7 Things To Make Breastfeeding Suck Less

Pun intended, hehe. I was going to title this something earnestly helpful like "7 Nursing Essentials", but that was too boring.  Can I also say that I am so much more comfortable with the euphemism of "nursing", like somehow it's bad for me to talk about breasts?  Sigh.  I'm working on it, though.

Anyway, as you may recall, I did not like breastfeeding at first. In fact, at this point with BabyT, 4 weeks in, it still hurt like a mofo, and I was spending upwards of 4 hours a day feeding her because she was sloooow. Luckily with BabyM, she's pretty efficient and has a picture-perfect latch, so it never hurt. A-mazing.

Why is there a pumpkin on my head??

However, like all newborns, she eats several times a day, so there are some things that make the experience even better.  

1. All-Purpose Nipple Ointment.  My doctor calls this stuff "magic ointment" and good lord she was NOT kidding.  This made breastfeeding bearable the first time, and I'm convinced it's also kept us thrush and infection-free as well.  For the second baby, I was smart enough to get the prescription filled *before* the baby came and took this stuff to the hospital.

2. Washable nursing pads.  Most people just buy the box of disposable Lansinoh nursing pads to avoid embarassing leaks on clothing.  And don't get me wrong, they're pretty great and I have a small stash of those on hand for long outings.  But I felt really bad about generating *so much* trash - tossing a few pairs of these every day for months made me feel very eco-guilty.  I found these wonderfully made washable nursing pads by wooldins on Etsy and bought a set with each baby.  They're WAY better than the 100% cotton ones sold in stores - those get clammy and gross.  These stay comfortable, and wash well.  Love.

3. Electric breast pump x2.  We started BabyM on a bottle this week, so I had my first grown up dinner away from the baby. So nice.  Of course, this requires me to pump, but I have to anyway, since I need to start the freezer stash for my return to work in March.  I'm lucky to have inherited a nice Medela pump from a close friend (8 years old but still going strong, surprisingly!).  What I found out last time was that lugging the pump and parts back and forth and setting it up at home and at work *each day* was a royal pain.  So I got another one for work and left it there.  I only brought the parts and bottles home to wash and had plenty of extras.  Well worth the extra cost.

4. My Brest Friend Nursing Pillow. I know, real women can nurse standing up, walking around, etc. and don't need any stinkin' nursing pillow.  But I'm just not woman enough.  I'm still pretty awkward without it, though I can get it done if required.  But with the pillow, it's so.damn.easy.  Baby is at the right height, I can sit up straight without a crazy backache, and it leaves me with a free hand to snack, surf the web, shop online etc.  Ridiculous name, but great product.

5. Ugly Glider.  I scored a screamin' deal (twice!) on Craigslist for a Dutailier glider-rocker.  These things are so ridiculously ugly, but so damn comfortable for breastfeeding.  Ours has a charming (puke) pastel animal theme.  But the angle of the chair is perfect, it's a rocker, and has comfy padding.  I can get over the sheer ugliness of it for the year or so we'll need it.

6. Medela Nursing Stool.  When I first saw this, I thought it was another way to separate new parents from their money.  I mean, Ugly Glider comes with its own ottoman so why would I need a separate tiny hard footstool?  Except that the ottoman is not the right height for nursing, and I am short and had a ridiculous backache for the first few weeks of nursing BabyT. The lactaction specialist recommended this stool, and desperate for relief, I shelled out the money for it.  Worth.every.penny.  Seriously.  It fixed all my posture problems.  Love.

7. Smartphone.  Yeah, I know.  You don't *need* this for nursing.  But OMG, having Internet access on a tiny device I can hold in one hand?  Priceless for those long feedings.  I've shopped online, kept up with Facebook, read the news, and cleaned out my email, all while growing a baby. How awesome is that? I could even watch movies and TV if I wanted to. Definitely an essential.

So there it is - the things that make breastfeeding easy-peasy for me.  Hope it helps.  What do the experienced mamas out there think?  Any essentials I missed?  I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

I'm learning to live

It's been a little over 2 weeks as a family of four and so far it's gone much better than I expected.  Most of this is due to the fact that TJ is home so we're pretty much always dividing and conquering.

Things that are going well:

No meltdowns yet, from anyone.  I'm pretty surprised, to be honest.  I suppose it's too early to get too excited about that, though.

Everyone is fed, clothed, clean and mostly happy.  That's a big deal, right?  BabyM sleeps in pretty good stretches usually - 2.5 hours up to 8 hours once (!).  It's all over the place - sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, but I'll take it.

I'm off the pain meds.  I can drive!  Things (mostly) don't hurt.  I can leave the house on my own! (In theory anyway.  In practice I need to take The Baby since I'm the only one who can feed her.)

I'm pretty well-rested.  I am one of those people who can nap anytime, almost anywhere.  TJ holds down the fort with T since I've got all the night duty with The Baby.  (I know, he is so awesome.)

I'm (mostly) accepting that I don't *have* to do anything right now except take care of my family.  It's hard for my Type-A self, but I keep reminding myself I have about 20 weeks left at home.  That's a long time.

Nursing.  So easy this time.  And efficient.  Loving the snuggly quiet time with BabyM, and also sometimes T keeps us company and "reads" us a book.

Things I'd like to be better:

T is waking multiple times at night and requires soothing.  Not surprising considering the circumstances but very rough on TJ who is NOT a napper.  I can't help much yet since I'm already up a couple of times with The Baby, but I'm hoping it'll iron out soon.  Sort of wondering if cosleeping will fix it - the one night she came to our bed, she slept through *everything*.

I had forgotten how ridiculously hard it is to leave the house with a baby.  T has gotten pretty self sufficient - she can put on her own shoes/jacket, use the bathroom and mostly dress herself.  We're starting over.  It took us 90 minutes to get out the door this morning to go to the Children's Museum.  Thankfully we didn't need to be there by a certain time.

BabyM hates the carseat.  I don't know why.  On the bright side, she almost always falls asleep after a few minutes of driving.  But this is the only time she really cries, and it's awful.

I still don't want to make a lot of plans with people.  First, it's hard to get out of the house and be somewhere at a certain time, not to mention, I may not want to be awake at that time.

Then I have to figure out the nursing-in-public thing, made more complicated by the fact that I can't find my nursing cover up.  The blanket over the shoulder trick is NOT working for me.  Also, it's so much easier with the enormous nursing pillow.  Sigh.

I miss my big girl.  I miss having uninterrupted time with her.  I'm often still asleep when she leaves for preschool in the morning.  She is here and awake for such limited hours that I feel like I'm missing out.  Sniffle.  Nearly every book-reading session or art project is interrupted because The Baby needs to eat and right now I'm the only one who can feed her. 

Which leads me to Introducing the Bottle.  We need to do this, but I'm afraid.  One of the nurses at the hospital gave her a paci (I know, too early!) and she took to it right away, but it screwed up her latch for the *entire next day*.  I was really upset about this, thinking we had broken our perfectly-nursing baby.  Fortunately, the following day she was fine and we haven't tried a paci since.


But it would be nice if TJ could feed her occasionally, *and* she's going to need to take a bottle when I go back to work in March.   Which means I need to start pumping anyway, so that we can stockpile milk.  Blergh.

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Not bad for the first few weeks, though.  Fingers crossed that the relative peacefulness and Baby Good Sleep will last!

Why we should choose our role models carefully

I wasn't going to write about Marissa Mayer's appointment to be CEO of Yahoo, figuring many of my fellow bloggers (ones I read, even!) would discuss it.

But as an also-7-months-pregnant woman in the tech industry, I can't let it go.  I don't think it's Mayer's responsibility to *do* anything differently than she plans to do - she needs to live her life the way she wants to, and clearly she is ambitious, successful, and kickass.  Go her.

What I do take issue with is so many women, and women's affinity groups hailing this as a great leap forward for us.  Yes, it's awesome that another large, well known company has a female CEO.  I get it.  Even better that her pregnancy didn't prevent them from choosing her.  (Talk to me sometime about job searching when one is pregnant - super fun.)

But, her statement about working through her few weeks of maternity leave is what gets me.  I don't know what Yahoo's mat leave policy is, but I suspect it's at least 12 weeks, and possibly more.   If the CEO isn't planning to take the leave, what does that say about the rank-and-file who think they need it?  Especially those who feel more "replaceable"?  Should we all hurry back to work?

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose male and/or child-free coworkers have made comments envious of my "5 months of vacation" coming up.  (Clearly these people have not spent 24/7 with a hungry newborn.)

Yes, I get 20 weeks, and yes, that's extremely generous for an American company.  But honestly it's still not enough. 

At 20 weeks last time, T was still waking 1-2x per night to eat.  She was getting all her nutrition from me, which meant I had to pump a couple of extra times per day for those 5 months, in addition to feeding her directly, in order to have any chance of enough of a milk stash when I went back to work because I knew I couldn't pump enough in a work day to feed her while I was gone.

In my ideal world, I would have been on leave through 9 months or so, when T started eating significant amounts of "real food" and started sleeping better.  Sure there are people rolling their eyes at this, and sure it's *possible* to go back to work as soon as your medical issues are sorted out.  But I think we as a country need to do better than that. 

I'm not recommending that Mayer do anything differently.  But I do think we need to be careful who we're holding up as our shining examples, because they might end up shooting us in the foot.

It's only natural

Happy Daylight Savings Time! Unfortunately babies don't know about clocks so we were up at 6am today. Which isn't entirely a bad thing since the Chublet went to bed last night around 9 and didn't get up to eat in the middle of the night. This has been going on for 3 nights in a row now so I feel like a normal person who gets to sleep at night. Woo hoo!

And speaking of eating, I am proud to say I have made it to 6 weeks of breastfeeding the Chublet. My first goal was a month. Well, actually, it was a week, then a month. My next goal is to make it to 2 months. (When I think about the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of a year, it makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out.)

Even though the Great Breastfeeding Propaganda Machine doesn't ever mention the sheer suckitude of it, I had enough honest friends to know that it was going to be rough. And fortunately, for us it wasn't as bad as other people have had it. But it still sucked (pun intended). And honestly, I still don't love it.

It's not that beautiful soft-focus bonding moment between baby and mama. It's boring. It takes a long time, several times a day (and sometimes at night). At first, I was spending 4 hours a day feeding her. Now we're down to 2-2.5 hours. And I know this because I keep track. So I know whether I have time to shower/eat/nap before the next time Angry Chublet demands food.

Chublet usually has her eyes closed so it's not like I can gaze lovingly at her while she eats. Plus, did I mention it's boring? On the bright side, my Internet-connected iPod Touch has saved me. I am up to date on everyone on Facebook, I can Tweet, and I have the complete New York Times electronically. So I'm more or less up on current events. That NYT app is phenomenal. And free. I've watched the first 2 seasons of The West Wing on DVD. And the first season of Gilmore Girls (I know, guilty pleasure.)

I guess what annoys me most is the major propaganda. Starting when I was pregnant, complete strangers would ask if I planned to breastfeed. As if it was their business. If you read any of the "helpful" websites, which admittedly I have consulted with questions, they all beat you over the head about how amazing it is, and how it is the BEST way. And that pacifiers are the devil and will screw everything up. As will feeding from a bottle, even if it is breast milk. And of course, formula is like poison. And the answer to nearly every question is "nurse more often". Which doesn't always work, especially in the early weeks when you JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE and your baby is doing that horrific screaming that just rips your heart out.

Reading all that has a nice way of making sleep-deprived new mamas a little crazy and a lot guilty for doing any of the above to maintain peace/sanity/baby weight in their house. I HATE this. Nearly as much as I hate the sites/books that tell you that it's bad for your baby if you opt for drugs during childbirth. As per my previous post on baby care/parenting books, is it really so hard to provide information without being preachy?? And if I hear the phrase "nature's perfect food" again, I'm going to slap that person too.

I am happy to say I no longer dread feeding time. Chublet has obviously figured out how to make it work for her, since she gained 3 lbs in her first month. And it doesn't hurt anymore, mostly. But it's still weird, having to chop my day into 2.5-3 hour intervals. And figuring out what I can wear to easily feed her in the middle of said fragmented day. And don't even ask about the weirdness involved in using the pump to store milk for bottle feedings. Though convenient, it's just strange.

I know, I'm a horrible mother for not loving this. And when she's 16 and we're waiting up for her to come home from an evening out, I'll look back fondly at the time when my baby was with me 24/7.

Of course, when my baby wins a Nobel Prize, I'll be glad, because of course, it was the breastfeeding that was responsible for that. *snicker*