Magical Anti-Fungal Breastmilk

No really.

I too have been told the wonders of the human breastmilk. That it'll cure eye infections, skin rashes, stomach upset, maybe even cancer... You name it, some has said breastmilk will cure it.

I listen, and think about it, and I got to the point where I think perhaps a bit too much is being made over the wonders of human breastmilk. It can probably do some of those things, some of the time, depending on the type of infection or cancer it's being asked to fight. I'd love to be proven wrong.

As I've mentioned, I believe in science, and figure I'd wait until I saw some a few peer reviewed papers showing support for these things before I started going off on the other powers of human breastmilk. I haven't gone looking for them, I'm busy. I'm sure some of them are there.

Of course human breastmilk is good for babies and mamas, and useful too. But so much magic and other benefits? I was a little skeptical.

The bottle, insert & sippy top

Well, we feed the little one pumped human breastmilk in a Born Free (tm) nipple topped bottle when she's in daycare, and we feed her filtered tap water in a Born Free (tm) sippy cup topped bottle at daycare and at home. The nipple bottle has been our preferred for probably ten months. The sippy cup bottle is new to the home, probably as of about four months ago.

Both bottle configurations require an insert. It's part of their probably patented bottle design that is supposed to reduce colic or something. All I know is the bottle leaks if you don't put it in there. The insert looks at first glance like it's all one solid state unit. We never bothered to try to clean inside it (though I'm now sure the directions we never read probably say to do so. Sleep deprivation. It does wonders for your literacy).

Didn't occur to us that this is a two piece unit

Until this evening, when I was giving the water sippy bottle a swipe before leaving it out to dry for tomorrow. I noticed some black ooky looking stuff inside the insert. I showed my husband. We decide it's mold. YUCK! Mold in my baby's water bottle. We clean it out.

We remember the milk bottle, which we've also never cleaned and been using much longer. It's clean and shiny like new. No mold.

The cleaned insert in two pieces

It's NEVER BEEN CLEANED. It's just had pumped human breastmilk. Which, to add to all the other magical properties of human breastmilk, is now anti-fungal. Wow. So, I'm sold. Human breastmilk might just cure cancer too for all I know.

PS: The insert that we'd never cleaned doesn't pass liquid through it, it just lets air vent out the side or something.

Breastfeeding Wasn't Painful

Over and over again when I was reading about breastfeeding when I was pregnant, one message was repeated: it shouldn't hurt. If you have sore nipples, you're doing something wrong.

So when breastfeeding didn't hurt, I figured all was well. Baby seemed as happy as any newborn could be expected to be. DH once worried aloud, ironically about half an hour before my mature milk came in and I started leaking all over the place, that she wasn't eating enough. I confidently said she's fine.

I'm still not sure about that now, in retrospect.

The next day, at four days old, we had to take her in to see our pediatrician, because the hospital ped had been worried about her potential exposure to GBS during labour. He wouldn't release her from the hospital unless I promised to bring her to see our ped when she was four days old. Her birth weight was 9 lb 4 oz and at four days, she'd dropped to 7 lb 13 oz.

As Whozat sagely points out, having IV fluids during labour can artificially inflate your baby's birth weight. So I'm not sure if Em really wasn't eating enough and I should be glad that we had to see the doctor so early, or...

If she was fine, just lost a bit more quickly that extra fluid weight, and the subsequent cascade of pumping and feeding her other ways might have caused her to forget how to latch on properly and exacerbate her posterior tongue tie. I'll probably never know.

We fed Em with a bottle, with a spoon, with a cup, with a tube beside our gloved finger. I feed her with a tube beside my nipple, with a tube under the nipple shield. For seven weeks, we kept this up and I kept thinking maybe we were making progress. But feeding her in ways involving my breasts was so cumbersome and time consuming that I was about ready to give up and just pump full time, when we finally went to an ENT and got her tongue tie clipped.

Then, for a couple of days, as she learned to latch onto my breast as a seven week old, I had sore nipples for a few days. Stinging, ouch, this is what they're talking about, dreading nursing a little bit. And then it got better. And now I worry that she'll be one of these babies who wean really early.

Note: Not until months after my baby was born did Annie at PhD in Parenting publish this great post on pain in breastfeeding. Go read it! In case you don't have time, the short story is that some discomfort is normal.

Another note: I was in some pain during the first few days of pumping because I had a really crappy, cheap breast pump. Chapped, cracked, milk blisters, the works. As soon as I rented a good hospital grade pump, all was well.

Breastfeeding and Tongue Tie

In all my recent breastfeeding blogging and tweeting, I realized I never finished documenting our current state of affairs with breastfeeding the Baby Piranha.

At 4 days, my pediatrician was concerned about her weight loss (birth weight was 9 lb 4 oz, 4 days was 7 lb 14 oz) and suggested it was due to her not latching well. She suggested I start pumping and syringe feeding, and that I try using a nipple shield. Done.

In retrospect, I realize that part of the reason for the dramatic weight loss was that I was given IV fluids during labour, and that inflated my weight - I only weighed 3 pounds less the day after I came home from the hospital, than I weighed going it! It can also inflate babies' weight - so her birth weight was probably higher than it would have been naturally, making her normal post-natal weight loss look more dramatic. I've since mentioned this to my ped and she agrees this could have been a factor.

At 11 days, the BP was gaining weight but not latching, so I went to see an IBCLC, who wrote in her notes that the BP has a posterior tongue tie. She encouraged me to continue pumping, offering the breast with and without the shield, trying out finger feeding, and sold us a larger syringe. Done. Nothing was said about tongue tie, it was just written down.

At 3 or 4 weeks, after only getting the BP to eat directly from my breast by manually expressing into her mouth, we returned to the IBCLC to be told to keep up the good work and get some coaching on side lying nursing. Done.

All of this time, my friend whose baby not only was tongue tied but after having the tie clipped, had to have it re-clipped at 4 months because it regrew, was encouraging me to visit her ENT to have the BP's mouth evaluated for tongue tie. I resisted because the IBCLC surely would have told me if that were the cause of our woe.

By 7 weeks, however, I was ready to throw in the towel on breastfeeding directly, and just buy two pumps: one for work, where I would be soon returning, and one for home. My friend made another appeal to call her ENT.

I thought it couldn't hurt and even if he clipped her tongue and it didn't help, the clipping was not supposed to be that traumatic.

I phoned the ENT, said the BP was losing weight (not precisely true, but I didn't have the patience to wait three weeks for an appointment) and was able to come in for an appointment two days later - on my second day back at work.

We drove waaay out into the suburbs where the ENT's office is - he is reputed to be the best ENT for tongue tie in the DC area. He's a nice, short, older man clearly fond of babies. He looked in the BP's mouth and said he thought her tongue tie was the cause of our latch problems and recommended clipping it.

I immediately agreed - it was really what we were there for.

Minutes later, I'm in an examining chair, holding the BP in my lap. A nurse is holding her head and the ENT is opening her mouth. An observer, possibly a student, is watching behind the ENT, and he is explaining to her what he's diagnosed and is about to do.

The BP starts to cry when her mouth is opened up. The ENT makes a quick clip - I can see the motion of his hands when the clip is made. The BP doesn't cry any harder, which makes me think the clipping really didn't hurt much. The ENT pops a bit of gauze in her mouth to absorb the few drops of blood that is coming from under her tongue.

The BP continues to cry for a few minutes. We're shown to a nice waiting area, not the main reception room, where we're encouraged to sit and try to nurse.

I'm told that after the clipping, it's important to try to nurse as much as possible - I'm not sure, but I assume it's either to help heal the wound in a way the tongue can keep moving well, or for the baby to have a good first day on the breast, to really learn to latch well.

She calms down fairly quickly - though I'm sure any caregiver will agree than even a few minutes of crying caused by something YOU CHOSE TO DO TO THEM! is hard to listen to. Those few minutes, I was busy doubting myself and my decision. I was thinking "oh I should have just given in and pumped for her, this wasn't necessary, I'm a horrible person, succumbing to the medical-industrial complex."

While I was busy berating myself, I was dutifully offering my breast to her. Suddenly, I noticed the BP had stopped crying and had latched on. Really latched on, and was sucking and gulping milk.

I'd never heard her gulp before. It was amazing. I got a little verklempt.

Since then, I've really only had to pump while at work and once or twice for car rides. Any time we're together, I can feed her directly from the breast. It is soooo much easier than all the pumping and bottles!

I also realized a day or two later, while watching her stick out her tongue in preparation to latch on, that I'd previously never seen her stick her tongue out of her mouth before. I'd seen her tongue, but it'd never before extended beyond her lips. Now it does!

I also spoke with the supervisor of the IBCLC I had seen twice, and let them know that I felt I should have been referred to an ENT much earlier. Their response was that they hesitate to make that referral other than in the most severe cases, because they don't want new moms to think their baby is deformed. I think that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard, but maybe I'm too much of a pragmatist.

The BP is a few days over 5 months old now, and still latching and eating like there's no tomorrow. She's rather big for her age, but tall as well as chubby. DH and I were big babies too, so it's probably genetic. We were at a party recently where she was about the same size as a 9 month old baby!

She's also tolerating me reintroducing a bit of dairy into my diet. I'm not eating dairy like the old days yet, but a bit of cheesecake here, a bit of pizza there, and we're both happy campers. (When I say tolerating, I mean she is showing no signs of having trouble with the dairy - no screaming when pooping, no green poo, etc...)

So, that's really the full breastfeeding saga thus far. I'm reading Baby Lead Weaning now, and I'm so excited to have found out about it. It seems like a very natural and sensible approach.

Anyone else have thoughts on tongue tie and clipping of tongues?

Photo courtesy of Qole Pejorian on Flickr.

Want to Breastfeed? Don't have Formula in the Home!

As my many posts which include the label breastfeeding attest, I've found breastfeeding to be important, interesting and challenging. I pause from my work three times a day to pump. I wear funny clothes to make breastfeeding and pumping easier. And I think in the end, one thing has been critical to our success:

Not allowing a single packet of formula in our apartment.

There were many dark nights - and days for that matter - when I was so frustrated with trying to pump and feed the baby at the same time, I would have taken any opportunity, any escape, to feed her without all the complication.

I remember she'd wake me, crying in hunger. I'd be so tired from not sleeping enough and the stress of adjusting to having a new baby, I'd feel compelled to try to maximize the accomplishments of my awake time. So in this sleepy haze, over and over again, I made her wait, crying, while I strapped on the pump, before I'd start feeding her. Sometimes I'd feed her a bit before starting to organize the pump stuff, but even then, she'd not be sated and would always be crying again before I finished getting the pump organized.

I was not at my decision making best. For some reason, I often wouldn't even accept the offers of help from DH.

Because I didn't have any viable alternative, we made it work. I pumped, we fed her, we cried. Repeat as needed. Had there been formula in the house, she would have been fed it. I imagine how it would sit in the kitchen, calling to my addled brain, like crack to an addict, offering to solve my problems.

If I had had formula in my house, I would have fed it to my baby, potentially starting a downward spiral of supply problems. I was offered it as I was leaving the hospital. I said no. I'm so glad I did. I'm glad formula exists for those who choose to or must use it. But I'm glad it's not here too.

How did you or do you plan to feed your baby? Got any just in case packets of formula around if you're breastfeeding?

(PS: of course, I don't think formula is like crack. They're both just something that's potentially tempting, one to a stressed out mama, another to an addict.)

Did you bring any food for the baby?

DH, the BP and I went for dim sum a few weeks ago, with a really great coworker, his spouse and a friend of theirs. Much oogling of the cuteness of the BP was done and then the feasting commenced.

After some time and playing with chopsticks, the BP started making her fussy, let's have a snack sounds. I turned her from facing outward to facing inward, dropped the strap on the nursing tank top (which is pretty much all I wear these days) and she latched on.

I guess I said something like "ooh you're hungry!" as she was getting settled, as the coworker asked me if I'd brought any food for her. As his spouse started to giggle, I just looked down at the BP, and grinned and said "yep, two containers!" He didn't quite get it, until looking back as his laughing spouse and back at me... Then I had to start laughing too. We had a nice giggle over that one. He knew I was pumping at work and he said something referencing that he's thought maybe I was pumping all the time.

I guess I'm more discreet than I realized... or even intended! Discretion in nursing isn't really my goal. I try to balance the BP's need for food with the DH's extreme discomfort with me doing any nursing in public (NIP) at all.

What's your funniest NIP story?

What I Hate About Pumping

People keep saying pumping is hard work. I've heard some women decide to wean, partly or completely, their babies from breastfeeding when they go back to work, because they don't know they could pump, or because their bodies don't respond to a pump with a let down / milk ejection, or because their workplace isn't, for any number of reasons, a conducive environment for pumping.

I definitely acknowledge I am coming to this from a place of privilege. Other than my usual white, North American, educated, able bodied, heterosexual, cisgendered, anglo privilege, I should also acknowledge that:

1. I had loads of support in getting started breastfeeding. Sometimes maybe even a touch of peer pressure, but I could have resisted had I needed to, I think.
2. I have an awesome job with a great employer and the most understanding supervisor you could ask for.
3. I have an office with a door. I had to cover over a little clerestory window for privacy (irony of this you'll see later).
4. I live in Washington DC where, if I didn't have my own office, my employer would need to provide me a clean private space in which to pump.

There are probably a half dozen other privileges I forgot about, but that's a good start.

So, as I think I've already covered, getting started breastfeeding was a bit bumpy. I had to pump from day four because the Baby Piranha had a tongue tie, which wasn't correctly identified as the cause of her latch problem until she was seven weeks old, despite several visits to an (expensive) IBCLC.

That, Dear Reader, was seven weeks of almost full time pumping. Almost no nursing in public for me, other than some comfort nursing, which was pretty much non-nutritive.

Then, in the same week, I went back to work and got BP's tongue clipped. And started just pumping while at work.

Up until then, I was using a fancy hospital grade pump which was almost silent and very effective. I hated pumping because I had to do it. I wanted to be breastfeeding without all this plastic in the way. While pumping at home, I pretty much always did the deed on the sofa in our apartment. Usually only the DH and BP were around, other than visiting grandpas. Of course I managed to figure the not latching was my fault, and when we got past that, I was delighted.

For work, I got myself a middle of the road good pump. It talks. It's hilarious. And it speaks both English and Spanish. That is, it makes sounds that almost sound like words. Quite often it sounds like it's saying por ahi, which more or less means over here.

I also bought a little electric single pump, the cheapest, and loudest of the lot. In breastpump noise, you get less if you pay more, it appears. I bought it for home use after returning the really nice hospital grade one. As the BP and I get the supply and demand in better sync, I'm using it less and less.

So three times a day, five-ish days a week, I close my door to my office, pull my gear out of the little fridge I bought to store my stuff in, and strap on the gear, and pump. I can't talk on the phone because it's such a chatty pump. I've read some pumping mamas will stick the noisy end of the pump in a drawer to muffle the noise and talk on the phone while pumping. Unfortunately my office furniture arrangement doesn't allow for that. While pumping, I'm entirely available by instant message, which my coworkers and I use heavily anyway.

A couple of times, people have knocked on the door. I feel like saying "unless the building's burning down, please go away!" but what I've said is "please come back later!"

So, aside from the whole I have to pump because I can't be with my baby full time like I'd like to be, I hate pumping because... I have to close the door to do it! It's such a weird feeling. The only time I ever close my door with my inside my office is to pump, feed the baby if she's visiting, or change my clothes. Oh, of course, also for private meetings that I don't want overheard. But that's pretty infrequent, to be honest.

When I'm closing the door, I feel like I'm doing something naughty or shameful. I wish I didn't feel that way. I'm not sure I want to be pumping in public - it's a visually weird thing and guaranteed to make folks uncomfortable (especially since breastfeeding itself seems to make people so uncomfortable). But it'd be nice if I could maybe get over the naughty feeling myself. I think part of my mind is wondering what my coworkers are thinking about all this closing of my door (we tend to be a very open door office... people keep saying they thought I wasn't in the office when I had my door closed).

I have a cutesy doorknob sign that says something like "Do Not Disturb, Mom Working" and a cartoon picture of a pumping mama talking on the phone. Maybe I should start using it to lighten the goofy feeling I have about it?

I really don't hate pumping. I'm glad I can do it. I'm lucky I can do it. How about you?

What I Love About Pumping

So I've been chewing on a post for far too long (and yes, it is far too long - not as long as the birth story, but long...) about what I hate about pumping. And then it occurred to me that I don't want to come across as complaining about pumping or breastfeeding, because I'm delighted I can do it and that we overcame our hurdles to breastfeed. So, first, what I love about pumping.

1. First and most importantly to me, I'm able to give the Baby Piranha the best food for her, even when I can't be with her, or when she's strapped into a car seat and I can't easily get nipple to mouth. This is such a great privilege of having the money and time and privacy to pump so that I didn't have to wean her from breastmilk when I went back to work after my paid leave from work ended.
2. Because I've been pumping for awhile, a common side effect is that I have a bit of an oversupply. With that oversupply, I'm going to be donating some of my frozen milk to a friend who is trying to keep their multiple set of babies around the same age in milk. That is awesome.
3. I love my cute PumpEase pumping support! I won mine in a contest on The Feminist Breeder's blog when I was pregnant. I had no idea at the time I'd need to be pumping as early as I was (four days post partum!), so had planned to buy mine after the baby was born. I'm so glad I got it early as it's critical to be hands free while pumping, as far as I'm concerned, to make it a little bit less tedious and more productive. *

Some folks I follow on Twitter say things about pumping being hard work, and I'm lucky in that it hasn't been hard for me. My MER just goes hey, pump, baby, whatever, here's some milk. It's not something enjoyable or particularly fun, but I believe it's important for the baby's health, and I'm mostly glad to do it.

What do you love or hate about pumping? Any surprises?

Come back next time when I talk about why I hate pumping!

Oh, and let's not count how many times I used the word awesome in this post. I know, too many. I will find a thesaurus, promise.

* Right so I got the PumpEase pumping supports for free in a contest. There were no strings attached to my winning the contest, I'm just saying they're awesome all on my own. Oh and they're made in Canada which makes them extra awesome as far as I'm concerned.

On Sleeping

As I've mentioned, I take parenting advice with some grains, or bags, of salt. People I talk to seem to be obsessed with sleep.

The first few weeks after Em was born, sleep was precious and infrequent. If she was sleeping, I'd wake up all the time to check that she was ok. And then she woke up needing attention/love/food often. Babies are like that! I don't know how parents who put their babies in another room to sleep manage the anxieties of those first weeks.

But then she adapted to our patterns and started mostly sleeping at night and mostly being awake during the day. I started trusting that she'd live through the night. There was that rough day at seven weeks when my Dads were here, when I'd kept her in the Infantino baby carrier all day, so she'd been asleep all day, and then only slept, and thus I only slept, four hours that night.

We're now in a nice routine where she naps once or twice a day for a few hours at a time and then sleeps from nine or ten in the evening to three or four in the morning for a brief snack, and then back to sleep again for a few more hours, often until seven in the morning. I've actually realized that it's often me (and my milk supply!) waking her up at four - she's no longer that hungry, so I usually pump a little extra for while I'm at work. And then we go back to sleep.

Before baby, I expected my sleep would be interrupted regularly with baby. First with feedings and diaper changes, then nightmares and nighttime illnesses, fevers, vomiting, then as she gets older, just worrying while she's out for an overnight with friends, and then parties and more! Parenting, as far as I'm concerned, is not about getting a good night's sleep.

I thought this was commonly known. I'm surprised by everyone's interest in how the baby is sleeping, if I'm sleeping, and the suggestions and tricks for getting her to sleep more. She's a baby with a teeny tiny tummy! I just don't expect her to sleep through the night for awhile, and even when she starts, I hear it's common to stop and start again.

I suspect that some people's inquiry as to whether or not I'm getting any sleep (and oh! I am, thank you) is more about making conversation, like commenting on the weather or making jokes about working hard vs hardly working. I know before I had a baby, I didn't know what to ask about them.

However, the parents who seem to be sleep obsessed make me wonder if I've just got a weirdly easy baby, which is entirely possible, or if my expectations are just a lot lower. I know the nights to come where she's awake once an hour again will be challenging. But knowing that they are coming makes them easier to deal with.

Do you talk a lot about sleep? What are/were your expectations about parenting and sleep?

Brief Breastfeeding Update

First things first. Thank you all for the awesome comments on my blog, on facebook, twitter and in email. Your support and kind words have been sustaining me through some dark and challenging moments. I'm drafting a post in my head with the title "Thank PTB We Have No Formula in the House." And now:

I think we're getting the hang of this. And now it's time to go back to work (well, next week) and figure out how that's going to work all over again.

But, no, seriously, starting a few days ago, Em started to really nurse using the nipple shield. She'd get a few ounces at a time and I was really pleased.

Somewhere along the line, I noticed that it seemed like she would latch on better to the shield if I laid her down and hovered my breast over her. One day I tried doing that without the shield, after we'd already been nursing a bit with the shield. She latched on! It was wild.

She's still doing that - latching on without the shield after a bit of time with the shield. It's not all the time, and she goes back and forth on whether it's ok with her or if it's going to make her cranky, but it seems to be mostly ok. Funny too that she prefers the right side - I'm going to take her back to my awesome chiropractor in a week and ask her to see if everything is ok in her neck. Apparently it's not just mommies that can have birth injuries!

She also doesn't nurse well at night - we still haven't gotten side lying nursing figured out, and she just doesn't latch as well, nor stay awake very well, so I'm still pumping before bed and when I get up so that we have milk to feed her overnight. I think she's getting better overnight too though.

My dads are here this week and we're having a great time. But it's very busy with sightseeing in addition to the baby care that I'm still just getting used to.

My 5 Biggest Breastfeeding Surprises

As I've previously mentioned, I thought I knew what I was doing going into this breastfeeding thing. However, I feel compelled to mention that I'm typing with one hand as I finger-feed Em with the other hand. Sure, we know just what we're doing!

1. Well, the troubles we've had latching at all definitely surprised me. I figured we'd not latch correctly and maybe I'd be in some pain. I never thought I'd just straight up be starving her! That made me, and continues to make me, feel pretty much like a failure at breastfeeding. We continue to work on it and we're going back to see the lactation consultant later this week. She's now passed her birth weight without a drop of formula and that's A Good Thing, at any rate.
2. Physically, the effects of breastfeeding have been normal but their effects on me were still a surprise: it's really thirsty work! I always drink a lot of water, but lately it's been an unbelievable amount of water. I'm going to need the change the filter on our water pitcher sooner than normal. Also, I've read a lot of conflicting info on whether or not breastfeeding helps lose pregnancy weight - the latest word seems to be that for some it does, some it doesn't. I pessimistically expected to be one of the doesn't - but either I was going to lose the weight easily on my own, or it really helps. Em's only be out almost four weeks and I'm already in the middle of my normal pre-pregnancy weight range. I stil have muscle to regain and fat to lose, but I'm well on my way.
3. Also not the biggest surprise yet, but I'm shocked at how much money I'm spending on breastfeeding. I'm sure it's still cheaper than formula, but I'm not going to sit down and sum it up, just in case it's not. The lactation consultant, the pump, the not-optional pump accessories, the scale, the bras, the nipple shield, the storage bags and bottles, etc... I hadn't expected to lay out so much dough to keep her in my own milk.
4. If someone has asked me before giving birth how much ego I have wrapped up in breastfeeding, or how disappointed I'd be if I were unable to breastfeed directly, only by pumping, I think I would have said very little. I remember telling my doula that I would give it my best shot but I wasn't going to beat myself up over any failure. Ha. Little did I know... My own emotional reaction to having to pump almost exclusively to feed Em has been a huge surprise for me. Most of the time, I feel sad but ok about it. Sometimes in the middle of the night, as I'm literally pumping and feeding her with a syringe at the same time, I feel like a huge failure and extremely frustrated at the intervention between her and I. However, I feel like we are going to make it past this. Whozat's breastfeeding story sustains me too - if they can overcome what they were faced with, I can get this little girl on my breast.
5. The biggest surprise about breastfeeding so far is this: sudenly I want to, and do, sleep in my bra. I've always hated wearing bras, and when a friend said I shoud be sleeping in one during pregnancy, I laughed to myself at the idea. I think I've never found a bra that fits well and because of that, when I am wearing one, I am aching to rip it off as soon as I get home. I used to be able to go without a bra on weekends and whatnot, but not anymore! My breasts are so sensitive and leaky now that going without isn't an option. Even so, sleeping in a (soft, no underwire) bra is quite weird for me - I never thought I'd see the day where I'd willingly (and soberly) wear a bra to sleep.

What surprised you most about breastfeeding? Were your expectations wildly off base?

The Dreaded Plugged Duct

As my faithful readers know, I did a lot of reading on breastfeeding while pregnant. I feel it's something important for both my baby's and my own health. So honestly, the latching problem Em and I are (still) having took me by surprise. I had been feeling discouraged - it seemed silly for me to be so often literally pumping and feeding her from a tube at the same time.

Last Wednesday night, DH had been feeding her or playing with her in the living room as I was getting ready for bed. For some reason, out of the blue, he brought her to me in bed and asked me to try a different position to get her to latch (I say for some reason but I think it's because as much as he enjoys feeding Em, he has seen how discouraged I have been by the problem we've been having, and he wants to help fix it). It was a goofy one, not one of the Four Positions From Which One Breastfeeds, and she didn't latch. But I sat up and tried the cradle hold, and for the first time in ages, she really latched on and sucked for awhile without the nipple shield - a few minutes at any rate.

I only mention this in my post on my plugged duct, because this brief bit of success made what happened the next day - well, I went through a bunch of words, tolerable, less discouraging, a few others - and really, the pain wasn't tolerable, I was still very discouraged - at any rate, I think the success, small as it was, sustained me.

Thursday morning around 3 am, I was having a dream where I was a passenger in a small car being driven by someone else - I can't remember who it was. Em was in the back seat and it had snowed heavily. We were leaving someone's house and the driver backed out of a parking spot onto a very steep and snow covered driveway. They braked hard and we skidded, though the driver more or less maintained control of the car. I clutched my chest, at first in fear of an accident - I remember the driver making fun of me for doing so - but then I realized I was having intense pain in my breasts. I started to explain this to the driver, and then I woke up, and realized the pain was real.

I got up and started pumping. My right breast quickly deflated and started feeling normal again. My left breast, however, continued to ache and when I massaged it a bit, I noticed I had dense area in the top half which was warmer than normal, very painful and swollen. I thought oh, I've read about this! It's a plugged duct.

I searched the Interwebs for confirmation and found great information on the Kellymom web site. Sure enough, that's what it sounded like I had going on. I chose to treat it with:

• rest
• ibuprofen
• massage (ouch! can we get a bugger that hurts!)
• warm compress
• frequent draining of the breasts through nursing and pumping
• more rest

Really. I don't think I've ever napped so much in my life. It was awesome, actually.

I called the lactation consultant I'd been helped by before to confirm my self diagnosis and she agreed with me. She also suggested cold compresses after nursing/pumping to both help reduce the pain and the flow of fluids to the area, which I inferred then might loosen the plug. I didn't do that, but it sounded like a good idea.

By 3 pm Thursday, the lump was smaller and less painful. By 7 pm, the lump was gone and the left breast was still sensitive but not achingly don't even think about touching me painful. I'm surprised at how quickly it went away, since the pain was so intense - I was expecting it to drag on for some reason.

Because I'm mostly pumping, I can get pretty quantitative about how much milk each breast is producing. My left breast was producing much less than my right breast before the plugged duct, and continues to be the slacker boob now. Hoping it picks up...

I've read that some women take a plugged duct as a sign that they're over-extended and they need to rest or cut back on what they're doing. I'm a little worried about what that means for me when I go back to work, but I hope I can find a balance that will work for Em, me and our ducts...

My Breastfeeding Story, or What I Did for World Breastfeeding Awareness Month

This post took a few days to write. I keep starting and then feel I need to check Em to see how she's doing. She's always fine. Sometimes she needs something: food, fresh diaper, a bath, some snuggles. Sometimes she is just fussy and the only thing she wants is to be hooked up with me for a bit, in my arms, snoozing at my breast. It's a magical power I have, to put her to sleep and get her so relaxed just by picking her up.

It's not perfect yet and breastfeeding has been challenging for us both since we started, a little over two weeks ago. She was born after a forty-eight hour labour, which by the end included most of the interventions I hadn't wanted, including artificial membrane rupture, Pitocin and an epidural. Most importantly, we didn't have a c-section and she is in very good health. She got APGAR scores of 8 and 9 as well. Little Em rocks my world!

Right after I gave birth to her, I put her near or on my breast (can't quite remember if she got to the nipple on her own or not, birth story yet to come) and she did suckle a little bit. I didn't think the latch was particularly good but she did hook on, and the fabulous lactation consultant I've been seeing assures me that's what is important, that early imprint of suckling, more than any particular latch.

We were kept in hospital for another almost forty-eight hours as the pediatrician wanted Em observed for possible problems related to the long labour and me testing Group B Strep positive. We chilled, got to know each other, used the free wifi (where they block Flickr as an adult site - glad to have access to a VPN to dodge things like that), and it seemed like we were breastfeeding. I saw on our release paperwork that her weight had dropped since birth: she was born at 9 lbs 4 oz, but it didn't worry me as I've read over and over that it's normal to lose some weight right after birth.

She was born on a Thursday and the hospital ped wanted me to see our own ped first thing Monday due to the GBS infection. We took her home Saturday, and chilled as much as we could. I felt like she was getting enough food as she was having regular bowel movements and she would nurse a bit and fall asleep and seemed happy. She was also wetting lots of diapers, so that seemed like a good sign. We were having a great time. Then she had her last BM Sunday afternoon and didn't have another until Tuesday morning...

Needless to say, we got ourselves in to see the ped Monday morning bright and early when I realized she'd not had any BMs for so long. Her weight had fallen below 8 pounds - remember she had been born over 9 pounds only four days earlier!

The ped diagnosed not enough food and a bit of jaundice - and thankfully gave me some constructive advice on breastfeeding rather than suggesting I should start giving her formula. Yay! What the ped suggested was begin pumping to feed her using a syringe or spoon or cup, try using a nipple shield to give her a bigger, easier surface onto which to latch, and also suggested a few ways to improve our latching, with different ways to hold my breast for her and whatnot. They also had to draw more blood to check for the GBS infection - this came back negative very quickly thankfully.

We were asked to feed her as much as possible and bring her back Wednesday. This was the 48 hours where I used the nasty cheap breast pump whose brand I won't mention. Let's just say you get what you pay for! I shredded my nipples using that pump - thank goodness I had the samples of Lansinoh products, about which I'll be writing a review for the Breastfeeding Moms Unite site shortly. Their lanolin nipple cream saved the day.

I then visited our friendly neighbourhood Breastfeeding Center to rent a real breast pump and wow - what a difference that makes! (Note: I recognize there are some serious concerns about Medela and unfortunately I'd already invested quite a bit in their equipment by the time I found out about them. Glad to know the limits of what I've purchased though)

Once I got a decent breast pump, it became easier - that is, less painful - to get food out of me, into Em. She started gaining enough weight to make the ped and thus me happy, but she still wasn't latching well. I've started pumping to reduce engorgement, feeding her something to make her less frantic for food, and then getting her to nurse a bit using the nipple shield. If she stays awake and is in a calm mood, I'll take the shield off and try to get her latched on again. Sometimes that works, sometimes she howls at me.

After a week of pumping and having little success feeding her directly, I returned to the Breastfeeding Center for a one on one consultation with one of the IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultants). She was very helpful and encouraging, but I left feeling a bit overwhelmed with many different suggestions - I was worried my fuzzy mommy brain wouldn't be able to remember them all. Fortunately, she is available for follow up questions by phone!

Em and I are progressing - she has a good suck reflex and I have a good supply of milk. I hope we can get feeding more directly happening sooner or later. In the meantime, I am spending some quality time with the pump, and DH gets to feed her too!

So, for World Breastfeeding Awareness Month, I started, and continued, breastfeeding. And so it goes... Hoping it gets easier, as that's what everyone promises me.