Thalia's fertility journey

Pob snippets number 7

Scene: I'm in our bed in the early morning, feeding Junior. H is upstairs getting Pob up. I hear loud screams. Then Pob appears in the door of our room:

Pob: I was crying!

Thalia: Yes I heard you. Do you know why you were crying?

Pob: I lost my dummies. My dummies were on the floor and that's the reason I was making lots of noise.

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Scene: H is away so I'm on my own with the two children in the morning. Pob wakes before I've had a chance to go downstairs and get her milk. So I go up to get her, leaving a protesting Junior on our bed, and bring her down to our room to collect Junior, thinking we'd all go downstairs together and I can breastfeed him while she has her milk and breakfast. Then I realise it's only 620 and I cant face making breakfast yet. Pob asks for her milk so I ask her if she'll look after Junior for me while I go and get it for her. I go downstairs and return with the milk. And find her sitting in the middle of the bed, holding Junior's hand.

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Scene: In the car on the way back from Gymboree. I get the usual refrain of "Where's my home gone?" from the back seat. I give the usual response, including "and then we do a twiddle under the bridge." This satisfies her for a bit. After a few minutes I hear a new question from the back seat:

Pob: Where's the [unintelligible] gone?

Thalia: What did you say darling?

Pob: Where's the [unintelligible] gone?

Thalia: I don't know sweetie, can you try to ask mummy again?

Pob: Where's the [unintelligible] gone?

Thalia: I'm really sorry sweetie, I don't know what you're asking. Could you have one more go?

Pob: Where's the TWIDDLE gone Mummy?

Thalia: (laughing) Oh sweetheart there isn't a twiddle, it's just a word to mean we are going to turn left and right a lot when we go under the bridge.

Pob: Oh.

Pob: Where's the bridge gone, Mummy?

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Scene: Boxing day. Pob is opening presents. One of her presents is a toy computer. A nasty tacky thing which she is too young for, but she is so mad keen on our computers that I couldn't resist.

Pob: A muter a muter!

H: Yes darling, your muter. Shall I show you how to use it?

Pob: No Daddy, it's MY muter. Don't touch Daddy, ok? It's mine, don't touch.

High on the list of things I wish I'd known earlier...

I am still pumping. I only pump now after dinner, and for most of the last two months that's meant pumping every hour on the hour for 4 hours, for 15-20 minutes at a time. Its not awful but somewhat limiting and I know H is a bit sick of seeing my boobs get pummelled all evening. By pumping this long each evening I was able to get about 150mls or so (5oz) which saw me through most of the supplementing I was still doing, but meant that I didn't have enough for a full bottle for the feeds I was skipping when I started doing work stuff.

Then one evening over the Christmas break I had a bath before dinner. And I went downstairs and pumped, and the milk came pouring out, close to 150mls just in one 20 minute pump. I thought it was a fluke, and so didn't repeat the experiment. Until one day last week, when I was so cold that H suggested warming up the bean-filled hot bags we have to warm me up. Because I was about to pump I stuck them on my boobs. And the milk came pouring out again.

Since then, I put the hot bags on every time I pump. I'm pumping twice an evening, for 15 minutes each time, and getting between 200 and 250mls between those two sessions. It's a lot less invasive of our evenings, and it's enough to feel like I can give him a good chunk of breastmilk even when I drop more feeds when I go back to work full time at the end of the month. But it's an incredibly frustrating discovery. While it's still true that I don't have an abundant supply, to see this amount of milk coming out makes me wonder what I could have achieved if I'd been using this trick all along.

I had a couple of months where I was pumping after every feed, yet only getting an oz at a time because Junior had got good at hoovering it up, while still taking a reasonable amount in the SNS. If I'd known about the heat trick how much difference might that have made? I could have perhaps avoided the month of needing to use formula in the evenings during his sixth month. And if I'd used hot pads on the boobs while feeding, would that have made a difference?

So, good news, but frustrating news. I offer it here for those who come after.

If you are suffering from low supply, and/or if you are pumping breast milk for whatever reason, try the hot pads. It's not just hearsay, for me it worked wonders.

Not the birthday post I intended

Babies don't care, do they? They don't care if you are vomiting copiously from food poisoning, or knackered because your toddler has molars coming in, or if it's 4am and not a good time for a baby to do a projectile poo that necessitates an entire clothing change. And they certainly are no respecters of Mummy's birthday. Come sun or showers or the two inches of snow we had this morning (yes I know for most of the Northern Americas this is not at all unusual but in the UK it means EVERYTHING STOPS as two of my good friends have described in the last couple of weeks of our 'big freeze') they want to be fed, and entertained. And to sleep occasionally (although not my baby).

I was planning a year in review kind of post but that will have to wait as the last 3 days I have been laid low by a nasty bout of food poisoning so I'm not up to the full introspection required. Luckily it doesn't seem to have affected breast milk supply and indeed I've had some super evening pumping sessions so who knows what my body thought was going on.

So to today. Junior did shoot me a little free pass and slept from his 'dream feed' til 4 am this morning which was nice, and then he just wanted the above mentioned full body clean (not that he wanted it, but it was required), and a quick feed. After that he wanted to hang out and chat but I'm not really up for that at that time of the morning so he went back in his cot and chatted to himself for 30 minutes before eventually crashing out again and sleeping til 730. Not a bad night as our nights go.

Pob arrived in our bedroom at 730, handed me a card and then demanded presents. She was ok that they were for me, but wanted to open them herself. She is delighted with the fresh snow and could hardly wait to put on her snow gear and get out there.

I seem to be better enough to contemplate going out to dinner tonight as planned with H. I don't know where we're going but H says they are definitely open tonight and I'm looking forward to a bit of time together. It's been too long.

It's not a bad day so far.

Since you asked

Both our digital SLR camera and our video camera, and a fancy pants zoom lens that was attached to the former, got stolen at the end of November, so we are missing photos for most of November (stolen with the cameras) and December (while we figured out the insurance and what camera to buy). But here are a couple from a professional photographer who was at a party I took the children to back on 31 October.

  

Junior's first six months, mostly about feeding

Junior is possibly the happiest, smiliest baby you have ever met. That is when he's not whining because he's TIRED because he WON'T SLEEP. But honestly, seriously, everyone who meets him comments on just how adorable he is. And he's a lot less whiny when he's being held or entertained or allowed to be on the boob as much as he likes.

Yes, he likes the boob a lot. To the extent that until about three weeks ago he refused bottles entirely. Luckily a bit of perseverance helped with this, and he will now take a bottle, particularly if the person offering it is not me. He won't take any more than he wants to eat, though. Just a soupcon more, and he starts to chew the nipple and do whatever it takes to get it out of his mouth. Which is not what he does with a real boob. With that he just keeps on sucking and sucking until he is in a full-on slumber.

Once he is asleep I used to be able to gently remove the boob (a delicate manouevre - a little too early and he'd whine and wag his head around, opening and closing his mouth in his sleep like a tiny pterodactyl) and move him to his moses basket for a proper nap - all of 45 minutes or so on average, although a few times before Christmas he did two hours whereupon I thought he was dead. But increasingly now if I move him he wakes up and refuses to go back down again unless the magic boob is produced. And the magic boob is going back to work in about 4 weeks, so things are going to have to change. Which as far as I can see means a repeat of the miserable month I had in October where I stayed in the house for a month trying to get him to go down for naps and stay down. It worked to an extent but not completely, and in the meantime it was bloody miserable (lots of holding him while he screamed blue murder) so its filling me with not much joy to contemplate doing it again. 

But, you say, he loves the boob. What happened with feeding then? Well, what happened with feeding (can't quite believe I've written so little about this since the early trauma days; guess it's been a dry spell for writing in general) is that we managed to get it to work, supplementing at most feeds with a homemade SNS (so so so much better than the soul-destroying Medela one I tried with Pob). By about week 5 of his life I was pumping enough breastmilk not only to deal with the supplementing needs but also to freeze 100mls or so a day. By the end of month 4 I could no longer freeze any, and by the end of month 5 I was out of my freezer stash - not because he was taking so much more in the SNS, in fact he was settling at - and growing like a weed at - an average of 40mls extra per feed, much much less than Pob used to get as supplement. But because I dropped pumps quite rapidly once I started getting only 20-40mls at most post-feed pumps, and so that we could all get out of the house more. I think he got really good at getting everything out of the boob, and I think I stopped being so good at letting down for the pump. I only managed to get as much pumped milk out as I did by pumping all evening once he was in bed. In fact I'm sitting here now with my pumping apparatus strapped to my boobs, waiting to turn the pump on one last time before bed. 

And not only was I able to do almost all of his first 6 months entirely on breastmilk, I also was able to drop the supplementing for some feeds - both those when I had more milk and when we were out, so that it was possible to have a life again. Sure he'd want to feed again a bit sooner than ideal - every 2 hours or so - but it meant we were/are portable and I could take him along to playdates with Pob and just stick him on the boob when he got ratty, which was great. My final triumph of being the breastfeeder I always wanted to be was going up to Northumberland the week after Christmas (as far north as you can get and still be in England rather than Scotland) and being able to walk into the motorway service station and just stick him on the boob without worrying about it. I felt like I was finally doing things 'properly,' finally a member of that club I was so desperate to join. 

We started Junior on solids this last week, and after an indifferent start he has taken so them well, and so far has lapped up apple, pear, butternut squash, carrot, and baby rice.

Just as we get breastfeeding working, I need to cut back so that thing work when I go back to work. I'm not ready to stop so I'm resisting dropping feeds, and it's not as easy to drop feeds as it was with Pob as I'm feeing less to a schedule and more to what works with what we are doing that day. So far, I haven't dropped any, but it's coming and it makes me sad. Such is my ambivalence that I haven't cut back on the domperidone at all, which I could presumably do a bit of without affecting supply much (and I have a huge domperidone stock so if anyone needs it - it is like magic for improving breastmilk production and it's all very safe for breastfeeding - please email me and you can have a full supply of the drug for about 3 months for free (plus postage)). It would be good to cut back on the dom as I reckon it's one of the things keeping my weight up as it keeps me hungry, but this is the last time I will ever breastfeed a baby and I want to make the most of it. I'm wondering to what extent I could keep feeding once I'm back at work. I stopped completely with Pob before going back to work but that was because I wasn't ovulating and we wanted to try to get pregnant again, not an issue this time. 

I am so very torn and conflicted about going back to work. But that's another post.

And the non-feeding aspects of Junior? Well, as outlined above, he is gorgeous. He is very very smiley and interactive. He's been rolling from back to front for about a month, and just started to sit independently. He has learnt to shake his head and thinks it's very funny. He's trying to imitate clapping and waving, but really cant do it at all yet. It's fun to watch his hands start to make the movement, though, and then he just gets stuck and you can practically see the gears turning in his head, trying to figure out what to do next. He loves to have his legs squeezed and any kind of tickling elicits delicious belly laughs.

He is saying 'mamamma' but it's not directed at me, it's more his unhappy, feed-me noise. He loves Pob to distraction and spends most of his time trying to get her attention, or at least admiring her from afar. She is quite interested in him sometimes, but guards her space and her time with each parent, and Granny, quite effectively. He doesn't complain. He has developed an ear-splitting screech for when he thinks he has been ignored too long, though. He loves his bouncer, not so keen on his playmat. He seems keen to get going but is definitely behind where Pob was on the motor skills- she was on her hands and knees, rocking at his point, and he's not able to get up on his knees yet, perhaps because he is so much bigger. He weighs over 20lbs (9.25 kilos) and is in the 91st centile for both height and weight so there's a lot of him. 

I adore him in a way I was not prepared for. It's just as intense as that first-child love, but without some of the anxious energy perhaps. He lights up the room, and even at 3 am I can't bring myself to be frustrated with him for long. My lovely boy.

With apologies, I know this is rambly but I've got terrible writers block and had to get something out there to try to get over it.