Apparently bananas are tiring

Myths about breastfeeding

I've run across SO many websites dedicated to dispelling the "myths" surrounding breastfeeding, but it seems like so many of them are afraid to say anything unpleasant about breastfeeding for fear it will convince you not to try it.  Now I'm all for breastfeeding, heck it's been really difficult for me and I'm still working to make it better, but I think it's worth sharing that it's not all puppies and rainbows.  I would encourage every mother to breast feed as much as she is able.  There are lots of health benefits involved for all parties, and even if you can't stick with it for one reason or another, every bit that you can do helps both you and your baby.  But if you only hear the good things about breastfeeding, never informing yourself about the ups and downs involved then how can you prepare yourself for what you'll need to do to give breast feeding a concerted effort.  So without further ado here are some myths I see all over the internet that I wish someone had dispelled for me.

Myth: Breast feeding doesn't hurt if you do it right.
Ha!  My nipples have ranged from slightly sore to downright painful for the last two and a half months.  From the week my baby was born I would cringe just to have my towel brush against my nipples when I got out of the shower.  Ever tried to dry your face without your towel touching your nipples?  Maybe if you're more flat chested than me, but I can't seem to manage it.  Now things might be better for you if you're used to having someone suck on your nipples five hours a day, yes that's 10 feedings a day at 15 minutes per breast which is the MINIMUM my lactation consultant recommended to get started, so it just stands to reason that women who haven't breast fed before are going to be sore.  It doesn't help that she sometimes kicks one boob while feeding from the other.

Now there are lots of things that can help, starting with getting your baby to latch properly.  The lanolin cream really does help, and they make these really fantastic gel nipple pads that are cooling and soothing and really fantastic!  The pain gets better with time, well, it comes and goes really.  You'll get a schedule going and be fine for a couple weeks (sore but fine) and then your baby will go through a growth spurt and be ravenously hungry and rub your nipples raw again.  Keep in mind, I haven't had anything like bad nursing problems, no cracked and bleeding nipples like I've read about.  But you'll want to have a few thick bras that  are really protective (and hide the lines from the gel pads mentioned above), and don't be afraid to take a little Ibuprofen now and then.

Myth: The pounds just melt off.
I'm sure they do for some folks, but don't count on it.  I lost weight pretty fast for the first few weeks home from the hospital and then stalled out with about ten pounds to go to my pre-pregnancy weight.  I was talking to a retired GYN nurse who works at my daughter's daycare and she says that's about par for the course.  She said it's because breastfeeding tends to cause fluid retention (makes sense, if you're providing fluid to your baby then your body would want to have plenty of fluid on hand) so most women stall out somewhere around 5-10 lbs above their pre-pregnancy weight.  Of course you can then watch what you eat and probably slowly lose more, but you want to be careful about that when your breastfeeding because you don't want your body to think you're starving.  You also don't want to loose weight to fast because that can release toxins into the breast milk.  Either one can hurt breast milk quality or quantity, so don't plan on slimming down quickly.

Myth: Breastfeeding is free.
Nope, there's still no such thing as a free lunch.  Yes, breastfeeding is more cost effective than formula, but it's still far from free.  Here's a breakdown of what you can expect to spend on breastfeeding:

• Lanolin - I go through a tube every month and a half or so, and the tubes run about $8 at my local Kroger.  It might be more cost effective to buy them online or in larger sizes, but I haven't checked.
• "Soothies" Gel Nipple covers - You may not need them all the time, but they're great help for the worst soreness, and you can put them in the fridge for even more effective soothing.  They run about $10 a pair and I forget where I got this last set.
• Sleep Bras and Nursing Bras - No, they're not the same thing.  You'll want extra protection for your boobs, so even if you don't normally need support while you sleep you'll probably want to get a couple of sleep bras (I got Medela sleep bras, $15-20 on Amazon.com, and wore them 24/7 for my maternity leave).  You'll also want some nursing bras, preferably something without under-wire for the first little while.  I got one actual nursing bra, and then found that my really old stretched out Victoria's Secret bras could be pulled down for nursing pretty conveniently.  Unfortunately, they don't make them like they used to, and you couldn't do this with their memory foam bras, and Victoria's Secret now appears to be addicted to memory foam.  You can get nursing bras that unhook from the top to fold down, or with stretchy bra cups that just pull to the side or down.  I found the second to be more convenient, but they're less supportive than the ones that unhook, so you'll have to figure out what works best for you.
• Vitamin D drops and other baby supplements - Our pediatrician recommended that unless our baby eats 32 oz or more of formula a day we should give her vitamin D drops daily.  My husband's been the one to buy these, so I don't know how much they are, but I'm sure they're not terribly expensive.  I've heard of other folks needing other vitamin and mineral supplements as well, but we've never needed more, possibly because we're feeding both breast milk and formula.
• Bottles - Unless you're never planning on leaving your baby with anyone else, or for that matter never planning to need to feed her in her car seat on the way somewhere, you'll need to get some bottles.  How many will vary according to how long you'll ever be away or how often you want to wash dishes, but my lactation consultant strongly recommended using the wide nipple bottles because they're more like a breast which can reduce nipple confusion.  However I haven't seen any wide neck bottles in consignment like I have standard size bottles, so you may find these to be more expensive than if you were exclusively bottle feeding.
• Breast Pump - Wile I've heard some people have great success with hand expression, the few times I've tried it I got much less than pumping and it took a very long time.  Breast pumps can ranbe from about $50 for the cheapest hand pump I've seen, to around $1000 for a hospital grade pump.  That's to buy.  You can also rent for about $50 a month, and there are accessories to buy to go with that.  I got a decent electric pump for $300 and it works pretty well, though some folks swear the hospital grade pump works better.  I kind-of wish I'd tried it to see if it worked any better, but at this point it seems like a waste.
• Lactation Consultant - I'm sure this is optional for most folks, but I found our lactation consultant extremely helpful and have been very glad to have someone to go to when I have questions.  I'm sure there's a wide range of cost here, but four our board certified (IBCLC) consultant it was a little under $200 for her to come to our house for three hours, and then she was available to help us by phone and email thereafter.
• Lactation support foods, herbal supplements  and medicines - You may not need these at all, and some of the foods probably shouldn't be counted.  After all, you have to eat breakfast anyway, and it doesn't cost any more to eat oatmeal (which supports lactation) than any other breakfast.  Still, there are a few things I got specifically to help with lactation including: hulled barley (for making barley water, $10 for a pound on Amazon.com but much cheaper if you buy in bulk), More Milk or More Milk plus (an herbal supplement to increase breast milk production, about $20 for a 2-3 week supply, more cost effective if you buy in larger amounts), and I also got a prescription galactogogue that was $100 for a three month supply.
• Specialized nursing pillows if you want one - I just used bed pillows, but some folks swear by their Boppys.
• Your time - It takes longer to breast feed than bottle feed, and takes more work from your baby to get the milk out.  The slower flow is actually one of the benefits of breast feeding since it prevents overeating which in turn can reduce spit-up.  It also makes a baby more aware of when she's full.  I mean, it's the difference between scarfing your food and having a leisurely meal, you have more time to detect satiation.  This can lead to better eating habits in your child's life moving forward, but it also takes more time at each feeding.  My baby can take a bottle in 10 minutes or so, but at the breast takes 40 minutes to an hour per feeding.  That's probably on the long end of things, but if you believe your time is worth something then you'll want to tally that cost.  Remember the adage "Time is money."  I also recently read that breast feeding mothers have reduced earnings over the first five years of their child's life than bottle feeding mothers.  It's possible that's because they're more likely to be stay at home moms or work reduced hours, but it's still worth keeping in mind.

Sure, your actual costs may not add up to the projected $600-1800 cost of formula for the first year.  Many of the costs of breastfeeding are optional, and my largest expenditures have been covered by FSA.  Bottle feeding may also have additional costs due to more child illness and doctor visits; here's a study that says that the extra medical costs to never breast fed babies average $331 to 475 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10103324).  But I'm so tired of hearing about this "free" feeding method.  I wanted you to know what to expect.  

I still think breast feeding is totally worth it.  There are lots of good reasons to at least give it a good try.  If nothing else, it can be an amazing mother/baby bonding experience.  But if we can take the rose colored glasses off and prepare ourselves for the reality of breast feeding then we're much more likely to be successful when we hit the bumps in the road.

Now I totally understand...

And I love her more than I ever thought possible.

Pregnancy advice, not like most of you care

So I've been thinking lately about pregnancy and how it's affected my life, the ways I was ready for it, and the ways I really REALLY wasn't.  It's taught me a lot, and while this post may have a limited demographic for an audience I figured I'd share anyway.

Things to do to prepare for pregnancy:
It may seem like the weirdest bit of advice I can give you, but the thing that has helped me the most during this pregnancy is that I already had a body pillow and was used to sleeping on my side.  Oh, I know, all the beauty magazines say to sleep on your back because this prevents wrinkles.  But this goes COMPLETELY out the window in your second trimester, and it's best to be used to sleeping this way ahead of time instead of trying to teach yourself a new way to sleep after you're already feeling like an ungainly hippopotamus.  The more your stomach's in the way, the more difficult it is to be comfortable, and you're going to be TIRED during your pregnancy, so you don't want to waste time trying to find ways to get comfortable.

Actually I had an aunt give me a body pillow for my high school graduation, and I pretty much can't sleep without it at all anymore, even when I'm not pregnant, especially if I'm away from my husband.  If I'm traveling, I do everything I can to fit it into my luggage.  All the pregnancy books say sleeping on your side is better for all sorts of reasons.  Apparently it helps your kidneys to work more efficiently, which is more important when they're working for two.  One book said sleeping on your left side is better than right, but didn't say why.  If I had to guess I would think it's because your stomach is on the left, so this helps to prevent heartburn and such.  I personally tend to alternate sides through the night (heck I have to get up to use the restroom 2-3 times now, might as well switch sides each time).  Hopefully that'll be enough to at least make sure that my wrinkles develop somewhat evenly on both sides.

I haven't gotten to the labor and delivery part yet, though I'll admit the word episiotomy (and the reason some folks say you need one) scares me bat-shit crazy, but I've been told by several practitioners that walking and being in the best possible shape is the best thing you can do to prepare those muscles for what they need to do.  So my second best bit of advice is, get used to a regular exercise regimen ahead of time.  Oh, I'm not saying you have to be a world class swimmer, or climb Mount Everest, but get into the regular habit of doing something physical before you get pregnant.  You're going to be tired during your pregnancy.  You'll sleep a LOT (probably more than you ever dreamed possible) so if you wait until after I promise you'll never get started.  In fact, you'll probably cut back significantly over the course of your pregnancy.  My husband and I worked out regularly with the wii before I was pregnant.  Ok,ok, he was a lot more regular than I was, but I would still join him.  And we took walks around the neighborhood (about a 2 mile trek) pretty often as well.  There's one big hill in our neighborhood that I haven't done since I found out I was pregnant (and I walk a lot slower now than I used to even on the non-hills), like I said you'll cut back, not just because you're tired but as you progress you'll feel less steady on your feet and less comfortable on uneven ground.  But if we weren't in the habit of doing something physical before we would NEVER get around to it now.

I'm sure there's a lot more I should have done to prepare.  If you want to offer me advice on what's helped you the most (or what I should be doing in my third trimester) I'll be glad to take it (with a grain of salt of course) and let you know how it works for me.  If not in this pregnancy, maybe in the next.

Things Pregnancy has taught me:
Just because I was already doing a few things right doesn't mean I had it all together, AT ALL!  This pregnancy has taught me a lot that I think I'll take forward into non-pregnant life.  Not the least is...

How to Eat.
When you have a strange alien being living in your mid-section for any period of time, this does not go unnoticed by your other internal organs.  Your stomach's probably the first to take note.  I happened to have been offered a free consultation with a nutritionist shortly before I found out I was pregnant, so by the time my appointment rolled around I had a whole slew of questions to ask, and was in a good mindset to take her advice to heart!

If you're in the habit of skipping breakfast, skimping on lunch, and eating most of your food at dinner that's gonna have to stop with a quickness!  One thing I found was that if I let my stomach get to empty, I got nauseous.  If I let it get to full, I got nauseous.  If I ate anything to rich (I couldn't eat mac and cheese for the first trimester), I got nauseous!  If I didn't prep my stomach in the morning, I wouldn't get to keep my breakfast!  So I learned to snack on very little bits of food throughout the day.  What will work for you will probably be different from what worked for me, but I went through a LOT of ginger ale before figuring out that if I woke up and immediately ate a little bit of fruit, before showering or dressing or anything, then my stomach would be in much better shape by the time I got around to real breakfast.  Then I continued to eat tiny amounts at really close intervals throughout the day, a few crackers here, some almonds and dried fruit there.  If I brought my lunch I often ate half of it, and then saved the other half for a mid-afternoon snack.  Then I'd come home and have a snack before I even started fixing dinner.  So even thought the nutritionist said to aim for 6 small meals a day, it was often more like 7-8.

This became less necessity after the morning sickness stage (I think I'm down to 4-5 meals a day) but it still doesn't do well to let yourself get to hungry, or to full for that matter.  While I no longer have to completely avoid all-you-can-eat buffets, I still can't take advantage of them like I once could.  Grazing all day helps keep your whole digestive tract moving in the right direction, so having nine months to train myself how to eat will (I think) work well for me moving forward, especially as I try to lose the baby weight.

Learn how NOT to worry.
There's actually a stage in pregnancy, early on, that is characterized by a fear that every little twinge is a sign that something is going wrong.  Coming on the heels of my first failed pregnancy I spent a LOT of sleepless nights wondering if every little twinge was a sign that I was losing this one as well.  After 2 solid weeks of not sleeping through the night a single night, not only was I exhausted but I was a nervous wreck from worrying all the time.  I finally had to accept that even if the sky was falling, there was nothing I could do about.  It was less a matter of fatalism, and more a matter of self preservation.  I mean, pregnancy makes you tired enough on its own!  3-5 hours of being awake and worrying in the middle of the night does not help things at all!

Lastly, Everyone has an opinion, but take it with a grain of salt!
As soon as you start showing people will start coming out of the woodwork to tell you about the best things that you can do for your baby.  You'll get advice on the best morning sickness remedies, the best places to shop for maternity clothes, the best way to coordinate your nursery, and where to get the best deals on diapers.  Learn to smile and nod, because for every bit of good information you get, there will be at least a dozen piles of complete and utter nonsense!  Every pregnancy is different, and you have to do what works best for you!  I tried several "morning sickness remedies" that made me more nauseous than when I started.  The things that worked the best were often the simplest (plain ginger, lemon drops, and fruit) but these may not be the things that work for you.  I've had at least one friend who NOTHING worked for, and she just had to resign herself to three + months of misery with each of her pregnancies.  Compared to her, I was just grateful to have kept almost everything that wasn't fish down!

There is also LOTS of baby stuff out there.  YOU DO NOT NEED ALL THE STUFF!  I had a lady come up to me in the store the other day and tell me about this amazing high chair that she used for her baby from the time he could hold his head up until he was four years old.  I went home and looked it up, and it was over $300.  IKEA has a perfectly good high chair for $19.99, and why do you need to have a baby at the table when he/she can't even sit up yet?  If I want to start training her to sit at the table I'll hold her, or pull the swing up to the table, or put her in the car seat carrier on the table or something.  I DON'T NEED A FREAKIN $300 high chair!  I found out recently that my college roommate who had twin boys NEVER HAD A HIGH CHAIR and her kids are just fine.  They just never really decided they needed one, and her boys are wonderfully well behaved and didn't starve.  I have adopted a new mantra.  If Abraham Lincoln didn't have it when he was a baby, then I probably don't need it either, because he turned out just fine!  Oh, there are exceptions to that.  We thoroughly researched car seats, and got one that was a good balance of safety and usability.  Of course cars weren't invented when Abraham Lincoln was a child, and neither were dishwashers.  But I get all these lists of things that you NEED to have a baby, and I'm telling you my baby doesn't need three types of blankets and a white noise machine.  I swear these lists were written by people in marketing, just to get you to buy more stuff.

For heaven's sake, my baby's due in July, if I get to many snuggley sleep warming outfits for her she'll get heat stroke!  That's not to say that I'm advocating having a bunch of naked babies running around, but keep your focus on the basic necessities: something to eat, a place to sleep, and maybe something to keep warm (if you're not due in July) and feel free to tell everything else (politely) to stuff it!  Oh, and diapers.  I've been told we'll go through an inordinate number of diapers!

Keep in mind, my baby's not born yet.  This is just the philosophy that's helped me not to wig out up to this point.  I'm not there yet, and I'm sure there's a lot that I haven't taken into account, so if you can think of anything else I should be doing, feel free to offer advice.  I'll be glad to take it, with a grain (or 1000) of salt, of course.

My Traveling Red Dress Experience

The history of the dress

I bought this dress a little over seven years ago.  

It’s been worn exactly twice, and languishing in my closet the rest of the time.  It was bought for me to wear as a bridesmaid in a Christmas wedding, the wedding of two of my best friends who soon started trying to have a family.  After a two and a half year struggle with infertility they were finally able to conceive, and now they have two of the most beautiful twin girls I’ve ever seen (saw them just last week).

When my husband and I started our attempts to have a baby they, along with another close friend who has PCOS like me, were my inspiration.  From tests to treatments to disappointments they had been through it all before me, and held my hand (literally and figuratively) through it all.  Then four years in I started with a new group of fertility specialists and FINALLY got pregnant.

It was the last week in January 2011 that I wore this dress for a second time.  I’ve been deeply involved in music from very early on: sang before I could talk, piano lessons from age 3, music major in college, and through it all I’ve had debilitating stage fright.  I try over and over with mixed results to force myself to sing/play/speak in public.  That January, the same week I started new treatments for what was wrong inside me, I decided to work on the outside as well.  America’s Got Tallent auditions came to Atlanta, so inspired by theblogess and her red dress wearing encouragement I went to the auditions, red dress and all.  The good news is, I’m not bad enough to make it on TV.  The bad news is, I’m not good enough to make it on TV either.  But I made it through, and with that boost of confidence I didn’t embarrass myself to badly.

Only two weeks later I found out I was pregnant for the first time.  I was overjoyed, only to have a miscarriage three weeks in.  It was devastating.  I tried to see the good in all this.  I mean, at least this proved that I COULD get pregnant, something I hadn’t managed in four years of trying.  But to have our hopes raised and dashed in such short order, only to be followed by month after month of disappointment seemed more than I could take.  My self-image went to pot!  From January to September I had gained nearly 20 lbs.  Nothing seemed to matter, not how much I ate or exercised, I’m sure all the crazy hormones I was on didn’t help, so we decided to take the rest of the year off to focus on getting healthy and then decide how to face the new year.

In October I started having horrible lower back and stomach pain, similar to monthly cramps, but instead of a day or so and then my period they went on for nearly a week with no sign of change.  I finally realized that they were in the same location as pains I had had during my first pregnancy.  Turns out, I managed to conceive, no timing, no drugs, no idea how this happened after almost five years of trying everything under the sun.  I spent the next two months terrified to eat the wrong thing, exercise to hard, expose myself to any chemicals, anything at all.  I was so terrified of another miscarriage.  Add to that terrified to tell people I was pregnant again only to have it end in disappointment again.

The dress moves on

So when Jenny mentioned having a new red dress photo shoot a few days back, http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-traveling-red-dress-revisited/, I looked at my body and said, no way am I fitting into that dress.  But it got me to wondering, if I can’t wear the dress, who could?  I mean, it’s a beautiful dress, and it’s spent the majority of the last seven years crushed in my closet gathering dust.  So I offered it out.  This was the response I got:

I need this dress. My struggles are with infertility, and weight. I turned 30 back in June, and every day my hopes of becoming a mother just slip further away. My life is consumed by the tremendous booming of my biological clock. We can not get pregnant without IVF, but financially we are fish out of water. Asking us for $15,000.00 is like asking for a million. 

I wake up every single day, chocking back the tears and just feeling damn sorry for myself. I can’t seem to shake it. I don’t want to work, or be social, or even cook a meal for my husband. For the life of me, I’m trying to summon the will to do anything-absolutely anything. I haven’t allowed photos of myself to be taken in over 8 years, because I HATE what I see looking back at me. I’ve completely lost my own worth. And I need to find it again. I have to. I have to wear that dress.

I swear only God could have let this person see my little comment way down on theblogess’s website offering the dress.  To have this dress offer encouragement to someone else going through the same struggles I’ve been through means so much to me.  So as this dress is on its way to its new home in Idaho it goes with all the prayers and blessings and love I can send with it, for the next lady who will wear it, and the next, and the next.

amazing

Well, I was planning a post about how hard it is to find skin care products that can be used during pregnancy in regular stores.  Sure, we all know not to use vitamin A derivatives, and to avoid salicylic acid, and BHAs but when you have a history of miscarriage there's SO much more to avoid!  You don't want to eat basil, sage, or rosemary because they can cause contractions, so do I really want to run the risk of rubbing them into my skin?  I love how folks keep pointing me to the organic lines of skin care products, like there aren't organic forms of vitamin A, and rosemary's a top ingredient in half these products as well.  So I was going to rant about how I can't seem to find anything to use on my skin in Kroger anymore, but then I got distracted.

This morning I had a doctor's appointment, really just a test to see if the baby's nerve development appears normal, or if it looks like he/she could be at risk for Downs.  Not that we would love a baby with Downs any less, I just figure its good to know so that I can prepare the best I can for whatever we can know.  So we started this ultrasound, and I thought things looked kinda twitchy, but then maybe that was the lady moving the want, right?  Nope, we have a very jumpy baby in there, not the most cooperative at holding still for the technician.  I thought about telling him to hold still so she could get her measurements, but then I figured the technician would think I was talking to her, or she would think I was crazy for talking to a baby that doesn't yet have ears.  Anyway, laying there, listening to a heartbeat, watching a twitchy baby who didn't particularly care to be measured, was amazing.



P.S. If you know of any decent grocery store skin care products that are safe let me know.  I don't want to have to order from specialty stores and spend an arm and a leg!

Well, I thought I was taking a break (warning, probably contains over-sharing)

I was just looking through old drafts and realized I never posted one from a month and a half back called "Taking a Break."  You know how they say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans?  Well, I'm thinking the folks that say that know what they're talking about!

After years of trying and months of invasive and painful treatments, we decided back in October to stop trying for a baby.  Well at least through the end of the year.  All the ups and downs were getting to me.  The weight gain, the hormones, sex on demand, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful procedures, knowing that THIS month was FINALLY going to be the month only to have something go wrong and have my hopes crushed, again.  I just couldn't take the stress.

So instead of another round of treatment starting in October I went on a diet and lost 8 lbs.  My husband and I went on a cruise.  I drank all the martinis I wanted.  Sex was spontaneous instead of planned, and I avoided thinking about anything having to do with anybody's reproductive schedule.  When the end of the month rolled around without a sign of my period, well, we all know I'm not likely to ovulate on schedule if at all, so I took a pregnancy test (negative) and started the standard progesterone to reboot the system another month.  But after a week, I realized I was feeling kinda weird.  My back hurt, not all that unusual for me, but my stomach hurt too, and then I realized that I was hurting in the same places that I hurt back in February with the pregnancy that ended in miscarriage, and I began to wonder.  Oh, I didn't feel as bad as I had back then, but then things could be early on.  Some stuff I could account to the progesterone.  My boobs had hurt in other cycles when I hadn't turned out to be pregnant, but my stomach, that was hard to discount.  So when I got home that night I looked, and I had one pregnancy test left.  I told myself I was stupid for wasting it.

I put it off until after dinner.  And then I took it, and watched it.  You know how you're supposed to wait three minutes for the line to develop?  Well I didn't even have to wait 30 seconds.  I was shaking when I showed it to my husband.  My next call was to the doctor's office to confirm.

I spent the next week and a half terrified at every twinge, looking for blood at every trip to the bathroom.  When I had my miscarriage in February I had no idea that there was even a possibility that anything was wrong.  I hadn't worried that anything would happen until it did.  This time I knew just how badly things could go, and it was a rare moment that I wasn't terrified that something was going wrong.  Then this:

In case you're wondering, that's a heartbeat there.  Now, can anyone tell me how to stop being terrified that something will go wrong at any minute?