beanski

sometimes breastfeeding really sucks

Our nursing relationship started out rocky. I was an overly tired hormonal woman with torn up nether regions coming face to face with a screaming and very hungry baby.

And though it pains me to admit this now, when I am indeed head-over-heels in love with the little boy, what I really wanted at the time was to spend time making sure his sister knew that nothing in this world could take my time, my love, my energy away from her.

Nothing except for this baby that refused to be separated from my boob for more than ten minutes at a time.

He had a long journey and by golly, the boy wanted to eat. And eat and eat and eat.

And so it goes. So it goes the story of our lives together up until this point; me feeding, him eating, most days upwards of ten times per day. It hasn’t slowed since I returned to the workforce except now I spend my time being milked by a machine rather than by a human. Twenty ounces of pumped milk he requires in addition to the four times I nurse him per day.

I don’t know if he needs twenty ounces of breast milk during each of his eight hour stints at daycare or if he’s being fed because he’s crying and wants a nap but can’t sleep in the midst of all of the noise. But alas, that is a post for another day. The daycare post that I have never written and will likely never write because I can’t spend time and energy and tears dwelling on something I have no ability to change. The post where I judge everything she is doing because surely I could do it a hundred times better.

I love our daycare provider. She just isn’t me.

So, twenty ounces per day it is.

I spend four sessions per day with my Medela, each session lasting fifteen minutes, to barely scrape up enough milk for the little bruiser. Most days I only had to pump twice for the girl but then she needed twelve ounces to his twenty.

You couple this with the bleeding nipples and the constant arching and wrestling and begging him to just please relax, be patient and eat already and I often wonder if I am doing him more of a disservice than a service by insisting that he be a breastfed baby.

During at least half of the feedings I am certain that the little piggy would rather have the bottle.

If it hurts, you’re doing something wrong; that’s what the Breast is Best books all claim. Yet each of the three lactation consultants I have seen have told me that everything looks good with the latch and here I sit with sore, bleeding nipples wondering why on earth I can’t just cut my losses and quit.

But I can’t do it.

First, I thought I would wait until I went back to work to see if that helped because I’d be pumping instead of nursing and quite frankly formula was not an expense we could afford on one salary.

Now, I tell myself to wait for the introduction of solid foods to see if that magically fixes everything.

And after that I expect I’ll have some other reason why I should just wait another little while to switch him to formula.

I am beginning to think that maybe I need it as bad as he does because I am not ready to let him go and detach him from my body just yet. Because during half of the feedings, when he's content and warm and snuggled in close to my body contently gulping away, I just can't imagine feeding him any other way.

It's on the good days, the days when I recognize that I am doing this as much for me as I am for him that I don’t mind the blood and the pain and the time I spend in the conference room listening to the constant WEE-UNK, WEE-UNK of the pump.

Because he’s only little for a very little while. And I already miss the littleness.

go ahead, you try to tell her no

She gives me the eyes and I cave every time. Her dad calls it the 'I need a more expensive prom dress, Daddy' look.

Lately I've been struggling with getting new pictures of Renee that I LOVE. She either bolts or gives me the cheese when I get out the camera and while both are funny and tell a good story about her at this age, I miss having a picture on my desk that really seems like her. I finally got one that I love but now I can't decide if I like the black and white or the color. I sort of gravitate to the black and white but this is one of the few pictures that I have of her where you can actually see the color of her eyes. And it shows why I sort of act like I don't know when someone asks me what color her eyes are. Because they are sort of blue/gray with a ring of green/brown around the center. Do if I say blue or brown or green or gray? Is gray even an eye color? Like can you put gray on your driver's license in the little box?

So help me...color or black and white?
 

it bloomed on her birthday

The Hoya plant that I started from a slip of my Grandma Grace's original plant hangs in our dining room. It is the one plant in the house that I water religiously so that I always have a piece of her here with me.

I've had that plant for well over 10 years and it has NEVER bloomed and I have often wondered how on earth she managed to get hers to bloom all of the time. On what should have been her 90th birthday, she showed me.

redefining myself with the mommy cut

Maybe I needed a little boost. Maybe I needed to feel like something other than someone's mom. Maybe I felt like over the course of the last two and a half years, I have lost the definition of me. Or maybe I just got sick and tired of the ponytail every single minute of my life. I woke up this morning and decided that I was cutting it. And then I ordered $500 worth of new clothes on the internet. And damn it, I feel better. I feel like a giant weight has been lifted. I guess maybe it was the 20 pounds of hair she cut off.

Kim took this picture for our Christmas cards this year. ISH. Not the picture because it is awesome because she rocks at taking pictures. And my husband is handsome and my kids are damn cute. But my hair and everything else about me? ISH.
 
So I cut off my hair hoping that would help with the ISH factor. Here is what I look like today.
  
And speaking of Kim. I love her. She sent me these on my first day back to work. When the delivery person showed up at my desk I said to him, 'Oh, so my husband did feel bad this morning.' And then I opened the card and I smiled because I really should have known it wasn't him. When I told Ski about them he said, 'Damn, I totally should have thought of that. She's making me look bad.' 

three months

It took me until now to start panicking. SERIOUSLY, WHERE DID THE LAST THREE MONTHS GO? I can't really explain or make sense of the fact that it seemed to crawl and fly by all at the same time. These babies, they play tricks on me...they are messing with my mind. One day I woke up and instead of wishing he was like 3 and she was like 4 so that we could have some peace and quiet once in a while, I started willing time to just please slow down. My baby, the one that was JUST born, is three months old. He smiles and coos and spends time playing on the floor by himself. Knowing that he is mostly likely my last shot at this whole infant thing makes it so incredibly bitter sweet. I'm already wondering why I haven't spent less time doing laundry and washing the dishes and more time snuggling and holding and kissing his soft little bald head.

This week has been hard knowing that these last days are probably some of the only days that I'll spend alone with Cameron. When she's sleeping and I'm rocking him to sleep, the tears stream down my face knowing that the time I spend with him is only a couple of days away from completely changing. The weekends will be spent as a family of four and my two days a week where I spend with just my little baby are over. I miss him already.

His whole face lights up and he laughs at just about everything. All I have to do is look at him or touch his ticklish little neck and he giggles and coos and carries on. He cries when someone besides me is holding him and he calms instantly the minute I touch him. He does a good job of making sure that I am constantly reminded that all of the hard work I do to make sure he has everything he needs to thrive is worth it. So incredibly worth it.

He had a double ear infection this month and you'd never really know it because Cameron really isn't a screamer. He really doesn't cry much at all. He was having a hard time sleeping and had a stuffed up nose and was running a very low grade fever when I had Renee in for her 18 month appointment so I had them take a look at him, you know, JUST IN CASE. He never bitched about the ear infection but the diarrhea that came with the antibiotic was NOT pretty. The kid really gets worked up about farting and pooping.

He has gotten better and better at nursing or maybe I have gotten better and better at not letting him chomp and I am happy to say that the nipples haven't bled since a week ago. With the bleeding stopping his belly has gotten at least a bit less volatile. And with the fixes to his belly issues have come sweet, sweet sleep for me. If the poop is normal and he's been farting regularily, he sleeps. For eight or nine hour stretches fairly consistently. When he wakes usually around 4AM he eats contently and goes back to sleep for four more hours. He's lucky he figured it out because now he is allowed to live. His mommy sort of sucks at being a mommy when she isn't sleeping. I hope he remembers that when he's seventeen and he thinks he can come home one minute past curfew. I will make him pay for taking away my sleep. He still doesn't really understand the concept of napping for more than 30 minutes at a time unless I'm holding him but whatever. He can't be perfect ALL the time.

He spends a lot of time inspecting his hands and his feet and when he's lost in thought staring at them I always tell him 'Yes, they're perfect, Cameron, I already checked. Everything about you is perfect.'

He can hold his head up for the most part and he doesn't really love tummy time any more than she did. Although he is much less dramatic about not liking it. While she screamed her bloody head off, he grunts and whines and moans until I flip him over. He has managed to roll from his belly to his back a few times but I think it was more luck than anything.
He weighed in at 12 pounds 11 ounces the last time we were at the doctor and is 23 inches long. 50th percentile across the board. I told you he was perfect.

This month has reminded me why there were days when Renee was little when I thought having ten babies sounded like a good idea. When the kids are healthy and things are running smoothly around here, the high is higher than any high I have ever had in my life. I'm just thankful that the lows are much easier to forget. I know I'll look back on these days as perfect and incredible and just like the story tale said having children would be. And I'll thank my lucky stars every day for the rest of my life that he picked us as his parents and that he has forgiven me for floundering around for those first couple of months trying to remember how to take care of an infant. Because now that I remember...I never want these days to end.

i miss my babies

He spent most of the night before his first day of daycare grunting and moaning and insisting that I hold him all night. It was like he knew; like he knew that I was about to throw him into the deep end and walk away. Fate or karma or whatever force has been at play for the illnesses that have circled through our family repeatedly for the past two months was holding on to one last giant fuck you for me.

I sat there in that glider, shushing, singing, crying, wrapped up in a blanket sweating and shivering and aching. Because my first round of mastitis decided to pick the night before my dreaded return to work to rear its ugly head. The Tylenol helps with the fever and the backache and the boobache but it does nothing for the heartache.

That feeling that I felt every day when I left for work before he was born when I kissed his sister goodbye and told her that loved her and that I couldn’t wait for work to be over. That sad, worrisome, nagging feeling is back, following me around like a black cloud reminding me over and over again that someone else is taking care of my children. Just like last time I feel like a part of my heart, my soul, my very being was ripped right out.

I know the pain, the longing, the ache will lessen over time but I also know that it will never go away. Because the number of those that I long for has been doubled, hence doubling my pain, my worry, my longing.

I miss my babies.

thank god almighty i'm free at last

My mom called on Tuesday afternoon and said, "Do you want dad and I to come down and babysit on Saturday so that you guys can go out and do something alone?"

Let me think. YES.

So, I pumped and we made reservations and we talked all week about how excited we were go get out. How excited we were to have a night off from feeding her dinner and a night off from the juggling act that is getting both kids to bed. Honestly, I can't remember the last time we went out. Sad but true.

We ate fondue and lamb and had a bottle of wine and dessert and for three sweet hours I felt like a different person. The old me. The one who didn't have a baby attached either to her hip or her boob at all possible moments.

And then we headed back to town and we drove by the house and hypothesized why which lights were on. And then we went for a drive just in case they weren't asleep because we didn't want to risk it.

I went to bed and woke up so incredibly thankful that I have a mom and a dad that are willing to spend seven hours in the car in two days just so that we can go out for dinner. Renee had such a good time and spent most of the day today saying "Rama ICE" and "Hi Papa."

alright, who did it?

I'm looking for whoever sneaked into my house and replaced my newborn with this baby who grabs onto and tries to pull down my shirt when he's hungry and who laughs hysterically when I tickle his neck. Surely he was just born last week and is much too little to be doing these things. IT'S GOING TOO FAST.

Be little forever, Cameron. Stay.