The land of milk and dairy

It has been 8.5 months of pumping for me and now it is coming to a close. There are many reasons for my decision to stop, but here are the main reasons:

• I have hundreds of oz of frozen breast milk stashed in our freezer that will still last for awhile. I'd like to use them to make all those grueling hours of pumping worth it.
  
  
• Emotionally, I just don't need one more thing to deal with each day. (The Chubs is eating round the clock (every 3 hours) because we have to do that or she won't eat enough. That means we have to commit the ultimate sin of waking a sleeping baby each night*. I have a feeling this is a forgivable offense when the alternative is shoving a feeding tube up said babies nose and making sure we don't accidentally insert it into her lungs.) I am exhausted both physically and emotionally. Adding pumping sessions to this already stressful routine is enough to send me to the looney farm. Therefore I am quitting so that The Chubs can enjoy a mother who has the time and energy to give her everything she needs.
  
  
• Less importantly, I have been on a dairy elimination diet for several months now. It has become much easier than it was at first, but I have been terrible at taking calcium supplements and I think my teeth have suffered from the lack of calcium in my diet. Also, I just want to have a big chocolate milkshake, is that so wrong?

In a few weeks my best friend from Texas is coming to visit. My wonderful husband is giving us a weekend away in the mountains at a hotel and spa where I will be baby free and don't have to mull over puke, food refusal, poor napping and tiring nights followed by exhausting days. I want to be completely done pumping by then so I don't even have to deal with that.

And whats one of the best parts about ending this pumping business (other than the fact that I won't have to spend hours sitting in a chair hooked up to my pump horns in a bored and tired daze)? My "girls" will get smaller and hopefully I can start wearing "normal" bras again. I may even be able to get back into my previous bathing suit without looking like a hoochie. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves ...

* The wise people who say these sorts of things, have a baby with absolutely no health problems. Congratulations to them! I bet their babies also poop rainbows and butterflies that smell like strawberry jam.

H/I, how's it going?

The answer? Not good. You may remember my bra shopping experience about a month and a half ago where I found out that I am now an ungodly bra size (thankyouverymuch, medela pump in style). What I didn't mention is that I did end up ordering a bra through the same shop that wasn't completely hideous. When I got it, I was excited. It gave me some good support and was somewhat attractive (surprisingly enough). I repeat, this was about a month and a half ago. My bra? Well, it's falling apart already. The bra we spent half of The Chub's college fund on is already showing signs of wear. Apparently even an H/I cup size can't handle these things. I can almost hear people mumble as they walk by, "Look at the funbags on that hose hound!". I noticed the other day that randomly my bra clips in back would undo, except for one that would hold on by a thread. This happened on a fairly consistent basis and I was starting to feel like a flower child (All I needed was a one way ticket to San Francisco).

I'm pretty annoyed for several reasons. First, the obvious - that I spent a good amount of money on this bra and it's not doing it's job. Second, that if this style doesn't work, I may be forced to buy one of the full coverage nudey bras with embroidered hearts on them. And third, that another expensive bra purchase is eminent, however I probably will only need it for a few more months until I stop pumping. The only thing that can remedy this situation is more cowbell.

The Inconvenience of Natural Disasters

So everyone would probably admit that there aren't any natural disasters that are convenient, but when you have a baby, the inconvenience increases ten fold.

The other day The Chub Muffin and I were hanging out, blowing spit bubbles and waving our arms around (thank goodness there are no hidden cameras in my home. However I suppose if there were, I wouldn't know because they'd be hidden) and I heard our weather radio go off. It said their was a tornado warning in our area and to "take cover immediately". It was about time for the Senorita to go down for her nap so she was already in a fairly foul mood. Immediately I took her down to the basement in her bouncer, but it was cold, so I need to bring in the portable heater.

After that I ran upstairs to get her paci because WOE if we were stuck down there without one of her most precious possessions. Then I grabbed some of her blankets to help keep her warm. Then I realized I should bring some extra milk down in case we were stuck there for awhile. This reminded me I should also grab my pump and pump horns just to cover my bases, in case, you know, we were down there for an indefinite period of time. Then I grabbed her precious haberman bottle since even in the most dire circumstances she wouldn't accept my boob. Then I realized, I needed my cell phone; some sort of communication with the outside world. Then I remembered I should grab my laptop, in case my cell phone couldn't get reception and so I could check on the weather and converse with my husband via google chat. Then I realized I didn't have any diapers, so I ran up and grabbed her diapers, wipes and butt paste. Anyway, you get the idea. By the time I had grabbed all of these items the warning was over and it was "clear" to go back upstairs. Half her nursery was in the basement at this point.

The good news is there wasn't ever a tornado. The natural disaster ended up being me (and the entire basement bedroom).

(Not so) pumped

As I mentioned before, The Chubs spent the first several days of her life doped up on anti-seizure medication. The nurses at the hospital where I delivered were convinced the activity they had witnessed from the Senorita was seizure related and to not risk possible brain damage, which seizures can cause if left untreated, she was given a very high dose of this drug that left her a very very sleepy newborn. Sure, most newborns are very sleepy the first days of their life, but most do not have a tube down their throat to help them breath either.


It was my goal all along to breast feed. I had heard the gospel of breast milk from a breast feeding class I had taken and knew that "breast" was "best" so I was bound and determined to make this work. I had heard the horror stories from other women. How could something so natural be so difficult? I had told many people that I would not give up and make it work. Those women that couldn't get breastfeeding to work were just lazy quitters.

Now that I was faced with an intubated and severely sedated infant, I was starting to see the challenges. Even once she was extubated and had full use of her mouth again, the medication was still so strong that she could barely stay awake to eat. Nothing I did would rouse her from her grogginess. This went on for days and days. Lactation consultants would drop in almost daily and work with me. We did everything but pour ice chips down her diaper to get her to stay interested and alert enough to take a full feeding.

Even worse than getting her to stay awake at the beginning, were the scales they used. Once she was stronger, they started weighing her. Her pre and post weight was supposed to reflect how much she took from me. Many times it would say she took a negative ounce. Did that mean she burned a full ounce off while she was eating? I found this hard to believe as milk dribbled out of her mouth and spit up stained my shirt, but they would continue to keep us at Children's hospital until the numbers reflected that she was eating enough. I felt like a prisoner and I was desperate to get my baby home and start living a normal life away from alarms, IV's and oxygen tanks.

We tried the bottle. The normal flow was too fast for her and she would turn blue because she couldn't take a breath amidst the swallowing and gulping. It seemed as though she did much better at the breast, but it also appeared (at least to the doctors and nurses) that she just wasn't eating enough, or anything for that matter, from the breast. It was time to try something new. I knew that if we could find the right nipple for a bottle we could show them exactly how much she was taking each feeding without messing with the scales, and most of all, we could finally take her home.

With a lot of patience and pacing on our parts, we were able to get her to accept a bottle that was specially designed for small and pre-term babies. Finally she was eating an amount that could easily be measured by the nurses and as long as she kept it up, we could bring her home in a few days. During those days I had one mission; get my child home as soon as possible. This meant I was exclusively bottle feeding The Chubs pumped breast milk. It was working and that was really all that mattered to me at the time.

However, I continued to be pressured by the nurses to "try" breast feeding her. I tried to explain to them how if I breastfed her, the scales would say she wasn't taking enough and it would extend our stay, but they continued to push. At this point my flow had gotten a lot faster with the combination of pumping and previous attempts at breastfeeding with the Senorita and she was now choking on my milk when I tried to feed her. This created a new problem since they do not usually let you go home if your baby "bradys" a certain amount of times a day. (this means their heart rate drops which usually happens if they choke or hold their breath for a certain amount of time). Clearly, things were not going well and it is extremely hard to pace an infant on the breast as opposed to a bottle. Finally I struck a deal with the nurses that I would try breastfeeding 3 times a day and they would not do pre and post weights if I offered the bottle to her after a feeding session to make sure she got enough.

In the end we finally too Senorita Chub Chubs home and in all honesty I felt much more comfortable feeding her with the bottle once we were home. Here was my reasoning:

A) I had witnessed on the monitors what her heart did when it went into bradycardia. I did not feel like I was in control of this when I was breastfeeding her and it scared me to death knowing I didn't even have a monitor to look at when I fed her.

B) Most breastfeeding sessions would end in tears on both of our parts. She would choke, start crying and push away with almost every feeding then proceed to do a mondo spit up all over me because the flow had come too fast.

C) Since she was so small when we left Children's (about 4 1/2 lbs.), it was critical she gained weight. The only way to be sure she was taking enough was to see the measurements in a bottle.

For 6 weeks I diligently continued to try to breast feed at least 2 times a day to see if she would magically take to it so I could stop pumping. For another 6 weeks after that I offered it to her occasionally with a bottle as a back-up. Now in her 13th week I continue to work at it but it seems all too clear that she prefers the bottle at this point.

I have to admit there isn't a lot of support out there for Exclusive Pumpers. Most women either breast feed or formula feed with a bottle. You won't find many that exclusively pump. There are many challenges that go along with my choice. For instance, when we travel in a few weeks, I will need to find a family bathroom at the airport to pump at and won't have any options on the plane. Breast feeding in public is widely accepted where pumping in public definitely is not! When I get The Chubs up for her middle of the night feeding, I have to change, feed her, put her down, pump for 15-20 minutes, clean the equipment and store the milk before I can go back to bed again. And during the day time instead of getting some "me" time as soon as I put her down for a nap, I need to pump, clean and store again.

I'm not trying to play the "woe is me" card, but I do welcome gifts and chocolates to lift my spirits.

But in all seriousness, it was never a choice. Breast milk is the best for The Chubs so that is what she's getting. And until I become a dry well, or the motor on my pump goes out, I will continue to provide her this liquid gold. I may not be pumped about all the hours I've spent chained to these motorized suction cups, but this is my life for the next several months and I've accepted it.

Now for a picture:




JUST KIDDING!