Nursing Your Kids

I’ve started worrying about the what-ifs. What if the birth is difficult and the baby won’t be able to nurse? What if I have an emergency c-section and the baby can’t nurse right away? What if the baby doesn’t want to latch? What if the baby has tongue tie and can’t latch? What if the baby has food allergies I can’t eat anything? What if my milk doesn’t come in this time? What if Sam wants to start nursing again because the baby is nursing all of the time?

My experience with Sam, relatively speaking, was easy. He latched (badly) right after his birth and stayed latched until they had to kick me out of the delivery room more than an hour after his birth. Even though my milk took five days to come in he nursed around the clock and after we fixed his latch my nipples stopped looking and feeling like I’d taken a cheese grater to them. Despite the bouts of mastitis, the overproduction, and the weeks of discomfort, Sam was a nurser from day one.

I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew that I could feed my baby and that was enough to make me feel confident and competent.

Now there will be another child, a child that I’m already attached to, that needs my love and care. I won’t be able to focus all of my energy on feeding the new baby. What if I don’t have the energy to make breastfeeding work? What if I’m not as good as a parent?

The bad news first:
Sam has not napped for three days in a row. Maybe more. I can’t remember if he napped on Friday, though I suspect that he did not.

The good news:
He has slept through the night for three days in a row. He slept in his old room Friday night and his new room both Saturday and Sunday nights. He loves his new room and happily played in it for a few hours after the big unveiling Saturday afternoon while I vacuumed and organized some of the resulting mess from the move. He’s currently playing upstairs without me, so at least I have a few minutes to myself but I am disappointed that he’s not napping. All of the nesting I’ve been doing has been taking its toll. I’m exhausted. I hope this is not the end of naps forever. He’s only two.

Speaking of nesting, yesterday I made pancakes, cranberry muffins, chocolate zucchini cake, and baked ziti, freezing half or more than half of each batch. Tonight I’ll cook something, again freezing half. My plan for the rest of the week is to cook and freeze as many meals as possible so we’ll have food to eat without my having to cook it when the baby is born.

This weekend I need to garden. If I don’t get flowers and herbs into pots now the chances of it getting done later are slim to none. Aside from a few tomato plants (Amish paste tomatoes if I can find them, Roma tomatoes if I can’t) I’m not planting any food besides herbs. I’ll plant some petunias and impatiens because they seem to survive neglect better than most other flowers. Though I feel guilty about not planting much, I imagine I’ll be grateful about it later.

Here’s the new room:

Two-year-olds are crazy. Bipolar possibly. Really, really, nuts. Sam’s moods veer wildly between angelic and horrifying. He’s like the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead. When he’s good, he’s very, very good. But when he’s bad he’s just horrid.

There are days when he wakes up smiling and cuddly and happily plays quietly for a while, eats breakfast, gets dressed and goes out for the day. Other days it’s like I’m torturing him by bringing the wrong fork or plate, or cutting his waffles too big or too small. He’ll freak out over something tiny and wail for what seems like hours, angrily making his little dictator demands. When we go to leave the house he’ll run off without me, causing me and my fat, pregnant ass to chase him all the way to the corner where he’ll either turn and keep running without crossing the street or turn around to grin at me.

A few mornings ago, for no reason at all, Sam bit me right in the belly. We’d just eaten a nice, weekend breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon and Sam was hanging out on my lap being silly. He was standing facing me, holding my hands and jumping up and down, laughing and talking about jumping on mama. He collapsed onto me into what I thought was a hug then bit me, hard, right on my belly. I think he caught a piece of the baby’s foot because the baby freaked out kicking and moving. It hurt like hell and I have a nasty bruise on my stomach. Sam still feels badly about it. When he lifts up my shirt to look at the baby he’ll talk about the boo boo and say, “Sam bit me.” (when do they start getting their pronouns right?)

Yesterday, a no nap day, Sam did not want me to leave his side during the portion of the afternoon he should have been soundly asleep. He cuddled in my lap and asked me to read the same terribly written Thomas the Tank Engine book repeatedly. The book, Thomas-saurus Rex is even worse than it sounds, but it was so nice to have a sweet cuddly boy to read to while my brains melted out of my head I was content to read it over and over again. Sam looked up at me and said, “Mama happy. Mama loves Sam.” I said, “That’s right, Sam. You make mama happy. I love you.” He said, “Love you too, mama,” and snuggled into my arms a bit farther. Then, at the top of his angry lungs he shouted, “Turn the page!”

With four weeks until due date I am sick of being, and especially looking, pregnant. Seriously. Stick a fork in me. I’m done. I think my weight gain has stalled somewhere around the 30 lb mark, a huge improvement from the (more than?) fifty I’d gained at this point with Sam, but the swelling has begun in earnest which is seriously interfering with my quality of life.

Aside from the self-esteem hurting fact that I can no longer find my ankles in the swollen section where my legs end and my feet begin, all of my shoes are painful to wear. Hell, even my ankle socks that used to fall off in bed during the night leave elastic marks across the tops of my feet. It’s finally spring and warm enough to fit into the maternity skirts and cropped linen pants that still fit over my ginormous ass, but I’m embarrassed to wear them because of the hideousness of my lower legs.

My hands are puffy and sore and my eyes are disappearing into my fat, fat face giving me a more porcine appearance than usual. It’s subtle to the people who see me regularly, but I feel like a whale.

And can we talk about my mother for minute? I generally try to reserve all complaints about her for my personal, semi-anonymous blog, but the other night she stepped over the line. She asked, “What do you think you’re having?” and I responded (as I always do) that I have no idea and no maternal instinct. She told me that I’m carrying differently. (Which I’m not, and I have pictures to prove it. I just look smaller because I haven’t gained an additional 20 lbs.) She then told me to turn around. I thought it was so she could look at me from the back since throughout both of my pregnancies I’ve heard that people can’t tell I’m pregnant when they see me directly from behind. My belly is mostly all out front. She then grabbed my sides and pretty much manhandled my love handles and quite pleased with herself she said, “You’re spreading. It’s a girl.”

My two-word response was not uttered aloud. Instead I jerked away from her and glared. Never tell a pregnant woman she’s spreading.

According to the website Holy Moly, Kanye West is a jackass who blames his fixation on boobs with being breastfed for too long. I couldn’t find anything on the New York Magazine website to back up their quote, but here it is anyway.

Kanye West told New York magazine recently about his obsession with ‘big tits’, blaming the fixation on his recently deceased mother…

“I was breastfed for too long. It messed me up.”

Canada is expected to classify BPA (the chemical found in some hard, clear plastics and some cans) as a dangerous substance. Recent studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, obesity, and infertility.

And a Yahoo article reports that the The National Toxicology Program found that

“experiments on rats found precancerous tumors, urinary tract problems and early puberty when the animals were fed or injected with low doses of the plastics chemical bisphenol A.

While such animal studies only provide “limited evidence” of bisphenol’s developmental risks, the group’s draft report stresses the possible effects on humans “cannot be dismissed.” The group is made up of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the Institutes of Health.”

This is a controversial topic for mothers these days. Most women, whether they breastfeed or formula feed, use baby bottles. Many of the most popular bottles are made from plastics containing BPA. Mothers who formula feed are also exposing their children to BPA through the formula containers- many brands of powdered and liquid baby formulas contain BPA.

Some mothers, especially those with older children, feel that the risks of BPA are just hype, and that their kids turned out just fine so why panic now. Plenty of women on my pregnancy board used X brand of bottle or X brand of formula with their last child and have no interest in switching. Other mothers understand that toxins are everywhere but would rather limit their children’s exposure to those they can control. These mothers are actively researching bottles that don’t contain BPA and the brands of formula that either don’t contain traces of BPA or have the lowest levels.

I fall into the latter category. I know that my children will be exposed to many chemicals throughout their lifetimes. I know my children will eat unhealthy foods and play with toys I don’t approve of. I know there will be lead, phthalates, and BPA in my kids’ environment no matter what I do. Even so, I plan on controlling their environment to the best of my ability for as long as I can. I sold my Avent breast pump and bottles and plan on buying glass or BPA-free bottles for the new baby. Sam’s sippy cups are aluminum or safe plastics. Whether it’s hype or not, if a chemical might be dangerous I want to keep it away from my kid for as long as I can. I can’t control things forever, but I sure would like to try to keep my babies safe while I still have the ability.

It’s tough to know what to do, especially when such a huge portion of the population has a, “I grew up on chemicals and I turned out fine approach,” but taking small steps and making minor changes is a good way to start. Safe Mama has a great post on how to avoid panic and confusion.

After a long, long stretch of shitty bedtime habits we’re back to a somewhat normal going to bed routine. I don’t know what changed, or how it changed, but somehow Sam started acting like a reasonable human being at bedtime. For the last week or so after his bath, brushing teeth and a few stories I’ve been able to turn out the light, lay down with him for a few minutes, kiss him good night and leave. Usually when I start to climb over the gate in his doorway he’ll call for me and I’ll tell him where I’m going and to lie down and go to sleep. He’s complied every single night.

Sometimes I tell him I’m going to feed the cat. Other times I’ve told him I have to go fold laundry. One night I told him I was going downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes. Each night he’s just accepted it and gone to sleep. One night Bob put him to bed and didn’t have the same luck I did. Sam didn’t freak out, he just called for us quietly from the gate in his door. I went in to lay down with him for a few minutes and he was asleep in no time at all.

Tonight he was restless when I was cuddling with him. He was playing with his trains and talking. I told him that I had to go fold laundry. He said, “Oh. Okay.” I asked if I should go or if he wanted me to stay for a little while longer. He told me to go. I did, and he quietly fell asleep.

I don’t know what happened, what switch was turned. I don’t know how long it will last. All I know is that it almost makes up for his almost nightly 3 am wakeups.

I finished painting the former storage/new guest room and the plan was to move all of the stuff from the old guest room/Sam’s new room into it so Bob could get some wiring done. In the old guest room they didn’t wire the ceiling fan through the wall- they threaded it through a metal chain and attached it across the ceiling and down the wall to an outlet where you had to manually plug it in. To wire it properly Bob had to put two or three holes into the wall.

I asked if he needed help moving all of the stuff out of the room and into the new guest room. It was packed with all of Sam’s old baby gear, furniture, lamps, things we’re selling on craigslist, and a ton of other things that haven’t been moved to the basement yet. a big 9x 12 area rug was on the floor. Our friend came over to help him. I moved the painting supplies out of the new room and finished cleaning/sweeping up. I didnt’ mop, but I wiped down the dust along the corners of the room and cleaned up some spilled paint. We moved the bed into the new room. I left to deal with Sam who woke up from his nap.

About five hours later the wiring was done. Holes needed to be patched and the room needed to be cleaned. I asked if they’d moved the stuff to the other room and they said no, but they covered everything. With the rug. The porous, woven, rug. Bob assured me everything was fine and nothing was covered in dust. The next morning I went up to help him move some furniture. He moved the rug, picked up a bag of clothes causing a huge dust cloud to fill the room.

All of the bedding, all of the clothing, all of the furniture, the rug, everything was full of plaster dust. He asked me to grab an end of the dresser we had to move. It was still covered in dust. I told him that we weren’t moving anything into the clean room until it was dusted. He didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand that moving dust from one room to the next would cause MORE DUST. He didn’t understand that the very act of transferring dust would send the dust down the open stairwell to the floor below. He didn’t get that he’d just caused me several loads of laundry, at least $50 worth of dry cleaning, and hours of dusting that could have been avoided. I told him, “This is very distressing to me.” His response was, “It’s plaster dust, not poison.” I burst into tears and didn’t calm down for close to an hour.

He said he’d clean everything (and he did, more or less) but he sucks at cleaning and I almost always have to clean up after him if I want things to be clean, not just look clean. Most of the stuff is now cleared out of the room and it’s cleaner than it was, but not clean enough to paint. If I’m going to start the room it’s going to take hours of prep work in addition to the hours of sanding and scraping we learned is necessary. I am feeling very overwhelmed right now.

(Yes, that’s the international image for “I have hit the wall.” Please let this room be finished and this pregnancy be over soon.)

During an appearance on Oprah, Salma Hayek’s comments about her weight loss and her breastfeeding experience caused some controversy. Hayek said:

I thought, ‘As soon as this baby’s out, I’m just going to lose all the weight superfast because I’m going to breastfeed, and everybody tells you if you breastfeed, [the weight] is going to come off.’

I’m proud of what I’ve lost. And the rest is going to go when it’s time to go.

The main objection to the statement is that it sounds like she’s accusing women who did lose weight easily of lying and being unhealthy. I can see why her comments could be taken the wrong way, but since I’m one of the women who did not lose weight easily I know exactly where she’s coming from.

When I was pregnant with Sam I had an easy, healthy pregnancy where I worked out several times a week and ate well. The weight piled on anyway. My doctor didn’t believe that I’d gained as much as I had and questioned the accuracy of my pre-pregnancy weight. I carried small, with a big basketball belly right up until 37 weeks when I puffed up like the Goodyear blimp.

I thought for sure that breastfeeding would help me drop the weight. It didn’t. The water weight dropped off right way, but the rest went slowly. Even before I got the okay to exercise I walked miles every day up and down unfairly steep hills pushing a 30 lb stroller. Once I got the okay I went to yoga classes, did cardio several times a week and lifted weights two or three times a week. I ate well and drank a ton of water. It still took me nine months to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans and close to a year and two stomach viruses to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

I think it’s great that Hayek was honest about her experience, despite her generalizations. Her generalizations are probably based in experience- I’m sure plenty of Hollywood mamas work out too much and don’t eat enough in order to lose the baby weight, just as some of the mothers I’ve known have done the same thing.

For me, weight loss because of breastfeeding was a lie. I worked my ass off to lose the weight and it still felt like it took forever. If breastfeeding helped you drop the weight, that’s great. I’m envious. But it doesn’t work for everyone.

Since last Wednesday, Sam has slept through the night exactly once. I don’t know why he’s waking and I don’t know how to make it stop. He wakes up, goes to the gate in his doorway and calls for either Bob or me. There’s no rhyme or reason to the parent he picks and he’s usually pretty specific about who he will accept. One night he woke up calling for Dada. I woke up and got up to use the bathroom. He heard me cough and wailed, “Uh-uh! Mama back in bed. Dada! Dada carry.” Some nights he’s more agreeable to the other parent stepping in, and will allow a substitute, but that’s usually after several minutes of screaming for the other parent at the top of his lungs, which means everyone’s awake and unhappy.

I wish I knew what to do. He could be having nightmares or it could be something else. Aside from the wake ups, which are generally pretty brief, he sleeps for about ten hours a night. He’s been napping pretty consistently for 2-3 hours (yes, still in the car) so he’s not especially overtired with 12 or 13 hours total sleep each day. I know it’s not night terrors, since he’s lucent and fairly agreeable to getting back into bed as soon as one of us goes to get him. He also falls asleep pretty quickly once we’re in there, and though I’d prefer not to get into bed with him it certainly makes it easier for me since he quiets immediately and goes right back to sleep.

If this next child isn’t a sleeper I don’t know what I’ll do.

Things around here are starting to settle back into normalcy. After my spectacularly bad birthday two weeks ago things actually got worse. I learned my paid for, reliable, did I mention paid for car was totaled by the insurance agency. Crying, I called Bob at work to tell him the news but he told me he couldn’t talk. I called him back half an hour later and he still couldn’t talk. Close to an hour after that he called back and told me that he was on his way to the emergency room- he’d been hit in the eye with a hockey stick stopping in to the gym to talk to another teacher just before I called the first time. He didn’t want to upset me more, which is why he’d waited to tell me.

Bob was out of work for a few days with a bruised retina and corneal abrasions. He’s expected to recover full vision, but for now, a week and a half later, he still can’t see very well and bumps into things. It could have been worse, but the timing was terrible. We were feeling pretty bleak for a while and our car search didn’t improve our moods. Sam stopped sleeping through the night AGAIN which made things that much more difficult.

Sam’s still not going down easily or sleeping through the night. We put a deposit on a new to us 2007 car that ended up being more than we wanted pay, but with our luck we weren’t willing to take a chance on an older car with more miles on it. I’m still pregnant and I’m getting more uncomfortable each day. I’ve started to swell for real and can’t fit into my regular shoes anymore. At least the sneakers still fit. To add insult to injury a cat peed in my bathroom and despite crawling around on my hands and knees sniffing everything I can’t find the exact spot. Anyone want to adopt a cat or three?

So that’s why I’ve been quiet the past week or so. Life has been rougher than usual. I’m looking forward to the birth of this baby and margarita season.