Before I got knocked up with Isobel, I bought myself some boobs. For the low price of about $250, when you take into account the soon-to-occur bankruptcy which my loan was a part of. I’ve actually been paid back (plus some) for them since, because plastic surgery? It’s a medical claim for income tax purposes in Canada.
I know, crazy.
Anyways, I bought them because I’d always hated my lack of boobage, thought that having more oomph might dispel certain eating/out of proportion issues, and cuz I’d been told that I wouldn’t be having kids. But, just in case, I asked and made sure that nothing would take place to stop me from a future in wet nursery, should the occasion call for it.
So while I was harbouring a future fugitive, I planned to breastfeed. Ha. I also planned to return to work within a few months of giving birth – being a stay at home mom wasn’t for me. My goal, to go full time for six months, then once solids were added, pump and supplement with formula. There’d be no bottles or soothers for at least six weeks, to prevent nipple confusion.
Then, Isobel came out of me in a harsh, violent way. With a cord around her neck and me bleeding all over the place. Moving was really horrible. Sitting up, putting weight there, pretty much impossible. So though my milk came in about 12 hours after she came out, we had some issues.
The first of which was that she was too small for me to safely hold her in most of the way I knew of (from all of my breastfeeding studying), without potentially smothering her or her rolling off the bed. Because I was basically lying down with 20,000 pillows around me, we had to learn to nurse lying down.
She was a very sleepy baby right off the bat – maybe the 25 hours of labour had something to do with it… Her blood sugar was a little low too, so as soon as I was all repaired and she was semi cleaned up and weighed (6 pounds, 6.6 ounces), we tried.
And she fell asleep pretty much as soon as a tiny bit of colostrum hit the back of her throat.
This cycle kept happening until she was passing out with milk overflowing from her mouth. I totally overproduced – it totally sucked and hurt. She wouldn’t/couldn’t stay awake, regardless of any of the little tricks that the nurses showed us to use. By the next day, she’d lost about 15% of her weight. More than usual, faster than usual.
Nurses came to counsel me on latching – not a problem, for us. They woke us to try to feed her – if the problem was her sleeping through feedings, doesn’t it make sense that waking her, she’s guaranteed to go back to sleep? They suggested formula – I had to repeat over and over that it was a last chance kind of thing. They said not to try to feed her everytime she woke because then she’s just start doing it to soothe – uhuh, I’d rather her be soothed, than potentially hungry.
Then the next day came and she’d lost a bit more weight, was jaundiced and my boobs were exploding from lack of follow through. I was actually a tad worried that the pressure might cause an implant to rupture. And the nurses said by dinnertime that I had to start supplementing her or else. They didn’t really fill in the blank, it was just or else.
And so we fought it a tiny bit until she woke up and the screaming started. And continued for a few hours. She wouldn’t latch on and she wouldn’t stop screaming like she was in horrible pain. We decided to try the formula, an ounce in a little medicine shot glass, after nursing. But she didn’t stop crying and at this point, I’d been awake for most of three days. The nurses offered to take her and after little protest, I got to sleep until I was woken up with their return.
Six hours had passed. I was refreshed. I was confused, since before, they’d never let us go more than three hours without forcing a boob into Isobel’s face. I was enraged when I saw the soother in her mouth and was told that they gave her a bottle. Of formula. As much as she would take.
Imagine my surprise when she latched on willingly and feistily ate without passing out. Damn it. The principal still existed, but it worked out, that time.
By her next weigh in the next morning, she looked healthier. Her skin was looking more gray than yellow and even pink in some parts. She was more alert. Not as fussy. She’d peed a few times – something she’d not done much of for the past two days. And she apparently had lost more weight. We had to stay for another day – meaning I’d lived at the hospital for four, now.
Turned out our nurse was a complete fucking dumbass – don’t worry, I’ll talk more about her during my birth story on the 24th. Isobel’d gained enough for us to go home, was just over five pounds. I don’t think anyone has ever strapped a baby into a car seat so fast.
Then we got home with instructions to never let her go longer than three hours without a feed and to follow every nursing session with an ounce of formula until she was closer to her birth weight. And she started falling asleep again, albeit after eating a lot more than before. She slept with me (us) and woke up often to nurse and I never got up once.
The next morning, she was checked out by a public health nurse, who said we could quit the formula. Saturday night, my inlaws came over to hang out. It was the finale of the Festival of Lights (aka drunks watching fireworks, two blocks from my apartment) and the streets were likely impossible to negotiate.
Around sun down time, Isobel started screaming. Not the crying from before. SCREAMING. LIKE. SHE. WAS. REPEATEDLY. STABBED. We looked around, looked at JDawg’s mom, looked at her. Nothing was really wrong – she was changed, ventilated, didn’t want to eat, didn’t calm with any rocking. What the fuck was going on?
Five hours later, the inlaws had left and she was still going, but also still not eating. Not even the formula we had left over. Remember? I wasn’t supposed to let her go any longer than three hours. It was almost double that by the time that I called the nurse line, convinced she was going to die if she didn’t eat.
They recommended that we take her to the ER right away, based on my answer of, “she’s only four days old and has been screaming for over five hours, what do you think?” to their question of whether I thought she was in distress. We had to call an ambulance – with neighbours hanging out of their windows while watching the anticlimax of the fireworks yelling, “OMG!!!! Is the baby okay?”
I was not okay. I bawled the entire 20 minute drive. I bawled the entire intake interview. I bawled while they looked her over and looked me over and tried to assure me that she was ok. I bawled when I saw them pull out a bottle of formula, heat it up and then her suck back eight ounces of it in less than a minute. And then, another two.
I felt like a failure. She didn’t want me, or my formula in little plastic cups, she wanted a bottle. I didn’t even know where 10 ounces of formula would fit in a baby of her size, but it did.
Turned out, she had some pretty harsh gas because of acid reflux. No one had ever said that I shouldn’t lay her down right after a feed to sleep, and since she was always falling asleep, she was always lying down. After that night, I spent the next six months of breastfeeding making sure she was always lying in at least a 45° angle. And boy, did she ever take to it after that.
There were marathons and when not in distance mode, she would eat every hour. When JDawg went back to work and PPD kicked in hardcore, we’d sometimes (often) spend the day in bed with everything within reach, and she would nurse for as long as I let her. Sleeping in between sessions. Both of us.
There were other issues and stories that could have been told. Like how teething at three months affected my nipples. Or how the one time I smoked a bit of pot before weaning, even after nine hours had passed, it made her puke – and how guilty I felt for that. About how she weaned herself, four days after her first birthday, though I saw the signs coming before that.
It makes me a little sad to see some of the mommy friends I’ve made still nursing their kids. The closeness, while I’m dodging fists and feet.
I think, mostly, I just miss her being still and peaceful.
