Thalia's fertility journey

This time two years ago

This time two years ago it was sultry. Boiling hot. I couldn't stop sweating.

This time two years ago I had agonising haemorrhoids and was experimenting with condoms filled with water and then frozen to see if they relieved the pain. They didn't.

This time two years ago my bag was packed. It contained, among other things, domperidone, fennel tea and fenugreek capsules. And a pumping bra. I wasn't taking any chances.

This time two years ago we had put the crib together and it stood at the foot of the bed, made up with the blue liner and the new white (organic) cotton sheets.

This time two years ago I poked my stomach every few minutes just to make sure he was ok in there.

This time two years ago I had sung Pob to sleep with her favouite song - the Pob song. I was very nervous about how the next few days would make her feel.

This time new years ago we were excited, and hopeful, and nervous.

This time two years ago we were just 10 hours away from meeting Junior.

 

 

 

Losses big and small

Tomorrow I leave on my first business trip in about 9 months. Junior is 7 months old. I am still breastfeeding first thing in the morning, after his lunchtime nap, at bedtime, and through the night (more on that another time). I plan to give up the afternoon feed this week given that from the week after next I'll be back at work full time.

Dropping feeds has been hard, my boobs have felt pretty buzzy and I've had several leaks. While this makes me feel happy about my breastfeeding success, it is hard to be experiencing it just when I have to give up. I don't want to give up, but continuing to feed just isn't compatible with my work life. I am away tomorrow night and won't be home until after bedtime on Tuesday. I am supposed to be away again on Thursday night. And in mid-March I will be away for a full week - leaving Sunday, coming back Saturday morning (going to Toronto, anyone want to meet up? Aurelia?). While I can pump through a 36-hour absence, I'm not sure I can do so through a week - won't he simply forget how to feed in that time?

I am not ready to stop breastfeeding, and I really wish I wasn't going back to work so that I could keep going that bit longer. When he settles in for a feed, particularly the afternoon one where he's a little bit sleepy from his nap, I feel like I can really do this magical, but utterly basic, thing I've always dreamed of.

That March trip is just over 4 weeks away, so I'm not deciding today what to do then. What I do have to do is deal with my sadness at leaving him at all. Although I've left him for an evening, I haven't left for longer than a few hours, and it feels very sad that for two nights in a row he won't have me there at bedtime. Or that I won't have him. Or both. There all the niggly issues associated with being away. I had to buy a portable pump and it turns out Medela has changed its attachments for this new pump so my existing kit doesn't fit it. I need to dig around to find my passport, my adaptors, portable hair dryer, etc.. I don't know if I'll be able to get the hotel to freeze my icepacks, or if Zurich airport will let me transport the milk I pump. It's all irritating, all that little bit stressful. Not to mention that I actually have to turn my brain on to a different channel and start to engage with my colleague again. We will see how I cope. But mostly I'm not stressed about all of that, I'm just sad about leaving my baby for the first, and very definitely not the last time.

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.

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.

Losing it

There are several posts which traditionally show up in the few months after a baby is born. That is if you are a common-or-garden blogger like me, rather than if you are a superstar creative writer like, say, Julie, or Alexa. And even they have been known to write one or two of these. Some experiences are . To my reckoning, those posts are:

• I have a baby, he/she is the best thing that ever happened to me
• The baby doesn't sleep, what do I do?
• Breastfeeding is awful/wonderful/stressful/impossible (delete as appropriate)
• I'm so utterly sleep deprived I just [insert humorous anecdote here]
• My husband isn't helping/is wonderful/doesn't get it/I've fallen more in love with him than ever
• I'm still fat/the weight has just dropped off aren't I lucky

This post falls into the last category, and guess which side of it I am experiencing. Not hard, is it? I have quite a history with weight issues. Not exactly a shocker given the experience of others in this community, not to mention the global privileged world female population.

I'm currently carrying the 15lbs of infertility weight, and another 10lbs of post-pregnancy weight. I was actually losing weight beautifully in the few weeks after Junior was born. It was like magic, stepping on the scales every morning and watching them plummet down. I don't know how much I lost in those weeks as didn't weigh myself after the third month of pregnancy, but everyone commented on how little weight I'd gained this time and when I first weighed myself post-birth, when Junior was about 2 weeks old, I felt pretty optimistic given I was already below the weight I had been four months after Pob was born. But then the weight loss stopped. And then I started gaining again. I managed to halt the gain at only 4lbs by stopping buying my favourite chocolate biscuits, and by walking more with the pram. But that just halted the gain, it hasn't helped me lose more. And the walking with the pram has fallen foul of napping bootcamp (of which more anon), which doesn't help.

The perennial problems are two. First, that I really like food, and second that I eat for comfort. The one time in my adult life that I have been in great shape was around our wedding, and then the impetus to look my best in that huge public display outweighed the two underlying issues. Although I never really gave up on the first one, I always ate delicious food, just less of it and didn't give up chocolate, I just cut back. And exercised A LOT.

But right now the emotional eating side is strong. I've been stuck mostly in the house for four weeks trying to get Junior to nap. I suppose I should just declare defeat (although there has been some progress) and get out again. But I'm bloody minded enough to sense that things might get better and therefore to keep going. And my approach to breast feeding takes so long that the time I have to exercise at all is limited in any case (cue the bloody minded riff again). And the slots that I do have are taken up spending time with Pob, which doesn't give me much exercise as even her favourite activity - running - doesn't happen for long enough or fast enough for me to get a lot of cardio out of it.

So I'm not really exercising, and I feel hard done by enough that I'm eating more than I probably need. Not excessively, but enough not to shift the weight. And I'm getting fed up with not fitting into my nice clothes, but not fed up enough to stop myself from eating that extra bit of chocolate. I'm not sure I'm up for another search into my unconscious to work on the emotional eating bit - although perhaps it would help Pob a lot in the long run - but I am up for trying to find time to exercise, persuading H to give me smaller portions at supper, and perhaps limiting the amount of chocolate in the house. I just need to get on and do it. 

Last week I went out with some of the women from my ante-natal group (from my pregnancy with Pob, I didn't do classes again this time). One already has a second child, one is pregnant, the other two are trying. I confessed to them it was the first time I'd been out since Junior was born, and they were horrified. Particularly the one who already has two children- the second being born just a year after her first. She is somewhat of a socialite and has a very active social life and regular date nights with her husband. She was moved to write me an email asking if I thought I had PND since she was shocked at my lack of activity and lack of confidence ( I should note all these women are at least 6 years younger than me and all but one shed all their baby weight in about a month after their first children were born*). 

I don't think I have PND, I'm certainly a lot more stable than I was after Pob was born. But I am hard on myself. And I am very tired after all these months of feeding in the night. But that's normal at this stage of parenting, yes? I could definitely get out more if I made different choices about my parenting, and it's true that the morning I took Pob out to a charity party and left Junior to have a bottle with our nanny was the morning I've felt the best in a long time. So perhaps that's the key.

Hence a resolution. I'm taking Junior to a cranial osteopath tomorrow to see if that helps to settle him a bit better. Either way, by the end of this week I will be heading out for a fast walk with the pram once a day. And I will try to take a deep breath and start to leave Junior a bit so that I can do more activity and am not tied to being in the house every three hours during the day (yes I know one can breastfeed outside the house, but it's hard with my SNS set up to do so effectively and discretely, and Junior has got to that stage where he's very interested in the world around him so he feeds poorly anywhere other than my bedroom, and also I want to keep my supply up as it's very fragile at the best of times so I do need to pump regularly, and...). Doing so might mean Junior has to have a bit of formula occasionally, and I'm thinking about that. Not ok with it just yet, but I think I need a bit of my life back, as well as doing a bit more to get my body back, before I go back to work and surrender a big part of my life again. 

Cue a whole new post about mothers and guilt and whether it's just my job to sacrifice what I need for my children right now. But I'll stop here and start that one another day.

* And please don't slam them. They are lovely women who love me a lot and appreciate me, they just happen to be rather lucky in the fertility and beauty stakes. Although 'lucky' is a bit relative as one has had two miscarriages and one had horrible anaemia and couldn't breastfeed and one had premature labour and pre-eclampsia.

The end of the fertility journey

I will never be pregnant again.

Really. We have decided that we don't want any more children. The newborn stage with Junior has persuaded me that no matter how much I love my children, I don't need to be that sleep deprived again. Nor do I really want that emotional struggle with breast feeding again. If we'd started earlier, if I had that much more energy, if we even had the option of conceiving easily, when we wanted to, then it would be on the cards. But two children is perfect for us, and I can't help thinking that having three would start to get very complicated in the parenting stakes - speaking as one of three children.

Just because we don't want them, doesn't mean we wouldn't have a surprise. It's very unlikely, but it has happened to others in our community. Well, we are taking steps to remove that option. H has had the preliminary consult for a vasectomy, and has said he will make the appointment before the end of the week. He said, very forcefully, when I pushed him on whether he was happy with permanently ending his fertility, that even if he ended up in another relationship because I had died, he would have enough on his hands with his two children and would not want more. He is committed to the family we have.

We also have several frozen embryos. I can't actually remember how many, somewhere between 6-8. But they were never the best embryos from any cycle, and if we wanted to use them it would be a long and probably painful process of suppression, estrogen, trigger, progesterone, transfer, and possibly a chemical pregnancy or two before we were done. And besides, we don't want any more children. We don't want any more children.

As others have written, though, it's hard to let frozen potential children go even when you know a pregnancy might kill you, let alone because having more children just isn't right for you and your family. Nevertheless, I am psyching myself up to remove our frozen embryos as an option. We will donate them to research. There is no option that I know of to donate them to another family, and even if there was, I'm too old to be an egg donor in the UK so fairly sure that would rule us out. I'll make that call tomorrow. Or the next day. Or after the weekend, perhaps. Well, we have mentally let them go, at least.

With the vasectomy/donation double hit, we will have no other chances to be pregnant again. And I am sad about that, no matter how I think through the misery of sleep deprivation and the pain of failing again to breastfeed my children successfully. I am sad that Pob will not have a sister. I am sad that I will never again use the little white Egyptian cotton babygro with the two little embroidered silver feet on the breast, the babygro which was the first thing I ever bought for Pob. I am sad that I'll never again have that newborn on my chest, conked out between one suck and the next. I have fallen in love so hard with my babies, both times. I fell in love at different points, and it didn't preclude moments of despair and frustration at the screaming infant at a later point. But I won't get to fall in love like that again.

It's sad, but it's wonderful, too. Wonderful that I got to experience that at all. Five and a half years ago we started trying to conceive, and four and a half years ago I started writing about it. There were moments on the journey when I was convinced it would never happen for us. And then moments where I thought Pob would be an only, and mourned for her and for us that sibling relationship. But now here we are, a family of four, and those who meet us now assume it was all smooth sailing - after all, our children are only 21 months apart, and who would 'choose' that? And we have the boy and the girl that people assume must be what we wanted. We have been so incredibly lucky.

And yes, some of that luck is because I pressured and argued, researched and fought for the best treatment, the best treatment as soon as it was possible, fast, no waiting. But that's just a small part of how we got here. An important part, but a small part. Others argue and fight and research and it doesn't happen for them. I have no rationale for why it happened to us other than the weird quirks of my biology, the randomness of that sperm and that egg, and that sperm and that egg and that test tube and that embryologist and that catheter and that drug and the resulting embryo happening to hit the uterine lining just so, and find just the right blood vessel to colonise, and...

So the fertility journey is done. So what, pray, am I doing with this blog, with this blog title? Not writing much, that's for sure. But this isn't goodbye. It's my space, it's our community even if the community I am truly part of now is more naturally those parenting after infertility, with a strong emotional connection on my part, if not on theirs, to those who were in the trenches with me but who didn't make it out, whose embryos never quite found the right bit of the uterine lining. I will try to change the title to more accurately reflect my life now, but I will remain here until they consign Typepad to the dust. The blog got me through, you got me through, through infertility and pregnancy and breastfeeding and the start of parenting.

Junior is stirring. This post didn't end up being what I thought it was going to be. But it is what it is. And I am here, now. A parent.

So. Napping bootcamp then.

You asked what napping bootcamp entails? Well, it first entailed getting in a sleep nanny who was recommended by a colleague. She came in to do one nap with us, but stayed for two given that Junior simply refused to nap for the whole duration of the first one. She gave us various hints tips and tricks to try to get him down, most of which you've heard before, including darkening the room, swaddling him, having a regular schedule, offering a dummy as a nap cue but taking it away before he is completely asleep, picking him up if he gets distressed, patting until he's calm, then putting him down again, etc. She asked us to make sure that almost all his naps for the next week would be at home in a darkened room, and to make an exception only for the late afternoon nap if we had to.

Being me, we've adhered to the plan almost in every detail in an attempt to give it a good try. The only area where I've been a bit lax is in sticking precisely to time. Sometimes I'll go 15 minutes later if he's finally asleep rather than waking him. But other than that we've been very good. And the results have been...mixed. I thought we'd cracked it when on Monday it took only 15 minutes to get him down for his morning nap, and he went down with no fuss at all, just a little grumbling, for the lunchtime nap. But then Tuesday every nap took at least 25 minutes to kick in, and the breakfast one was really screamy as well. Yesterday the morning and lunchtime naps only took 10 minutes each, and the only crying was when I first put him down, he immediately calmed down when I put my hand on him and then just grumbled and then lay quietly while he waited for sleep. But yesterday afternoon he only slept for 10 minutes of the hour's nap time, and this morning took 20 minutes again, although not much of it was crying.

So I dunno. It's been a long week, and unlike the previous not-very-successful napping strategy of putting him in his pram and walking, I've barely left the house. I'm going to give it another 3 days or so and then start to try him in his pram as well as in his room as I'm not prepared to be housebound for the next three months. I like to think this will work eventually but so far I'm not totally convinced.

Leaving Junior behind

This morning we had an interview at a nursery school for Pob. They were completely inflexible about the time, which overlapped with a likely feeding time for Junior. So we decided the best option was to leave Junior with our nanny, expressed milk and a bottle, and to see how they got on.

The interview went well. Pob was quite charming which was a relief given she had been very screamy all morning. She played and chatted and asked for a biscuit when the children were having their snack. She asked about the fish and told the director that her torch wasn't working so it needed new batteries. I think we passed. Whether or not we get a place is another matter as they only have 12 spots. But we did our best, and if we don't get a spot there there is a lovely nursery a bit closer which has us top of their wait list, so I think we'll be fine.

Meanwhile, since the director had kept us waiting 30 minutes, Junior was starving so the nanny had no choice but to try him with the bottle. She said he kept grizzling and refusing at first, but eventually realised it wasn't so bad, and took about 100mls (3 oz and a bit).

It's a relief to know he will take a bottle, but I have to confess to also feeling a bit sad. I know this is not a rejection of me, but it's also only the second feed he's had without me since he was born (the first was one overnight feed when he had jaundice in the hospital and was fed in the nursery while I was pumping). It's a step away from the close - perhaps too exclusive? - relationship that we've had.

Anyway, I've now pumped 180mls so I guess the boobs were ready to feed him. I will focus on knowing it's good to know that we have the flexibility of the bottle if we need it.

Breastfeeding redux

Well, I've been somewhat avoiding this post as things are not fantastic, but not awful, and they also change daily and I wanted a sense of where we're heading before I wrote about it. But since feeding and the faffing around feeding are what takes up about 14 hours or more of my day, it seems odd to be avoiding writing about it.

So. Breast feeding. Where to begin.

In a nutshell, since about the end of week 2, Junior has been solely on breastmilk, in contrast to my experience with Pob. He is gaining weight like a champion and was just under 6 kilos (13lbs) when I weighed him this weekend. Unfortunately around 320mls (approx 10oz) or so of this breastmilk comes in the form of supplement. Currently we are still using the SNS to do this, partly because I've got in the habit of it, partly because the one time I got really fed up and tried a bottle, about a week ago, he wouldn't take it. I tried to taper off the SNS using the instructions at Kellymom, but it didn't work, there are just some feeds where he really needs a supplement, particularly in the early evening.

There are several current challenges with our feeding process:

1. He has started to notice the SNS and to spit it out if it offends him, even if he is hungry and the boobs are clearly not giving much, as at the 5pm feed.
2. He isn't clear when he's sucking for comfort and when he is genuinely hungry. When he is sucking for comfort he doesn't like the extra flow of milk from the SNS and so he wriggles to spit it out again.
3. He is a terrible sleeper, particularly during the day, finding it very hard to settle himself to sleep even when he's clearly knackered. One thing that usually works is sucking himself to sleep on the boob. Sadly a dummy is not a good substitute for the boob and he spits it out instantly. So I am tempted, particularly in the early evening, to leave him on the boob so that he will fall asleep. Then there is the issue of whether or not to add the SNS to get a bit more milk in in the hope he will sleep longer.
4. Since I can't always tell which of the above situations is true, some feeds can feel a bit like fights with me trying to get the extra milk into him, and him spitting out the tube. If he stops fussing when it's out then I know he's just trying to suck himself to sleep and mostly I let it go. If he fusses when it's out I assume he is still hungry and keep persevering with the tube, although sometimes what this means is that he's got a huge burp coming. He's not easy to burp and it's often accompanied by vomiting, so this can get a bit messy.
5. At the end of most feeds I pump, so that adds time onto the end and also makes me less relaxed about how long he feeds for as if I want to do anything between feeds, or want him to nap, I need to get on with it as he is still feeding every 3 hours or so during the day.

Most days this is ok, but I am starting to feel very housebound as the whole process is really too hard to do outside the house unless it's a matter of life and death. I also resent how much time it takes away from Pob. I rarely feed him in the same room as her since it's just too tempting for her to grab at the syringe, play with the bottle of milk I'm using, etc.. So it all feels a bit limiting.

Yet I find it impossible to stop.

There must be a halfway house where I pump less and therefore he gets probably some formula (although I have about 3 litres of breastmilk frozen right now so that wouldn't happen immediately). There is an option where I persevere with bottles to remove the faffing associated with the SNS. There is an option where I start skipping the breast feed completely at some feeds so as to be able to get out of the house more. None of them seem ideal, but at the same time I know if I get to the end of my maternity leave and haven't spent any quality time with Pob I will be very frustrated with myself. On the other hand, recent evidence says there are fewer problems with allergies if babies are breast fed through the introduction of solid food, which won't happen til 6 months.

He's 10 weeks old this Thursday. Currently I want to get him through the first two rounds of innoculations - one this week and one in four weeks time - and then start to tail off a bit. In the meantime I'm going to try to get him to take the occasional bottle so that I have a bit more flexibility. I wish this was easier for us. I wish my boobs worked properly. But they don't and so Junior and I will have to work out a compromise that works for both of us.

For Aurelia in particular, I'm fairly sure reflux is not the issue. I think he is a somewhat refluxy baby, but we treated it with Gaviscon for a few weeks and it didn't make any difference to his feeding pattern.

You know you are sleep deprived when...

...you fall asleep with the tubing from the SNS in the open bottle of pumped milk, and wake up 15 minutes later when an inadvertent leg jerk sends the milk all over the mattress.

Boobs, bras and pregnancy

I don't have time to write a proper post, snowed with work and trying to see Pob, it's all got rather too busy and frustrating in the last week or so. So here's something I've had in draft for a while. Will try to write more soon.

There are a lot of myths about breasts, bras and pregnancy. I suffered through a month of a stupidly ugly and ill-fitting bra while I was pregnant due to these myths, so here's my chance to blow some of them away.

It is one of those facts that everyone just knows on the boards, rather like the one about how eating fresh pineapple helps implantation, that you must not wear underwire bras while pregnant. This myth leaves the big-busted among is in a quandry. At what point in the pregnancy are you supposed to ditch proper support for your even more enormous than usual breasts, and go for a non-underwired bra. I hit this decision at about 12 weeks, when my boobs had grown at least a cup size and my existing 36DD bras were uncomfortable. I originally ordered some bras online from an upmarket maternity lingerie online shop, but they didn't make sizes big enough for my breasts and I had to return their lovely lacy confections.

I then visited that old stand-by of lingerie shopping in the UK, John Lewis. It's not where you go to get the pretty stuff, but they do have a reputation for at least fitting you properly. I was fitted by a woman who was wearing full body covering, although not a face veil, and who looked to be no more than 18. She insisted I was a 38D and sold me a rather ugly, completely flimsy, beige bra for a bargain £10. I took it because I thought that was my lot as a pregnant woman. But after a week of itchy lace and boobs resting on my emerging bump due to lack of support, I decided to bite the bullet and go to the Queen's bra fitters, Rigby and Peller.

At this luxuriously appointed salon, they first made me wait for about an hour, then a seven month pregnant fitter eyeballed me, told me I was clearly a 38F, that the whole underwire thing was nonsense, and sold me a couple of underwired bras. They lasted til 7.5 months, at which point they became too uncomfortable due to the bump pushing up under the breasts. I then went back and got fitted for nursing bras. It was a bit early, but they just sold me one that was a cup size bigger than I was at the time, and one a size bigger than that. After the birth I wore the 2 bras I had for about 4 weeks, then figured out I had gone down a back size but was again a cup size larger. Given my inability to leave the house at the time due to extreme breast feeding psychosis, I ordered a few online from Figleaves, who have a good selection of actually quite pretty nursing bras that made me feel a bit human again.

I subsequently heard from Betty, who has a good friend who is a boob doctor, about the underwire thing. His opinion was that the most important thing during pregnancy is to get proper support, which means continuing to wear underwire if you are big boobed until you simply can't any more as the bump pushes up towards your boobs. After your milk comes in you need non-underwired nursing bras, and at that point you should pretty much never not wear a bra again. I'm currently sleeping in the nursing bras that are too big but at least are non-underwired, and it feels quite uncomfortable to be bra-less, something I used to enjoy at night.

So far in the last year I have been about six different bra sizes - from a 36DD before I got pregnant through a 36E through a 38G while I was pregnant, to a 38H when I was breastfeeding, and now down to a 34E. It makes my underwear drawer a confusing place.

Don't be so quick to hit 'save' next time

Apologies for those of you who've been eying this page and wondering just how lazy one blogger can get - posting a link with no post. Answer is, obviously, I hit 'save' rather than 'save draft' and forgot about it. Since I saw it show up in my bloglines this morning, perhaps I should just get on and blog about it and save the other pending posts (I'm getting really behind - now got a list that includes: Pob at 10 months, Secondary infertility, progress on this cycle, the trip to the zoo, the naming ceremony. Argh) for another day.

So yes, this article. Apparently breastfeeding promotes the release of a 'trust' hormone - oxytocin - in the mother's brain. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they don't know what's going on in the baby's brain simultaneously. I would imagine perhaps something similar - although perhaps baby brains have a lot else going on so this may be just one change of many they are experiencing during that period of extraordinary growth and change in the first year, and hence lost in the shuffle.

It's not really a ground-breaking study, nor is it telling us something we didn't really know. But it got me thinking. I wonder what it misses out. Does the same thing happen when someone takes their baby in their arms and lovingly offers them a bottle? Does thinking about your baby while you sit attached to a breast pump have some of the same effect? I know the aim of much of this research - or much of the promotion of this kind of research - is to promote breastfeeding, but what is there out there for those of us who struggled to succeed at breastfeeding, and for whom, therefore, these kind of articles are like a poke in the eye with a large sharp stick? Is there any evidence (I bet there isn't) that women who didn't breastfeed their babies - or didn't breastfeed for long - have weaker attachment to their children? I know the evidence for the health benefits, but I'm less clear that there is evidence to show stronger attachment - after all, how exactly would you measure it without being confounded by a lot of additional factors that are hard to identify and pull out of the data?

Having said that, I am delighted I persevered in my totally insane way with breastfeeding, despite everyone (except some of you, dear ladies in the computer) telling me to give it up as a bad job. The last two months of breastfeeding, where Pob seemed to really know what to do, and where I was less stressed, and where she started to need less from the bottle (perhaps because she started solids around six months), were lovely. Some of the times earlier were lovely too, but they also involved me being chained to the house most of the time, and constantly measuring what I was producing and what she was getting, which was less fun. Not to mention the part where I cried all the time. But despite that, for us it was worth it. Those moments were lovely.

Might I have had those lovely moments with bottle feeding? Yes, I might. And we'll never know what the difference would have been. For us, it was right to persevere. I would do it again if I had the time over again. For others, it might not be right to persevere in the same way, and that's ok. I don't think it means that 'trust' between mother and baby is necessarily less, just perhaps that the way trust is formed might be a bit different. But isn't each relationship between a mother and baby quite unique? Let's bear that in mind when reporting about breastfeeding issues and talking about breastfeeding in general (cue another post about the breastfeeding websites that come up when you're having trouble, and how much like shit they can make you feel if things aren't going well).

The last time

On Sunday night, Pob's seven month birthday, we had our last breastfeed. I talked to her gently as she sucked away, and told her it was the last time. It was a lovely feed. I put her into bed after her story and her song, and came downstairs for dinner. H and I shared half a bottle of wine. It felt ok.

On Monday night I gave her her bottle. Throughout she kept diving for my boob, and whining. She drank the bottle ok, however, so I kept going with the routine, telling her the 'hippos go beserk' story and singing to her once she was in her swaddle in the cot. Then, as usual, I gave her her dummy and left the room. And she started crying. So I went back in, told her everything was ok, and left the room. And then she started crying again. Lather, rinse, repeat for 45 minutes before she eventually settled. I figured it was a bit of mourning for the boob, although I was surprised as she hadn't seemed to mind any of the previous feeds stopping.

On Tuesday we went through our usual routine. And this time it took 20 minutes to settle her. Better than last night, I thought. We're on the way up.

On Wednesday it took 30 minutes.

Tonight it took 1 hour 20 minutes, and she only settled in the end after H rocked her to sleep in the glider.

I dunno what to do. I don't want to go back to breastfeeding (oh I do I do, but I want to give my body some recovery time, not to mention the chance to get pregnant again), and let's face it, I'm sure there's not much milk in there for her right now. I don't want to have an unhappy baby, either. And I'm drawing a veil over the night time sleeping (ok, since you ask, last night I gave her a dream feed at 2230, then she woke at 215, settled on her own, 235, needed attention, 415, needed settling, 445, needed the dummy, 6am, was awake and didn't go back to sleep, although she was ok being entertained by her mobile for 20 minutes or so while I tried to pretend I was still sleeping). I'm worried that taking her away on Sunday is going to make it all worse, and worried about my mother looking after her all day - it turns out this training course I'm running is a very full agenda so I'm not sure I'll even be able to settle her each night.

Other than sleep things are wonderful. She naps beautifully during the day. She's really enjoying her solid food, and has become quite the roly poly baby. She tries to charm everyone she meets. She's gorgeous.

I just wish she'd sleep at night.

Pob at six months

She's six months old. I've put away most of her 3-6 month size clothes as she's already too big for them, and some of the French and Italian 9-month size are only going to last another week or so. Those continental babies must be much skinnier than our English ones. But as my old nanny used to say, this is a baby who pays for dressing - she looks adorable in most things I put her in.

On the day of her half birthday she looked like a 1950s baby in a little sailor dress, all big smiles, mohican hair and lots of drool. Yesterday, when we had a few friends and family over for tea she wowed the crowds in trousers and a navy shirt, covered for the first part of the party by a long-sleeved bib which was rapidly smeared with the very delicious banana and apple she had for tea. She was very good natured as she was passed from lap to lap, grinning at everyone who smiled at her, peering around me as I fed her to look at the assembled crowds. Eventually at about 5pm she'd had enough and screeched loudly until I took her up for a nap. Unusually for her, she needed me to stay with her until she settled. I patted her gently and she stared at me with slightly worried eyes until eventually, with a big sigh, she spat out the dummy, turned her head and went to sleep. By the time she woke up everyone had gone, and when I brought her back downstairs she kept looking around the room, and then looking up at me, as if to ask where her adoring fan club had gone.

She loves people. When I take her to Gymboree she spends most of the time looking at the other babies and at the instructor, giving the adults in particular big gummy grins. After she grins she usually has to hide her head in my shoulder, as if her own charm is overwhelming her. This love of faces now extends to her toys, and she shows a marked preference for dolls and animal toys. Of course the first thing she does is to stick their heads in her mouth, but still, it's a preference. Jimbo the clown is the one toy we can use to make her laugh - singing the Jimbo song (to the tune of 'Wheels on the bus') makes her giggle with joy.

She's been sitting unaided since the day of her half birthday. She'd been managing 30 seconds or so for the last week or so, but that day was the first she really sat, bolt upright, and even managed to correct herself when she wobbled by throwing out her arm. She still has a tendency to overbalance and fall backwards, so some strategically placed pillows, or Mummy's legs, are still essential. If she goes forwards she simply rolls herself onto her arms, so that direction doesn't need protection to the same extent. The arrival of the Mozart cube from the US has helped the sitting up, as it keeps her entertained while she leans forward to chew on a corner or lean on a panel, and the lights keep her watching it as she sits upright and wobbles to and fro. Our early observation that music seemed to help calm her has been confirmed by her special interest in this toy, as well as by her wondering look and instant silence if she's been screamy, when we launch into song.

She now won't stay on her back for more than a few seconds, rolling over onto her tummy is now essential. Once on her tummy, though, she rapidly gets frustrated by her inability to go anywhere - and rolling back onto her back seems not to be the point, even though she can do it if she wants to. Instead, she wiggles desperately on her tummy in one of two ways - using her tummy as a pivot she rocks back and forth, kicking her legs and waving her arms, or she plants her face to the floor and wriggles one leg forward under her hips, then the other in a crawling motion but without ever having both her hips up in the air at the same time. She will eventually pause and lift herself up on her arms with a big sigh, looking around and exclaiming loudly at the annoyances of life. Our downstairs floor is slippery enough that this motion often pushes her backwards, and this really drives her bananas as she just gets further away from the object of interest. She can, however, twist herself round on her tummy to get at something she's interested in, or to watch us as we move around her. I regularly come back from the loo to find she's in a completely different position than when I left her. We keep meaning to start child proofing, but have done nothing about it yet. I'm sure that will come back to haunt us.

I bought her a bouncer a few weeks ago and she LOVES it especially when we turn on the nasty flashing lights. It's a horrible piece of plastic tat, the kind of thing you always thought you no child of yours would ever be allowed, but we don't have any doorways suitable for one of the plain door frame-based bouncers so it was this or nothing. And it makes her so happy, who I am to deny her the flashing lights and tinny music.  She loves bouncing enough that she often does it when being held upright on our laps, too, and this child is STRONG!

She was starting to babble about two weeks ago, saying 'Ma' for the first time on Mothering Sunday, followed by a selection of 'ba's 'da's and 'ya's. Since she started on the crawling motions and sitting, she's been babbling less, although I could have sworn she did a 'Mama' yesterday. Her cries of outrage also sound more like talking now. She doesn't just blow us an outraged raspberry, she articulates her frustration with a range of vowel sounds. This happens when I take her off the boob for a burp, when we aren't responding fast enough to her need for food once I've put her in the high chair, or when we've left her too long on her playmat without attention.

Feeding is going well. We started giving her solids a couple of weeks ago, and so far she's loved everything except broccoli, potato and mango (not together). Her favourite seems to be pear, with a mixture of avocado and banana a close second. I've been steaming and purreeing up a storm, and we now have a freezer full of cubes of courgette, apple, pear, sweet potato, butternut squash, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, and pea. Today we'll give her courgette for the first time, tomorrow perhaps a second go at potato as the first one didn't mash well so she got a bunch of larger lumps in her mouth which made her gag. The solids have reduced her milk drinking somewhat - I breast feed her before each of her two solid meals a day then offer her milk again afterwards but she usually doesn't want it, or takes only an ounce. She has a huge bottle feed just before bed - often taking around 300mls (10 oz) - of a mixture of breast milk and formula, depending on how much I've pumped. And that's the big revolution around here, I've stopped pumping during the day. I started off by missing it, feeling it was a waste to leave any milk in the boobs at the end of a feed, but the extra benefits of having more time to do things, has persuaded me it's worthwhile. I've also skipped a couple of the 330am pumps, and although I'm not really feeling any less sleep deprived, I'm feeling better about starting to wean from the pump. Plus it means she gets a great feed when she wakes up, so that feels good.

The next step for us is to gradually reduce the breastfeeding. I feel incredibly proud of what we've achieved. After having successfully breast fed at the British Museum this week, and rather less successfully at the Natural History Museum - the difference being I was in private at the first, and in public at the second and BOY does this baby prefer to look around than to suck - I've managed to do what I always envisaged. I'm not ready to stop, but the looming of my return to work, and the need to start my reproductive system going again, mean it's time. I'm down to 30mg of domperidone a day, and expect to have stopped taking it by the end of the month. So far my supply seems to have persisted quite well, at least enough to get through four or five feeds a day, plus a couple of decent pumps - one in place of the dream feed and one in the middle of the night if I choose to do it. The next step is to drop a day time feed, and I haven't felt quite ready to do that yet, but I know it's necessary if we're even going to attempt giving Pob a sibling, and you know how important I think that is. It's coming. I'll miss it, but it's time.

Sleeping is better. We got her back to sleeping through the night by offering her 'hungry baby' formula at the dream feed, after her breast feed. That meant she just woke up once, usually around three, but was easily settled with a dummy and a bit of patting. Then we got ambitious. Two nights ago we decided to skip the dream feed. She always seemed to hate being woken, and it seemed worth a try. The first night she went til around 330, and after a go at settling her we gave in and fed her around 415. The second night - last night - she woke just once, at midnight, and settled after 10 minutes of patting. It seems we might be about to have a baby who sort of sleeps through the night. For a short while, I'm not counting any chickens, you understand.

What we didn't count on is how much WE enjoyed the dream feed. Although I know it's supposed to involve keeping the baby almost asleep while you feed, it never worked that way for us as by the time I'd breastfed the sleepy baby, then we'd given her the top up bottle, and changed her nappy, she was always pretty much awake. And we both really enjoyed hanging out together in bed with her. She'd be very smiley and happy, and often very cute as she drifted between sleep and sucking. When I breastfed her at this feed she's often fall asleep on me, and I'd pull her off the boob and let her sleep in my arms for a few minutes, enjoying the sneaky cuddle time that she doesn't allow when she's awake. When she'd scream because we'd interrupted her eating to burp her we'd sing to help her calm down and she'd look at us with such a look of puzzlement we'd always burst out laughing.We didn't do one final dream feed to enjoy it that last time, and so the first night we went without it we really struggled, sitting together on the sofa, moaning about how much we missed her. We don't know how to recreate that particular snuggle time, we'll have to figure something out as we're both in serious withdrawal.

Pob is a real person now, a real person who loves us and who loves our friends and family. She loves music. She loves bouncing. She's fascinated by mugs and glasses and water bottles. She sticks everything in her mouth. She loves Jimbo the clown. She loves pears and apples and carrots and butternut squash. She doesn't like being held too tight when there is a world to look at. I miss the tiny baby, but I love the explorer she's becoming.  Roll on the next six months. 

Boob update

Thank you to everyone who has been enquiring re boobs. I'm now fairly sure that the little lumps on the nipple are blood blisters. A bit similar to 'blebs' or milk blisters, but with blood inside due to over-enthusiastic pumping (I think). I've tried squeezing them but can't get them to go, and the same squirt of milk comes from in between them if I test it while Pob is feeding. But she now seems to be feeding ok on that side, and that boob has stopped hurting, no more shooting pains or nipple soreness, so I'm just leaving it for the time being. I know that's a head in the sand thing, but since I've got no breast lumps etc., and it's not hurting, I'm not worried.

In other boob updates, I've been weaning off the domperidone and am now down to 90mg/day, down from 120mg/day. As I mentioned before, I saw an immediate drop in how much I could pump, and it's dropped a bit further since then, but Pob has also taken to refusing or taking only a very little top-up at each feed, so I think she has simultaneously got a lot better at emptying the breasts. As this has become clearer, it's helped me see that the challenges we had with breastfeeding were indeed partially due to Pob's poor sucking rather than just the problems with my supply. Of course secretly I thought all along that it was 'all my fault' despite everyone's diagnosis of the contrary. It's good to know it wasn't all me - not sure why that matters, but it feels like an important realisation.

I can't really express how very glad I am that we persevered with breast feeding. Although many people told us I was bananas, what we have now is close to what I always wanted (well, I didn't imagine the pumping, but that has become less onerous as the feeding itself has got better). Pob strokes what she can reach of my breast and chest while we're feeding. She pulls off and grins up at me occasionally. She opens her mouth like a baby bird as I pull her in towards me and makes little contented 'hmm hmms' as she sucks. It's tremendously satisfying, and I feel very lucky that we got to this place, even if our time here will be short. I don't know what it would be like to have stopped earlier, of course, and it would certainly have given us more time when we could have gotten out of the house, but for us, for me, I'm glad we chose to persevere through the crap, that the domperidone built my supply sufficiently that it was possible for us to get here.

The boobs, they are not happy

A week ago, I decided it was time to reduce the domperidone dose. The extra weight is starting to make me really grumpy, and I thought it was worth a try. I dropped one pill a day, from 12 to 11, starting on Saturday. On Friday I pumped 460mls, on Saturday 400, on Sunday 325. Hmm. Who knew that dropping one pill would make such a difference? There may also be a Pob effect going on as she can now empty a breast pretty effectively in about 15 minutes, so perhaps she's taking more out. Odd how that coincided so precisely with the drop in dose. I'm going to drop another pill soon, so we'll see.

The real unhappiness in the boobs, however, is that I keep getting shooting pains in my right boob after feeding or pumping. It really hurts quite a bit. In addition, there are three little bumpy nodules on the nipple which don't want to go away. I have no idea what they are. One looked dark for a while so I wondered if it was a blood blister, but it has now lightened to about the same colour as the rest of the breast tissue. Pob has started fussing on that breast, so I'm wondering if these are blocking the milk flow in some way. When I hand express, I often get a real squirt from that breast, but it comes from in between these little nodules. Any clues? Is the sharp pain thrush?

I know I should go to the doc, but honestly I don't think my GP has any clue at all about breasts so I'm not sure how much help it would be. And I'm not calling out one of those unhelpful lactation consultants again. So for now I am grinning and bearing it.

Feeding, part one million and two

The feeding has been going pretty well, with a few blips. We're breast feeding, then supplementing while I pump at each feed. Just before Christmas I weighed Pob and found out she'd lost 200 grams (approx 7oz) over the last week, so we went on a feed-Pob-up binge, offering her 150mls after each breast feed to see how much she'd take. H would force feed her at night to make sure she got a big feed, and when we got back from the country we found she'd gained 750 grams in a week. Which I think means that the measurement the day I found she'd lost weight was probably off as I think it's close to impossible for her to have gained that much in a week. But it's all good as it meant she is back on the curve and I don't have to freak out (again). Since then she's been steadily gaining 100-200 grammes a week, and taking anywhere between 50 and 120 mls after each feed.

I've started to really enjoy the breast feeding itself. While we were away over New Year, and then a few times since, she has woken up early a few times, and I have taken to bringing her into bed with me and dozing while she feeds for an hour or so. These have been very much the kind of calm, loving, affectionate breastfeeding experiences that I'd really wanted. I'm so very glad I persevered with this, even though it continues to be a pain in the arse, and to massively restrict my movements with her. My friends ask why don't I stop pumping, and just breast feed and supplement with formula, but (i) I'd rather she got breastmilk if possible and (ii) I'm not sure I'd have enough milk for her to tolerate breastfeeding without the additional stimulation of pumping.

The pumping was going pretty well, such that we were only on formula for one feed every 3-4 days. I stopped taking any supplements before Christmas as I couldn't see what effect they were having. I started again in early January, but didn't see any impact so I've now stopped and am fairly sure I won't go back to them. I am still on Domperidone and will start to taper off it once I decide how much longer I'll persevere with feeding.

I say 'was going' above because it's been a bit of a crappy few days with the pump - my supply dropped about 20% from what I was pumping over the Christmas break. Not really sure why. This was then compounded by my rented Medela Symphony breaking on Sunday night, so I had to go back to first the Lactina I still had (rental, hadn't returned it yet, have now) and then the Pump in Style while I waited for a replacement. All I can say is ouch. My nipples may never forgive me, that Pump in Style is tough. Once I got the replacement Symphony going today I could barely feel it compared to the irriration of the Pump in Style. If you're finding this post while deciding what pump to use, all I can say is, shell out for the Symphony, and goodness knows don't bother with a Lactina. At least a Pump in Style is portable, the Lactina in my experience purports to be 'hospital grade' but gives less stimulation than the Pump in Style.

The fact that the feeding has been going well, and has become quite enjoyable, means it's hard to stop. I always thought I would stop before I went back to work, and I've decided to return to work at the end of April, in three months time. It will just be too hard to maintain feeding given my hours and the potential travel. But now I've worked this hard to get this far, I'm really reluctant to stop. I know I couldn't pump through my kind of work, but I'm wondering if I could maintain enough supply to still do a morning and/or an evening feed, although I suspect my supply will tank if I start to cut back on what I'm doing. Also, I don't want to start tapering down the feeding until I have to. Possibly late March, I'm not really sure. We'll see when we get there.

I know there will be benefits to stopping, but the benefits are mostly about me, and not benefits for Pob. It would allow me to cut back on the domperidone, which will help curb my appetite, which means hopefully I could start to lose some of this weight. Currently I'd have to buy a new wardrobe to go back to work in as I can't fit into any of my suits! My boobs would hopefully shrink a bit which would make running possible. I'd have a bit more time - time I could spend doing a bit more of a variety of activities with Pob as well as time to finish writing thank you cards, etc. I might even manage to cook dinner for H at some point.

So I want to continue with the currrent regime not just because I'm enjoying it even while I resent it, but also because it seems to work best for Pob, to give her the best possible nutrition. I don't know how much longer that will stay true, but it's true for now. Of course, there's the additional drive which is that we can't start to  reliably try again for number 2 until I've had one normal cycle, so at some point that will become a strong driver to stop. Perhaps the strongest, since I want to at least try for another one because I think that's best for Pob. It will be easier to stop if I feel it's doing something for her.

When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid

We're back from a week in the frozen North of England. It was quite frozen, we had snow and hail and rain and driving winds, but we had a lovely time. Although having a lovely time involved torturing poor Pob somewhat by bundling her into a snow suit and strapping her to her father's chest every time we left the house. Even so he had to walk holding his rain coat around her when we were on the beach so that the wind didn't get into the small gap between his chest and her face. He's rather hardy and enjoys the wilder weather, so he didn't mind too much although a lack of gloves I'm sure meant that his hands were absolutely frozen.

Pob was a total angel on the car journey. We left around 10am, she slept for 1.5 hours, we stopped for lunch and she woke, we fed her and changed her, got back in the car, she slept for 2 hours, we stopped again to feed her etc., got back in the car, and drove for a further hour and a bit to our destination, during which she slept. I pumped after each stop and it went fine, it was much less awkward than I thought it would be - I just wore my pumping bra under my clothes, and wore a loose top over the top. I'm sure a couple of passing drivers got an eyeful of a nipple or two, but it didn't bother me and the yield was rather good. On the way back Pob was slightly worse, she got fed up for the last 20 minutes or so as we neared home and was very screamy but still, I couldn't quite believe our luck.

On the other hand, she has decided that going down for a nap or for the night is for the birds, and is now screaming the place down as we try and settle her. We've tried swaddling/not swaddling, going through a routine in the evening of feed/bath/books/bed, rocking/not rocking, singing/not singing, it doesn't seem to make much difference. She does go down just fine after the 11pm feed, even though she's wide awake when we put her down - something about the dark and quiet that helps perhaps? I think it's something to do with her increased awareness of the world and her own skills. She learnt to blow raspberries a few days ago, and now I hear her lying in her crib, practising blowing them and occasionally stopping to chat a little, it's very adorable.

She also has started to grasp things. When I shake her rattle in front of her she focuses really really hard on it, wobbling her head back and forth as she does so, and after 30 seconds or so she starts to try and reach out for it. She doesn't always get it, but she is trying, and on New Year's Eve she managed to grab and hold the rattle for a minute or so, a couple of times. We were very over-excited.

We saw the new year in dancing around the room to the sounds of Jools Holland's Hootenanny, watching the fireworks go off across the bay, illuminating the nearby castle. It was such a perfect moment, it made me cry. As did reading to Pob a few times from the copy of 'When we were very young' that I found at the cottage. Both are moments I'd dreamed of through the years of infertility, and even before that, and they happened. And they were perfect. Yes, she was rather wriggly while I read to her, yes she was a bit screamy when we put her to bed after the dancing, but those moments were perfect nonetheless, and they outweigh any amount of wriggling and screaming. We are so very lucky, and we continue to bask in that every day, screaminess or no.

Hitting the nail on the head

A conversation with one of my oldest friends.

Thalia: General whining about breastfeeding. Missing out on bonding at the breast. Wanted to bond. Moan moan worry whine moan

Friend: T, there is more to your relationship with Pob than sticking your tit in her mouth every few hours

Thalia: Stunned silence.

She's got a point, don't you think?

Luckily I know not to quit on a bad day

On Sunday, I pumped 595ml. I've never pumped anything like that much - the previous high was 525ml and that had only happened once. I was bouncing between 420ish and 490ish a day, which was allowing me to only use formula every 3-4 days. Given where we've come from, you can imagine I was feeling a little smug about that. I'd accomplish this by pumping once in the middle of the night, since she's stopped waking between midnight and 7. That gave me around 100ml. Then I'd pump after each feed, and I've been following electriclady's advice, and just leaving the pump stuff set up and getting in a sneaky 10 minutes here and there as well, which had given me an extra 80ml or so a day. All this pumping, plus taking a bunch of supplements, plus the domperidone, and I felt like we had a routine which was manageable, and, indeed, quite rewarding after all we'd been through. She has been going on the breast at every feed, and we've been having a nice time together, and then she gets filled up with a bottle. She's gaining weight beautifully, and looks wonderful, and we were doing it almost entirely on breast milk. I could see that I didn't want to continue this forever, because it was stopping me from getting out of the house much, but I wasn't prepared to give it up just yet.

Then, over the last few days, two things happened. The first is that she started fussing at the breast, coming on and off, and, at 3 feeds over the last 2 days, screaming inconsolably until I gave up and gave her a bottle. It's the bad old days of 2-3 weeks old all over again. The second is that the pumping volume has gone way down. I still get a good pump at about 4am, and I can get a good volume in the morning by pumping after my shower - i.e., about 30 minutes after the morning feed has ended - but then that's it, the rest of the day I'm struggling to get 40mls after a feed.  know that 6 weeks ago I'd have been delighted by that, but now it feels like such a step backwards. Well, it is a step backwards!

When the post-feed volume started to decrease about a week ago, I just assumed it was because she was taking more from the boobs (I've certainly felt that she's been sucking better), and that the boobs would catch up and I'd get back to pumping more again in due course if I kept stimulating them. So I added in extra pumps between feeds to try and get more volume, and to add stimulation. To no avail, I'm just killing my nipples to get an extra 20mls or so. Sunday, it turns out, was a bit of a fluke, and anyway was accomplished by adding in two extra between-feed pumps, which is not a habit that's conducive to having a life.

The breast refusal is worse. That takes me back to my saddest, darkest moments since she was born. The thought, the feeling, that she doesn't enjoy nursing, is a horrible blow to my self-esteem and a hit to the nursing relationship I thought we'd established. What I have craved, over and above the need to nourish my baby, is the desire for a lovely bonding experience at the breast. After the initial three weeks of struggle, I thought we'd got to a good place with that, but now it seems she's got fed up with the slow flow and wants the bottle more than me. Ugh. This is compounded by my worry over the last week or so that she's not really bonded to me - she seems to be as happy with my mum, or H's mum, or H, as she is with me.

Well, this has to be the dullest post ever.

The point is, I thought we had a system which I could keep up for maybe another month, get her to 4 months, before I started to taper off so that it wasn't too much of a shock to the system when I went back to work, and so I could start to exercise a bit more and shed the awful, flabby 30 extra pounds I still have to lose. I was feeling ok about it because I had such a sense of achievement about where we've got to, and what I was managing to produce, even if it was horribly hard work. But today it doesn't feel worthwhile. Funny how hung up on the numbers I've got, my sense of self worth tied almost solely to ml pumped/ml supplemented per day.

However, as the title says, I know not to quit on a bad day. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Btw, I don't want a lot of comments telling me to give up, because although I know everyone means well, it's not what I need to hear. I know it's ok to give up, I know she'll be fine on formula, but I want to breast feed her, and if that's my main job right now, I want to do it as well as I can. I'm ok, really I am, I'm just having one of those moments.

She's still wonderful, by the way.

In which my body proves, yet again, that it is the boss of me

My body really is perverse sometimes. For the last few weeks I've pumped after every feed, that's six times a day. I went from being able to pump around 280mls a day when I started this regime, to around 500mls or so just before I got ill 10 days ago. My supply then fell back to 400mls and didn't seem to recover even when I got better. I started to pump for longer, up to an hour at a time if I can bear it, and then a few nights ago decided to add in a pump at around 2am, now that she's reliably not waking til around 430 or 5. So I pumped at 2am and the first night I got an extra 90mls from doing that. But the next night it was 80mls, and last night it was 75. In addition, the amount of milk I get at the other pumping sessions has decreased, so that overall I'm now pumping around 450-470 rather than the 500-600 I was hoping for. (Still not as much as she's drinking, but enough to limit the formula to just under one feed per day). I'm having to pump for up to an hour just to get 80mls at the 430am feed, which is not really what I need given that I do have to sleep as well. I've tried power pumping (pump for 10 mins, pause for 10, repeat 3 times) a few times a day and that does give me more, but it takes a long time and during week days I need to be with my daughter rather than stuck to the pump!

The perversity seems to be that pumping more doesn't increase my supply. I get more the first time I do it as if I somehow catch my body by surprise, and then over a few days it adjusts back to the lower overall volume. Do you think if I sneakily changed the time I pumped every day my body would be surprised and I'd get more out? Why do I work (or not work) differently from every other woman on the planet in this area?

Minor suckage

Having found these pictures, I decided I never want my daughter to be hungry at the end of a feed, not even a little tiny bit. So we started making all her top up bottles 100mls to be on the safe side. Then at the 4am feed she seemed to have done pretty well on the boob, so I wondered about taking some milk out before we gave her the bottle. And then decided that wasn't  fair to her, I should just heat up the bottle as it was. So I did. And all she wanted was 40mls. 60mls of breastmilk down the sink. That's one whole pumping session. That really hurts.

What was that about steps forward and back?

On Sunday she had ~280ml in top up. On Monday it was 390, today it was 460. I pumped around 300 each day. I think this is the beginning of the end? I guess that she is getting lazier on the breast as she gets used to having bottles again? And she wasn't that energetic on the breast to start off with.

I saw a lactation consultant today who said that Pob has a weak suck and is never going to get what she needs from the breast. So I'd better get used to either pumping and bottle-feeding, or go to formula and just put her on the breast for comfort. I feel completely desolate. I have some feelings I need to work through on this, but I need longer and really should be sleeping right now so there will be another post on this probably overnight while I'm pumping. But right now I'm struggling.

Respite

She's gained half a pound since last Wednesday - i.e., in 5 days. That's on about 320mls of top up a day, plus 6-7 breast feeds. I can do all this on breast milk right now, I'm pumping about 250mls a day over 6-7 pumping sessions, one after each feed, then making the rest up from what we have in the freezer. Currently we have about 1.2 litres in the freezer so that will keep us going for 10 days or so at this rate, if not longer. By then maybe I can get the pumping volume up a bit, or perhaps get the supplementing need down a bit by getting her doing better on the breast. Who knows. For those of you who took domperidone, did you find that going up on dosage sometimes reduced your supply? I upped my dose from 100mg/day to 120mg/day to try and deal with her not gaining weight, but the supply seems to be down from then. Any advice much appreciated. I'm out of my more milk plus supplement, could that have made the difference?

Thanks for the advice re thrush. I found Dr Newman's protocol and while no chemist will make up the nipple ointment for me, I hope to be able to locate gentian violet by dint of calling every chemist in the surrounding area and hassling them until someone agrees to supply it. I remember this stuff being in the medicine cabinet whenI was a child, I had no idea it had become so hard to obtain.

The health visitor was happy with the weight gain, but is coming back on Friday to weigh her again. Do you think they don't trust me?

Sharp turns and no entry signs on the road

I started composing a post yesterday about how much better things were with the feeding. Sadly I went to the clinic today to get Pob weighed, and she is precisely - to the nearest 100gs - the same weight as she was 2 weeks ago. Since she was only on the 30th centile for weight to start off with, this isn't good. So all the progress we've made with feeding over the last 2 weeks seems to be for naught. Sheesh this is difficult!

What we've been doing: 

About 2 weeks ago now I was so tired of all the pumping (about 11 times a day) that given your advice and the advice of the maternity nurse we had, I decided to just go for it and stop pumping during the day, and just put all the milk into the baby. So we stopped doing top-ups after day time feeds, and just kept putting the baby on the breast whenever she said she was hungry. The first few days were very tough. I did try using the supplemental nursing system, but just couldn't get it to work. So it was just me and the baby. Given she was still producing wet and dirty nappies I did know intellectually that she was doing ok - or I thought I did. We continued to give her a bottle at night - as much as she could take - and I kept pumping after the evening feeds and the night time feeds. Then she started to sleep longer at night, up to 8 hours (I know, I am very very lucky) so I started to wake up to pump in the middle of the night to pump even while she was sleeping. I've been getting around 200 mls from 3 pumping sessions so felt that the supply issues weren't the issue any more.

The baby seemed fine. She is more alert after a feed now, she plays happily for up to 40 mins or so on her mat or chair after each feed, then says she's tired by starting to grizzle, she settles to sleep via rocking or singing or both, and sleeps for 1.5-2 hours until the next feed. She was producing at least 2 dirty nappies a day and plenty of wet ones, so there was no reason to think she wasn't getting enough to eat. So it was a real shock today to find out she hadn't gained at all.

The health visitor was concerned and told me we had to start adding more to each feed, via a bottle since she's already on the breast for an hour at each feed. I do know that her sucking etc isn't great, so I've been trying to tickle her etc to keep her awake, and take her off if she really falls asleep, sit her up etc. until her eyes are open again and I can put her back on. I think at least part of the issue therefore is that she just doesn't eat fast enough - clearly not the child of her mother! - so even in an hour she isn't getting quite enough. She's getting enough that she isn't upset and doesn't feel hungry, but not enough for her to be gaining in the way she should.

It's all rather depressing, just when things seemed to be going better! The thought of adding bottles back in is really depressing after gaining some time back in the day by not using them. But clearly we need to get more food into her, so that's what we'll do, at least for the next week. Wish us luck.

One step forward, about 75 back

Well, I did say we were only celebrating small victories, but we seem to be losing the war. My pumping production is stuck at about 400ml a day, that's about 13.5oz for you US people. It's been that way since Sunday, so nearly a week. I do well in the early morning, then in the evening I'm struggling to get more than 40ml in one 20 min pump - whether it's between feeds or after a feed. Pob is still happy to stay on the boob for a good long time with the nipple shield, but she then wants between 70 and 100ml top up, so I'm not producing enough from the pumping to satisfy her. And as she grows, she needs more. Instead of being able to cover 4-5/6 feeds in 24 hours with breast milk, today I've only managed to cover 3.

I spoke to the good lactation consultant today, and she started to say things like, well, you've done really well so far, it's great you lasted this long, looks like things are tough etc. She admitted that given supply has not climbed this week (at least the supply which doesn't go straight into Pob), she's less optimistic we can achieve our breast feeding goals. She's asked me to try the supplemental feeder, which I've been resisting, and suggested a quick jolt to the breasts of pumping once an hour for 10 minutes for a four hour period. I've done that pumping this evening and got 20mls each time which is fucking depressing.  I tried the supplemental feeder and it didn't seem to make the critical difference to Pob - she still sucked in a somewhat lackadaisical fashion and seemed to enjoy herself but still needed the rest of the milk left in the supplemental feeder when she'd finished, delivered to her in a bottle. And then she needed some more.

It's like the infertility game all over again. And yes I know oh how i know it's not the same loss by any stretch of the imagination, I just mean the process seems similar. You keep going because you can't bear to give up. You hope, you hope really hard that in the end it will all be ok, but the process is painful and tiring and stressful and sometimes you wonder why the hell you're putting yourself and your other half through it. You wish you could take a peek into the future and see whether it worked or not, so that you'd know if it's worth persevering. Right now I can't leave the house for more than an hour because I'll have to either pump or feed. I have to hand Pob over to someone else when she's had a certain amount of time on the breast, so that I can pump. People keep telling me to enjoy my baby. And that formula isn't so bad. And I know that's true, but right now I can't let go of the dream I had to feed my baby. To sit in my chair and just put her on the breast and to sit and commune with each other while she fed. And I'm angry with people who don't have any problems with this. And feeling like a heel for not just being happy to have her. Ugh. It's hard, much much harder than I had set myself up to deal with.

Small victories

Well, it's been quite a week but we seem to be winning a little ground, albeit with some set-backs along the way. Pob hasn't had any formula since 530am yesterday. That is a big win. Supply is up due to some combination of pumping as often as I can and the drugs. It makes me wish a little that I'd waited to take the domperidone until we saw how much my supply increased without it. But I just keep telling myself there's no reason it will do her any harm, and the bonus of breastmilk is worth it. In a few weeks if things keep going ok, I might try decreasing the domperidone dose, just to see. Not sure we'll get through another 36 hours without some use of formula as my supply is lower later in the day, but I'm trying to celebrate these small wins.

The screaming and kicking every time she goes near the breast has also pretty much ceased, due to starting to use nipple shields. I kept looking at her rooting around at the breast, pushing and pulling at it, burrowing her head this way and that, and it just looked like she didn't know how to get a purchase on it. So thanks to you and various real life friends, we decided to give the nipple shields a try. She will now latch on just fine with minimal fussing with the shields, and on the left breast she'll often latch on without. For some reason trying them seemed less of a concession than trying the supplemental nursing system. Our lactation consultant still thinks it would be a good idea, but I'm just not there yet.

Today was another milestone in that for the first time since day 2 or so she settled after a feed without a top up. Just once. Let's hope tomorrow it might even be twice. She's started to feed a bit more frequently - every 3 hours so far today, so rather than trying to pump in between feeds as well, I'm just pumping after each feed. That will still get me to 8 pumps today which I think should be ok.

Pob seems pretty unscarred by all of the drama. She is very alert after some feeds now (thankfully not at night, mostly) and looks very hard at the world around her, often with a puzzled look on her face as if she is contemplating the mysteries of the universe. She sleeps well, we have been thanking our lucky stars for that. She loathes nappy changes or having her clothes taken off or being put on, and howls the place down as we try to talk her through the torture with minimal fuss. She loves being in the bath with me and calms right down as she enters the water - although of course getting out of the water is a cause for much more screaming. When she gets really upset her chin trembles and her eyelashes get wet. Thank goodness she's no longer doing that just because I offer her the boob. She remains, of course, utterly beautiful. We are counting all our lucky stars. 

The ups and the downs

I wish I'd had proper internet access in the hospital. We've had some wonderful moments so far, and I've been just so overjoyed to be with her. She is beautiful and we are very lucky to have her. As soon as H gets the chance i will post a couple of pictures, but right now I am exhausted and miserable and I can't deal with the technology.

Of course I feel awful about being miserable, but you see we are having real problems with breast feeding and I'm utterly hung up on wanting to do that. We are trying everything we can but my supply is almost non-existent and apparently she has a bit of a sucking issue - which if I had lots of milk would not be a problem as her sucking would be enough to get her the milk she needs, but since I only get 10ish mls from both breasts when I pump, she just can't get enough going with her sucking. So we are supplementing with formula after each breast feed, while I pump. It's absolutely killing me. I feel such a failure, and so angry that yet again my body isn't doing the right thing. I know it happens to lots of people, and sadly I was prepared and had already bought the heavy duty pump etc., but I just thought we might catch a break. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to relax (gee thanks, where have I heard that one before?), eat well, sleep lots (but when I lie down for a nap I just start crying which isn't conducive to sleep) etc. etc. And then they tell me that formula is just fine, not to worry. Which I know is true but it's not what I wanted for my baby and it's going to be a long time before I can reconcile myself to it as a solution.

I started on a supplement which contains fenugreek, fennel, nettle and blessed thistle today. I've been drinking gallons of fennel tea since Monday. I'm pumping after every feed. And I am not optimistic.

A lactation counsellor has been round, she told us about the sucking problem, but she was pretty negative about ways to increase supply. My doctor won't prescribe domperidone and I can't yet see any way to get it sent (illegally) to the UK. So I just feel a bit hopeless.

And I feel awful that my first real pob post is so miserable. Yesterday's would have been better. I hope tomorrow's will be. But this is just where I am right now.

Thank you so much for all your good wishes. I read them as they came in, late at night on my blackberry while I was trying to feed Pob. It really helped.