hungry baby who isn't gaining weight should not be inflicted on a new SAHM (acronyms continue - yesterday, work did not happen so I was a stay at home mom and or stuck at home milk machine) with limited mental and emotional capacity. Especially when she has access to the internet.
Good results emerged from the "I'm starving my baby" freak out though. First, I got a lot of support in my online mother's group, which always helps when your first feeling is a desperate isolation. Second, it inspired me to make an appointment with a lactation consultant at The Bellingham Center For Healthy Motherhood. No matter the results, my appointment is during their weekly breastfeeding cafe, which has coffee and serves as a social place where I can actually go with my boob-Beastie. As a bonus I can weigh her before and after feedings to see how much she's eating. Which is kind of a mystery otherwise.
Third, it gave Molly an excuse to come by the house with some mother's milk tea. Which is not tea made from any actual mother's milk, phew. Mostly an herbal blend that tastes like fennel or anise and features potentially supportive herbs. Molly had a momentary worry about her supply when little Lucy started fussing (lucky her, sounds like instead the little three month old is teething). She got the tea, realized she hated the licorice taste and then decided she would just as soon eat cookies of she had to choose. I'd just as soon drink tea so it all works out. And any excuse to stay hydrated right? Her toothy little girl is also a long and lean baby whose weight gain also stalled before suddenly exploding so that gives me more help than the tea.
Real bonus was I got to actually hang out with Molly again. And again Lucy and Emma enjoyed the toys that still don't quite grab Miss Chaya. And the rocking chair! Emma didn't crash it through the skidding glass door but not for lack of trying! Eventually Emma did grow sassy and bored enough that Molly called it a visit, which naturally cued up with Chaya's return to consciousness lest mommy get wild ideas like napping. Despite being my second most constant visitor, Molly has still never seen Chaya with her eyes open.
On the bright side of the baby awakening, she'd graduated from weak and recriminating morning nursing (definitely more comfort nibbling going on in between howls) to a full on frothy messy feed. Full of baby spit up, and no you dare not attempt to remove her from a good latch just to clean milk stained face! Chaya made that one quite clear.
Made for a creative couple of meals (spatula is good). And a very grateful mummy when Andrew eventually got home and held the kiddo for a quiet non-boob window and a bit of a baby tempest when she decided she needed to be nursing yet again.
Today I'm off to see the lactation consultant with plenty of hope for some answers and maybe some cookies.
It has started off so much better. She was sleeping when Andrew was supposed to get up. I came down to start breakfast and get dinner tea but decided to go with the baby and grab those snoozes. She slept until seven! And so far is much better tempered this morning. At least I will be better rested and any morning rages will be shorter since we slept out those extra two hours.
Bring on the Tuesday! Gently...
Pump Up The Volume Beware the Cafe au lait
Well, that's it, hand my mommy-card back to the front row and label me a half-pint. Or maybe like a half-ounce. After some prodigious production and growth spurting a ways back, I find myself suddenly underproducing for our little beastie. The guilt, I assure you is unavoidable, although I think I do have a one-up on a lot of moms in similar situations. I have already tackled the emotional baggage of infertility and artificial conception. And once you've fenced with those ferocious foes, the little formula devil doesn't sound quite as devastating on one level. And when I consider the freedom (date night, bottles, pacifiers, eating whstever the heck I want.. all without constantly worrying about supply, latching, and sensitivities... they can appeal). Then again, that brings its own guilt. Even considering that I would not go to the very edges of my abilities... even imagining advantages... oh motherhood.
Yesterday I made my appointment with the lactation consultant. It was a fantastic visit and I can't rave highly enough about the entire center. I missed the cookies though. There was a lot of paperwork. We weighed Chaya before and after feedings, worked on more efficient latching and then discovered I was only producing some fraction of what Miss Chay-Chay would need to keep growing. Hence the weight loss recently. Here I thought it was just her new baby cross-fit routine keeping her trim.
Bring on the interventions! There may still be time! Maybe. Because I wasn't taking enough pills with my five bajillion vitamins, I'm now supplemented out the wazoo. Bitter Goat's Fenu-Greco-Roman Lactogagogaugical tea anybody? I probably have it somewhere. Thank goodness, I relocated my second pill case. Additionally, it's time to break out the pump. Which is a surreal and daunting device.
The idea is that I breastfeed Chaya as efficiently as I can with all the new efficient milking practices that I learned (ok, I tried to learn, I'm not great at them yet), and then pump for some time afterwards to really empty that sucker (or, to be more accurate, suck-ed). More demand theoretically signals for more supply. More herbs theoretically help produce that supply. Baby gets drowned in milk. Or at least starts getting a little bit more... Or mommy struggles for a while as the supply gradually diminishes until she can finally cut the chord knowing she's done everything she can. Kind of a crapshoot on which will be the answer there.
This all sounds easy. It's not. Chaya is accustomed to having 24/7 access to mommy's chest. And trickling out sustenance or no, there's comfort in that suckle for her. Suddenly, she's not really getting any of that time. Probably not enough feeding yet either. Talk about a hangry baby.. Feeding is all feeding. Or trying to feed. If one side isn't producing enough swallowing noises, and strange monster latch faces she gets flipped to the other. If neither side is producing, she's off and mommy's pumping. And her hourly little top me up now has to be delayed for at least two hours. It's brutal. Particularly on mommy and daddy. We went from a boob-fiend to full on purple crying baby in about half a day. The sobbing. The fits. The recrimination. I feel like we're torturing our little one.
However, there are bright linings to every cloud. One, she is in fact getting help. I took the initiative to start supplementing so she won't keep losing weight. And it seems to be helping a little (nasty farts and weirder diapers aside). I have special little tubes and gadgets so she can even imbibe while on boob.
Andrew can also feed her with his finger. It's a miracle. I pointed out that he probably could even tape one around his nipple, but he draws the line apparently.
Yes, Andrew is back! After a good start back at work, we're derailing him a bit. He is either taking vacation or getting back on parental leave, depending on work policies. Which is a bloody relief, because pumping is a two-handed affair and pretty well nobody can handle this ball of abandoned baby alone. And he's pretty well in demand in a way that boob-beastie Chaya didn't allow. It's really nice, being able to share all this, even if most of this is "extreme exhaustion and wit's endedness." But there's bonding in that.
It is getting better though... hopefully. Maybe. We'll say so in this moment, because our adorable daughter is currently clad in monkeys (and tube spilt formula spittle) and cooing more than sobbing. I type too soon. I'm sure, but like our baby, we live in the moment. Unless the moment is "putting my poor little lady parts into a very aggressive suction machine.
If I had more time between pumping, feeding and comforting a collicky creature, I would rhapsodize on the stark modern dystopia that is the breast pump with all it marvelous science fiction fanciness, but if I do not keep singing "I am chay-ya-ya-ya-ya and I like papay-ya-ya-ya-ya while drumming on my balding babies back (not feeding related, but she is developing male pattern baldness from all the stroking and kissing we do to her I believe), then it will be nuclear holocaust around here.
Happy Whatever Day!
She Reminds Me of the a Babe With the Power Nursing Tools
After a day that will live in enfamil, the (W)right household has slowly adjusted to the new standard of supplementation. A generous term perhaps since it is really the formula being supplemented by whatever magic mojo can be coaxed from mommy's minimizing mamilla through science and plenty of coaching. It's not squeezing blood from a stone exactly, or even milk from a male (cats? Anything with nipples can be milked! Except me, apparently!). There's still quantities to squirt just yet (though lord knows how much longer)... Just maybe more dessert than main course. Or salad before the mac and cheese. Wanting to get those nutrients and antibodies in before the calories, but the calories matter most.
On Wednesday I clarified that actually my understanding of the protocol in which we starve or poor baby by limiting feeding frequency to two hour intervals was both wrong and a terrible threat to any remaining parental sanity. Feed whenever she wants but no comfort nursing and switch to formula when she's being less productive. We again clarified that actually sometimes it's hard to know what she wants and maybe four ounces of formula on top of whatever else all in one epic half hour binge... Exorcist baby doesn't cover the sheer volume of wails and sticky spit ups resulting. Let's just call it viewing Vitamin D-bacle the sequel.
We are now attempting to throw some weight on those baby bones with a myriad of feeding strategies centering on the basic principals of (1) breast milk fresh from the tap first (2) extra breast milk to follow as available (3) calories in in in (they'll figure their own way out, don't worry), (4) but in a way that encourages production of more breast milk.
More production theoretically comes from the thousand and fifty herbal supplements jammed into some little pills, and from stimulating the nipples with adobe m some extra suck suck time, so all methods of feeding should encourage the baby to keep sucking hard (and mummy will get s little extra suck from the pump). Also required is probably a delicate chain of hormonal reactions that - like my prior issues with having ovulatory cycles - may just not work (at which point I just say thank you to my body for holding up for a healthy pregnancy and breastfeeding for the first most important days).
But yeah I'm basically a milking cyborg for now. There are tubes to take the milk out of me. Tubes to add supplement into our baby's sucking experience. Laser vision and a heat ray to prepare bottles... Wait that was the deluxe me that cost extra. Darn.
The tubes are pretty crazy though. We also have various syringes for finger feeding and an abundant supply of magic bottles. Still it's the heavy duty stuff that really makes me feel wonderment/dystopian nightmare. If you haven't stared at a working breast pump, you're missing all kinds of opportunity for nightmares and a generally fascinating experience over all.
The supplemental nutrition somethingorother (SNS for most purposes) involves not only tubes but a complex little iv type bag that can be filled with the supplement of choice (still voting for Gatorade, Muscle Milk, or Nestle Qwik, maybe the strawberry flavor). Once the baby is latched (hopefully well, but bring a towel just in case), a little tube running from the bottom of the bag can be inserted into baby's mouth. While she's nursing, she'll also suck fluid from the tube. Like a bendy straw of formula. There's more to it in terms of increasing our decreasing the readiness of flow and of course the tube will fall out and squirt prodigiously. And formula will go too quickly (or is it qwikly) in and too quickly back out again to baby's tummy.
Trust me, the free enfamil samples we started with are disgusting. Andrew's researching the heck out of better formula because I'm not keen on shoving corn syrup solids and the like into the little one. Seems wrong after giving her a nice start on simple and healthy foods via the placenta and early boob.
It's a bummer to think of all the benefits of breast milk that I may not be able to give to my Beastie anymore. It also confirms that anxiety that some little shoe would drop in the perfectly healthy and natural pregnancy following years of infertility and necessary intervention. Deja vu to feeling let down by my body. My let down is a let down now! I had held out some hope that my body just needed a jump start. That after the baby was born, I'd return to normal hormonal cycles and have just the option of another wee one. This makes me think I'm probably still me and the pregnancy was just a break bought at great effort by a body hellbent on keeping the little thing healthy where it couldn't keep itself. But it brings home as well what a gift Miss Chaya really is. A certainly not-forgone conclusion.
And for any disappointment, there is also the practical understanding that there is so much more to give than a specific kind of food. In a sense I feel like Andrew and I have become so much more parents in the last few days. He has fed her, we've comforted her through some really tough nights. I have let go of Chaya-as-extension-of-my-body-and-soul, allowing her to be baby Chaya and beginning the process to personhood.
And for now I will do what is reasonable to keep some supply up as every drop of a gift (so sayeth the lactation consultant's walls) and to comfort nurse as appropriate. But I can also appreciate the freedom of bottles and know she'll turn out ok even on the nasty enfamil. We're getting fancy fussy formula today, since we are in it for the long haul, but even that nasty enfamil has let her get back on track to growing. Which means that baby is getting to be a better and better strength training said. Mommy's recovering so time to start the baby squats!
The days of milk and honey-a-diaper may be dwindling, but tears will dry with the milk and love will overwhelm the sadness. Let's get this baby fat!
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