hydrangea blooms, full, luscious, and decidant
the fantastic new baby smell, sweet, unique, fresh, and full of love
my husband, graciously loyal, loving, supremely supportive and caring – I count myself lucky
fresh, sweet, red, wet watermelon – which is a diretic and how I calmed my body’s swelling post-partum
a quiet afternoon with just the baby and me - to nap, freeze berries, catch up on a bit of laundry, and try out our new Maya Wrap sling
warmer weather that allows a quick pop outside without having to layer up jackets, sweaters, and winter shoes
fresh basil pesto from farmers market herbs – enjoying it on blanched stringbeans, gluten-free pasta and fresh mozzarella cheese
my sweet older children who tolerate mama’s sleepy head, and “please taste it” antics at the meal table
sweet fresh strawberries – that will soon be gone until next year
friends from our mother’s group who have graciously dropped by with dinners for our family at a time when 5 PM is a challenge time
God’s grace that continues to shine down on us as we get to sleep a bit more, heal our body more, peek out of doors a bit, and wonder what is in store next.
Blessings to you this wonderful morning!
Nursing is something I have never loved. I wish that it was. It always felt uncomfortable to me. Stressful really. How much is he getting? Is it enough? Is it the right mix of fore-milk and hind-milk. Am I eating the right things? Are we on time? Does that feeding fit into our hectic pace to get to that event? When is my body, mine, and when is it really his?
I do wish nursing was the blissful, relaxing moment it might have been. Maybe I just wasn’t keen enough to “be in the moment” to enjoy it all.
There are so many experiences that have led me to this place of mixed fillings. But this third try was the eye-opener. Some of the puzzle pieces finally fit together to reveal why nursing is so physically difficult for me.
I wanted to share my story here in the hopes that another mother out there struggling with the same symptoms I had could find some solace, direction, a few answers, and someone who understands. Nursing can be hard. It can be work. And it can be rewarding in the end.
For me, this third time, my milk came in on the third day. We had gotten plenty of help from the lactation consultants in the hospital and I felt I was ready to handle engorgement and milk supply. Little Dylan was nursing beautifully. He did it all: waking up to nurse every two hours, staying awake for 30-40 minute feeds, suckling powerfully, and gaining weight well. But I began to get more and more swollen. And it all was extremely painful.
Within 48 hours, I was so swollen, I couldn’t close my hands, walking was painful, and my breasts were as hard as softballs after our feeding session. The pediatrician instructed us to return to the hospital for phototherapy to manage Little Dylan’s jaundice. Even though getting back to the hospital seemed like a set-back, it turned out to be truly a blessing in disguise.
I was in tears because of the painful swelling. We would nurse, and I would get more swollen. As the hours passed between feedings I’d feel a bit better. My breasts burned, let-down felt like daggers in my chest, and heat and ice compresses did nothing to quell my discomfort. My skin felt like there were spiders crawling on it. My heart felt like it was racing and hot flashes made me sweat. My mind felt sleepy, my throat felt thirsty and all of a sudden, I’d feel ice cold covered in sweat.
My doctor, two different lactation specialists, and many nurses told me they had never heard of anyone experiencing such symptoms while nursing. They advised pumping to alleviate the engorgement, hot and cold compresses to ease the swelling, hot showers to help let-down, and more frequent feedings to empty the milk in my breasts. No one could tell me why nursing made me swollen afterward.
With puffy eyes from tears of pain and frustration, and a body hurting, we checked into the pediatric ward at the hospital. A nurse asked me if I was okay and she turned out to be the angel sent for me.
I told her of my symptoms, about our difficulty breastfeeding, and that no one could tell me how to help myself. She looked at me and said, “I think you have “hyper-let-down. I’ll help you nurse tonight.” I was so surprised. And I felt a flow of relief amidst this supreme gift of grace from God.
When the baby latches on and begins to suck, the nipple simulation sends messages to the brain’s pituitary gland to create oxytocin. Oxytocin pulses to the milk glands in the breasts and lets-down the milk so that it can gently flow out through the nipple. In women with hyper-let-down the message to breast is to let the flood gates open and the deluge of milk in the breast is released with force. The milk can shoot out of the nipple, the flow can cause the baby to choke, gag, and unlatch, and hyper-let-down can feel painful to mom.
Our nurse angel told me to lay down on my back and informed me that I’d be feeding that way for a while. With my baby above my chest, or if we are laying side, beside me, gravity isn’t pulling the milk down out of my breast. The flow is lessened, my pain is lessened, and my baby can feed more comfortably. After that feeding laying down I could open and close my hands easily, my feet were not swollen, and my breast felt relief instead of more engorged. I cannot explain swelling less. Nursing laying down just worked for us.
Through that night of feedings we also surmised I might also be hyper-sensitive to the prolactin hormones in my body. Many times, hyper-let down is coupled with milk over production. I seem to have very sensitive breasts that take every bump in the road, cool draft, and touch of cold water to mean “make more milk.” I know it sounds weird. I don’t understand all the ways the body works but I these are my symptoms. The best it was explained to me was that each time after the baby would empty a breast my body would work over time to make more milk. Hot flashes, cold sweats, racing heart beats, all may have been because of overactive hormones saying, “make more milk!”
Additionally, I fell upon this tid bit during a Google search. Koreans eat a traditional seaweed soup called miyeok guk after giving birth. In fact, this soup is made for the mom on the birthdays of her children for years to come. It is sweet, salty, and soft on the tummy, and I was eating two large bowls of it a day. But seaweeds can be milk production enhancers. I already had a problem with over production. After halting my seaweed soup consumption, some of my oversupply subsided and my breasts became lighter, softer, and less painful.
The real solution for hyper-let-down and overproduction is time, patience and to have faith. In time hormones will transition to post-partum levels, residual bodily swelling will subside, and the baby will feed more regularly and the milk supply will match the need. I am not a person of much patience. But this time I vow to remember daily, or perhaps hourly, that this time nursing Little Dylan is truly precious. I hope I can trust in God, and my baby’s feeding habits, enough to let go a bit, relax, gaze at my little one and enjoy his amazing new presence. In the meantime, we are nursing laying down, reclined, and at home, patiently waiting for the day the rest of the nursing puzzle fits together and we can rejoin regular life together as a happily nursing couple.
I write this today to share with others a sense of hope when nursing seems impossible. Have faith in the Lord. Have faith in your resolve to be the best mother you can be. Be proactive, ask for answers, and search with your heart. I am forever grateful to that nurse who helped me. You too may be surprised who shows up in your hour of need.
Thank you all for your wonderful comments and well wishes. I so appreciate each one of them! More to come about our family fun this summer.
I rarely talk about God on this blog. I feel my relationship with the Lord is very personal to me, and perhaps I am just not that confident about sharing it all as a “new” Catholic. I prefer to influence others, even evangelize, without mentioning His name because Who He Is will always shine through.
I was so unsure through out this pregnancy. I was wanting a third child, but not sure I could follow through physically. I wasn’t sure if this decision was prudent financially. I wasn’t sure about wanting to start a career and how bringing a new life into this world would help or hinder that desire.
What if it all ended in a surgical c-section? What if I had other medical complications along the pregnancy path? What if we lost the pregnancy all together? What if the child was born with some kind of medical challenge? What if I wasn’t able to push him out? The what-if’s haunted me.
It was so very hard to let go and trust in God. The pregnancy was quite a test of faith. And a journey of growing in faith. Each trimester I felt a little more able to make it through. I felt a little more confident in my ability to be a mother to someone new. By the end I felt as if I was heading toward the end of the dock to jump off into God’s embrace with pure faith, but something kept holding me back. Doubt. Fright. Personal insecurity.
In the final weeks of the pregnancy I felt unprivy to the events about to happen. I counted down the days to our due date. Wondering all the while which contraction was going to be “the beginning of the end.” I was afraid of the unknown. Not knowing how labor and delivery was going to follow had me scared and praying for a little more faith in God to hold my hand through it all.
It turned out the wait was more than worth it. All of that waiting to know God’s plan for me, sacrifice, and physical suffering have been returned in ways too great for finite words. Since giving birth, God’s grace has shined down. Angel nurses and doctors have come my way saving my breastfeeding relationship and my body. Support and love from our community and friends has poured forth making me feel unworthy of such love. My own realization about how I can be a better, more supportive, effective parent to my children has come to the surface so clearly. And my feelings of love, respect, and humility toward my husband have been renewed as he has faithfully risen through much fatigue to take care of all four of us.
I am teary eyed as I write this and think of my blessing baby; Dylan. I thought my sacrifice to submit to God’s will and give birth to another child was emense. But the blessings, gifts, and grace I have received these past couple of weeks is overwhelming compared to what now seems to be my small painful suffering. Thank you God. Thank you Virgin Mary. Thank you baby Dylan.
Not a vurtue that I possess in quantity. But my faith that God will make it happen when He decides the time is right, that my body and the baby will be able to pull through, and that my belly isn’t going to burst in the mean-time is what is testing that small amount of patience I do posses.
We are so very near to the end of this pregnancy. A tiny bit bittersweet for me since I believe that this shall be my last. No more feeling those wiggles inside. No more preminent dreams about who this little guy will be. And no more of the yucky stuff, like heart burn, sciatic nerve pain or morning sickness either.
I am ready to hold this little guy in my arms, rather than in my belly. I am more ready than ever for the mental anguish of labor and delivery. I am maybe more ready for the sleepless nights that ensue afterward for weeks on end. I am ready for today being the last day of pre-school, and the summer of open possibilities with three little ones at home. We have big plans. We have big transitions coming. And we have great anticipation.
My absence from this space has been more about technical difficulties with our computer and internet connection. I hope to keep writing here in this space (and maybe update the banner to a vision without snow) in the coming weeks about the ins and outs of our new family member, how the other small tots are getting along, and about our summer season on-goings.
Cheers for now!
Still here, waiting for the baby to make his first appearance. Just a couple of weeks left, if that.
Sleepless nights filled with anticipation, getting-ready contractions, and hot feet for some reason. Days are filled with cooking, baking, and freezing foods for our family. I spend countless minutes with the fridge open, snacking on nuts, fruits, cheeses, and drinking lots of cold water in vain efforts to quench my insatiable appetite. We are wrapping up the final weeks of pre-school and looking forward to a summer of unscheduled possibilities. I am making strawberry jam and freezing blanched spinach just beginning to preserve some of the summer’s bounty for the colder months to come. And wondering all the while how much canning and freezing this mama will be able to manage in the months to come.
I’ve been off, sitting, eating, and waiting without writing in this space because we’ve been having a bit of computer trouble as of late. Hopefully it will be all cleared up by the time we meet our newest arrival and I can share the details here.
Goodness I am so behind when it comes to organizing the kid’s photo albums. Heck, I haven’t even completed my wedding scrapbook. Now with number three on the way, I am in kind of a sleepy panic. (Sleepy because I still haven’t been sleeping well. And a panic because, well, with less than five weeks until we meet this new little one, there is no way that I am going to complete Mini Mister’s latest album. This one for Little Miss took me a year and a half.)
This album, to be published by Blurb.com, is for Little Miss’ first two years of life. There are a little over 900 pictures on 325 pages, with all the little notes I could manage to remember. I know that there were so many other little quotes, cute moments, and wonderful tid bits I forget and would have loved to have document here, but my memory didn’t pull through. Plus, enough is enough right?
Now, on to Mini Mister’s latest album. That would be from his 18 months to his current 4 1/2 years old. YIKES. And Little Miss already has another year of photos to document. AND, there is this new baby whose first months of life is sure to be filled with snap shots.
Isn’t amazing what the digital age has done? I believe my baby photo album contains something like 30 pictures of me before I turned two years old. How is it that I was able to shoot more than 1,000 of each kid? Really, are they that much more photogenic than moi?
Blurb is a book publishing software and service. Their easy-to-use downloadable software helps you lay out your book, what ever kind you choose. Then you upload the book to their site and order it. This 300+ page book in hardback form is currently about $90. This may seem like a lot, BUT, it is actually fairly economical when you consider what it would cost to print out 900 photos. Shutterfly currently charges a discounted 10¢ per print with their annual plan. After spending $90 on prints, and $29.99 for their Annual Plan fee, there is the cost of all those album books as well. I figured I’d just get it all done at once and pay a little less.
Whew. So two years are done. Only two more albums to go.
Today is Little Miss’ final Child Find screening. OT and a hearing screening. Since she was an infant we’ve been in and out of physical therapy. It seems each time we test, qualify and finally start seeing a therapist, her little development skills just skip ahead to “age appropriate.” Then given a few months, we lag, and lag, and lag, and mama starts to get a bit frustrated that we can’t feed our self or get dressed. And then we are back in the same boat.
My mind is mushy this morning from lack of sleep, so I hope that I am able to be the best advocate that I can be, but there is certainly a part of me that thinks that she isn’t going to “qualify” for Child Find county public school services. There are plenty of skills I’d love her to have help attaining, like the small-motor feeding issue and the sensory-perception issues that make participating in a group environment impossible. But I don’t believe that the county’s tests “allow” for these discrepancies even though they do affect her learning in the classroom and ability to cope independently at school.
This is the fourth of five times I need to travel the 40 minutes to their offices. If there is one thing I’ve learned through screenings for both Mini Mister and Little Miss is that even if we don’t “qualify” Child Find isn’t the end of the road. There are many more OT options out there. It is just a matter of finding them. We will see what happens.
100 %. One hundred percent. I hear this a lot. I feel most of our popular American culture feels 100% is all there is. Give it all you’ve got. The best. The top of the pile, and THE goal to strive toward. I’ve realized if you value a life with less stress, 100% really isn’t always the goal.
Sometimes, good enough is the best. Sometimes, partial is the goal. Sometimes, letting go of 100% and perfection is the only way to live. Because if you are caught up in perfection all the time, well, that endless quest just might drive you batty.
I admit I am a recovering perfectionist. And will be recovering probably for my entire life. I don’t know where I got it in my head that perfect is best. But this pregnancy has definitely taught me, knocked me up-side the head actually,with the fact, that good enough, is just that: good enough. It gets the job done. Let go of the rest. Move on. There is so much more to live for, enjoy, to embark upon, and to accomplish. Don’t dwell.
Heavy, sleepy, and a touch achy, I am getting by one day at a time now. Filling out enrollment application forms for Mini Mister to enter Montessori kindergarten in the fall. Gathering the necessary paper work and swallowing hard as I write that enormous tuition check. I make pie dough one day. Meat filling the next, and still the next day assemble it all into lovely, delicious, hand-pies we will enjoy from the freezer after this baby makes his entrance.
I rested on the side of the bed frequently as I changed our bedding to something more becoming of the spring season. No more down comforters with heavy duvets. Light cotton quilts now adorn our beds after a bit of huffing and puffing. I am researching baby slings and how to possibly keep my precious blue hydrangea plant from rot and fungus this summer.
I am trying to keep cool as the temperatures here in northern Virginia rise above 80 degrees with a touch of humidity in the air. And I am wrapping up our pre-school speaker-series for which our family was responsible this year.
We are thinking about all the gift giving in May with graduations, birthdays, mother’s day, and new babies welcomed. And we are trying to spend as much time as possible out of doors before the mosquitoes awaken and the hot humidity takes over.
Lingering a bit among the thoughts of today helps me let go of elusive perfection in the future and to be present in the moment. And perhaps most importantly concentrating on the now helps me to live it with grace.
Only five weeks more. As I become bigger and heavier I am looking forward to the end. Sleep has been elusive. Evenings filled with tossing and turning. Achy hips and hot feet. My appetite seems to be insatiable. I find myself in the fridge all day long, snacking on nuts, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and fruit. And there are so many things to do before this newest addition comes into this world.
Baby blankets to sew. Diapers, diapers, and more diapers to obtain. Sleeping arrangements with mama in the early days. Crib accommodations in hyung’s room, a new diaper changing station, and somewhere to put all those baby clothes. Talking about a new baby my two kids who were babies just yesterday, I swear!
And then there is lots of wondering. When will the little guy make his appearance? Little Miss would have been born this week at 35 weeks old. Will he wait until our due date? How will I know to go to the hospital? Mini Mister was an induction and we went to the hospital for Little Miss before I was in active labor. Will we get to the hospital in time?
What will he be like? Colicky? Happy-go-lucky? Will he travel well? Will he sleep well? How will the kiddos cope? What will we be able to do this summer? Will I be able to put up the fruits and veggies we will want for the winter time when this little one starts eating whole foods? Will we be able to travel to visit relatives? Or will we be perpetually caught up with invasive medical testing, neonatal specialists, procedures and worry?
I try to remember that there are good things about this last pregnancy too. I’ve been praying. I’ve been pondering. I’ve been taking it one heavy breath at a time. I concentrate on the here and now. I focus on the meatballs, casseroles, and soups bound for the freezer to sustain us postpartum. I think about what a blessing it truly is for us to be pregnant, again, and at this age. There are so many couples who aren’t able to conceive. There are so many couples who aren’t able to add a new member to their family because of financial constraints. Each jab in the ribs and breathless trip up a flight of stairs is becoming a little more sweet since I know this last time is a special gift.
P/S
An update: Mini Mister received his shots for kindergarten, three pricks, with no problem. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t cry, he didn’t even complain. He was very proud of himself that he got through it all, but I am wondering a bit if this is at all normal. No reaction to something so ouchy? It seems a bit odd to me. Sensory processing is something we have been monitoring with him for years. Nevertheless, I am feeling pretty lucky that I didn’t have to somehow hold down my 45lb struggling 4 year old at 8 months pregnant. Maybe we should just be thankful.
Butterflies in my tummy is definitely the way to describe it. Today is there is a shot clinic at our pediatrician’s office and hopefully Mini Mister will be getting his pre-kindergarten booster shots. All four of them. Or as many as we can manage today.
I have very mixed personal feelings about immunizations all around. This is such a complex and touchy subject among parents for so many very good reasons. I feel most grumpy about the government telling me what I should and should not put in my child. I feel perfectly capable of making my own informed decisions about our bodies and really resent the intensely profit-driven relationship between our legislators and the drug company lobbyists. This isn’t to say if given the opportunity that I wouldn’t immunize. Maybe it is the inner independent in me that just doesn’t like being told what to do.
I am tremendously grateful that my children haven’t yet had any adverse reactions to these shots. I know that others who haven’t been so lucky.
Nevertheless, our state requires these shots as a prerequisite of kindergarten enrollment. And Mini Mister is due for four pricks.
For years anybody close by wearing a white lab coat induced monumental fits of physical struggling, tears, and screaming. So many invasive medical tests beginning at 4 months of age, and a forced daily medicine regimen, really scared the poor guy. Since his surgery, doctor visits with no pricks, catheters, IVs, or velcro straps, have gradually become less terrifying. I am really worried that the fear of all things medical will return with trauma of four shots.
I am worried about splitting up the shots into two session. Would that simply be dragging out the process? Am I right to separate the shots from his regular check-up appointment? Am I worrying too much about nothing? Will my son who has trouble with sensory processing anyway feel the entire incident is an insignificant drop in the bucket?
Parents you know how it is. You’d like to keep all harm, discomfort, embarrassment, and angst from your child for all time. We do the best that we can. Today, I’ll pray that God will lead me through this trial with a strong spirit and that I’ll be able to reassure Mini Mister that growing up has bumps and crazy turns, but in the end the smooth parts are to be thankful for.
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thank you for stopping by my blog  I am a 35 year old mom to a 4 year old son, a 3 year old daughter, a son born in May, and a wife to my life wonderful. I write in this space when my crafty inspiration strikes or when I get to pondering about how we can live more simply and better connect with the earth around us. We are a family surviving the suburbs, contending with commercialism, and getting to a greener lifestyle. Welcome! ~Abbie a few blogs I like in no particular order Permission © Organizing-Life 2009
All images and designs are property of Organizing-Life. Please do not copy any original designs or photography without written permission. Thank you!
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