Support group, not so supportive

I went to my breastfeeding support group yesterday at my local hospital. When I was on maternity leave I went weekly and now that I’m back at work I go maybe once every 2 months. They have a scale, so I weighed my baby and freaked when I saw he’d lost just under a pound since his 6 mo check up (2 months ago).

I talked to the Lactation Consultant at my group about it and she gave me THE worst advice ever! I explained to her that he’s active, hitting milestones, having wet/poopy diapers, happy, and sleeping throught the night. I asked her if his activity level could have anything to do with it. She told me that 11-12 hrs is too long for him to sleep at night and that I should wake him up in the middle of the night to feed him. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! Who the hell wakes up an 8 month old that’s sleeping peacefully through the night? He’s NOT going to go back to sleep if I do that! He’s not a sleepy newborn and his sleeping isn’t going to mess up our breastfeeding success by interrupting supply and demand. Hell, I think an 8 month old baby SHOULD be sleeping through the night or at least getting close! Most parents are thrilled to have that!!

I even explained to her that it sounds like a long time but he usually doesn’t nap more than 20 minutes during the day. 10-12 hrs a night is the only sleep he really gets in a day and 12 hrs is a good amount of total sleep for an 8 month old. She proceeded to talk down to me and read me the riot act of what solid foods are okay for a baby to have. I already told her I feed him solids and that I offer a variety. She also knows this is my 3rd baby – I know what solid foods are good for an 8 month old. She also knows that Graham and I are slender people and our other baby together was little too. I was fuming by the time I left!

Here’s the story behind my kid and what I think the issue is :

He’s become VERY active. He crawls everywhere (and he is FAST! lol) and he’s even begun pulling up and standing. I would guess some weight loss is a result of his higher activity level. The rest I absolutely will take the blame for – his hunger cues are different than they used to be; he gets a little fussy and then gets distracted by playing. I will make sure to offer him milk more often so his distraction doesn’t make him miss feedings. He also LOVES to feed himself but I don’t think an adequate amount of food is getting in. My solution is to go back to purees to make sure he’s getting enough in and try again with self-feeding later.

These are all things I was waiting for her to discuss with me but instead she gave me what I think is crappy advice.

I want to know if YOU have ever gotten crappy advice from a Lactation Consultant or a Pediatrician? Did you follow your own instincts? Did it work out in the end?

Boobs In The News

A few nights ago  my husband shared this article with me :
http://tinyurl.com/y9zat6e

I know I’m opening a HUGE  can of worms here but I’ll just start the ball rolling with two words : Healthcare bill.  Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves.  Moving on…

Page 1239 of the new healthcare bill President Obama signed states employers will be required to provide “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.” Only companies with less than 50 employees can claim it’s an undue hardship.

Let me start by saying that as a nursing mother this makes me really happy!  I’m not even thinking of myself here because I pump in my car since my job doesn’t offer a pumping facility and I’m okay with that.  I’m just excited that the US may possibly be taking a step back from all the formula pushing and promoting and actually trying to help moms do what nature intended for women to do  – use our bodies to nourish our children. I’ve read a lot of articles recently that discuss the US and it’s promotion of formula in developing countries that don’t even have safe, fresh water to mix it with. That means we’re actually contributing to the increasing health risks in developing countries.

This section of the bill also forces employers to “enable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express the milk”

Quoting from the linked article :

“A 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that while 74 percent of women start breastfeeding, only 33 percent of mothers relied on breastfeeding only at three months. At six months, the numbers go down to 14 percent.”

I had my first child just 2 months shy of turning 19 and I had absolutely no knowledge of the normal course of breastfeeding. My own mother nursed both of her children but we had such a strained relationship that I couldn’t ask her for any guidance and I was too embarrassed to talk to a doctor or lactation consultant about something that was supposed to come natural to me but didn’t.  I hung in there for the 1st week, which is a very important week, but no longer.

When my second child was born my husband helped me prepare for breastfeeding the only way we know how – we bought a lot of stuff!  We got the “non-nipple confusion causing bottles”, the $300 pump, the nipple creams, the nursing bras, nursing pads, books, EVERYTHING related to breastfeeding.  As it would turn out, breastfeeding is just damn hard even when you’re doing everything right.  In retrospect, I really was doing everything right  but at the time I felt like I had to fight my son to get him to latch and that he cried more than a happily satiated baby should.  I basically felt  like a complete failure at nurturing.  I tried to go to a breastfeeding support group at my husband’s suggestion but I was crying so hard in front of a group of strangers that I couldn’t even talk about the problems I was having.  I was too embarrassed to come back.  That breastfeeding experience lasted about 2 months.

For my third attempt at breastfeeding I didn’t invest in anything other than the necessary nursing bra and I literally bought just one.  I didn’t expect to come anywhere near my goal of nursing for the first year and didn’t want to throw anymore money away at the threshold of a Babies R Us.  Miraculously when Maddox was born we were a great nursing team!  He latched on immediately and it was a perfect fit.  No pain, no wrestling with him…no tears from either of us!  It was exhilarating to think that my boobs weren’t broken after all!  However we had a well-meaning pediatrician who was concerned that he was losing weight.  Mind you almost ALL babies lose weight in the first week after birth AND he was a scheduled c-section, which means I was loaded up with fluids before the surgery.  It made sense to me that we would both be puffy with fluid retention and it would go away after delivery.  Apparent the doctor didn’t think so.  This is when I realized that although doctors tell patients that “breast is best” they’re terrified of giving misinformation or being sued so they tell you to supplement with a little formula the moment something seems to be going wayward. Since breast milk production is a supply and demand process, supplementing with formula can be the end of a dream to exclusively breastfeed for the first year of your baby’s life.  The more formula you offer, the less milk you produce. Often feedings replaced by formula start increasing and it becomes easier to just switch to formula completely.

Instead of supplementing, I shed a lot of tears and did a lot of reading and emailing to my sister-in-law (who breastfed both of her kids) and spent an entire weekend laying bed with my new baby doing nothing but nursing.  And guess what?  I was RIGHT!  My baby didn’t need formula, he needed patience and a little bit of time.  He’s now almost 8 months old and still exclusively breastfed!

Breastfeeding is a DAMN hard thing to do! I am so so so very fortunate to have a boss and a team of coworkers who have never once questioned my need to frequently pump.  I have also never been questioned about the length of time it takes.  Without the support of my boss and co-workers I surely would have fallen into the vicious cycle of formula supplementation. So cheers to the 14 percent!  I hope the numbers of breastfeeding moms begin to grow with the help of this new bill!

Things I didn’t realize until I became a parent

Babies cry. A LOT.  They aren’t cute chubby cherubs floating on clouds like those toilet paper ads suggest. They’re needy and whiny and utterly helpless.  It’s your new job as a parent to teach them that the world has enough to offer to make them coo, giggle and laugh.

Kids are disgusting and will happily live in filth unless you stop them.  Repeatedly.  It is completely necessary to tell another human being to change their underwear every single day.

The world as we know it, as we were introduced to it as children ourselves, is constantly changing; Pluto is no longer a planet, children use drawings and grouping instead of long-division in school,  and ”ain’t” IS a word.  It’s in the dictionary (see also, “ya’ll”).

It’s okay to let your feuding kids play video games once in a while so they can virtually kill each other instead of performing the real act.

A small child will without a doubt tell everyone you know exactly what you say about them behind closed doors.  Most likely at a dinner party or similar get together.

When you find the person you want by your side to help you raise your children you can no longer imagine what your life would be like without them.  It’s a partnership that makes you want to have all the answers to life’s biggest questions and gives you the drive to become a better person and parent.

A baby boy can urinate in the bathtub at an alarmingly fast rate.  Luckily your reflexes catch up after the first dousing or two.

Taking a hot shower by yourself  with no noise in the background, without any time constraints or sense of urgency, is a goddamn vacation!

The world is a scary, cruel, and volatile place that can take your children from you at any moment. You must keep them safe yet give them the distance to flourish on their own.

It’s okay to let a child be disappointed.  Coping skills are vital to grown up life and if everyone gets the 1st place trophy no one will learn to try harder until they earn it.

No matter how much your kids fight (even if they’ve drawn blood) they really do love each other.  They can spend five weekdays beating the crap out of each other but one day apart makes them miss their sibling.

“Because I said so” is a perfectly valid way to end any argument. …go ahead and ask me why.

Being in charge of a tiny new person’s life is the single most terrifying, exhilarating, heartbreaking, fulfilling, rewarding and amazing thing you can do.

Tuesday Quotes From Xavier

Things my precocious 4 yr old son says:

While watching me brush my hair

“If you want to be more beautiful you should get Bump It.  It doesn’t clip, it just slides on and it’s SO secure. You can get a second set with high Bump Its and small Bump Its”

Later in the evening

Me: “What can I use Bump It for?”

Xavier: “Oh, well, you can use it to look sassy, flirty or fabulous!”

On the topic of having to wipe his own butt in Kindergarten

“I don’t want to go to Kindergarten anymore”

When I tucked him in at night and told him to turn on his nightlight and climb into bed

“No mom! Tucking me in is not about telling me what to do”

On introducing himself to a new person

“Hmm.  That sounds like a boring name!”

When my husband sarcastically called our daughter a rocket scientist

“It means you’re a dumb crackhead, Maya”

When a motorcycle went zooming past us on the road

“Woah! That guy was going FUCKING FAST!”

As he walks into my bedroom while I’m hanging out in bed with my husband, Graham

Xavier: “Are you, ya know, having sex?”

Graham: “What’s sex?”

Xavier: “I don’t know. I just know on Mamma’s doctor show the girl wants it and the boy won’t give it to her.”

A tiny glimpse of the last week

Uuugh!  Maddox is almost three months old now and seems to be going through a growth spurt, which is my version of hell.  I’ve been waking up every 1.5-2 hrs to nurse him for about three nights now and it is KILLING me.  It’s really tempting to make the switch to formula but part of me knows that he’ d do the same thing on formula that he’s doing on boob milk.  The other kids have been brats the past week or so and a lack of sleep sure doesn’t hep that.  Not much else going on around here.

I did manage to cook a bit this week which is refreshing. It’s hard for me to find a happy medium with keeping the kids happy and myself energetic enough to make a home-cooked meal.  Last night we had steak and poatoes and I made a warm banana rice pudding (yum!) and tonight I made Swedish meatballs in a cream sauce over egg noodles.  Although tonight’s dinner was technically semi-homemade since Schwan’s made the meatballs.  Tummy pleasing all the same : )

Peaceful afternoon

Somehow I actually managed to get Xavier to take a nap today!  I’m not sure how I did (I suspect a small amount of withcraft was involved) but I’m SO glad I did!  I needed rest even more than I needed sleep.  Sometimes my body just craves lying down and being still and just…recharging alone with my thoughts.

While X was napping I had Maya sitting on the couch reading.  It keeps her occupied and quiet and I would really like for her to love it as much as I did as a kid.  I think I spent most of my childhood with my nose buried deep in a book.  I attribute that to my mother who was always reading and was always trying to find books that I would like.

With the older kids occupied I laid down in bed with the baby.  I remember when Maya was born and I would just spend hours staring at her and marveling at this wonderful new life I had created.  With Xavier I didn’t do that nearly as much.  Life seems so busy now that I don’t get to do that as often as I’d like so I devoted my “nap time” to “getting acquainted with my baby time”.  Maddox and I just laid there, tummy to tummy, staring into each others eyes.  He cooed and squirmed like crazy and I just watched him look around and discover his world.  It was pretty much the best way to spend an afternoon!