World Breastfeeding Week: A Macabre Nursing Story

*This story is in no way meant to detract people from breastfeeding. It's a story I've been longing to tell and since it's World Breastfeeding Week, I thought now was as good as ever.*

Over Christmas last year, I fell terribly ill. We now know it was a severe case of tonsillitis brought on by allergies, but no one could figure it out and I became sicker and sicker.

I had to go to urgent care on Christmas day, running 104 degree fever and talking gibberish. I told the doctor I was dying and when he didn't react to that I got loud, saying,


"why don't you care that I'm dying! I always get well and I'm not well and I've been sick for a long time and my fever won't go away and I need to go to the hospital!"

The doctor was made of stone. He didn't even acknowledge my rant and gave me a steroid shot in the bum and sent me on my merry way.

That being said, we had no idea whether or not my illness was contagious but after having gone through the ear tube saga with Toph, we decided not to risk him getting it. It was decided I would pump my milk out (I was already used to this. My pump became one of my closest girlfriends). Matt would give the baby bottles and I would only nurse once I was fever free for 24 hours.

Well, that fever free day came and I was so happy. I got to nurse Toph for the first time in a few days. We sat down to nurse and I knew my supply would be low but I didn't know how low.

Apparently, Toph was not thrilled because after a few minutes of vigorous sucking, he took matters into his own teeth.

Meaning, he bit me. Hard. I mean, clamped down and wouldn't let go. I was still a little out of it and while I normally wouldn't have done it, I pulled my breast out of his mouth, thus dragging the little tooth across my breast. Oh the pain.

I handed the baby to Matt and decided I needed to pump extra to build my supply back up. I didn't look at my breast and figured a baby with one bottom tooth couldn't possibly draw blood.

I got the pump situated and everything in it's proper place and turned the pump on. I leaned my head back to rest my eyes as I was starting to get tired again. I pumped for about four minutes when Matt passed by.

His eyes got really big as he looked at the pump bottle and he gasped. I was roused from a half doze and looked down.

The right pump bottle was filling with blood.

Toph did indeed draw blood and the pump was now suctioning out the blood. What should have been just a little dab of blood turned into a bloody massacre due to the pump extracting it all out.

In the bottle was a mixture of blood streaked breast milk.

I am not a squeamish person, but this sight made me feel a little light headed (more than I already felt).

I simply turned the pump off and decided I would drink fenugreek tea instead to try and increase my supply. It worked.

*This was the only macabre hiccup in breastfeeding that occurred. And it didn't even hurt that bad. Please still consider breastfeeding your child. Totally worth it, bloody bottle and all.*

Visit the World Breastfeeding Week site here.

The Big One and Taking Away the Big Three (Bottle, Pacifier, Breast)

In a few short days, my Toph will be ONE!

(*reaches for a tissue)

I've been reading up on "one" and it turns out, Toph will officially be considered a toddler and no longer an  infant. That means there are a few baby things that needs to go, and all of them have to do with sucking.  You can imagine then, how I feel about the situation.  It sucks.  The book in question is this one:

At first, I would hang on to every last word in this book and obsess over everything it said.  It didn't help those baby blues at all and finally, hubs hid it.  Now, we use it as an occasional reference but that's it.  So now, I refer to this book and everything that is supposed to be taken from the baby at age one.

The pacifier:

Ah, I remember my naive days when I thought I would wean from that thing at four months.  Now, a year is approaching and we're nowhere closer to getting him off of it.  Sometimes I am racked with terrible guilt about that; but then I realize that while I might be going against baby literature, I am in no way breaking the law by letting him have a pacifier to soothe him.  We have set some ground rules to start the weaning process--only at bedtime and naps.  We'll take it away during naptime first, then tackle bedtime. Raise your hand if you're looking forward to that.

The bottle:

Please forgive the horrible quality; cell phone shot taken by the husband.

No one in this house will have a big problem with getting rid of the bottle; in fact, hubs and I are doing a happy dance because it means no more nightly cleaning, sanitizing and prepping of the bottles.  Toph never LOVED the bottle, but he realized it was a necessary part of survival when he started daycare.  He's already down to no bottles a day and doing just fine.  Moving on, he says.

Breastfeeding:

A good nursing session always conked him out.

This last one is the biggie.  No one wants to see this part of babyhood go away.  Toph loves it, I love it and Matt loves it (simply because it's his free time when I'm nursing).  And you know what?  I thought about it and again, no laws will be broken if I nurse past a year.  It's certainly not bad for him, he gets comfort from it and it's a huge part of our wake up routine and bedtime routine.  I now only breastfeed at night and in the morning and I no longer pump (hallelujah).  We'll probably stop completely by June or July, when we're not working and devote a lot of time to fully weaning him.  Until then, this part stays the same.

My baby is growing up and the big year mark seemed pretty traumatic in terms of things that must be taken away (I realize that's not how anyone put it but in my head that's how it is); as a mama, I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible on my boy.  That's my job.

A Proud Moment

I have recently put the baby books down.  I don't look at Babycenter.com anymore.  If I have a burning question that I feel has to do with the safety of my child, I consult a pediatric medicine book that was sent to me from my insurance company. 

I don't like anyone telling me when my child "should" be doing something, and then follow up with, "well, really, who knows when your child will do this because babies, like all humans, are different." So, I was tired of the non-answers, the not very well cloaked bias, and the crazy high expectations.  I mean, one book said to not watch TV while nursing as it would impede the bonding time between mom and baby.  I took this one especially personally because for the first five weeks of his life, my Toph would nurse every 1.5 to 2 hours.  Each nursing session would last upwards of 45 minutes.  Did I mention those nursing sessions were painful?  I love nursing now, but those initial weeks were enough to make me wonder what sick joke nature was playing on me.  My DVR, Law and Order SVU marathons and Adult Swim got me through those times.  And my baby and I are completely bonded and these days I don't watch nearly as much TV because he's on a 3 hour schedule and nurses 20 minutes tops (okay, 30 if he's tired, but it's cute when he falls asleep latched, so I let it slide).  Plus, each nursing session is extra special because soon, he'll be on three bottles a day, thus diminishing our actual nursing time.  But don't tell me I can't nurse my baby while watching TV!

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant...

Anyway, before I retired the baby books I did read that it was a good idea to build up a good supply of expressed milk for when you have to go back to work.  One of my big hangups is losing my supply because as a teacher, I can't just run off and pump when I need to.  I have good classroom management and everything, but even the best kids are likely to hang off the ceiling if their maestra is gone fifteen minutes.  We also don't have the staff available to come into my room everyday to watch my class for fifteen minutes while I spend quality time with my breast pump.  So, I have been fretting.  Another thing I have been doing is building up a crazy milk supply.  It got so big that my dad felt it was necessary to buy us a deep freeze to store it.  I don't think he liked opening up our freezer, expecting to find juicy steaks to grill, only to find a bomb shelter of frozen breast milk.  Thanks for the deep freeze, dad!

Here's my crowning achievement:

Now remember, I'm slow on the uptake and it took me awhile to realize that freezing the milk flat will save a lot of room, thus all the frozen milk blobs you see on the right hand side.

I'm proud of that freezer.  More so, I'm proud of this guy: 

He's been a gem in daycare.  He is loved by all.  I finally have the staff convinced that Toph is an actual nickname and yes, we do call him that at home, so please, call him that during his stay with you.  For awhile he was Tope (as in the color taupe, a great compliment to tan..."the guy said it was tan and taupe..." name that movie!).  But if name clarification is the only problem we have, we're okay.

I am still getting teary eyed when I strap him into his carseat in the morning.  It's okay, I've got waterproof mascara.

Bottles, Bottles Everywhere

Operation Give Toph a Bottle started two days ago. I got out three baggies of frozen pumped milk, thawed it and put it in my trusty Dr. Brown's bottle. I handed the bottle over to hubs along with the baby, and started to cry. I'm dead serious. Maybe those hormones are still lingering. Toph fussed the entire way through the bottle, but drank about four ounces of milk. Day two of Operation Give Toph a Bottle was not a success; he was crying his head off and I could not take it, so hubs handed him over and he nursed. Today was day three and it went about the same as day one; a lot of fussing involved, but he when he finished he gave hubs a big smile and was in pretty good spirits after that. Right now he is down for his morning nap and we are relaxing getting ready for a busy-ish day.

I learned that giving him a bottle is not the end of the world and it gives me a much needed opportunity to pump. And, it gives daddy a chance to bond with him by feeding him, so that's always a good thing. Hopefully, this will be my last post dedicated to bottles and breastfeeding!!

Feeding My Baby

I looked up yesterday and realized that in 3 months, I will be going back to work.

This thought has the potential to niggle me in the back of my mind and make me sad, but I choose to enjoy every day with Toph to it's absolute fullest and to cherish these months that I'm home with him.

With that said, I'm not going to be with him 24/7 forever, and I need to start preparing us both.

Toph has a passion for nursing; he is still on about a three hour schedule, try as I might to make it longer in between feedings. I absolutely don't mind this; he is a very healthy boy and I love nursing him. However, if I let him nurse for every feeding every day until I go back to work, I'm pretty sure both of us would go into shock. For me, that means I would quit my job, our house would go into foreclosure and my husband would have to take up pizza delivery again. (When I worry, I really go there.) I plan on exclusively breast feeding until he is four months old and in all honesty, if I were staying at home with him, I would exclusively breast feed until six months. If I could reflect on any one parenting decision I've made in his two month life, it's my decision to breastfeed. Yes, it was a struggle the first two weeks (it hurt very bad), but now I love it; it's become an emotional thing for me. So, the thought of having to go back to work makes me incredibly sad, because he'll have to take a bottle. I know I've got to start getting him to practice that now, so a couple of days ago I made a bottle and realized...I don't know how to give a baby a bottle.

I fumbled through it though and Toph looked at me in a way that said, "Mama, you must have lost your mind." Needless to say, after a couple more minutes of trying to get him to take the bottle from me, we gave up and he nursed, the whole time saying, "You crazy lady, if you've got the goods you've got to give them up." In all honesty, I was totally fine with nursing him.

I read that it's pretty common for babies to not take a bottle from their moms, so I keep thinking I'm going to make a bottle for him and hubs will give it to him. However, I've been putting it off. I told myself that once Toph is two months old, that he would get one bottle a day and when he was three months old it would go to two, and then at four months it would go to three and once August hits, it would go to all his daytime feedings (excluding the 7am feeding). He's been a two month old for more than a week now and I have yet to give him a bottle. It makes me sad! I wish I could explain how I feel, but I really can't.

I decided to make the transition easier I would introduce rice cereal at four months for one feeding a day, gradually building it up to more, so that when six months hits, he'll be ready for more solids. So, we'll see how that goes, but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. The first step is to make that bottle, put it in hubs hands, walk out of the room and go spend some quality time with my breast pump, while my baby gets his nourishment from a bottle. Yes, there are tears in my eyes as I write that.

We'll see how it goes.