Things I will miss about St. Louis

I was going to go sit on the couch and write this, but then I remembered our couch is no longer here.  It is buried somewhere beneath piles of stuff in the moving van parked at the end of our driveway.  In fact, the only things left inside the house are our air mattress, a few last minute boxes, and a lot of empty echoes.  It is strange how much the house echoes when all our stuff is gone.

We’re leaving tomorrow, and I’m not sad.  Every once and a while, I get this nagging pang that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t try hard enough.  I didn’t give St. Louis a chance.  But that isn’t true.  I did.  I gave it almost four years of my life, and in the end, it didn’t work.

What I’m left with is a list, a very short list, of the things I will miss when we leave here.  Tomorrow morning.

1. Forest Park

I ran here, almost every day (aside from the last several months of stress fracture/tendon injury) on the gravel paths that perimeter the park.  It must have added up to thousands of miles.  I knew every stretch of the loop.  It’s really the only place to run in the city.  The only place where you aren’t constantly stopping at stoplights and in the thick of traffic.  I think if I wouldn’t have had Forest Park (and lived within running distance of it), we wouldn’t have lasted here nearly as long as we did.

Forest Park was the first place we went after my job interview, almost 4 years ago.  We were thinking, St. Louis?  Could we really live here? And we had a picnic by the fountains and considered all the miles we could run on the crushed gravel trails, and we decided, let’s give this a try.

I took Will back to that same place last week so we could say goodbye.

 

2. Wydown Road

This is about a 2-mile long stretch of multimillion dollar houses that has a wide multi-use path (i.e., bikes, foot traffic) on either side of the road.  Even when there is a 4-inch sheen of ice covering everything else in the city, the multi-use path on Wydown Road is clear.  In the winter, sometimes it is the only place you can run.  What makes Wydown even better is that there is a grassy median in the middle with a worn-down dirt footpath.  Because of the dirt path on Wydown, and the crushed gravel at Forest Park, I’ve been lucky to do very little concrete and asphalt running even in the city.

I ran a lot of miles here in the wintertime before the sun came up.

3.  Our house

I liked our house, I really did.  It was in a great location, and it had character.  It had a red door.  I loved that.  I’d never lived in an old house before.  In its 88 years of existence, I often wondered what kind of people had lived here and what kind of things they had done.  I never found any old love letters or anything, though, so I guess I’ll never really know.

 

4. Our neighbors

Our neighbors are good people.  There are a lot of kids close by, and Will was just getting to the point where he was becoming friends with them.  On nice days, we would go out to the park and Will would play stomp rockets or superheros or ride bikes with his friends.  I know he will make other friends in Colorado, but it is going to be really hard for him to let go.

 

5. These people

I hope they don’t mind my posting this picture of them.  I love these people.  These are some of the best people on earth.  They are my former co-workers/colleagues, and there are of course others who are not pictured in this photo.  These people were my family while we lived here, and even after I quit my job, they made sure that I got through the last few difficult months.  I am so lucky to have met them, to forever have them in my life.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, for always being there for me.

 

Well, that’s about it.  Everything’s packed (almost, at least).  There’s nothing left to do except try to get a good night’s sleep and then head west at first light.

 

Thanks for reading.

February sucks too

I haven't been able to write lately, because a little over a month ago we suffered an Unfortunate Incident which all but ruined us.  As far as Unfortunate Incidents go, I suppose it was the best kind to have because in the scheme of things, we still have each other (so far, at least), and we still have our health (again... so far at least), we just have no money.  I am not going to write in detail about this incident because there is a slim chance that there might be some Legal Action taken someday in an attempt to recoup our losses and also because I don't feel like broadcasting the details to the world.

Ever since the Incident occurred, there has been a moratorium on anything remotely fun or joyous in our lives.  Everything is somber.  At first I couldn't eat anything for days (great for saving money) and got very skinny; then at some point I shifted and realized, you know, Schnucks brand tortilla chips are cheap, and eating half a bag of them sure makes me forget my troubles.

In the midst of all of this, winter rages ferociously around us at all times.  We experienced the Great Blizzard of 2011 last week, though honestly, it didn't end up as bad as they were predicting.  Wash U closed down campus during the worst of it (something which apparently happens next to never).  The snow here wasn't so bad, but the 8-some inches of ice we had made (and is still making) everything ridiculously treacherous.  Even now more than a week afterwards, we can barely get the car out of the driveway what with all the ice piled up at the bottom.

Did I ever mention that I hate ice?

Hate it.

Hate it.

Hate it.

I can handle snow and even cold weather, though I dislike it intensely.  But I hate ice.  Back in Urbana, we would always get an ice storm the first week of December, and the ice would persist until April.  I am not kidding.  I hated it, oh my god, did I ever hate it.  I had been under the impression that St. Louis experienced less ice than Urbana (being that St. Louis is always 5-10 degrees warmer), and thus moving here would be an improvement.  But I am feeling very, very gipped at the moment.  I walk to work, and the sidewalks are a solid slick of ice.  It is like walking on a glacier.  I hate it.  On my way in this morning, I actually started crying.  I hate this winter.  It is the third worst winter of my life.  (The worst was 2 years ago when I had hyperemesis and the second worst was last year  when I was home alone and iced in with a baby who cried 12-16 hours a day).

In terms of dealing with the aftermath of The Incident, I am doing so the only way I know how.  And by that, I mean, I am rereading The Mists of Avalon.  The history of this coping strategy is that the second time I was in Nicaragua-- when I was there alone to do my pilot study-- I found a tattered copy of this book in the night stand by my bed.  I had many difficulties and panic attacks throughout the duration of my pilot study, and I took to reading The Mists of Avalon to forget about my troubles.  It was a very effective strategy.  At the time, I found the book to be somewhat poorly written (the dialogue mainly, was tiresome), but the book's epic nature (it is almost 900 pages) kind of made up for that.  I got hooked, and I brought the book home.

After the Unfortunate Incident, I didn't know how to cope with it, so one night I went down to the basement and searched out my copy of The Mists of Avalon, now held together with duct tape.  Superb.  I am finding that the second time around, I am actually more forgiving of the over-the-top dialogue and unbelievable scenarios.  It is a great distraction.

All of this reading reminded me that at my core, I always wanted to be a writer.  Before graduate school sucked all the life and creativity out of me, I had written fiction, or at least attempted to.  The problem was, most of my ideas were too large and grandiose (like... the 900 pages of The Mist of Avalon) for me to actually finish.  And most of what I wrote was so cringe-worthy I couldn't show it to anyone.  But there is one particular story idea that I had about 9 or 10 years ago, when I was working in the Lab after college, that has stayed with me. While I was taking care of the frogs and tadpoles, I would lose myself in my thoughts, sketching out the plot and developing the characters.  I still thought of this story from time to time after I went to graduate school.  And then when i was in Nicaragua for a year doing my dissertation research, I actually started writing it.  No kidding:  I wrote the first chapter on a Palm Pilot while I was out in the forest while the monkeys were sleeping.  It was in the dry season, when they would wake up about 5am and then go back to sleep during the oppressive heat of the day from about 8am to 3pm.  It was kind of awful being out there in the forest all day with them.  So I distracted myself by slowly and laboriously writing Chapter 1.  I remember so well, typing it out word for word while the monkeys slept in the big mango tree that was the site of so many battles between the groups for access to the fruit.  It was exactly 4 years ago, February 2007.

On a whim, I opened up the file on my computer and re-read that chapter.  I realized (okay, this is very snobbish of me) that it was the best thing I had ever read.  The world needed to hear this story.  I was going to finish it, somehow, some way.

But now I'm kind of stuck.  I have next to no time to work on such an endeavor, and seriously, if I am going to do a good job of it, it will require a ton of research.  The kind of research that will make my dissertation look pale by comparison.  The story is all there in my head, but it will require a lot of work to make the details believable.

I am hesitant to pour that kind of work into it.  For starters, it seems like the kind of thing I would write but then never be able to show to anybody.  And that seems like kind of a waste.  Besides, even if I did somehow find the strength to show it to somebody, it is my impression that it is actually very hard to get a book published, especially for a nobody like me.  If I poured years of my life into this and it got rejected, how could I ever come back from something like that?  I don't know.

Something else that this entry was supposed to be about was how I have come to acknowledge (while not completely accept) the fact that my nursing days are over.  The last 2 or 3 months have been like hanging on to a rock wall with just my fingernails, and I cannot put up that fight anymore.  On Saturday, William will be 18 months old, and I'm going to call that the end of this.  In many ways, it makes me immeasurably sad.  I will soon be facing that moment when I am nursing Will for the last time, and I can't even think about that without getting all choked up and hysterical.  Yet on the other hand, I am so frustrated and sick of nursing him that I dread it to the point of loathing.  I dread nursing him to the same extent that I dreaded pumping any time that I ever pumped.  It is cold and insanely unpleasant, and there is no milk coming out whatsoever.  When the Unfortunate Incident occurred and I went days without eating, drinking, or sleeping, that pretty much sealed the deal on the approximately 2 drops of milk a day that I was producing at the time.  If I still was actually lactating, I think I could keep it up.  But I just cannot do this if my only function is to be a human pacifier, with no milk, nutrients, or antibodies coming out.  No amount of heroic effort is going to get me to relactate.  I have done everything and been unsuccessful.  I need to accept this and move on, but it is so hard.  My whole life has been centered around breastfeeding for the last 18 months.  At this point I don't even know who I am without it.

Ugh.

Time to read some more of The Mists of Avalon, I suppose, and try to go to bed.

 

 

Christmas sinus infection

As it turns out, I've been walking around with a sinus infection for the past week.  I've felt like complete and utter hell, but I couldn't really do anything about it because I had 895,000 final essay exams to grade, and then it was Christmas.  Actually, I tried to go to a "Take Care" clinic on the 22nd, and that was a total fail.  First of all, I had to drive through Mall Traffic 3 days before Christmas, and second of all, when I arrived, I was informed there was a 4 hour wait.  The scare of driving through Mall Traffic and also having found myself in an exit only lane for the interstate by mistake (think: The movie Clueless when the character D accidentally merges onto the freeway in LA) was enough to scare the sinus infection away from me, at least for a moment.  Since I was supposed to be at work and was trying to do this on my "lunch hour," I did not have 4 hours to wait, so I turned around and drove back through Mall Traffic so that I could continue grading the 895,000 essay exams sitting on my desk.

I was determined to power through this.  I mean, come on.  I'm Melissa.  When I was in Nicaragua doing my field research, I put bandaids on things that should have had stitches.  Instead of going to the hospital to get an IV for 2 weeks of Vortex, I drank some coke and just kept going.

Well by today, I am no better, and I am so completely frayed from being unable to sleep for the past 8 nights due to the congestion.  I haven't taken a breath through my nose since December 19.  I'm taking the day off anyway... even though I'm not technically allowed to take sick or vacation days until the end of February, I've worked 20 hours of unpaid overtime in the last couple of weeks, so I just get to use that as "comp time."  What better to do with my comp time than go to a doctor.

There are like 7,000 doctors that my insurance covers, and I have no idea who to go to, so I just picked the closest one.  When I called her office this morning, I found out that in order to be seen by her, I had to have a "new patient evaluation," and the first available opening for said evaluation was January 19.  I think I gave an involuntary sob and said, "But I am sick nowwww," and they told me that they would let me know if there are any cancellations.

I suppose I could have kept calling doctors and seeing if there was another one who would see me, but I decided to try going to an Urgent Care Clinic a few miles from here on easily navigable roads that would not necessitate going through Mall Traffic or the freeway.  The good people at the urgent care place were nice and the whole process did take quite a while, but all things considered, I cannot complain.  They did x-rays and found that I did in fact have a sinus infection, and prescribed an antibiotic (that I hope does not send me into anaphylactic shock) and pseudoephedrine.  I told the doctor that I was nursing and I was concerned about pseudoephedrine drying up my milk supply (I'm glad I knew that because it did not seem like that information would have been volunteered to me).  He said that yes, decongestants can have a drying-up effect for some nursing mothers, but that I could drink lots of water and pump to counter balance that effect.  And I was all GEE.  You have no idea what I have been through to nurse this child.  I am already drinking a lot of water and pumping and making like, I don't know, a half an ounce of milk a day.  After I finished off the domperidone, my temporary burst in supply has precipitously declined.  If I add pseudoephedrine to the mix, I have a feeling that is the end.

So I am completely miserable and even more miserable at the thought that the thing that might bring me relief from these symptoms might also put an end to my fragile milk supply.  There is so much sinus pressure in my face that it feels like I am giving birth through my eyeball.  I know we might be at the end of nursing anyway, but still, I don't to put the nail in the coffin myself.  I keep thinking, if I can just tough this out maybe a few more days, the antibiotics will kill off the infection and then I will feel better.  The pseudoephedrine only treats the symptoms, right?  It would just make me more comfortable in the meantime.  But god, I would really like to be more comfortable.

Thanks for reading.

 

Relactation

I'm pleased to report that I've had a little bit of success in the relactation department, and I am so, so so so so so so glad I didn't throw in the towel and give it up.

A year ago, when after much struggle, Will was 4 months old and my milk supply finally seemed stable, I went off Domperidone.  I had saved a week's worth of pills just in case of some type of emergency, which, as it turns out, was wise.  My milk supply has been dropping ever since Will turned 1 and I started this new job, but after the stomach flu hit me last week, I thought I was done for.  I had a moment when I decided that was alright, that we could just be done with nursing, but then I thought I might as well just try the remaining Domperidone and see what happened.

As it turns out, I started lactating again.  I was also eating oatmeal and taking goat's rue (until I ran out of that), so I guess it may have been one of these other factors, or some combination of thereabove.  But in a matter of a few days, I went from being completely empty and having nothing come out when nursing him or pumping, to actually feeling like I had milk and being able to express some when pumping.  I know it still seems miniscule, but by about Wednesday of this week, I pumped 1.25 oz while at work, and I actually had 2 let downs while pumping.

I was very excited, and Will seems to have taken a renewed interest in nursing, now that milk is actually coming out.  Even when I was bone dry, he would never turn it down or unlatch himself, he just seemed kind of bored while nursing and would often be looking around for dad's iPad.  But now he nurses with fervor, and screams at me when I try to unlatch him after all the milk is gone.  That's not really an improvement in our lives, but it does indicate to me that he was getting luke-warm about nursing only because there wasn't enough milk coming out, not because he didn't want to nurse anymore.

So, I ran out of Domperidone yesterday.  I am taking Motherlove More Milk Special Blend (it arrived on Tuesday) and eating oatmeal, and hoping that all hell doesn't break loose.  I nursed him before his nap today, and it didn't go so well.  Not a whole lot of milk came out, and when I to pry him off (because I didn't want to sit there for an hour and a half letting him sleep nurse), he screamed (shrilly) for about 20 minutes before I could get him settled down.  I just now pumped and only had a tiny bit come out; I don't know if that is because I nursed him not too long ago, or because the Domperidone is coursing out of my system and I am done for again.

Still trying to decide what to do.  I was hoping that a week's worth of Domperidone might jump start me, and I could keep this going for another couple of months if I pump at work and eat wallpaper paste (I mean oatmeal) and take the More Milk tincture.  If I stop lactating now that I'm done with the Domperidone, I have to decide whether to just give it up or order some more from Vanauatu.

Anyway, I've got to take advantage of Will's nap so that I can work and not get paid for it.  Trying not to complain too much, because I do like my job and also because next semester they're giving me a lighter load, that is, if I can hang on until then.  So tired.

Thanks for reading.

Stomach flu

This past week both Rob and I had the stomach flu.  He got it first, and then it hit me with a vengeance about 24 hours later.  Rob still wasn't feeling good when it hit me, but thankfully he had the wherewithal to function and take care of Will.

I'd often wondered what it would be like for me to have intestinal distress for the first time since my hyperemetic pregnancy.  Unsurprisingly, it wasn't pretty.  I started throwing up about 5am on Tuesday and finally quit at around 10pm.  I threw up every 1/2 hour to an hour most of that time, except for about a 3 hour block in the late afternoon when I didn't puke but just felt like it, which was perhaps even more awful.  I was ridiculously dehydrated.

I took a sick day on Tuesday, even though I am technically ineligible to take a sick day until I've worked there for 6 months, but under the circumstances, going to work was not an option when all I could do was lie in bed and puke into a bucket.  On Wednesday I was back in the office though, very spacey and unable to eat or drink anything.  I couldn't really stand up or walk for long periods of time, and even talking to people was difficult.  Unfortunately, this is the busiest time of year for me... giving 4 final exams and grading 2 papers, all for large intro classes with several hundred students.  I am looking at some serious overtime in the next 10 days, it is crazy ridiculous.  I had about 30 people in my office for Intro to Public Health alone, firing questions at me about their upcoming exam, when I was just like, people, I need to lie down now, please.

Somehow, miraculously, Will has not gotten it.  I almost hesitate to write that, incase I jinx it and he gets sick.  But I feel like he would have gotten it by now if he were going to.  Half of his daycare was out with the stomach flu, as was one of his teachers.  How he managed to come through unscathed is a mystery (or is it just the antibodies in breastmilk?)

So much vomiting did bring up a lot of really scary, dark, unhappy memories of my pregnancy, a lot of anger, a lot of everything I have tried unsuccessfully to forget about these last 16 months.  But it also made me realize a few things.  Mainly, the completely messed up way I felt for several days after giving birth had absolutely nothing to do with giving birth, but because of the 8 hours of vomiting I did during labor.  The vomiting that was caused by the GBS antibiotics that they "had" to give me.  That terrible, nauseous, unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to speak, unable to see straight, unable to stand up without passing out... that wasn't because I'd given birth.  It was because I'd vomited for 8 hours straight and didn't eat anything for almost 2 days.  I still find it weird how nobody at the hospital really gave a shit about how completely messed up I was after Will was born, but that is a different post for a different time.

What this entry is supposed to be about is that the stomach flu has had catastrophic consequences on my ability to breastfeed.  As I recently mentioned, I have been struggling a lot lately to make any milk at all, and I feel like the stomach flu has essentially sealed the deal for us in terms of weaning. I didn't nurse Will on Tuesday, the day I was sick.  I was just too, too sick.  I couldn't stop vomiting/dry heaving and shaking/shivering all over, and I really really did not want Will to get sick.  I was so afraid if I touched him or was close to him at all, he'd get it.  In the morning before Rob took him to daycare, Will toddled into our bedroom and was looking at me and I could see his little blonde head bobbing along as he circled the bed, and it made me so sad because I just wanted to hold him but felt too awful.  I was still too sick to nurse him that night.  I was completely freaking out about it though, because I knew that I am not in the position to be skipping feedings, and that if I did this, it would probably mean the end of it.  Rob knew I didn't want it to end this way, so he bundled up and walked over to my office (where I keep my breast pump) and brought it home to me.  Give him a gold star for this.  I pumped, and I pumped (stopping to throw up at least once) for over 20 minutes, and not a drop came out, not a single drop.

On Wednesday, I nursed Will in the morning (feeling nothing come out) and I pumped later at work (okay, maybe a couple of drops, but that was it).  I know I am still ridiculously dehydrated, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better.  I've still kept nursing him, but it seems very futile at this point.  Just for comfort, not milk.

The thing is, on Tuesday when Will didn't nurse, he was totally fine without it, even at night time.  Rob rocked him and put him to bed, and he slept clear through until 6:30 the next morning. For several months, he really hasn't sought it out, but he doesn't turn it down when I offer it to him.  And he still never, ever unlatches on his own.  Even if he is bored and wants to play with his toys or with dad's iPad, he just tries to take me along with him.  Sometimes I think he might be a little frustrated that there is no milk coming out, but most of the time, that doesn't seem to bother him either.

I don't want to give it up this way, but it would be an easy out right now.  It's just that last night he had a really rough night.  I think he's getting his canines in, and he woke up around 3am and screamed for about 3 hours.  He was trying to latch on to my sweatshirt, he wanted to nurse so bad.  So I just nursed him, and even though there was no milk coming out, it comforted him.  I just wasn't happy about it.  It doesn't feel so great to nurse him without any milk coming out, and the whole situation of losing my milk this way made me really sad.

Sooo.  This morning I broke into my emergency stash of leftover Domperidone from when I gave it up about a year ago.  I have enough for 8 days.  I have no idea if it will do anything, but I had to try.  I also ordered some Motherlove Special Blend tincture, which should arrive on Tuesday.  In the meantime, I'm pumping at work and trying to rehydrate the best I can.  We'll see if any of this works.  Maybe it won't, but at least I won't go down without a fight.

Thanks for reading.

Quits?

This is seriously hard for me to write, but I may be about to stop nursing William, and it is not because either of us is ready for it.

Ever since I started this new job (and started nursing him less), I could tell my milk supply was steadily dwindling, but for a long time I thought, after everything I've been through, there is no way I can be going through Low Milk Supply again.  I've fixed that.  We're done with it.  This dwindling is normal.  We've made it past a year, and now there will be no reason for me to stop nursing him until one day he says to me, "Mom, I'm done with that," and I say, "Okay," and we have a piece of (vegan) chocolate cake or something.

But that's just not what's happening.  After my last bout of mastitis, things seemed okay for a while, but then (and brace yourselves for TMI), my long and blissful bout of lactational amenorrhea ended.  Aunt Flo is what seemed to put the nail in the coffin.  Will nurses, but I can't ever feel any milk coming out, and I rarely hear him swallow.  I even took the breast pump to work, to try to increase my milk supply (but recall how pumping between feedings was fantastic failure when I was dealing with Low Milk Supply).  After feeding him in the morning around 7am, I've been trying to pump around 9 or 10am at work.  Maybe it's having some effect, I don't know, but even if it is, the effect is miniscule.  If I pump closer to 9:00, sometimes I get nothing or maybe just a drop or two.  If I hold off till 10:00 or even a little after, I might get enough to thinly cover the bottom of the Medela bottle (so what... 1/8 of an ounce? 1/4?) but never anything more than that.  It is seriously depressing.  Not in the sense that I want to save the milk to give to him (I just rinse it down the sink), but just because it seems to confirm the fact that I've run dry.

Admitting all this is hard because first of all, I am stating that my body is a complete and total failure.  But beyond that, I think the larger issue is that I'm feeling like, oh my god, I've made a huge life mistake.  If I wouldn't have accepted this position, if I would have just stayed home and kept nursing him whenever he wanted to, we wouldn't be in this boat now.  Even though this job (if I keep it until then) will provide him a free college education, and I have tried to convince myself that my working (and this job in particular) has been positive for William, I have clearly not acted in his best interest.

So do I have to go over the reasons why I want to continue nursing him?  Apparently, because the last time I wrote something about my nursing problems, some moron posted a comment insinuating that I was a selfish freak for nursing a baby past 1 year.  (Freak... I can understand why an idiot would think that.  But selfish? WTF.  I didn't delete the comment simply because it was so fucking ridiculous.)

So here are the reasons why I would like to continue nursing William:

1) He still wants to nurse.

2) WHO guidelines indicate nursing to at least 2 years.

3) As a biological anthropologist, arbitrarily stopping nursing at 1 year makes no sense.  Across mammals, weaning generally coincides with the eruption of the permanent molars (which doesn't happen until like, age 6 or 7 in humans).  And cross culturally, many societies nurse for much longer than one year.

4) The immunological properties of breastmilk.  Will has survived outbreaks of stomach flu, hoof and mouth disease, and impetigo at his daycare, all unscathed. He's had a runny nose practically since starting daycare, but in the scheme of things, I feel pretty lucky.  Is breastmilk giving him an edge to stay healthy?  I don't know.  But I don't want to find out by stopping and then having him get sick all the time.

5) I love him so much.  I just want to what's best for him.  And that's not because he is anyone's grandchild, nephew, cousin, whatever.  Please.  As if.  He's mine.

I go back and forth about what I should do.  Sometimes I sit there and think, you know, we've had a good run.  I bet not even a La Leche League leader would fault me for weaning him at 16 months.  Considering how we started out, we've been remarkably lucky.  When everybody and their freaking brother was telling me to give him formula (including my OB and a pediatrician, who both told me that giving him formula would INCREASE MY MILK SUPPLY), I refused.  Thank god I knew my OB and the pediatrician were dead wrong about that, because had I listened to them (and the throngs of other people who told me to give him formula), it would have been a completely different story.  He never had one drop.  I tried everything, literally everything, to increase my milk supply, and I got it to work.  He thrived, and is still nursing at 16 months.  He's made it past the critical 1-year point, so we'd be fine to just stop and move on with our lives.  In some ways, that would probably make my life easier.  I could go running in the mornings before work, without having to worry about leaving enough time to nurse him.  Or I could go running, grocery shopping, etc in the evenings without having to be the one who puts him to bed.  Rob could put him to bed, or we could even go out together and have a sitter put him to bed.  In his whole life, I have always been the one to put him to bed, every single night.  I like putting him to bed, but it would be nice if for some reason I had to go somewhere or do something, someone else could do it and I wouldn't have to worry.  For a while I thought about just cutting his nursing down to once a day, either in the morning or the before bed, or maybe even as soon as I get home from work.  But given the problems I am having maintaining any kind of milk supply on twice a day, I'm afraid my milk would dry up completely if I reduced it to just once.

And the reality of that freaks me out.  I'm Melissa.  I am not going down without a fight.  I've gone to heroic measures before, I'll go to heroic measures again.  I will do whatever it takes.  Breastmilk is this wonderful, magical, substance of perfection, that will keep my kid healthy and have long term positive health benefits throughout his entire life.  Sixteen months is too young to take that away from him.  I will pump, I will power pump, I will quit my job if I have to, but I am not giving up.  I will stop nursing him one day when he tells me he's done with it, or he otherwise indicates that he just doesn't want to nurse anymore.  But not a moment before that.  As long as there is a breath left in my body, I will not give up.

The thing about heroic measures though, is that I'm not sure what measures to actually take.  None of the usual galatagogues (ie, fenugreek, blessed thistle) worked for me during Low Milk Supply, and I swear that pumping/power pumping made it worse.  None of the easy things, like eating oatmeal or drinking lots of water, worked either.  Domperidone was the only thing that worked for sure, so I guess if I was really going to heroic measures, I'd call up Vanautu again and place an order.  One other thing that may have had a slight positive effect was the Motherlove More Milk Special Blend.  I have no idea where to get that in St. Louis, but I am leaning strongly towards ordering some online.

So, that's where I'm at.  Who else out there has been through this?  Anybody?  I feel kind of like, probably not.  But if you have, please drop me a line and tell me what you did to get through.  Idiotic comments, however, will be promptly deleted.

Thanks for reading.

 

Is this normal?

I've been at my new job for around a month and a half now, and things are going well. Before all of this started, I had been terrified at the prospect of partially weaning Will. At 12 months old, he still nursed at least 5 times a day, and nursing was by far his favorite pastime. If I went too long without nursing him, he would begin to wail, crawl over to me, and pull down my shirt. I almost did not take this job because I didn't think Will would be able to handle going 8+ hours without the boob. He steadfastly refused to take a bottle, so it wasn't like sending him off to daycare with pumped milk would be an option. Besides, my bottle-feeding mom-friends told me that by this age, you're trying to get them off the bottle, not start them on it.

I just sort of closed my eyes, took a deep breath, trusted that it would somehow all work out, then called the department head and formally accepted the position. As soon as I hung up the phone, I wondered what the hell I was thinking.

But it has worked out. Somehow. Not perfectly. My god this has been stressful. You don't even know how stressful. I couldn't even begin to tell you the half of it. I'm pretty sure Will has developed dental enamel hypoplasias from drinking my stressed out milk and from living and breathing all the stress around him. It continues to be ridiculously stressful, but luckily, I am so busy that most of the time I do not even have the time to notice how stressed out I am. So I just keep going.

At any rate, since the beginning of August, I slowly worked at cutting down the amount of times I nursed Will each day. His nursing took a more dramatic hit when I started work on August 23rd, and an even more dramatic hit when he formally started daycare on September 7. Since then he has nursed only twice per day. I nurse him early in the morning as soon as he wakes, and then I nurse him once again in the evening before he goes to bed. On the weekends I sometimes nurse him more.

The thing is, it has been going pretty well for the most part. At least, I thought it was. He is just shy of 14 months now, and he is perfectly fine going without nursing all day long. That part is wonderful. It is a huge change from an entire year of my life, when I nursed him pretty much every 2 hours, all day long, just to keep him happy. In many ways, I feel like this is the best of the all possible worlds. I'm still nursing him, so he's getting all the health and immune benefits of breastmilk, I'm just only doing it twice a day instead of all day long like we had been doing for his entire life.

Here is the problem though. Now that we've been on this twice a day nursing schedule for a month or so, I am starting to feel like I've got no milk at all. It felt frighteningly like the first several months of his life when we were dealing with the hellishness of Low Milk Supply. I mean, I knew that I should naturally expect my milk supply to decrease as I decreased the amount of times I nursed him. But here is what I am afraid of: I am afraid that my milk will totally dry up and he'll end up weaned before either of us is ready.

Within the past week, I've really noticed how astonishingly little milk I have left. My nursing bras are gigantic on me. There are times when I'm nursing him when I don't feel a let-down and it really doesn't seem like there is any milk coming out at all. That's the thing that worries me the most. I really noticed it over the weekend when we were all sick. Will and I were both feverish and congested; he was fussy and I was too tired to do anything else to entertain him, so I just decided I'd nurse him multiple times throughout the day. And nothing came out. At least, it seemed like nothing came out. I was kind of too sick to notice or care about it a whole lot, but by now I am starting to freak out. Is my milk going to dry up completely? I am so not ready to wean him.

I realize, in the greater scheme of things, having nursed this baby for 14 months (and never given him one drop of formula, not one drop!), is nothing to sneeze at, and even the most dedicated lactivist (is that a pejorative term? I don't mean it to be so) would probably congratulate me on a job well done even if I were to stop nursing him today. Hell, I practically got a standing ovation at a La Leche League meeting when I told my story of everything we had been through to keep nursing and fend off formula when Will was just 4 months old. But I am not ready to quit nursing. I don't really have a target weaning age in mind, other than say, kindergarden. I mean, I personally see no reason not to nurse him until he is at least 3. Or at least 2. Whatever. Just something older than 14 months.

So, I just don't know... is it normal to have vanishingly little milk left at this point in the game, or have I reverted to the terror of Low Milk Supply that I somehow managed to get us through after Will was first born? Am I just extra paranoid about milk supply issues because of everything we went through? Is my milk going to completely dry up? Should I take something to prevent that from happening? Recall that I tried everything and nothing worked. Except for Domperidone, after about 8 weeks of 9 pills per day. I rifled through my stash of nursing supplies and found that I have about a week's supply of Domperidone left. Should I take it?

It's just that this is all kind of emotional for me. Realistically, I will probably never have another baby. I don't think there's anybody out there working on finding a cure for Hyperemesis Gravidarum or Babies That Cry 12 Hours Per Day, and I can't imagine ever living through either of those things again. So once we're done, we're done. Nursing has been hard, unimaginably hard, what with the low milk supply and the constant crying, and did I mention the low milk supply? But I am nowhere near ready to end it, and it makes me very sad to think that one day Will will be done nursing and that part of my life will be over forever.

At any rate, I'm in uncharted territory. I would appreciate feedback from anybody who's been there, done that. Is what's been happening a sign that my milk is on its way out? Or is it normal to have a low milk supply at this stage and maintain it for as long as you and the baby see fit?

Thanks for reading.

Did I ever really have a low milk supply?

Some researchers are conducting a survey of nursing mothers who have used Domperidone to increase milk supply.

I took the survey, and it reminded me of something I've been wondering for quite a while now: Did I ever really have a low milk supply?

A couple months ago, the local La Leche League put me in contact with another area mother who was experiencing low milk supply issues and taking domperidone for it. She wanted to talk to someone who had been through it and was on the other side, and I was happy to provide any help/moral support that I could. I kept asking the other mom how she knew that she had low milk supply... did her baby cry all the time? Because Will's crying was really the only thing we were going on the whole time I was dealing with this. But no, the other mother said her baby did not cry all the time and was generally pretty easy-going. I think she said that the baby's poor weight gain was the main issue.

For us, Will was a bit slow to gain weight, but he never had dangerously low weight gain or weight loss. During the worst of it, he had a week where he only gained 4.5 ounces. Because I was nursing him almost constantly (as much as 12 hours some days), and he cried whenever he wasn't nursing, the lactation consultant told me she suspected I had a milk supply issue. She thought he must be doing a lot of non-nutritive suckling, otherwise he should be gaining loads of weight considering the amount of time he spent nursing.

Domperidone was the last resort after a long road of trying everything. After a couple weeks of taking it, I definitely felt like I had plenty of milk, and that was a huge relief. But the thing is, Will's crying didn't end. It didn't seem to be colic or acid reflux or an allergy to something in my diet. He just cried. Whenever he wasn't nursing, he cried.

Feeding him was very stressful. Whenever he nursed, he would fall asleep. Maybe after a half an hour or so, I'd unlatch him and he would wake up and cry. Once, I resolved to just let him nurse until he unlatched on his own. I sat there for a solid hour and a half, letting him nurse and nurse (while he was asleep). Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and unlatched him. He woke up immediately, gave me a look of pure contempt, threw his head back, and wailed. He didn't care whether or not there was milk coming out. He just wanted to nurse and nurse and nurse and nurse.

Something I really didn't get at the beginning was the whole concept of the let-down. I guess I thought that the milk was supposed to be shooting out in a constant stream for 10 or 15 minutes straight. But it wasn't that way for me... is it that way for anybody? I'd look at the clock once I started to feel the milk coming out. Most of the time the let-down would only last a minute or 2 before it subsided. Every week I'd be back in the lactation consultant's office, saying, "Milk only comes out of me for a minute at a time... he's not getting enough to eat." I don't know, maybe I am a freak and that's not how it's supposed to be, but that is pretty much the way it is now: several let-downs of milk, interspersed with periods when no milk is coming out.

I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say here, and it's getting very late. I guess I probably did have some milk supply issues and Domperidone did help. But knowing what I know now, I don't think milk supply was the root of the problem. I think Will is just a very needy baby, and for whatever reason, he spent the first 6 or so months of his life crying. I am very glad we are past that.

I still would like to know if hyperemesis or the GBS antibiotics (that I apparently had a severe reaction to), or the freakishly unexplained blood pressure spike I experienced after labor may have had any impact on my milk supply.

Oh, and one more thing, I think Domperidone made me dizzy, even though that wasn't really supposed to be a side effect.

What is the matter with me? Morning will be here before I know it, I've got to get to bed.

Skinny jeans

I know all of you out there reading this lost all your pregnancy weight and fit back into all your old clothes within a week or two weeks or a day or whatever, but I didn't. I stayed fat for a long time. I didn't gain a tremendous amount of weight while I was pregnant (27 pounds), but I held onto it. Actually, that's not quite true. I lost almost all of it while giving birth, most likely because I didn't eat for about 3 days and threw up 2-3 times per contraction (a side effect of the antibiotics they "had" to give me for GBS+). When I came home from the hospital and stepped on the scale to find that I'd lost 20 pounds, I thought, losing this pregnancy weight is going to be a piece of cake.

Speaking of cake.

Even vegan cake will make you fat if you eat enough of it. And I did. I actually gained weight after Will was born and while I was exclusively breastfeeding him. This is probably because my impressive weight loss during his birth was mainly due to dehydration. But also, I became an eating machine after Will was born. My lactation consultant thought I was suspiciously skinny and advised me to eat, eat, eat, in order to increase my milk supply. And I did. For 9 months I'd been constantly puking or feeling like I would puke, and even though the nausea persisted for about 3-4 months after Will was born (actually I am still nauseated sometimes, but not like I was while pregnant), I could eat a lot more things. Like tortilla chips (no salsa though, until just recently), and peanut butter. And cake.

I felt really bad about myself about being so fat, but apparently, not bad enough to stop eating. Plus, having a snack was sometimes really effective at drowning out Will's constant crying. It was like, "As long as I am eating these vegan brownies, I cannot hear you cry!!"

Within the past few months though, I've finally noticed that my clothes are fitting me better, and in some cases, are even loose. Around the time of the marathon, I cautiously stepped on the scale and found that I was only a few pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight (which was Freakishly Thin) and am actually a few pounds less than what I weighed in high school and after we came back from a year in Nicaragua (when I had taken a hiatus from running).

A couple days ago, I was going through a bin of old clothes that I packed away during my pregnancy and by this point had pretty much given up hope of ever wearing again. I put on a skirt that had been tight on me when we came home from Nicaragua and it was pleasantly loose! And then I came across my Skinny Jeans. The last time I had worn them was when I was skeletal and 14 weeks pregnant and so sick that hurling myself into an abyss seemed like a good idea. With much trepidation, I tried on the jeans, not expecting them to go on past the knee.

And they fit! Comfortably! Still a bit tighter on me than back in my glory days, but I can definitely wear them.

So there you have it. I have finally lost almost all of my pregnancy weight and am back in my skinny jeans. And it "only" took 10 months. And I didn't do anything special. Unless you count becoming a vegan (again) and running a marathon.

When Will was the size of a lemon and mama was skinny

Well rounded, but in skinny jeans again

Taking it back

My mom brought me my baby book around the time Will was born, and yesterday I was looking through it to see when I got my first teeth (Will hasn't gotten any teeth yet). On the first page of the baby book, my mom had taped the information pamphlet given to her by the maternity ward of the hospital where she had me. I read through it, and at first it made me want to cry. Then it made me mad. Really mad.

What made me so mad was the hospital policy of separating mothers and babies. Look at the bottom left. "...please instruct your friends, relatives, husband, etc., of the time when babies are in the room as you are not permitted to answer the phone when you have your baby." Then they list the times when you have your baby. 9:30-10:30am. 1-2pm. 4:30-5:30pm. Three hours a day. Three hours a day!

WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID ANYONE EVER THINK THIS WAS OKAY?

I mean seriously. I would have just liked to see some one try to come between me and Will after he was born. Several of their limbs would have been torn off. I can't imagine anything more cruel and inhumane than separating a mother and her baby. What was the purpose of this? What was it supposed to achieve? Did doctors really believe women were only capable of seeing their babies for 3 hours a day? And that they couldn't even handle talking on the phone while the baby was present? What did these doctors think that women were going to do once they got home?

On the bottom right of the pamphlet (see below), it does say that this hospital allowed the option of "rooming in" on request. I asked my mom if she had roomed in with me. "Oh Lord no," she said. "It was unheard of. I was in a room with three other women. Your dad couldn't even be in the room when they brought you in for me to nurse."

I expressed my outrage at such idiotic policy, and my mother shared the sentiment. She recalled that she was furious and that she even got "lippy" with the nurses (to no avail, of course). "Yes, it was inhumane," she agreed with me. "They totally ignored women back then. But what did we know? We had no choice. And I certainly didn't want to have you alone at home."

That's the thing about this. The thing that makes me so mad.

The right side of the pamphlet, in the middle of the page, indicates that women weren't allowed to get up and use the bathroom for six to eight hours after giving birth. Even then you had to have a written order from the doctor, granting you permission. My mom said she didn't remember this part. What she remembers is that her neck hurt so bad while she was lying in that hospital bed, and she asked the nurses for a heating pad. They told her they couldn't give her one without a doctor's order, and it was nighttime, so they didn't want to call and disturb him. "So as I think about it, my neck has hurt for the last 30 years," she told me.

Many things infuriate me about all of this, but perhaps what infuriates me the most is that these policies make breastfeeding impossible. My mother always told me that she wanted to breastfeed, but she couldn't. After reading this pamphlet, I'm all, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. If you are only "allowed" to see the baby 3 times a day, for an hour each time, how on earth is your milk going to come in? And even if it does, how on earth are you going to make enough milk to feed the baby? Clearly, while the babies were being kept away from their mothers in the sterile environment of the nursery, they would have to have been given formula or sugar water or whatever other crap doctors thought was "best" back then. Formula companies got rich while breastfeeding almost became a lost art in this country, and most women probably blamed themselves for not being able to do it.

I was terrified of giving birth in a hospital, for fear that it would be the same sort of patriarchal, assembly line experience that my mother had had and that it would end with me being unable to breastfeed. But things have changed in the last 30 years. I labored in a tub and on my knees and on all fours or standing or sitting-- however it felt bearable. I had a midwife and a female obstetrician and a doula who whispered encouragement to me for at least 12 hours straight and who advocated for me so that they didn't give me pitocin when I stalled at 5-cm for 4 hours. I got to have my husband with me the whole time, and I got to hold my naked, bloody, writhing baby the moment he entered this world. He never left my side after that, and no one gave him formula (even though the doctors told me I should). I had a lactation consultant who worked with us for weeks and weeks to get this baby to latch right and to get me to make enough milk for him, when despite everything that we had going for us, I still almost wasn't able to do it. I had to fight every step of the way for every last little thing, but not fighting was never an option.

I look at the policies under which I was born, written out in black and white like that, and it makes me wonder when birth was taken away from the mother, and why. I realize this is why I felt so strongly about giving birth the way I did and about breastfeeding. I was fighting to take it back.

Some pertinent background information

A lot of things took place before I started this blog, and I wrote about them elsewhere.

First of all, I got pregnant. I wish I could say that I was a glowing and radiant, but unfortunately I was not. I had severe nausea and vomiting the whole time (and even for a while after). You can read the highlights (if they can so be called?) of this journey here and here.

Then, I gave birth. It was an epic experience, is all I can say. The whole long story is in four parts, but if you just want to cut to the chase, we had a baby. We named him William Miles, and the minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

• Part 1: Tuesday's Child?
• Part 2: Wednesday's Child?
• Part 3: Waterlogged and Tender
• Part 4: Aftermath

The story didn't end there. The baby wouldn't stop crying, ever. Nursing was terrible. We were seeing a lactation consultant twice a week, but nothing was getting better. Finally, our lactation consultant suggested that Will's crying was because he was hungry, and she began treating me for a low milk supply (hence the impetus for this blog). That part of the story begins here.

About Cloth Mother

Who is Cloth Mother?

Cloth Mother has a PhD in Biological Anthropology. She does research on the weaning process in folivorous primates. She spent a year living in rural Nicaragua doing her dissertation research on two groups of wild mantled howler monkeys. (You can read all about that on Nicablogua). Afterwards, Cloth Mother came back to the US to write her dissertation. (And you can read all about that on Almost PhD).

She also runs marathons and she is a vegan (most of the time). She is married to Ragfield, and they have one child together (William), who was born on August 12, 2009.

Why Cloth Mother?

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, a psychologist named Harry Harlow did some really terrible and unethical studies on social development in primates. Harlow et al. took newborn rhesus macaques away from their mothers and placed them with “wire mothers” (monkey shaped things that were featureless and made out of wire) or “cloth mothers” (monkey-shaped things that had faces and bodies covered with a soft, warm cloth). Results demonstrated that even when the wire mothers were equipped with bottles of milk and the cloth mothers had none, the baby macaques preferred the soft cloth mothers. Especially when subjected to fear, stress, or unfamiliar situations, the poor dears clung to their cloth mothers for comfort.

When Cloth Mother was pregnant, she did everything possible to ensure that the baby would be 100%, exclusively breast-fed. Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong, and she did not produce enough milk. William was always hungry. Cloth Mother did everything imaginable to increase her milk supply, but nothing worked. She spent the first several months of William’s life feeding him, pumping milk, giving him the pumped milk in a bottle, and then feeding him again. With no breaks in between. It was all she did, all day and all night. She refused to give him formula. And she refused to listen to the advice of an idiot pediatrician who told her she had to. She had an excellent lactation consultant that got her through the whole thing. The lactation consultant ended up prescribing her a non-FDA approved drug called Domperidone, and after about 6 to 8 weeks on this medication, she finally had loads of milk for William. This whole experience (which you can read about here and here) damn near killed Cloth Mother. But she would do it all over again if she had to. William never had a drop of formula, not one drop, and it was worth it.

As she began to reflect on all she had been through during her pregnancy (which involved a mild yet horrific case of hyperemesis gravidarum), birth, and the first months of William’s life, she began to see herself as one of those cloth mothers in Harlow’s experiment. Warm and comfortable but, in the early days, without much milk. She decided to blog about it.