In 1998, we moved to Chicago -- a gorgeous, vital, friendly city which now warms our fond memories and wistful thoughts. However, we moved there from the Palouse hills in Idaho. There were less than 2 million people in Idaho. There are over 8 million in Chicagoland, packed tightly. We had some culture shock when we arrived there, towing our logging-road-enduring, planned-obsolescence-defying Geo Metro behind our U-Haul truck down the ruined tollways and urban residential streets, amidst copious homeless persons and obvious gang presence. We reclusive, bird-watching geeks were clearly not in our element. By the time we started unpacking our truck, we discovered the lovely side of the city: people watching the truck for us and scolding us when we left it unlocked because we "shouldn't trust people," the neighbors' bodybuilding Russian guest helping unload the truck and bringing us cold iced tea and civilized conversation, the friendliness of neighbors who wanted answers when they asked how we were.
Nonetheless, urban life brings its own challenges -- like neighborhoods completely lacking box stores or other retail outlets, and having to commute to get to grocery stores. So we picked a suburb pretty much at random, because it had lots of water near it in which there might be waterfowl, and drove there to go shopping and fool around. And there were geese and ducks and good places to eat and green plants in broader swaths than the parks that dotted South Chicago, so we kept coming back. Eventually we dubbed it "the Stomping Grounds" and did a lot of our shopping for things like electronics and Christmas gifts there.
In spring of 2002, we noticed a Canada goose snuggled down in a planter right in front of one of the box stores (neither of us can remember the store -- it was a discount chain right next to We-R-Toys and Bloodbath & Beyond). She was nesting there, supervised by a visibly anxious gander who strolled disconsolately up and down the parking lot, grumbling at passersby. She honked and hissed at all pedestrians, offering to bite those who stopped to admire her. It was probably the worst nesting site in the history of nesting sites. We dubbed her Crazy Goose and drove out there every other day throughout the whole nesting season to make sure the water pan a goose-bitten Samaritan had left her had been refilled. When we fed her corn muffins, she hissed us the whole time she gobbled them, and got a lump of them stuck in her throat that caused her to drool her water back out. We waited for the lump to clear before we would drive home to our apartment, abused the whole time by her cursing and grumbling, and nervously watching her gander try to decide whether he wanted to kick our butts or not.
We'd been watching her for almost two weeks -- walking right up to her to feed her and give her water -- by the time we noticed Quiet Duck.
Quiet Duck had clearly taken the advice of her crazy goose friend on nesting sites and just as clearly regretted it. She hunched silently in the bushes in the planter, head nestled in her burnished breast, eyes closed so not to raise a shine, Zen not-thinking to be invisible. She could have been a ninja. She was so silent and still that even after one had seen her, one could lose her position -- in broad daylight, exposed in a planter in front of a busy retail hub.
It seemed plain that Crazy Goose did not like sharing her water and food with Quiet Duck, even after she had talked her into nesting in a madhouse with her. We tried to feed Quiet Duck, who seemed unhappy to have been noticed and merely sank down more silently and sullenly and not-thunk all the harder, and Crazy Goose hissed and darted in to steal the crumbs from under Quiet Duck's still, hiding, sad little beak. There was nothing to be done for her, other than respect her desire to hide.
One day when we returned to visit the nesting waterfowl and refill the water pan, Quiet Duck seemed particularly bedraggled. We nudged a small, separate water bowl with a few shreds of lettuce floating in it to the duck. She shrank back in alarm, adjusting her wings, and finally standing up.
A full dozen little faces, yellow like dandelion flowers and enlivened by shiny, guileless bright eyes with a smudgy mascara stripe across them like a mask, popped up from around her. They wobbled prodigiously in the spring sunlight on skinny necks like fuzzy yellow-brown stems. Each and every one of the twelve ducklings began peeping softly and continued to do so, softly muffled, after their mother settled her glossy feathers over them again with a matronly plump and shimmy.
The next day, when we (irresistably) returned, she and her ducklings had wandered to safer territory... probably the cattail marsh across the street.
I have never forgotten these ducklings -- they were probably the most precious sight I've seen until recently. And now, my son, a golden and fuzzy creature with bright shiny eyes in a face like a flower, wobbles exactly the same way when he raises his head on his slender neck to peep at the world.
...and a postscript, just to tell you how great Chicago is. In 2003, Crazy Goose returned to her absolutely terrible nesting site, probably very close indeed to where she was herself born -- as female waterfowl will, generation after generation, regardless of anthropogenic changes to the landscape. Her dutiful mate hovered anxiously nearby. But rather late in the nesting season, construction crews started tearing down the building in front of which her planter was situated.
We were despondent. We were afraid she would defend the nest and be hurt herself, and were grief-stricken that her eggs -- already probably peeping with the life ready to burst forth from them -- would not get the chance to hatch. We worried about her gallant gander. I stayed awake late at night crying, and made Pat drive me back out there to see if there was anything we could do for her. (Yes, I'm as crazy as Crazy Goose.)
Impossibly, the gander was still meandering unhappily around the parking lot, looking defensive and slightly embarrassed. We approached the planter, which appeared to be filled with construction debris, with trepidation.
The construction workers had built her a little house, erecting bricks to either side of the nest and a sturdy roof atop it to keep out any falling brickbats from the rest of the deconstruction going on behind her. She hissed us merrily and bit my thumb when I checked the level of her water pan.
And there she stayed, in her little nest house, until she had hatched out the chicks and led them off to whatever zone she chose to raise them in. And I felt better about the world and positively in love with the construction workers (which is easy to do -- they're lovely to look at, aren't they?)
And that's a real-world happy ending.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Two things to do with Brussels sprouts
I got fancy with dinner last night, and made chicken in a mushroom thyme cream sauce, and leek and fennel risotto seasoned with fennel seeds and thyme and splashed with absinthe to make the fennel flavor pop -- and a Brussels sprout salad that knocked our socks off.
Brussels sprouts are Pat's favorite vegetable, and there are lots of ways to fix them that are utterly delicious. I'm going to give you my two favorites, but you can be madly creative with the little flavor buttons if you simply adhere to two rules:
1) They must be fresh, not frozen; the fresher, the better. You are looking for smallish sprouts without yellow wilted leaves or ooky black spots -- and this time of year you should be able to find a stalk of them, fancy for the holidays. They are really fresh when you cut them right off that stalk, provided they aren't all wilty.
2) You must absolutely not overcook them. Note that they are overcooked as soon as most people consider them fully cooked: you want them to retain a little tender-crispness, not to melt into cabbagey softness. Their texture is neat when they are soft, but they lose something in the flavor department.
So, last night's salad:
FEATHERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS SALAD WITH FENNEL (2 generous portions)
12 Brussels sprouts, shaved paper thin with a mandoline or a very sharp knife and patience (if you do this by hand, cut them in half so that they don't roll on the cutting board and then slice them fine)
1/2 bulb of fennel, pale part only, cored and shaved paper thin
1/3 cup or so of flavorful nuts (hazelnuts or almonds are wonderful)
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper to taste
a few tablespoons of freshly shaven shards of Parmesan cheese
Mix all ingredients, withholding nuts and cheese if desired to sprinkle atop. I didn't; I mixed it all in with my hands and it was wonderful that way.
And my favorite sprouts recipe...
FIERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS
15 or 20 Brussels sprouts, trimmed and cut in half or in quarters
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter (optional - use more olive oil if preferred)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced or cut into fine matchstick shapes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pine nuts (totally optional and I most often forget them, but mmm)
Heat oil and butter over medium-high heat, and throw in Brussels sprouts and garlic. Stir fry until sprouts are very bright green and tender-crisp (you can hurry this up by adding a tablespoon or three of water and letting it cook off -- it will help steam the sprouts and keep the garlic from burning if you have other things going on). Add spices, stir and fry a few more moments, and serve. These are AWESOME with Italian food: alongside pasta with a red sauce, lasagne, or sausage and peppers on polenta.
If these two recipes don't blow your skirt up, I don't know why.
Brussels sprouts also love to be paired with: a spoonful of grainy mustard in a butter sauce, a squeeze of key lime juice and salt and pepper, flavorsome olive oil and a lavish last-minute splash of Vincotto, or fingerling potatoes and bacon.
Brussels sprouts are Pat's favorite vegetable, and there are lots of ways to fix them that are utterly delicious. I'm going to give you my two favorites, but you can be madly creative with the little flavor buttons if you simply adhere to two rules:
1) They must be fresh, not frozen; the fresher, the better. You are looking for smallish sprouts without yellow wilted leaves or ooky black spots -- and this time of year you should be able to find a stalk of them, fancy for the holidays. They are really fresh when you cut them right off that stalk, provided they aren't all wilty.
2) You must absolutely not overcook them. Note that they are overcooked as soon as most people consider them fully cooked: you want them to retain a little tender-crispness, not to melt into cabbagey softness. Their texture is neat when they are soft, but they lose something in the flavor department.
So, last night's salad:
FEATHERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS SALAD WITH FENNEL (2 generous portions)
12 Brussels sprouts, shaved paper thin with a mandoline or a very sharp knife and patience (if you do this by hand, cut them in half so that they don't roll on the cutting board and then slice them fine)
1/2 bulb of fennel, pale part only, cored and shaved paper thin
1/3 cup or so of flavorful nuts (hazelnuts or almonds are wonderful)
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper to taste
a few tablespoons of freshly shaven shards of Parmesan cheese
Mix all ingredients, withholding nuts and cheese if desired to sprinkle atop. I didn't; I mixed it all in with my hands and it was wonderful that way.
And my favorite sprouts recipe...
FIERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS
15 or 20 Brussels sprouts, trimmed and cut in half or in quarters
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter (optional - use more olive oil if preferred)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced or cut into fine matchstick shapes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pine nuts (totally optional and I most often forget them, but mmm)
Heat oil and butter over medium-high heat, and throw in Brussels sprouts and garlic. Stir fry until sprouts are very bright green and tender-crisp (you can hurry this up by adding a tablespoon or three of water and letting it cook off -- it will help steam the sprouts and keep the garlic from burning if you have other things going on). Add spices, stir and fry a few more moments, and serve. These are AWESOME with Italian food: alongside pasta with a red sauce, lasagne, or sausage and peppers on polenta.
If these two recipes don't blow your skirt up, I don't know why.
Brussels sprouts also love to be paired with: a spoonful of grainy mustard in a butter sauce, a squeeze of key lime juice and salt and pepper, flavorsome olive oil and a lavish last-minute splash of Vincotto, or fingerling potatoes and bacon.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thank you, state-sponsored insurance
The grand totals so far for Fletcher's birth: $144,475.94 was either discounted ("patient savings") or paid by insurance. That's 100% of the bill, for those keeping track -- and that doesn't count the lavish prenatal care that they already covered.
And suddenly I do not mind paying my state taxes, nor my insurance premiums.
And suddenly I do not mind paying my state taxes, nor my insurance premiums.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Make this. Right now.
If you like gingerbread, apples, and wonderful holiday smells, this cake is for you. Plus it comes out bakery-gorgeous. Wow.
Dr. Babs' Ginger Apple Torte from Food52.
Also, Fletch is volunteering to nurse straight from the tap, once per day only and in the morning. I know it's ridiculous, but it heals my (ridiculous) feelings of rejection -- as do his loving little monkey-face expressions.
(Pictured: monkey-face. Very blurry. But that's the expression. Awwwww....)
Life is good, and I am THANKFUL indeed.
Now, go make the cake. Yes, turbinado sugar. Don't fuck around with this, the crunchy topping is too good to risk on substitutions. You heard Auntie Linda.
Dr. Babs' Ginger Apple Torte from Food52.
Also, Fletch is volunteering to nurse straight from the tap, once per day only and in the morning. I know it's ridiculous, but it heals my (ridiculous) feelings of rejection -- as do his loving little monkey-face expressions.
(Pictured: monkey-face. Very blurry. But that's the expression. Awwwww....)
Life is good, and I am THANKFUL indeed.
Now, go make the cake. Yes, turbinado sugar. Don't fuck around with this, the crunchy topping is too good to risk on substitutions. You heard Auntie Linda.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Not dead, just sleepless and busy... and in love. Also, TMI about nursing, probably.
Oh my! Life with a newborn is wonderful. Fletcher is already displaying a lovely personality and lively intelligence, seen in glimpses in the short hours in which he is awake and the fleeting smiles that cross his face on the twilight edge of sleep. (Gassy grimace "smiles" are different.) He makes earnest attempts to communicate, through eye contact and the simplest and most pure signs and gestures: for instance, he roots all the time, for his knuckles, my pinky finger, the pacifier, nipples, and for food, but if he is HUNGRY, he makes pointed eye contact and then opens his mouth wide, like a baby bird. He copies facial expressions -- sort of -- although he has patience only for sequences of three or four of them. He clearly loves and trusts his father and mother. And he is strong -- raising his head from Day Two, although he cannot maintain it, and becoming Tiny Fists-O-Fury when upset or gassy.
Guess what upsets Fletcher? My breasts.
He won't nurse, for various reasons. When he was born, he was lethargic from Magnesium Sulfate and morphine, hypoxia, and a precipitous blood pressure drop. He was "sleepy" and the instant the nipple went into his mouth, he fell asleep. Tickling or chilling him during nursing to try to keep him awake only (predictably?) annoyed him further.
He clearly dislikes having a lot of breast tissue in his face along with the nipple, but there's not much I can do about that -- I am both fat and busty, and I have a lot of breast tissue. The "breast sandwich" is too fat for his little mouth, and my nipples are too big for him. And after being injured by the well-meant pinching of the lactation consultants and my own desperate attempts to compress my size Fs into size As for the baby, I have been wrestling with engorgement that makes this problem worse, much worse: the nipple is perched on a taut, swollen areola that cannot be "sandwiched."
And he hates to be confined (except in a swaddle, which is most DEFINITELY not nursing attire in his book) and doesn't like to be "positioned" tummy to tummy with me (or any variation thereof, in which he has to lie still and stop swinging fists and feet). He doesn't open his mouth wide enough to latch, ever, and might be tongue-tied... but at this stage of the game I would not consent to elective surgery (however minor) to correct it.
But he was jaundiced and we were in a major hurry to get some nutrition in him to flush the bilirubin out of his system. So we fed him expressed colostrum, by finger feeding and through a bottle nipple, with the assistance and blessing of the lactation consultants. He is now nipple-confused and just gnaws the bottle nipples instead of sucking on them -- though he does suck my pinky and the pacifier, if he can get his tongue properly depressed to do so.
The only position in which Fletcher appeared to enjoy the process of unproductively mauling my nipple, licking off the droplets I hand-expressed to tempt him at least, was oddly gymnastically equivalent to the reverse-cowgirl (or at least the 69) of nursing: too contrived, lacking in intimacy, and simply not as pleasurable as it is adventurous. I can lie on my side with the baby's tummy toward my face and his head toward my breast, and instead of arching, screaming, and pummeling me with his brutal little fists and seizing handfuls of areolae with his sharply kitten-clawed fingers, or falling asleep, he simply gums my nipple and whimpers. But when they tried to teach me to do this in the hospital, I was in agony from my incision, and I am not sure that it's the answer now, either. I mean, nursing at the breast instead of simply lying together skin-to-skin and feeding him satisfactorily from a bottle is a matter of my convenience: for social reasons, I cannot exactly strip, lie down 69-fashion with the baby, and try to force him to suckle instead of gnaw in a "mothers' room" at Babies-R-Us -- let alone at my chair in a restaurant!
So. I've been exclusively pumping breastmilk for the little guy. And, when necessary due to engorgement or blockage or when encouraged by nurses in order to help push out bilirubin, a supplemental bottle of formula every other day or so.
I've researched nursing through every website and book I can lay hands on, and am mightily annoyed. All of them assume that you will read the books before starting and NOT as a matter of troubleshooting, and all of them assume that if you just stick with it everything will be magical and will work out perfectly and unicorns will fart rainbows on every street corner. They make dire predictions that if you ever, ever give a baby formula, you have condemned him/her to a life of obesity and diabetes, amid other complaints. They tell you not to "give in." They assume that doggedness is all it will take to nurse a baby. And I am here to tell you, it doesn't always work out that way.
Also, there's a lot of disinformation out there. Nice and well-meaning people with lots of professional experience will give some of it to you. They probably do a lot of good for people without serious problems, but for those of us who have some stubborn obstacles, the advice itself can cause suffering.
Here are the little things about expressing breastmilk that I've learned so far.
1. DON'T let pumping or hand expression cause you pain. If the pump hurts you, you may have too small a flange for your nipple, or too sharp an edge in your flange: use lanolin to grease the flange edge if you need or file it down with a fine emery board before you wash it next. Or you may have the suction turned up too high. Just -- don't. Be gentle and kind and loving to your breasts.
2. DON'T worry. If you are stressed, you will give less milk (that session.) Take the time to relax, breathe deeply, think happy thoughts, get a massage or get your back scratched, get comfortable, have someone hold the baby, have your significant other massage your breasts (NEVER toward the nipple, always away! and massage up to the collarbones and out to the edge of the armpits, you have glands everywhere), use hot compresses or take a warm shower if you like. Kick your relatives out, even if you would let them watch you nurse: pinching your breasts or being hooked up to the machine is not shameful, but it is qualitatively different. You will be amazed how much this affects your milk production.
3. About quantities: all the books will tell you that so long as your baby is peeing or pooping the requisite number of times and appears to be thriving, you have enough milk. This is probably true; all babies are different. And yet... if you're like me, you want to know what would be ideal production. You will start out producing a milliliter or two a session of expressed colostrum, the sticky yellow stuff that is so great for babies and which comes in before your milk. That amount will increase until transitional milk comes in (much wetter and whiter). By the end of the first week of the baby's life, you will probably be producing at least half an ounce to an ounce of milk a session. By the end of six weeks, when your milk is done transitioning and your supply becomes more or less stable if maintained, you'll be producing something like 25 ounces a day.
4. Pump every 2 1/2 to 3 hours during the day and every 3 to 4 hours at night, for 12 to 15 minutes a session. This is tough to balance if you get tender: you'll need to stop if you are making yourself sore and aren't producing much milk, but you will want to express a goodly quantity every session to "order" the milk you want for the next session (you get back what you remove from the breast.) Don't crank up the pump strength. Don't pump more frequently. Don't pump forever in a session. Painless and efficient is what you want.
5. Use an ice-pack after pumping if you are sore. Don't use it too close to the next session, as a cold boob is not an optimal milker. Use a warm compress to loosen things up again if desired.
6. Try to get ahead of the baby's needs. If baby is crying, it will stimulate your letdown, sure, but it'll raise your stress. See #2 above. Have someone entertain the baby if possible while you focus on pumping.
7. Don't focus too hard on pumping. Feel free to relax & meditate, fantasize, scheme, watch TV, read, whatever. I catnap because oxytocin makes me a zombie.
8. WEAR A BRA. Not a tight bra that leaves lines and compressions on your skin, because that will impact the glands and could cause mastitis or engorgement. A nicely-fitting, soft, stretchy sports bra.
9. While you pump, use gentle compression on the engorged glands in your breast to increase milk flow. You'll be shocked at how well this works. GENTLE is the watchword here -- and you do not want to squeeze-and-pull toward the nipple, just to press the milk sinuses that are reluctant to release their bounty.
10. Don't squish the flanges into your flesh so hard that they create compression areas. The ideal is to hold the flanges gently onto your skin in a "natural" position. This ideal is ridiculous, because there is nothing comfortable about leaning forward with your hands tucked under your knockers and trying to hold on hard-plastic cups that will spill milk down to your navel if you jostle them at all, but it's just that -- an ideal. Shoot for it. And learn to live with the spills.
If I think of more, I'll add them. But there you go.
Guess what upsets Fletcher? My breasts.
He won't nurse, for various reasons. When he was born, he was lethargic from Magnesium Sulfate and morphine, hypoxia, and a precipitous blood pressure drop. He was "sleepy" and the instant the nipple went into his mouth, he fell asleep. Tickling or chilling him during nursing to try to keep him awake only (predictably?) annoyed him further.
He clearly dislikes having a lot of breast tissue in his face along with the nipple, but there's not much I can do about that -- I am both fat and busty, and I have a lot of breast tissue. The "breast sandwich" is too fat for his little mouth, and my nipples are too big for him. And after being injured by the well-meant pinching of the lactation consultants and my own desperate attempts to compress my size Fs into size As for the baby, I have been wrestling with engorgement that makes this problem worse, much worse: the nipple is perched on a taut, swollen areola that cannot be "sandwiched."
And he hates to be confined (except in a swaddle, which is most DEFINITELY not nursing attire in his book) and doesn't like to be "positioned" tummy to tummy with me (or any variation thereof, in which he has to lie still and stop swinging fists and feet). He doesn't open his mouth wide enough to latch, ever, and might be tongue-tied... but at this stage of the game I would not consent to elective surgery (however minor) to correct it.
But he was jaundiced and we were in a major hurry to get some nutrition in him to flush the bilirubin out of his system. So we fed him expressed colostrum, by finger feeding and through a bottle nipple, with the assistance and blessing of the lactation consultants. He is now nipple-confused and just gnaws the bottle nipples instead of sucking on them -- though he does suck my pinky and the pacifier, if he can get his tongue properly depressed to do so.
The only position in which Fletcher appeared to enjoy the process of unproductively mauling my nipple, licking off the droplets I hand-expressed to tempt him at least, was oddly gymnastically equivalent to the reverse-cowgirl (or at least the 69) of nursing: too contrived, lacking in intimacy, and simply not as pleasurable as it is adventurous. I can lie on my side with the baby's tummy toward my face and his head toward my breast, and instead of arching, screaming, and pummeling me with his brutal little fists and seizing handfuls of areolae with his sharply kitten-clawed fingers, or falling asleep, he simply gums my nipple and whimpers. But when they tried to teach me to do this in the hospital, I was in agony from my incision, and I am not sure that it's the answer now, either. I mean, nursing at the breast instead of simply lying together skin-to-skin and feeding him satisfactorily from a bottle is a matter of my convenience: for social reasons, I cannot exactly strip, lie down 69-fashion with the baby, and try to force him to suckle instead of gnaw in a "mothers' room" at Babies-R-Us -- let alone at my chair in a restaurant!
So. I've been exclusively pumping breastmilk for the little guy. And, when necessary due to engorgement or blockage or when encouraged by nurses in order to help push out bilirubin, a supplemental bottle of formula every other day or so.
I've researched nursing through every website and book I can lay hands on, and am mightily annoyed. All of them assume that you will read the books before starting and NOT as a matter of troubleshooting, and all of them assume that if you just stick with it everything will be magical and will work out perfectly and unicorns will fart rainbows on every street corner. They make dire predictions that if you ever, ever give a baby formula, you have condemned him/her to a life of obesity and diabetes, amid other complaints. They tell you not to "give in." They assume that doggedness is all it will take to nurse a baby. And I am here to tell you, it doesn't always work out that way.
Also, there's a lot of disinformation out there. Nice and well-meaning people with lots of professional experience will give some of it to you. They probably do a lot of good for people without serious problems, but for those of us who have some stubborn obstacles, the advice itself can cause suffering.
Here are the little things about expressing breastmilk that I've learned so far.
1. DON'T let pumping or hand expression cause you pain. If the pump hurts you, you may have too small a flange for your nipple, or too sharp an edge in your flange: use lanolin to grease the flange edge if you need or file it down with a fine emery board before you wash it next. Or you may have the suction turned up too high. Just -- don't. Be gentle and kind and loving to your breasts.
2. DON'T worry. If you are stressed, you will give less milk (that session.) Take the time to relax, breathe deeply, think happy thoughts, get a massage or get your back scratched, get comfortable, have someone hold the baby, have your significant other massage your breasts (NEVER toward the nipple, always away! and massage up to the collarbones and out to the edge of the armpits, you have glands everywhere), use hot compresses or take a warm shower if you like. Kick your relatives out, even if you would let them watch you nurse: pinching your breasts or being hooked up to the machine is not shameful, but it is qualitatively different. You will be amazed how much this affects your milk production.
3. About quantities: all the books will tell you that so long as your baby is peeing or pooping the requisite number of times and appears to be thriving, you have enough milk. This is probably true; all babies are different. And yet... if you're like me, you want to know what would be ideal production. You will start out producing a milliliter or two a session of expressed colostrum, the sticky yellow stuff that is so great for babies and which comes in before your milk. That amount will increase until transitional milk comes in (much wetter and whiter). By the end of the first week of the baby's life, you will probably be producing at least half an ounce to an ounce of milk a session. By the end of six weeks, when your milk is done transitioning and your supply becomes more or less stable if maintained, you'll be producing something like 25 ounces a day.
4. Pump every 2 1/2 to 3 hours during the day and every 3 to 4 hours at night, for 12 to 15 minutes a session. This is tough to balance if you get tender: you'll need to stop if you are making yourself sore and aren't producing much milk, but you will want to express a goodly quantity every session to "order" the milk you want for the next session (you get back what you remove from the breast.) Don't crank up the pump strength. Don't pump more frequently. Don't pump forever in a session. Painless and efficient is what you want.
5. Use an ice-pack after pumping if you are sore. Don't use it too close to the next session, as a cold boob is not an optimal milker. Use a warm compress to loosen things up again if desired.
6. Try to get ahead of the baby's needs. If baby is crying, it will stimulate your letdown, sure, but it'll raise your stress. See #2 above. Have someone entertain the baby if possible while you focus on pumping.
7. Don't focus too hard on pumping. Feel free to relax & meditate, fantasize, scheme, watch TV, read, whatever. I catnap because oxytocin makes me a zombie.
8. WEAR A BRA. Not a tight bra that leaves lines and compressions on your skin, because that will impact the glands and could cause mastitis or engorgement. A nicely-fitting, soft, stretchy sports bra.
9. While you pump, use gentle compression on the engorged glands in your breast to increase milk flow. You'll be shocked at how well this works. GENTLE is the watchword here -- and you do not want to squeeze-and-pull toward the nipple, just to press the milk sinuses that are reluctant to release their bounty.
10. Don't squish the flanges into your flesh so hard that they create compression areas. The ideal is to hold the flanges gently onto your skin in a "natural" position. This ideal is ridiculous, because there is nothing comfortable about leaning forward with your hands tucked under your knockers and trying to hold on hard-plastic cups that will spill milk down to your navel if you jostle them at all, but it's just that -- an ideal. Shoot for it. And learn to live with the spills.
If I think of more, I'll add them. But there you go.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Home again, home again!
We were supposed to go home on Thursday, but they held us another day to keep an eye on Fletcher -- and on me. Little Fletcher's bilirubin numbers continued to go up gradually, but as jaundice can be dangerous if it gets bad enough, and the hospital has access to transcutaneous bilirubin testers (a light shined through the fat on baby's noggin that returns a level of "yellow", so far as I can tell) and didn't need to draw blood unless the numbers got scary. As for me, my blood pressure was a little elevated again and the doc wanted to make sure it didn't continue to climb. Also, my feet are HUGE because of IV fluids and he wanted to watch me for blood clots. All good.
But. They said the words "brain damage or death" about jaundice and then took my blood pressure. Imagine! And then, they rotated in nurses from another department to cover the night shift.
Fletcher still does not like to nurse. I was trying, at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, to nurse him, and we had arrived at a perfect "I will try this and NOT scream like you stabbed me, but we're not good at it yet" situation. And then, the fire alarms in the hospital started making noise. The bulkhead-style hall doors locked themselves down with talking security locks (the closest one about 2 feet from my room door) and started droning canned warnings about fire. SEVEN strangers ran into my room, where I was trying to feed an upset newborn, all nekkid, and one threw a cloth at me: "You might want to cover yourself, we have an emergency."
The fire alarm located in the attic of our room had malfunctioned, automatically shut off the air conditioning to the entire hospital, and closed all the bulkheads, and the only cure was for the lone Operations manager to be on a ladder in my attic for three hours while his phone went off every minute and a half because the laboratory and clean rooms COULD NOT OPERATE without the air conditioning...
The night nurse forgot to give me my pain medication on time THREE TIMES, resulting in a lot of pain. I was also suffering some weird sore/inflamed breast symptoms because the lactation consultant pinched my nipple too hard (I know, right?) and had had me lie on one side to try another "hold" -- which made my incision tender. When she DID finally come in (when I demanded medication) in her street clothes, she waxed horrified and alarmed at how my baby's bilirubin level had "spiked" and WHEN were they considering putting him under bili-lights, because the levels were dangerous? (She's from another department: babies' tolerance for bilirubin exceeds that of adults, but I didn't know that... and neither did she.)
Pat spent hours researching jaundice online. Medical studies of jaundice that he found online were neither comforting nor able to confirm anything scary. All we knew was that we were doing things right and that the baby had multiple risk factors and that his numbers were borderline.
Guess when they elected to take my blood pressure? Right. Plus the nurse's assistant who took the BP did not sanitize her hands, coughed the entire time she was in my room, and grumbled about having been reassigned to mother/baby from pediatrics -- all of this while the room next door had CDC warnings posted on it for "respiratory contagion." Ohmigod.
So I told them that, if my baby was well enough, I was going home no matter what my fucking blood pressure might be, because it would surely be lower at home.
In the morning, my doctor saw no reason to keep me: I look to be healing well, my blood pressure was going down, nothing to especially worry him. He told me what to watch out for.
The pediatrician who stopped in scoffed at the baby's bilirubin level and told us to take him home and continue taking good care of him, and get him to the doctor for a check up on Monday.
We got him dressed, fed, and checked out. We stuffed him into his baby carrier. We brought him home, where, excited by the change of scenery and habits, and the reduced noise level, he could hardly sleep.
It's bliss to be home. Pure bliss. And life with a newborn, although challenging, is wonderful. He is charming, funny, and smart already (a being of pure Id), and can Houdini his way out of any mittens, socks, or swaddles he is put into. (And twice, his diapers along with the swaddling blankets.... oy!)
My mom, now known as "Grandma" despite her sworn oath never to let anyone call her that, is cooking copious and delicious meals for us and is a blessing. My darling friend and doula April, trusty by our sides throughout the hospitalized period, has offered to do any errands or help any way she can. The wonderful ladies at church are offering to make casseroles, come help, and provide sympathetic ears if I need them. The only cloud on my horizon, a very small cloud, is that my hormones are crazy out of whack and I can go hysterical with weeping over something like a bird-rescue call too difficult for us to take in our current situation. (I guess I frustrate easily right now -- and the idea of leaving something helpless without assistance just got to me. But I am still blissful, not depressed.)
More pictures of our little yellow Oompa-Loompa are surely to come, but I'm just catchin' you up, right now. :)
Love you guys. Be good.
But. They said the words "brain damage or death" about jaundice and then took my blood pressure. Imagine! And then, they rotated in nurses from another department to cover the night shift.
Fletcher still does not like to nurse. I was trying, at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, to nurse him, and we had arrived at a perfect "I will try this and NOT scream like you stabbed me, but we're not good at it yet" situation. And then, the fire alarms in the hospital started making noise. The bulkhead-style hall doors locked themselves down with talking security locks (the closest one about 2 feet from my room door) and started droning canned warnings about fire. SEVEN strangers ran into my room, where I was trying to feed an upset newborn, all nekkid, and one threw a cloth at me: "You might want to cover yourself, we have an emergency."
The fire alarm located in the attic of our room had malfunctioned, automatically shut off the air conditioning to the entire hospital, and closed all the bulkheads, and the only cure was for the lone Operations manager to be on a ladder in my attic for three hours while his phone went off every minute and a half because the laboratory and clean rooms COULD NOT OPERATE without the air conditioning...
The night nurse forgot to give me my pain medication on time THREE TIMES, resulting in a lot of pain. I was also suffering some weird sore/inflamed breast symptoms because the lactation consultant pinched my nipple too hard (I know, right?) and had had me lie on one side to try another "hold" -- which made my incision tender. When she DID finally come in (when I demanded medication) in her street clothes, she waxed horrified and alarmed at how my baby's bilirubin level had "spiked" and WHEN were they considering putting him under bili-lights, because the levels were dangerous? (She's from another department: babies' tolerance for bilirubin exceeds that of adults, but I didn't know that... and neither did she.)
Pat spent hours researching jaundice online. Medical studies of jaundice that he found online were neither comforting nor able to confirm anything scary. All we knew was that we were doing things right and that the baby had multiple risk factors and that his numbers were borderline.
Guess when they elected to take my blood pressure? Right. Plus the nurse's assistant who took the BP did not sanitize her hands, coughed the entire time she was in my room, and grumbled about having been reassigned to mother/baby from pediatrics -- all of this while the room next door had CDC warnings posted on it for "respiratory contagion." Ohmigod.
So I told them that, if my baby was well enough, I was going home no matter what my fucking blood pressure might be, because it would surely be lower at home.
In the morning, my doctor saw no reason to keep me: I look to be healing well, my blood pressure was going down, nothing to especially worry him. He told me what to watch out for.
The pediatrician who stopped in scoffed at the baby's bilirubin level and told us to take him home and continue taking good care of him, and get him to the doctor for a check up on Monday.
We got him dressed, fed, and checked out. We stuffed him into his baby carrier. We brought him home, where, excited by the change of scenery and habits, and the reduced noise level, he could hardly sleep.
It's bliss to be home. Pure bliss. And life with a newborn, although challenging, is wonderful. He is charming, funny, and smart already (a being of pure Id), and can Houdini his way out of any mittens, socks, or swaddles he is put into. (And twice, his diapers along with the swaddling blankets.... oy!)
My mom, now known as "Grandma" despite her sworn oath never to let anyone call her that, is cooking copious and delicious meals for us and is a blessing. My darling friend and doula April, trusty by our sides throughout the hospitalized period, has offered to do any errands or help any way she can. The wonderful ladies at church are offering to make casseroles, come help, and provide sympathetic ears if I need them. The only cloud on my horizon, a very small cloud, is that my hormones are crazy out of whack and I can go hysterical with weeping over something like a bird-rescue call too difficult for us to take in our current situation. (I guess I frustrate easily right now -- and the idea of leaving something helpless without assistance just got to me. But I am still blissful, not depressed.)
More pictures of our little yellow Oompa-Loompa are surely to come, but I'm just catchin' you up, right now. :)
Love you guys. Be good.
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