Knocked Up : breastfeeding

Adventures in Milk Production

knockedup — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:23:00 GMT

Now that I have over a year's worth of combined milk production time, between both boys, I feel like I'm something of a lactation specialist. So let me share what I've learned with you, the sort of things that I did not read in the La Leche League manual:

1. The Eating/Milk Connection

You are what you eat. Thus, your milk is what you eat, and since your baby has your milk, your baby is also what you eat, and your baby's poop might smell like your dinner. You've probably heard all about eating beans and giving your baby gas, or the spicy food/fuss connection, neither of which seem to have had any effect on my nurslings. But what you eat does get into your milk, and into your baby. Even if what you eat is a chewy gob of high fructose corn syrup.

The day after Halloween, I was sitting on the floor, playing with Jonas. Something smelled sweet. Like candy. It seemed to be coming from Jonas' rear. Had Axel shoved some of his candy down his brother's diaper to save it for later? Did Jonas decide to do some late night Trick-or-Treating of his own? I opened up the diaper to check and, instead of finding a shiny yellow plastic package, I found mushy yellow poo.

Poo that smelled exactly like Swedish Fish.

Exactly like the Swedish Fish I'd gobbled up the night before. The Swedish Fish that went from my mouth to my stomach to my milk to my baby to his poop.

Yeah, it was both creepy and delightful. If you've got to change a poopy diaper, it's a little easier if the air is filled with the scent of gummy red candy.

Though I have eaten beets, they did not turn my milk red, as I'd heard they would - that one seems to be an urban lactation legend. But I have experienced firsthand the interaction between candy and breastmilk. I think I might make Swedish Fish a regular part of my lactating mother's diet, right along with the prenatal vitamins and organic apples.

2. The Milk Production Excuse

Nursing is much better than homework-eating dogs. I wish I'd discovered this earlier. A telemarketer calls, and I say, "I'm sorry, I've got to go. I'm making dinner for my son." There's no protesting, no "Please, just give me one minute to tell you about the super terrific Blasto Vac."

It could be any time of day, and this would be true. The thing about breastfeeding is that you're always making your baby's next meal. Therefore, you've always got an excuse about why you need to hang up the phone. I think I'm going to keep on using this one for the next dozen years. People don't seem to question baby-related excuses, especially when you throw in a word that makes many people uncomfortable, like breast.

3. Milk expression will occur in the strangest places.

When Axel was tiny, I tried to confine nursing and pumping to private, calm spots. I avoided being out of the house when I thought he might get hungry. I tried to pump behind closed doors in my office, further barricaded behind a nursing cover and a wall of bags, because the blinds on my office windows are wimpy. I told myself that I would make sure I didn't have to nurse in public, not because I was against public nursing but because of my own discomfort. Well, life, as they say, happens. Eventually, I had to nurse him on a plane, in a (parked) car, in a house, with a mouse - our own Green Eggs & Ham lactation adventure.

With Jonas, I started out having to be a more public nurser. Axel needed to get out of the house, and I needed to take him and take the constantly hungry baby, too. While I try to be discreet and remain draped in a nursing cover, I've found that I've gotten surprisingly used to potential exposure in public. Now I've pumped in the jury commisionner's office (lactating isn't quite a good enough excuse to get out of jury duty), in my car, and in various office building bathrooms. Baby's got to eat, so a mama has to get creative.

Jonas is earnestly training for a staring role as Baby Zombie King in the next George Romero flick, drooling heavily and gnawing on his knuckles with as much ferocity as can be mustered when you weigh less than the cat. Time for another milk feast.

The Milk Production Factory

knockedup — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:29:00 GMT

The first time around, breastfeeding was hard. The first four months were rocky. Axel couldn't latch without the aid of a handy-dandy piece of silicone. I thought he was wasting away and took frantic trips to see a lactation consultant. Then he wanted nothing more than to be attached to my boob for hours on end every evening, and we both wailed in frustration. I wore a groove in the couch, sitting and nursing and watching constant reruns of America's Next Top Model. Even when we finally got the kinks worked out, when Axel and I were both pros, I rarely had peaceful, beatific, earth mother moments of joy while a wriggling body sucked fluids out of me. Honestly, I kept at it for ten months because I didn't want to shell out hundreds of dollars on formula, and I'd worked so hard to figure it all out that I couldn't give up too soon.

This time around, I'd been too overwhelmed by the chaos and busy trying to keep all of us alive to notice that breastfeeding is going pretty well. Sure, Jonas has times when he decides he's ravenously hungry an hour after he just ate. Yes, he's a moderately cranky puker. And he does that zombie baby thing where he ferociously wags his head and tries to latch on to anything - the nursing pillow, his hand, his sleeve, my arm - and gets more and more angry that he's not getting any milk when the milk deploying equipment is literally smushed up against his nose.

Other than the regular baby spit-up and tears, though, it's been pretty smooth. It's easy and natural in the way that I very naively assumed breastfeeding would be before I had Axel, and found out that it is not always easy, especially during those sleep-deprived and hormonal early weeks of motherhood. I'm more experienced this time around, Jonas has a stronger latch, and I (mostly) got over my hang-ups about nursing in public, which makes leaving the house much easier. I'm better at going with the milky flow, navigating the relationship between the new baby and the boob in a way that works for us. It's actually sort of nice and cuddly, in a way I hadn't imagined it could be with Axel. And I've done a lot of reading of back issues of The New Yorker at 2 am.

Weaning

knockedup — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:54:00 GMT

Ouch. Double ouch. Over the last few weeks, we gradually replaced nursing or pumping sessions with formula. After nine months of 99% mama's milk, the challenges of pumping for an hour a day while still getting work done, combined with other factors, made me decide to move Axel from the boob to the bottle and sippy cup. On Monday morning, Axel nursed for the last time. It's been 48 hours without milke expression and damn does my chest hurt.

I admire - and envy - those mothers who are able to stick with it. Just 36% of mothers make it to six months. I was lucky enough to have the support of family, a great lacation consultant, a private place to use the dreaded pump at work, and a body/baby that could make it work, with some guidance and training. If I were at home with Axel, I think we'd still be nursing. I've got mixed feelings about it all - the working, the mothering, staying at home, boobs and bottles and babies. Formula is seriously expensive. Thought I hated nursing in public, and could never get comfortable with the possibility of showing that much skin to strangers even if it was for the nourishment of my child, it (after lots of work in the first four months) was easy to roll out of bed, wander sleepily down to Axel's room, scoop him up and bring him back to bed with me for an early morning nursing/cat napping session. But it's also easy to hand Axel a sippy cup to drink from/bang on the floor while I make dinner. He doesn't seem to miss nursing.

As I said, it hurts. Seriously. I don't remember the inital postpartum engorgement aching this much - probably because my whole body felt like I'd been walloped with a bag of bricks and so one more ache wasn't noticeable. The whole neck to waist area feels fragile; I don't want my husband to touch my arm, let alone hug me, because he might bump into my chest. Awhile back, I went mountain biking with my father - and, while I am moderately outdoorsy and athletic, I am no good on two wheels and have been told I pedal like a first grader. Biking on a steep dirt trail was not a wise choice. On the way down a hill, my tire caught on a branch and I dove over the handlebars and landed in a rock pile. The left side of my body bruised and oozed and bloodied, and was swollen and tender for weeks. I crept gingerly around, trying to keep my pants from touching my leg. This is a similar sort of pain - less than labor, less than when I broke my arm in two places, less than a rotator cuff tear, but enough to make me generally prickly.

I made the mistake of strapping Axel on with the Baby Bjorn. Owwwww. Then, during a diaper change, he kicked me right in the boob. Yes, there was some swearing in the nursery. I tried to go on a run, and made it a mile before I had to turn back due to boob cramps - that was a first. Last night, I took a shower; that helped, while I was in the shower, but the aches came back right after I got out. Then I draped a bag of frozen asparagus and carrots across my chest. Mixed vegetables eased the pain, but I can't walk around with frozen produce duct taped to my chest. Or can I? Maybe I can affix ice packs to my bra and then wind bubble wrap around myself. Add a few martinis and I may have found the solution to all that ails my boobs. If I wear a baggy shirt, maybe no one will notice all the extra padding....

Food and Fears

knockedup — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:53:00 GMT

My son is in danger of starving. He's going to waste away to nothing but a set of big blue-to-hazel eyes and wild light blond hair. Yesterday, at childcare, he only drank two ounces of milk. Today, he cut that to an ounce and a half. He spent the days showing off, crawling around the room by putting down his right hand, then left, then pushing off his left foot. Hand, hand, foot, repeat, until he'd criss-crossed the soft mat and the not so soft carpet. I think he's trying to dig a groove in the shape of a 747 around the exersaucers and bouncy seats. He has no time for nourishment - he's got important tricks to practice, a substitute teacher to seduce with his big grin and drool, and a roomfull of babies to impress. Soon he'll lose a few of the slow-to-come pounds he's put on. If it keeps up, he won't just crawl out of his pants, as he often does now; they'll fall off him the minute I pull them up.

Perhaps I'm overreacting. I am his mother. Food and health-related overreactions are six line downs in the job description. He's a wee boy. It's true that he chowed down on oatmeal, peas, and yams at dinner. It's true that he nursed well morning and evening both days. It's true that he took a few mouthfuls of solids while at daycare - but far less than the jars he'd been gobbling while on vacation. It's true that he just came back from a week and a half trip, and so he hasn't been at childcare. It's true that he's still been on the cheerful side, even though the stranger anxiety seems to be popping up and he sobbed both mornings when I left him. It's true that he's somehow got enough energy to investigate heating vents all over every room.

It's also true that he's never loved the bottle. His father and other caregivers have had to spend an hour to get him to take 4 ounces. There was a time when he drank about fifteen ounces during eight hours away from me, but only on a few occasions months ago. More often, he had five to twelve (on a good day), and, lately, he's been dropping that range to a max of ten. While he's had a few ounces of formula here and there, most of it has still been breastmilk. He's refused a few formula-only bottles, and, since he'd been consuming less, I've been able to (barely) keep up with his consumption, so he hasn't gone off mama's milk as much as I thought he would. Honestly, he's always been finicky about nursing, too - and the past milk avoidance fuels my concern. He seems to have a love/hate/sometimes indifferent relationship with liquids. He's not a drinker. He's too grown up for milk.

That said, an ounce and a half of milk and a few baby-sized mouthfuls of food doesn't seem to be enough to sustain a crawling machine. I'm left wondering what's going on, and in a watch-and-wait and try not to be too neurotic situation. Is the low intake a temporary dip connected with a new skill? Is it because, while on vacation, he nursed 98% of the time, and had been almost bottle-free for a little under two weeks? Is it a little-known side effect of the baby jetlag (which hasn't otherwise affected him)? Is this big fluctuation totally normal? Is he giving up the milk because he's now on solids? And if that's it, why isn't he eating solids like he did on vacation? Did the salty sea air bump up his appetite? Do mashed in Colorado bananas taste worse than mashed in Hawaii bananas? Do I just have a more tantalizing spoon technique than the ladies at his childcare center? Does he need a Vegas-style bottle with an umbrella to make him a drinker? After two days, it's not panicking me enough that I'm calling the doctor. I'll be able to sleep tonight (assuming the child lets me). Still, I'd love some advice.

Milkmaid

knockedup — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:59:00 GMT

I've been milk production, distribution, and supply for the 194 days of Axel's life - six and a half months. Six months of nothing but mama's milk was my goal and, now that we're there, I'm deciding what's next. Nursing has been rocky, with latching challenges and weeks when I felt like I had a ten pound leech latched to my boob for eight hours each day - not to mention the night. There are parts of nursing that I like, now that we've both figured out how to do this. When Axel's not testing out his claws of death grip on my nipple or yelling at the boob because he's full or full of gas, it's warm and cozy. I like cradling Axel against me, and the mutual adoration fest we have sometimes, and the chance I get to catch up on reading The New Yorker. But that's only sometimes. I've never gotten comfortable with public nursing, and, as much as I try to supress it, the selfish part of me dislikes cutting short lunches or long runs because I have to pump. I would characterize my overall experience with breastfeeding as work - and not the dream job sort of work, but the waiting tables at Village Inn to save up for college sort of work. It's been hard. Worthwhile, certainly, but hard.

The direct-to-baby method is by far my preferred channel for milk expression. The breast pump is a fabulous invention - it's the reason I can got to work four days a week and still send my milk along with my baby to daycare - but it's also a loud, clunky machine. I don't think anyone likes being hooked up to machines, whether they're the sort that are dripping fluids into us to combat dehydration or the sort that suck fluids out of us. Sometimes I wonder if it's taking just a little bit of my soul along with the milk. It's exhausting - setting up the pump three times a day, and then pumping for up to thirty minutes at a time to end up with a max of 16 ounces a day. That's over an hour and a half each work day of pumping and pumping-related activity - and, since I spend so much time pumping during work, there's work I have to catch up on when I'm at home and Axel's asleep for the night. While I've gotten pretty good at one handed typing and catching up on reading, there are only so many reports I need to read and terse emails I can send and meetings I can leave early or go to late. I know I'm incredibly lucky that I have the flexibility at work to have devoted so much time to pumping so far, and to have a private office with a door I can close to pump, even if it does have a huge window with see-through blinds. Fifteen ounces just covers the three five-ounce bottles I send along to daycare with Axel (he's a light eater). Getting up to that mark is stressful - and, as I feel my stress growing, I remind myself to calm down, close my eyes, and do deep belly breaths (you know, the sort that are supposed to help you with the pain in the early parts of labor and just made me, asthmatic that I am, feel like my lungs were shrinking up). After the deep breaths, I gaze at my photos of Axel and think of tropical waterfalls, and then I try to type a reply to an email with just my right hand, and I'm right back in the stressed out, milk-inhibiting mode. It's a negative cycle of stress impacting milk flow, which then stresses me out more and further affects milk making and release.

Part of what's kept me pumping and nursing thus far is my inner Scrooge - I'm cheap. Formula is expensive. Why buy it when I can make something of a higher quality for free? And, the longer I nurse, the more brownies I get to eat - at least, that's how my logic goes. Well, I'm going to have to cut back on brownies and shell out some cash. Some days I can't keep up with Axel's needs, and I've been tapping in to the freezer stash to make up for my body's shortfall. It's going to run out soon, at about the same time that I'm going to switch to pumping twice per day - and that means Axel will start having some formula. Formula, solid foods, the ability to cram two pairs of socks into his mouth at once - he's moving on from getting everything from his mama. I'll keep doing breastmilk and formula for as long as I can. My son's worth enduring more hours hooked up to the dreaded pump.

Boob Fiend

knockedup — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:19:00 GMT

I used to think I had a pretty good understanding of my body, including my chest. I know my way around a Victoria's Secret catalogue; I've got a drawer full of bras of various colors, fabrics, and functions, from a pair of useless stick-on bra cups for strapless, backless tops to industrial bounce-proof running bras. Breastfeeding has shown me that I understood my boobs about as well as I understand the functioning of my spleen - not at all. Breastfeeding is natural, and so we assume it should come to us naturally. Natural should not be understood as a synonym for easy or painless or fast. Hangnails are natural. So are wicked flu viruses and zitty adolescent angst. After Axel was born, the two of us didn't immediately snap in to a perfect, symbiotic breastfeeding relationship - it's been a struggle.

Apparently, I have flat nipples. I'd never given them much thought prior to trying to breastfeed so, when the nurse first told me this, I wasn't surprised, exactly, but I didn't know how to react. Was that a good thing? A bad thing? A freakishly rare thing that could land me in the Guinness Book of World Records? In my case, combined with Axel's overall wee-ness, it's a challenging thing that meant we've been using plastic doo hickies called nipple shields to help him latch on. I've now had three visits with lactation consultants, and I am getting very comfortable having strange women grab my breasts and squeeze them into an aereola sandwich. Modesty ceased to be a concern when all that water was gushing out of me in the delivery room.

My baby seeks out something to latch his mouth on to like a mad zombie (only without the foaming and blood at the mouth), wildly wagging his head with a gaping mouth. Anything close to his mouth will do - his hands or sleeve, my husband's non-functioning nipples, my cheek or shoulder. What he wants, of course, is my breast (preferably with the shield, not without), and he often goes from placildly sleeping and letting out adorable squeeks and moans to sudden, ravenous hunger. Hungry babies must have been the source of inspiration for a whole cast of zombie-playing actors.

Between pumping to bank away some milk and Axel's recent frequency feedings, during which he'll eat and then, 30 minutes after finishing, want to eat again, clustering three feedings into four hours, chaining me to the nursing chair and Boppy, I feel like a soul-less buffet. Maybe I'm delicious, and have an array of fantastic delicacies to offer babies, but I'm exhausted. Sure, there are moments while breastfeeding that I caress his fuzzy head and smother him with kisses, feeling that all is right with the world, even if there is a piece of plastic between my breast and my baby's mouth. But there are other moments where my neck aches and it's three a.m. and I'm overcome with unbearable thirst, and I just want him to hurry up already and finish eating. Unfortunately, babies are not reasonable. Axel doesn't understand when I explain to him that he just ate, and that I want to eat, or sleep, or shower, and couldn't he please wait just an hour or so to eat again? Of course, I give in to him. He's the baby. He's much cuter than me, and he cries a lot louder. He's clearly in charge.

While nannying for a three and a six year old during graduate school, I took the kids on a trip to a working farm, where we watched a cow, moaning because of its bloated udders, get hooked up to a milking machine. The cow rolled her eyes back in her head, and her groans changed to sound relieved. I feel like that cow and I could really bond with one another, if she ever gains the ability to speak.

As soon as Axel's tiny belly is full (temporarily), he lapses in to a luxurious food coma, slowly stretching his arms and wiggling his fingers, a secret sleepy grin crawling across his face. "You'll never guess what I just had," he seems to be thinking, "And it's all mine. All mine!"

Sometimes he's then awakened by what seems to be gas pains worse than anything the world has ever seen, judging by his writhing and squawks of protest. I don't eat any cow's milk products (another reason the cow above would like me), and I haven't been going on broccoli binges, so I'm not quite sure what's at the root of his pain. I'm considering tracking everything I eat, which will make me feel even more like nothing but a milk factory, but it might help get to the cause of his violent burps. As soon as the burps explode out of him, he lapses back into his full-bellied sleep, only to awaken 30 minutes or three and a half hours later, zombie mouth ready again to eat. We're getting the hang of this breastfeeding thing, slowly, unnaturally working at it.