Neglected

My daughter was less than two years old when her sister was born. Suddenly, she was from queen of the castle to sharing the title and that was not easy. Neither was having mommy home, but not being able to play every second of the day.

Besides being tired, recovering and a little overwhelmed with a baby, I had a toddler running loose in my house! And just about every 45 minutes I was strapped to the chair with a hungry baby. Whatever was I to do?!?!

Not to worry, my toddler was not scarred. She was not damaged. She may have been a little bored but we worked it out.

I knew the transition would be tough. And having mommy home and stuck to a baby would be even tougher. So, we figured out ways to have fun around the nursing schedule. First of all, I put her little table near the chair I was feeding in. While nursing, I would color, help with stickers and read. We read books. We put together board puzzles. We watched movies and television shows. She wasn't deprived of attention. But I have a very independent little girl on my hands, so maybe she is a rare case.

In the time I wasn't nursing, we made the most of the moments. We went on walks. I put the baby in a Moby wrap and pushed the toddler in her swing. We painted with pudding. We danced. We played in her water table and I watched her splash in her pool. We played Legos. We kicked a ball back and forth.

And in her own way, she knew that mommy had something else to do. She knew when the baby was eating and she would ask "you gonna pump?" when I would get out my pump bag. She never bothered me or nagged, and even though I felt guilty, I knew it was important. I mean, she got that time with me, shouldn't her little sister? Me and the baby needed time to get to know one each other without a layer of skin and some internal organs separating us. We needed to have time to learn how the other worked. Just because she had an older sister didn't mean she didn't deserve all of her mom too! God knows there are already way fewer pictures of her, should there be less time as well?

I had to drop the guilt and realize that at not-even-two, my toddler didn't know any better. She was okay with giving up some of her mom for her new sister. And the relationship between me and the youngest is better for it.

Get by with a little help from my friends

When I first came home from the hospital, I didn't have a lot of energy. However, I have a particular way of doing things. I like things cleaned a certain way. I despise clutter. The only other person who can clean my house to my standards, so to speak, is my mother. And actually, she does it better. I wanted to make dinner, I wanted to clean, I wanted to open all the baby gifts and write thank you notes. But the baby, well, she had other plans.

In the beginning, both my children were frequent nursers. I swear I would put them down and 15 minutes later they were hungry again. Or inefficient nursers, who knows. So a lot of my plans were sort of left dangling. The bathrooms weren't getting clean; I barely had enough time to shower and pee, nevermind clean them. The kitchen floor had seen better days. But I didn't want to ask for help.

My mom came over one day and looked at the sight of our living room and immediately set to work. She brought me a basket of clean clothes to fold while I nursed and tried to calm the babe. She cleaned the house and left it feel fresh as a daisy. My mother-in-law came over and played with my other daughter in the yard, leaving me time to nurse, bond and rest.

I wanted to believe I could do it all, but I couldn't. Nor was I expected to. If I needed help, I just had to ask. Breastfeeding isn't easy. Neither is recovering from having a baby. Neither is keeping up a house with a newborn. Neither is having a toddler. Combine all those things and you have the perfect storm.

If you can't do it all, ask a family member or neighbor or your husband to take a few chores off your plate. It's only a few weeks until your baby is past that must-eat-all-the-time newborn stage and on to something else. Don't blink or you might miss it.

The Perfect Position

In the early days of nursing, I was mostly concerned with nourishing my child. I didn't care if I was sore. I didn't care if I had to contort my body into all sorts of different positions to get her to latch on. By God being a mother is about sacrifice and I was going to do whatever it took....that is until about three days in when I could no longer move and my back was kinked in a completely unnatural way.

Turns out, those nurses, books and lactation consultants are right. Getting the position correct is important, not only to a good latch but to your muscles and bones as well.

My first child was only nursed cross-cradle. I used a bed pillow or couch pillow and while I had a Boppy, it just never took. We were way better at balancing her on a pillow while I strategically moved to her. I was sore for nearly the entire six months that I nursed her. And I'm probably still out of whack because of it.

With my second, I started using the Boppy the second I got home. I didn't take it to the hospital because I never used it with my first and I didn't want one more thing to bring to and from the hospital. Her and I, well, we become Boppy addicts. I was able to get her to latch well when she was turning her head slightly to the left. So, we cross-cradled it on the right side and used the football hold on the left.

This is where I will impart some "do as I say not as I do" advice.

Don't do this. My kid ended up with a big flat spot on the left side of her head and the inability to cross-cradle on the left. And let me tell you, when they get so big, football hold is much, much harder because their legs can push off the furniture behind you.

I used to sit on my non-supportive couch with my legs folded under me, holding her in these positions until I just couldn't take it anymore. I called a chiropractor friend, got myself adjusted and started over.

I recommend sitting on a supportive piece of furniture. For us, this is the glider in her bedroom. i use the Boppy, even now, to stabilize her and cross-cradle on both sides. I sit back with my shoulders at a comfortable position and tilt and pull her towards me, not the other way around.

This is really, really important. Get into a comfortable position for you and then work with the baby. If you are uncomfortable every single feeding will hurt and all the time in between will be full of trying to stretch out the kinks. But find what works for you. Some like side-lying in bed. Some are okay balancing the baby while sitting in the middle of the floor. Others, like me, need a really supportive environment.

And if the kinks come, call a good massage therapist or chiropractor to get you all straightened out.

Disposable versus Reusable

Alright girls, let's talk breast pads.

With my first, I rarely needed them. I have no idea why. Inverted nipples plus not a lot of engorgement meant virtually no leaking. I think I came into my second pregnancy with a nearly full box. This time around, well, like everything else about the pregnancy/baby/nursing relationship...this too was way different.

Within the first few weeks, I had gone through my existing supply and was on to a new box. Friends who had left overs passed them my way. I was pretty much sticking with the Lansinol brand nursing pads. They come individually wrapped, which was nice because I could use just one if one needed to be changed and the other didn't.

I don't know about you, but I actually don't know why those things are made with stickers on the back. I never used them. I also wasn't a huge fan of the texture for some reason. They seemed to bunch up in places and leave me (already feeling post-partum unattractive) feeling lumpy and out of sorts.

But they did the job. The were absorbent, they were the right size and I could toss them each time I nursed or pumped without a worry.

But, there is something about throwing them away that made me feel like I was just adding so much more to the diapers and other things I was already throwing away. So, on a grocery shopping trip to a local big-box store, I swung by the baby area to pick up another box of the disposables but right next to them were the reusable cloth ones. I figured I'd give them a try.

I like them for all the reasons I didn't like the disposables. Mainly, I'm not contributing to landfill overcrowding. But also, they were soft and they didn't bunch. But I hated them for all the reasons I loved the disposables. I had to remember to wash them or I would run out...and with a new baby the last thing on my mind was laundry. Maybe more than one pack would have helped with that. They came with six in a pack so I just had to make sure they were washed and put away before I needed more. That didn't always happen. Plus, apparently round, white pieces of cloth are food to the sock-eating-monster as well. They would disappear only to reappear after the last load, probably with stories of being stuck under the agitator or inside of a pant leg.

I tried them both. And maybe because I'm on a try-to-be-more-green-and-healthy kick right now, I'd buy more of the disposables. They were what I needed.

Here are some links to places to buy them:

Bare Necessities

Babies R Us

Amazon

FYI, for the disposable kind: Diapers.com. Order them when you get your diapers and you often get over the $50 so shipping is free!

Really on the countdown

This coming Friday marks the end of pumping at work for me. I should newborn to make it quite awhile ob what I have frozen, plus my baby turns one in just under a month. So I am calling it quits. Really though, my baby has been weaning herself and my daily output hasn't been the same since I took a week off of work in March.

For me, the weaning process means cutting down pumps. So this week, I'm pumping once per day at work and not at all at home. It makes my work day feel incredibly long for some reason. Or maybe it's because it is Monday, who knows. I will say that the amount I'm getting doesn't really impress me and I can see why this is the last week.

I'm curious to know how my daughter will take to this when I start giving her a bottle and our nightly cuddle sessions might be replaced with a cuddle session with Daddy instead. I'm curious as to how I will respond to finally having my body to myself for the first time in almost TWO YEARS! Will I be happy at first and miss it later? Will I still have the same cuddle time with her? Will I miss the way she falls asleep and snores quietly while I read the news before bed on my iPod Touch? What about bedtime? How will that go?

So you see, I might be coming to the end of my journey, but there is still so much out there. So much I have to say. I know you have questions and I know I can come up with answers. I know there are things out there that new nursing moms want advice on. Like to drink Pepsi or no drink Pepsi--What was my experience? It's all out there. It's all coming. So stay tuned!

Sleeping Angels

In my last post, I wrote about waking my jaundice baby.

Everyone says "don't wake a sleeping baby," but in the case of jaundice babies who must eat--wake them. This is often easier said than done.

My babies were sleepy babies. Both of them. The second was worse than the first. In order to wake her up enough to eat, I had to do a lot of things. Here are some tips for waking up the little sleepers.

1. Diaper change. Sometimes this is enough to get them startled into waking up.

2. Turn on the lights. This probably should have been the first one because my recommendation is not to change diapers in the dark, but whatever. Most babies will open their eyes and look around. Though my stubborn one would leave her eyes closed and just turn her head toward the light.

3. Take off the clothes. Theirs not yours.

4. Cool rags. I would rub her down with cool rags and wet wipes to startle her, which usually lead to screaming and then nursing would be her comfort.

5. Play with their feet and tummies. I used this trick to keep her awake while nursing. Snuggled up to your warm body and drinking warm milk is the perfect place to fall asleep. I would just occasionally pick at her feet or stomach to make sure she didn't doze off.

My other advice is to leave the light or TV on while you are nursing. I would either watch TV or read a book while she was eating. This kept me awake and also kept her from getting to comfortable and falling back asleep.

Little Glow Worm

When I was pregnant, we explained to our older daughter that we would soon be having another little baby and it would come live with us. She would often give me her Glow Worm and tell me it was her baby. Maybe I should have taken that as foreshadowing.

Our daughter was born a few weeks early and had some nursing issues in the beginning (ones that I still promise I will write about) and was pretty jaundice. By pretty I mean she basically glowed a nice yellow color, even with the lights off--I'm kidding, sort of.

I guess she was a Glow Worm after all.

Now, the only way to get rid of the yucky jaundice is for them to poop. The only way for babies to poop is to eat. The only way my baby was eating at that time was from me. Can we say exhausting?

My doctor gave me strict orders to get up every two hours no matter how long baby wanted to sleep and wake her up to eat. He allowed only one long stretch of no more than four hours per night. It was so difficult to hear my alarm go off and have to wake my baby. But, she needed it. The jaundice, he told me, was making her sleepier, but she couldn't get rid of it unless she was awake.

Night after night, I set an alarm, woke her up, fed her and repeated the process every two hours.

At first I thought "why am I doing this to my poor child? And HOW can my husband just snore through my alarm!" However, she got better and our nursing relationship got better as well. It was a long week or so, but soon our little Glow Worm was a Glow Worm no more.

Though, it was fun to freak unsuspecting people out that first week with our neon yellow baby!

How Medela steam bags saved my life---okay not really

They pretty much saved my milk though.

I like to be prepared. When I pack a back, I pack it for every disaster. Well, most of the time.

When I came back to work after my maternity leave, I packed my pump bag with all the essentials. I had bottle wipes, bottles, nursing pads and some of those Medela steam bags that you put in the microwave to sterlize your stuff. I rarely have to use them, but like I said, it's all about preparation.

Throughout the year, I was less prepared everyday. Sometimes I would forget my little cooler and have to use a fridge at work to store my milk. One day, I forgot bottles to store the milk in. Gasp! I had the bottles I was pumping into, but I prefer the short little 5-ozers for that and those stored a fraction of what I was pumping at the time. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Then I saw the steam bag shoved down in the side of the bag. I glanced at it, looked at two small Ziploc bowls I had left over from the breakfast I brought in that morning and thought--why not! I washed them out with dishsoap in the sink at work, sterlized them in the microwave and then had two containers that fit perfectly into my little cooler.

I don't use the bags a lot because I generally wash/clean/sanitize at home. However, I have to say, this little box of bags is cheap at your local baby supply store and awesome to have on hand for times just like this one.

Resourceful Mom proves I wasn't crazy

When I finished nursing my older daughter, it felt like she took some of me with her.

Oh, not my heart. While nursing was a good experience for me, I was ready to do done. It's almost like she sucked my insides out and took my boobs with her. I seemed....smaller, but in all the wrong areas. I thought I was crazy. Could this really happen?

Apparently it can.

Last week I read a really cute post from Resourceful Mommy about such a topic. It left me laughing. Check out What To Do When The Ladies Have Left.

Helping hands

When I first started nursing my oldest daughter, as I referenced before, we had some issues at the start. I was frustrated and she was hungry. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I cried. Then I got help. I Googled and Googled and read and read, but what I really needed was someone to show me what the heck I was doing wrong. My mother couldn't. I wasn't a breastfed baby. And the Internet offers conflicting advice, shocking, I know. So, I pulled out the paper work I was given at the hospital and found the number for the lactation consultant and called.

At first, I heard "oh those boob nazis" and "they are mean," but those people were wrong. I went there, tear-stained face, no-sleep, baby just four days old and I said "please help." And they did. They found the nipple shield solution that worked perfectly for us. The followed up with us for weeks afterward until I felt comfortable in what I was doing. They didn't judge. They didn't dictate, which is more than I can say for a nurse in the hospital who made me feel as though this natural thing was going wrong and it was ALL MY FAULT!

With my second daughter, I asked for the lactation consultant firs tthing in the morning. Like I mentioned but haven't written yet, we had some issues that time to. I recognized it early on, while we were still in the hospital. Every time a nurse would ask how it was going with nursing, I said "well, we are closer but I think we need the lactation consultant." The nurse would try to help. Some did help, some made me cry, but I always said "can you just have the lactation consultant come by? I have a few questions and I want to make sure she's got a good latch." The lactation consultant came, saw, and helped me conquor. She sat with me and watched some "Jon and Kate Plus 8" with me while we worked on my baby's latch. She checked on me a few times before I left. She followed up with me and said she felt confident I would do fine.

The thing is, I'm not perfect. I'm not the ultimate nursing mommy. I'm just one nursing mommy. A regular, every nursing mom who wants you to know that it's okay to ask for help. It's okay not to love it. It's okay not to be fanatical about it. And you can make it to your goal. And we, your other nursing mommy friends, will be here to cheer you on.

Grubby paws

One of the down falls of nursing and never feeding my child a bottle at home is that I get to miss the sight of her cute little baby hands holding her own bottle.

This weekend we had a long car ride. She woke up hungry and we had no time/place to pull over and feed her. I had just finished pumping and decided to give her the expressed milk in a bottle. This was the first time in a few months I've seen my own child with a bottle. I handed it to her, fully expecting to have to hold it for her, but then she wrapped her cute little chubby fingers around it and started drinking all on her own.

I was stunned. I had no idea. My husband knew this. My parents knew she could do this. My dad even said if she is in a reclined position, she will balance it on her feet and hold it up.

It's really incredibly cute and it makes me realize how quickly she is growing up. I'm glad she's learning the skills needed to hold her own bottle though and that's she's so adorable doing it.

Overly stocked

Someone asked me a question this weekend about engorgement. With a less-than-one-week-old son, she is having engorgement issues. I know she's web savvy and has probably Googled her soul away searching for an answer. And then she e-mailed me. I tried to help her, and here was my advice.

She's engorged on one side only and has trouble getting her baby to latch on.

My initial response was "congrats on your milk coming in!" I mean, it took me about a week to get a well-established supply and feel like I was getting something when I pumped.

So what are my engorgement tips:

• Pump, pump, pump, hot shower, pump, pump, pump. Along with pumping, stop and start the pump a few times (If using a pump that has the quick suction to mimic the baby) and the quick suction at the beginning can help stimulate the letdown. It can take your body some time to adjust. Try not too pump for too long though, just for relief, because pumping leads to more milk production.
• Warm compresses and cold compresses. I found the warm ones helped before pumping but the cold ones helped with pain.
• Supportive nursing bras. Nothing hurts worse than waking up loose and engorged.
• Nurse on only one side during a feeding and pumping for relief on the other to help the body regulate how much milk to produce. Offer the other side when the first side is completely soft.
• Check the baby's latch.
• Know that this will get better!

My friend also said she was using cabbage leaves to help with pain and milk reduction. Kellymom.com, one of my favorite resources, has instructions on using them correctly.

Who knew there would be math involved?

Apparently my pumping has become a really good lesson in why you pay attention in math class. Especially for that dreaded “train a leaves the station at this speed….train b leaves another station at this speed, where will they meet?” question.

Maybe you can help.

In 50 days, my baby turns one. As I've said before, more power to those who continue past one year, but my love affair with my pump ran out months ago and I'm counting the days. My supply is rather low these days so I need to continue my regular pumping schedule to maintain it. Four times a day: on the way to work, 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., then I nurse at about 7:30 p.m. and maybe once at night.

My baby eats five times a day on average. She gets two bags of milk at day care and nurses prior to leaving in the morning, once before bed and then maybe once at night. When I'm with her, we excusively nurse.

I have 175 bags of milk at home. Let’s assume day care has enough milk for this week and won’t tap into my supply at all. I pump about two bags each day. On the weekends, I generally pump an additional bag but use none.

Between now and her birthday she needs 250 bags of milk (could be 200 but let’s go with 250). As I mentioned, I have 175. I need 75 more bags of milk today to make it to her first birthday. But since every day I continue to nurse, I produce two bags PLUS nurse, I actually go down by three bags every day. In addition, starting in two weeks, I'll move to summer hours, which is a four-day week schedule. So that's an additional day of no day care and not taking into my resources.

I'm calculating somewhere around 20 days. Anyone with more math skills than me care to chime in?