- We are both still awake, and there are birds chirping outside and What. The. Fuck.
- Way, way too many skinny, pale, almost-vaguely-ethnic, blonde chicks up in my fashion editorials right now. Diversity, PLEASE.
How we established breastfeeding
Published August 3, 2009 | 
It’s World Breastfeeding Week! To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
I’ve written in detail about my birth experience, but I haven’t really mentioned anything about establishing breastfeeding. I felt like my nursing relationship with Maia was just as easy as everything I read during my pregnancy led me to believe it would be, and that it didn’t really warrant writing about; yet now, I realize that establishing breastfeeding is not necessarily easy, and that a lot of women struggle with it.
After I held Maia for the first time, my midwives said that they needed to evaluate my tearing. So I passed her to Chris and, feeling like a superwoman, walked into the bedroom to be checked out. It turned out that I needed to go to the hospital at some point, but of course I immediately said, “I need to breastfeed my baby first.” My midwives smiled and agreed.
So they helped me hobble out into the living room again, where I settled into a corner of the couch and held my daughter. The midwives beckoned Chris over as I clumsily pressed Maia to my breast, trying to put her round little mouth around my nipple. She grunted and whined, making a motion that I later recognized as rooting. I felt a momentary panic — why isn’t she latching on? doesn’t she love me? can’t I feed her? am I broken? – before the midwife showed me how to do it: put Maia’s nose level with my nipple, hold her close, and stroke down her nose and over her lips with it until she tilts her head back, opens her mouth, and latches on. But she didn’t, not right away, and she rooted against my breast furiously, her little cries growing more and more angry.
“You might need to help her with this, Daddy,” said the midwife, as she and Chris bent their heads together over me. With the tip of a finger, she stroked Maia’s cheek gently, then as Maia turned her head in that direction, the midwife pushed her against my breast. Maia latched on.
I can’t describe to you how I felt, nursing my baby for the first time. Confused, proud, amazed, scared… the cocktail of newly post-partum hormones surfing through my body, the thunderous rhythm of my heartbeat echoing in my ears, and the completely unfamiliar feeling of this amazing, new little creature feeding from me all combined to leave me overwhelmed and humbled. I remember my hair kept falling in my face, and Chris kept pushing it back, watching. He asked, “How can Maia breathe?” because she was so squished against my breast, and the midwife explained that Maia breathed through her nose, then went over the signs to show that we had a good latch.
I have smallish areola, so they don’t show if Maia is latched on properly. As a newborn, her chubby, squished cheeks pressed against my skin. We could see her jaw moving, working as she drank, and hear her swallow.
For twenty or thirty minutes, the midwife sat beside me and watched Maia nurse, talking with me about how I felt and making sure that I recognized a proper latch. When Maia delatched, as she did frequently, I learned how to help her latch on again. When she stopped suckling and looked sleepy, I learned that by stroking under her jaw I can stimulate her to continue. I credit that time with being the main reason our nursing relationship has been so easy and remains strong.
Every time the midwives visited over the next week — they came on day one, two, four, and seven after her birth — we talked about nursing. They made sure we were doing alright, and helped Maia and I take to the side-latch to get more sleep.
Of course, for the first week or so, my nipples hurt. Badly. I’d rub lanolin wax on them and that helped, but it seemed like as soon as I applied it Maia wanted to eat again, so I’d clench my jaw and put her to my breast. I found that I might be in pain for half a minute but after that my body simply acclimated itself to her, accepting that this was its work. At times, I’d intentionally put her on the breast that hurt the most, to remind myself that any amount of pain is bearable for her. Fortunately, I never bled (it would have really disturbed me) nor peeled, just ached and ached.
Although we’ve begun experimenting with solid foods around here, they’re really just for amusement (and all three of us have fun!) Breastfeeding remains the primary way Maia receives nutrition, and I’m aiming for it to be that way for at least a year. I’m planning to let her wean when she’s ready. Even if she’s eating solids by day and only nurses to sleep at night, I’d be fine with that — whatever she wants!
Please share your story about establishing breastfeeding.
6 things I dislike about breastfeeding
Published August 2, 2009 | It’s World Breastfeeding Week! To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
6 things I dislike about breastfeeding
1) I can’t wear whatever I want. I have to wear clothing that’s easy to whip my breast out of. This isn’t usually a problem, but I do have items where it would be either VERY inconvenient or downright impossible to nurse while wearing.
2) My husband can’t do it instead. Wait, isn’t this one of the things I loved yesterday, that breastfeeding is our special time? Well, there’s still something intensely frustrating about my inability to pump milk (I don’t know if it’s a supply issue, a pump issue, or whether I’m just so uptight about it now that I can’t relax enough for my milk to let down). I want to know that when I find work, my daughter is being fed breastmilk. I worry that she’ll be fed formula. I know it won’t kill her, but I want her to be nurtured by MY body.
3) Sometimes I just want my breasts to be mine again. This rarely crosses my mind, but when I feel this way, it’s in the middle of the night and I am just exhausted. Sometimes she won’t side-latch, so I have to sit up and wait for her to finish, which means less sleep for me. Obviously I can deal with that, but I also sometimes think, “My breasts are nothing but an extension of her mouth,” and it frustrates me.
4) The way my breasts feel after an extended nursing session. “Floppy” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I weep for the perky breasts that I didn’t appreciate. WEEP.
5) When I am engorged and she won’t drink, it’s a horrible feeling. I have these rock-hard LUMPS on my chest that are hot and achy. This is when I can grab the pump, but usually I’m so busy being miserable and trying repeatedly to convince Maia to nurse that I forget.
6) Stretch marks. I don’t think I need to say anything else.
I couldn’t come up with any more things I dislike. What about you?
10 things I love about breastfeeding
Published August 1, 2009 | It’s World Breastfeeding Week! Not like, you know, breastfeed the world, but let’s celebrate the beauty of breastfeeding. To celebrate, each day this week I’m going to have a breastfeeding-related post.
10 things I love about breastfeeding
1) I feel empowered knowing that my body provides all the nutrition that our baby needs.
2) It is our special time together.
3) The way she turns her head, mouth wide open, and practically attacks my breast when she’s particularly hungry. It reminds me of how very much she needs me.
4) Being so aware of her: the focus in her eyes as she drinks, the puffs of breath from her nostrils against my skin. I can study the curve of her ear and the fall of her hair. I feel the weight of her in my arms.
5) Watching her try not to smile when I make silly faces at her. There are times she loosens her latch to give me a little giggle, and times when she lets go and just laughs at me.
6) The primal connection to millions of years of mammalian history strikes me as I feed her. There are times I look at her and think, “I am a mommy animal, and you are my baby animal,” and I am filled with pride.
7) It often settles her into sleep and I watch her eyes roll back into her head as they flutter shut, her long lashes coming to rest on her plump little cheeks.
8 ) It often settles me into sleep, particularly in the mornings. I pull her into bed, lay on my side, latch her on, and we fall asleep together as she suckles.
9) It is convenient, cheap, and natural. As long as I’m around, she can be fed.
10) Milk breath. When she has finished eating and is still awake, her breath smells milky and sweet for awhile.
What do you love about breastfeeding?
Disney, daddies, and dumb decisions
Published July 6, 2009 | When I was 17 years old, I ran away from home.
It was the summer before my senior year of high school. I bought a bus ticket to Michigan, where “the man of my dreams” — we’ll call him Leon — lived. We had met online several months earlier, and he had come out to visit me in Connecticut for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We didn’t get to spend New Year’s Eve together; I spent the transition from 1999 to 2000 in my bedroom, grounded and furious. Leon’s the person who bought me the Hot Damn that I got drunk off for my 17th birthday.
What he hadn’t told me, and what I discovered soon after arriving in Michigan, is that he, at 24, lived in his parent’s basement. He also hadn’t told his parents that I was visiting, never mind planning to move in. This was not the first of his deceptions, and certainly not the last.
My dad and I
As I’ve written before, if I have any “relationship” with my father at all, it’s a frail, tempestuous one. And while I take personal responsibility for my actions, I also can’t deny that I — that any person — is shaped by their life experiences, and that includes what he’s done to me. So when I say that I felt adrift, confused, and completely abandoned by him, and when I say that those feelings are part of what contributed to me seeking out some man to love me, some man to fill that void in my heart left by him, I know that I have every right to it. And Leon happened to be the first man that came along.
However, something else contributed to me seeking out a man to save me: Disney. I grew up in the Golden Age of Disney movies, when they were all still musicals featuring beautiful, spirited princesses who somehow nonetheless were incomplete until they found their man. I remember seeing The Little Mermaid in the theatres with my mom, and both of us crying at the end when Ariel gets married, hugs her father, and whispers, “I love you, Daddy“. I remember watching Belle finding true love as she kissed The Beast. I remember Jasmine crying out, “I am not a prize to be won!” and then, dressed in fiery red scraps, being rescued from the evil Jafar by a daring Aladdin.
I grew up — so many women grow up — with the concept that someday my prince will come and rescue me pounded into their heads. This isn’t even a subtle message. It’s the plot line of our youth. I just looked through this list of Disney animated movies and the number of them I loved where that storyline is implemented is staggering. There is no denying that I believed my prince was out there, searching for me as I searched for him.
Again, let me say that I take responsibility for what I did. I’m not writing that I ran away because of my father and Disney, but I am writing that having those two influences in my life has shaped me as a person. The person, the teenager, I was, was not a wise enough girl to look inside herself, find the strength nurtured by all the positive influences on her life, and abandon the idea that she needed to be rescued.
Now, as a mother, clearly I worry about my daughter. I look at her in Chris’ arms and think, “You are the first man she’s in love with. Don’t break her heart.“ I hold her in my own arms, nursing her, our bodies two separate entities now and yet still so completely dependent on each other, and think, “Make your own mistakes. Don’t make mine.“ She will make mistakes. She will have her heart broken. She will break mine. But I can’t stomach the thought of her doing the same things I did. When I imagine her being as weak as I was, nausea rises in my throat. I think of someone treating her the way Leon treated me and a primal, irrational fury consumes me, the need to protect her burning so strongly at the very core of my being that I would face anything, anything, to keep her from that anguish.
So when I saw this feature in JPG Magazine called “Fallen Princesses”, where a photographer took the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood, then looked at them in a modern, post-fairy tale light, it really resonated with me. Now that I’m more than a decade removed from Disney’s target audience, and I’ve come into my own, I look at those images and nod.
Cinderella in a bar, despondent, staring at a shot glass and being eyed askance by a pair of rough-and-tumble men, the type you expect to see hanging out in a place like that during the day.
Snow White, barefoot and surrounded by her own little dwarves, her mask of resignation unable to hide the desperate look in her eyes that cries, “Yes, this is my fairy tale ending — is it yours?”
Belle, lying with eyes closed, hands clasped, on a surgery table, bloody stitches crowning her hairline, a needle penetrating her grotesque lips and a scalpel carving her face.
On and on.
Yet at the end of Disney movies comes a happily ever after, doesn’t it?
When you find your prince, you find meaning in life, don’t you?
It’d be nice if those things were true. They aren’t. I thought they were. I made ignorant decisions and I hurt my family. I did these things because I genuinely believed that love conquers all, that love is easy and, if I just pursued my prince, everything else in my life would fall into place. I don’t want to tell Maia she can’t watch Disney movies. I love the thought of her dressing up as a princess and inventing her own fairy tales.
I just hope she comes to understand that there’s a reason they’re called “fairy tales” sooner than I did.
New Mommy Disease
Published May 5, 2009 | I can’t stand still anymore. I stand and sway my hips from side to side, as if rocking Maia; I did the same in early February, trying to bring on my labour (it didn’t help).
I don’t even think of my breasts as sexual things. They’re purely functional; they feed my daughter, they don’t entertain my husband. I’m not sure he’s too happy with this, but oh well. They have stretch marks, the girls are constantly standing at attention, and the only time I see them anymore is when they’re about to be used for someone’s snack.
I’ve given up on keeping the living room uncluttered. Fuck it, we have a baby, there are going to be burp cloths and toys and discarded pieces of clothing hanging out of the laundry basket sitting in the corner. At least there’s a basket!
I thought that Maia smelled like a muffin yesterday. Turns out, the wrapper from the muffin I ate for lunch (cause I can eat it with one hand!) was on the table behind where we were nursing. But for awhile there, I thought I had the most delicious smelling baby in the entire world.
I’ve sung the Worms song at least seventeen times in the past twenty-four hours, because Maia was so cranky that it seemed terribly apropos:
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
Gonna go eat some wooooooorms!
Big fat juicy worms! Slip-slop slimy worms!
Fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wooooooorms!
First you bite their heads off
Then you suck their guts out
Then you throw the skins away
BIG FAT JUICY worms! SLIP-SLOP SLIMY worms!
Fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wooooooorms!
Seriously? I love that song.
PS: As you can see, I’ve added a few features to the individual posts on the blog (they don’t show on the main page), such as quick links to social bookmarking sites if you’re using them, and a ‘related posts’ list in case you care to explore some archived posts. Hopefully these add value to this site rather than detract — please let me know what you think!
How do you calm your baby?
Published April 25, 2009 | I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with Maia, or if this is just a phase, but lately we’ve been having a bit of a rough time in this household with her. She’s still boycotting naps that last longer than 15 minutes, and at night she sleeps a maximum of three and a half hours before waking up for a feeding. The nighttime thing doesn’t bug me too much, because she’s miraculously staying asleep when I move her from my arms into the bassinet instead of being super-touchy about it all. And the lack of naps, you know, I could deal with it — if she didn’t need to take them. But she does, a fact which she demonstrates with red-rimmed eyes and falling asleep against my shoulder as soon as I pick her up to comfort her.
None of that’s actually the problem, though. The problem is that she has had an upset stomach off and on for about a week. She’ll be fine, happy and playing with us, and then just scrunch up her entire body and start screaming. It seems a lot like gas, only gas medicine doesn’t make it go away. I’ll feel her belly rumbling under my hand if I lay it against her stomach. Her face goes all red and she seems like she’s sobbing (when she’s not screaming). I can tell she’s hungry because she starts sucking at my shoulder or my hand, and when it’s my hand I can feel her tongue working — then she gets pissed off because that’s not what she wants. So I try to feed her, and as I tilt her body down and towards me, her face starts to get all screwy; by the time I put her to my breast, she lets out a wail, scrunches up her body once more, and starts crying. It’s heart-breaking. And, it means we start the entire process of calming her down all over again.
Generally, calming her consists of one or the other of us carrying her around the house, bouncing and “shhhh”ing her. Sometimes she won’t relax with me, so Chris will take her and she will. If carrying her around isn’t working, I’ll lie her down on the couch and try to play with her there. We also try distraction techniques: my mom bought a toy called Freddy the Firefly, and shaking him around will distract her for a few minutes so she relaxes. If that doesn’t work, making lots of noise with the rattle comes next. I’ll get out the playsilk, I’ll call the dogs over, anything at all to calm her down.
Since it’s been nicer outside, I’ve been taking her onto the balcony (and staying well away from the railing!), which seems to relax her a bit. It’s still a liiiiiittle chilly to keep her out there for long though, so back in the house we go.
But of everything we try, there is one thing that is guaranteed to calm her down (and if it doesn’t, well, we know we’re screwed until she just gets over whatever the hell is bothering her): we bring her into the washroom, turn on the sink for some white noise — and the shower if she’s especially fussy — and show her the shower curtain.
I posted this on my Facebook account as the “quintessential mommy pic” — no makeup, hair a mess, spit-up on my shirt, doing something absolutely mind-numbing to keep my baby happy. Then again, as her Babcia (my mother) said, that’s a pretty rockin’ shower curtain when you’re 10 weeks old.
The stuff you don’t think of until it’s in your face
Published April 21, 2009 | Motherhood is so unpredictable, and rewarding, and frustrating. If I could go back to my pregnant self and tell her one thing, it’d be to talk to my husband more about our parenting style. Oh, we talked about it vaguely: “”You’ll help me out, right?” “Of course! I want to be involved in our daughter’s life.” But that doesn’t even brush the surface of the number of parenting decisions we have to make each day.
The biggest one we should have talked about: “cry it out” or not? I say not. I say that an infant has no concept of how to manipulate people; if she’s crying and we pick her up and soothe her, we’re fulfilling her basic, primal need for love and social interaction. Sure, this results in me carrying her around the house a lot, but to me, it’s a hell of a lot better than listening to her cry. I can’t even fathom how I could decide “I’m tired of taking care of my baby” and go put the baby in another room, close the door, and go about my daily life without her. It’s just not who I am. Yes, there have been times when she’s been crying so long and loud that all I want is for her to shut the hell up and go to sleep, but I also feel like, as her mother, it’s my responsibility to at least let her know that she’s being heard, and I’m not going to abandon her just because she’s upset. I know it works for some people, and that’s fine, that’s their thing. I know not everyone can handle listening to a baby cry. I know it can pierce your brain and make you think of doing things that you’d never actually do. And I know that in an apartment, where there’s not a lot of space and you can’t really have a quiet area to “escape” to for a break from the crying, it can be even worse. But this is something we should have talked about and hashed out a lot more, because it’s lead to some resentment on both of our parts.
Another big thing to talk about: co-sleeping. I’m okay with Maia not being in bed with us all night; it wasn’t something that I’d planned on doing anyhow, and when Chris and I discussed how having her in the bed was impacting our sleep (which was already impacted enough with the sheer fact that we have a newborn), I was alright with compromising and putting her in the bassinet for most of the night. I still am. And I still pull her into bed whenever she wakes up for the first time after 5am, so when I wake up for the day, she’s right there. I like to sleep with a comforter on no matter what the temperature is, and I like my comforter all the way up around my neck, so it can be a little scary for me because I worry about accidentally covering her with it. But honestly, waking up and having her right there is so, so perfect. I wonder what we’re going to do when she outgrows the bassinet (and at the rate she’s growing, it’s going to be sooner than expected). I hate the idea of her sleeping in another room. Maybe I’ll live in the nursery until she is sleeping through the night or only waking for one nighttime feeding.
Which leads me to a third thing: nighttime feedings. On weeks when Chris is off work, since we’re all in the same room together, I just feed her while sitting up next to him, but I feel kind of funny if she goes into loud suck mode because it could be disturbing his sleep. There’s been at least one time where he’s gotten up out of bed and went into the nursery to sleep because she was just too damned slurpy. Now, I’ve also pumped a few times and stored some milk in the freezer, but how on earth anyone feeds their baby that way is beyond me. By the time the milk has warmed to the proper temperature (even if it’s just been in the fridge), Maia’s so wound up about the fact that she isn’t being fed that there is no way she’ll take the bottle. I have to put her on my breast, let her calm down, then de-latch her and give her the bottle. And frankly, if she’s already nursing, I don’t really see a reason to de-latch, but then the milk in the bottle is being wasted (everything I’ve read suggests NOT reheating milk more than twice). But when I leave her with family to be watched, I have to leave a bottle; are they supposed to randomly heat it and try to feed her? She feeds on-demand.
Then there are the little decisions: how often to bathe her? who bathes her? how often to change her onesie? should she be wearing long sleeves or short? what about pants? socks? how full do we let the baby laundry get before we do it? do you powder her rump every time you change her or just randomly? should we hold her over our shoulder or in front of our chests? when she falls asleep being carried, do we set her in the swing, on the couch, in the crib, in the bassinet, or just continue to hold her? do we swaddle her? do we put a blanket over her? do we turn on the music on the swing? will she stay calm enough for me to do some dishes if I put her in her bouncy chair? should I turn on the music and lights display on the bouncy chair right away, or save it for when she gets a little fussy in the hopes that it’ll calm her down?
Gahhh. Ten thousand questions, and you can never have one set answer to them, you have to adapt on the spot. It’s exhausting!
Month Two
Published April 13, 2009 | Dear Maia,
Today you turn two months old and, just like last month, I’m stuck between amazement at how time has flown by and disbelief that it’s only been that long. This morning as we laid in bed together, I rested my hand on my stomach and remembered being pregnant, feeling you kicking and pushing — but I couldn’t think of what it was that I did all day without you around. Then I tried to remember life before the pregnancy, and it came to me in bits and pieces: a vacation to Florida, a trip to Connecticut, taking pictures with Daddy in Montreal, or bringing home the puppies. These memories seemed more like remnants of a dream than anything that ever happened to me, as if I only drew breath when you did.
Despite our love for you, there’s no denying that this month has been difficult. You’ve grown more aware and responsive, but at the same time, you’re very demanding. I’m surprised there’s not a path worn in our flooring from how many hours Daddy and I have spent carrying you back and forth around the apartment, shushing you, trying to make you happy. There was one night where you cried for four hours straight — and of course this was quite late, when Daddy had to work the next day. But you know what? As soon as he came out to help us, you fell asleep in his arms.
This month, you two have become something like best friends. We joke that you’re Queen Maia, he’s Prince Daddy, and I’m Mommy the Milkmaid. There have literally been times when you two are together, I’ve walked over to say hello, you’ve taken one look at me, and started to wail. Fortunately, I have a sense of humour about this, or else you might just hurt my feelings. Although that said, he did scare you the other day. He was raising you up in the air, over his head, and you loved this, so he thought that maybe you’d like to be lowered as well; he pretended to drop you from his waist to his knees and you screamed, this frightened, high-pitched, endless wail. You were terrified. We felt horrible, and Daddy cuddled you close until you calmed down.
If there’s only one memory I could hold on to from this month, it would be seeing you smile for the first time. It was 5am and you decided that was a perfectly good time to wake up for awhile, so we went out into the living room together. I laid you down on the couch and played with you — and then, you beamed. Your mouth opened wide, the corners of it curled up, your dimple appeared, and your eyes wrinkled up with joy. Maia, you could wake me up every hour of the night, as long as you smile at me. I went and woke your Daddy up to let him know, but it took another week before you started smiling at him. Now, every morning, you are in a happy mood and you smile at us while “talking”. It makes starting the day so much easier!
For the last few days, you’ve been trying to laugh. This is hilarious, since it means you draw a big breath and then you squeal or yell, very loudly, while smiling. I know that within the next week or two you’ll start giving us those giggles that you so desperately are trying to find, and of course I’m more than willing to help you, and I’ve probably tickled you more in these few days than I have in the rest of your life.
You’re also “standing” a lot. Sometimes when we’re holding you, you stretch out your legs (we refer to this as “Legs of Steel”) and push off us. We’ll swing you backwards and pull you back up, but that’s not always enough, and you want to be held straight up so you can put all your weight on your feet. Then you straighten your back, hold your head up, and talk to us. You’re only eight weeks old, Maia! Stop trying to grow up so fast.
Every day with you is different from the one before. Sometimes you’ll nap all day, sometimes you’ll be awake for ten hours in a row. Sometimes you are incredibly happy, sometimes you cry no matter what we do. Sometimes you’re interested in us, sometimes you want to look at toys instead. We can’t predict you, and as frustrating as it can be to have to think outside of the box, I love that you expand our horizons. People say they start to think differently when they have a child, and I understand that now. It’s not just that I have to think about how to take care of someone else, or how the world will impact you, but I have to find new ways of looking at situations. I have to try and think like a baby, and that’s difficult with twenty-six years of life experience. But it’s amazing.
We are so in love with you, baby girl. Even when you wear us out.
Love,
Mama.
Mah boobies
Published April 3, 2009 | Over the last few days, my boobs have started to feel different. Ever since Maia’s birth, they’ve been… round and firm. And I felt like I’d be either engorged or empty, depending on whether she’d fed.
Now they just feel mushy and heavy. Not very round, more like a teardrop shape. Definitely not very firm. They’re like water balloons that aren’t quite full enough to burst when you throw them at someone.
Oh, and you know how some people have lazy eyes? Well, I have lazy nipples. They like to point in any direction other than straight forward. Unlike any eyeballs I’ve ever met, they also like to squirt milk (my record is four fountains at once!).
Good thing I’m not trying to look pretty for anyone (my poor husband…), or else I might be tempted to go for a push-up underwire bra!
not a joy
Published April 2, 2009 | she’s in hysterics, i’m in tears. i’m out of ideas and running short on patience.
two hours of almost unbroken, gut-deep wailing from her. i don’t even think i can hear in my left ear anymore.
all i can do is hold her and wait it out. it can’t last forever.
but it makes me wonder if there is something medically amiss.