My hat is off to all the working moms out there. I’ve always had a suspicion that, while I could make it work if I had to, it wasn’t really for me. This first weekend of the next stage of yoga teacher training has proven that too me.

I love teaching yoga – and I love doing teacher trainings, because we get to dive into the deep end of the pool. It’s a new way of becoming a student again. But it’s draining. Two to three hours of practice a day, with additional physical work when doing practice teaching or looking at bodies, is a lot! Particularly on this four-month post-partum, anemic, sleep deprived mom. We also don’t have a whole lot of breaks during which I can pump – two (if I push it) during a 8 hour day (including commute) just doesn’t cut it. While I’m fortunate enough to be able to pump extra during the days between training weekends, and am close to keeping up with her supply, I know that this is only going to work BECAUSE I have only one day a week where I’m gone for that long, and the other two days I’m gone are at times when she wouldn’t eat as much anyway.

I can’t really say that my mind is always separated from what I’m doing in my training – it’s not too hard to generally stay focused on task and not drift off to wondering how she’s doing, except for during Savasana, that is. But it certainly is a distraction. And, though I am happy to see her when I get home, I’m sore and tired, so I wish that she didn’t require so much physicality out of me.

This first teacher training weekend focused on standing poses and backbends. With my new body, it’s certainly a whole new practice, and backbends, which used to be a place of freedom and exploration, are now tentative, cautious things. The teacher for this weekend is the same one that taught my 200-hr training, and I feel like she has changed her teaching. It may be due to the fact that we have a very wide range of students in the class, but I like the approach, even if I find it challenging and somewhat different than I’m used to. (Though, I can already see, we are likely to have a difference of opinion when it comes to the prenatal section of the class, and I’m already thinking about how I want to approach those differences.)

On that vein, there is a final project that needs to be done for the class, and I’m thinking about making it related to prenatal yoga in some fashion. The final project has sparked a fire of creativity in me – well damped by the other demands on my time though it may be.

I’m happy for these four (or eleven, depending on the week) days between training weekends, even if one day each week will be in back to back yoga classes. It feels like a chance to slow back down (ironic, coming OUT OF a yoga weekend) and reconnect with Daphne.

This comes after a long weekend of changes. Sure, I realize that her patterns are going to change, seemingly constantly, for quite a while. But I hardly expect dramatic shifts over the course of a day, even if there is some random event that messes up her pattern.

The event in question this time was an attempted camping trip. Some hiking buddies invited me out to the North Cascades to a luxurious* base camp. (*Luxurious is relative here. We usually go backpacking. So having tent sites, a fire ring, potable water from a faucet, and flush toilets in a drive in site… That’s total luxury!) It was a two hour drive away, and would be the first camping trip for Neo and Daphne, with Jason staying home since he’s not much of a camping person. I deliberately overpacked, so that the Subaru hatch was filled up with tent and chair and clothing and food and diapers and virtually everything I thought I would need that I could bring. Even a bouncer. The one thing that I thought would be good to have, but I had no where to make use of it, was the exercise ball we bounce her to sleep on. And that was the one thing I really wish I had. Well, that and a big car camping tent.

She slept most of the trip there, but demanded we stop and nurse about 15 miles from the campsite. On a nice, cool, bright day, with ample turnouts in the country highway, there was no reason not to. Heck, we even got a river view (and whatever the aural equivalent of view is) to go with her meal. My friends did most of the work getting me unpacked and set up – and had a great time passing Daphne around to meet and play with her. But eventually we had dinner, and then she had dinner, and she was clearly getting overtired. So I tried putting her to sleep. Swaddling her went alright, but putting her in the bouncer was a bust – she just wanted to try sitting up. I tried bouncing her on my leg, but there was light in the tent, and she had no interest in sleeping. After about an hour, I called it quits. Perhaps it would have worked if I spent longer, but my gut feeling was that it would have been a LONG night of trying a lot of things cramped uncomfortably in the tent (or trying to get back into the backpacking tent with a sleeping baby, which is just precariously risky). I’ve learned to go with my gut over the past four months. So they helped me back into the car, and I got underway. Again, she demanded to nurse on the way home, but this time being pulled over on the side of an almost deserted country road in the pitch dark to nurse was FAR less fun.

Still, I’m glad we got out there and gave it a try. I know now that I want a humongous car camping tent and to bring an exercise ball along next time. But she greatly enjoyed it, as did my hiking buddies. Even Neo had fun, though it was all a bit new to him.

Daphne has discovered her hands. Well, is in the process of discovering them, anyway. And it’s one of those things that is adorably cute to watch, hilarious in the seriousness she gives it, and then makes you realize that maybe hands and the ability to control them really is a pretty amazing thing after all. Nothing like a baby experiencing things for the first time to remind you of what you take for granted.

In related firsts news, she also got to try her first non-booby-milk taste. She’s been watching us eat, and enjoying it, for the past few weeks. She’s made a few passing attempts to reach out towards the food, but nothing serious. In particular, she enjoys watching us eat noisy food, and was having a good time watching Jason eat a particularly crunchy and tasty new crop apple. So, when she reached towards it, Jason let her give it a try.

Daphne opted to show off her new trick today at her four month checkup: monkey sit. She so wants to interact with her environment. I’m fairly certain she will have some kind of mobility by six months – even if she is just repeatedly rolling in order to get somewhere.

For the past five weeks, I have been back at puppy training class with Neo. Class being during the day, however, Daphne gets strapped into a carrier on my front to offer confusing hand gestures to Neo, and away we go.

It’s been a little tough, because I have to move somewhat slower with her on me, and because it presents logistical challenges with where I can reach. Additionally, it’s harder to bend down – I can’t lean forward, so have been getting a lot if squatting workout.

Neo is doing pretty well, and having a “little sister” seems to be helping his maturity along so well that he was able to do a sit for exam in our last class. He still needs to work out exactly what his role is when it comes to guarding Daphne, but he is definitely making progress, and looks quite happy to be back in class.

Two and a half weeks since I last posted, and I hardly remember where we were then.  It’s amazing how life changes so imperceptibly slowly with a baby, until you look back only a few weeks, and things seem so different.

The weekend before last, Jason’s parents came up to visit.  I joked with him that, really, the purpose of the visit was for grandma to spend time with Daphne, and while I’m sure that she would have liked more time to spend with her, that’s what happened.  Jason and I took advantage of the help and had an actual date!  Not only do we not do the whole “date” thing all that much, we hadn’t gone out in over three months, given the whole baby thing.  Still, we’re predictable, and there was little question what we were going to do – sushi and a movie.  (Really, in the reverse order, which was perfect, because the theater wasn’t packed at all.)  We enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and then further enjoyed a larger quantity of sushi than I can remember eating.  Nom!

Daphne did well with the visit, not yet showing signs of separation anxiety, but I know it’s coming.  We were home so much that the grandparents didn’t really have to worry about trying to get her to sleep, but were able to enjoy her being awake.  I know Daphne loved the attention, and enjoyed getting to dance with grandpa, though it may be a few years before she’s really picking up the west coast swing steps.

At the same time that they were here, Daphne was hitting the second half of her growth spurt.  So far, she has a distinct growth spurt pattern – the first signs are that she starts mauling my nipples badly again.  It rather worried me at first, making me fearful of a nursing regression that would head us back on the path of more pumping when it’s become obvious that my boobs do not respond to the pump nearly as well as to her. But we rode it out, and after five or six days of the pain, she was back to her usual, tolerable, feeding.  I happened to have scheduled a visit to Lauren, the craniosacral therapist, that fell during this growth spurt, and she noted something that I am suspicious of causing her feeding regressions – she doesn’t grow symmetrically.  (That is, specifically in her case, the right and left sides of her head weren’t caught up to each other at the same size yet.)  It makes sense that we wouldn’t grow exactly the same on both sides even if we end up about the same.  But I think it means for her that she goes through a period of essentially relearning how to use her new size and shape during a growth spurt.  If you’ve ever tried walking again after having a cast on a foot for six weeks, you can understand how we sometimes have to relearn something we already “know” how to do.

The growth spurt has certainly ushered in the “four month wakeful period”, where she is far more interested in what’s going on in the world than eating or sleeping.  This has had the net effect of making nursing a pain in the butt.  (Figuratively, anyway.  Literally, it’s a pain in the boob.)  She’s too interested in looking around at anything bright and shiny, or noisy, or new, or not new, or that just exists.  So, the boob gets pulled around and she does a little less actual eating.  She makes up for this by not going “to bed” until 11pm or so, and then waking up every three to four hours to eat a real meal.  I understand this is totally normal, and given that she’s making at night for what she’s not eating during the day, I have no interest in trying to “sleep train” her to sleep through the night, but I look forward to her at least getting back to giving me something closer to five hours of sleep at a time, and to maybe going to bed sometime between 9pm and 10pm.  (I have a theory, that Jason is probably a little leery to test out, that she will go to sleep for the night better if BOTH of us are in bed.  Oh, he might have to come to bed before midnight now! :P)

Monday, Daphne had her first babysitter.  Tracy is going to watch Daphne approximately once a week to help me get to the yoga classes I need to take for my next teacher training session.  This Monday was a dry run, with me not yet going to a yoga class, and being around the first half of the time, and not very far away doing a bit of shopping the second half.  Fortunately, Daphne ate just before Tracy arrived, so that was convenient.  As Tracy and I talked about Daphne’s routines and I showed her around (the cloth diapers are always a tough one), Daphne got to know Tracy and generally charm her way into Tracy’s good graces.

As, expected, about an  hour after she ate, Daphne was showing signs for a nap, so I showed Tracy how we put Daphne down, but noted that if she comes up with something that works better for the two of them, that’s totally fine!  So she gave it a go, and I was surprised when she came out of the bedroom relatively quickly (10, 15 minutes?), and not so surprised when Daphne started crying 15 minutes later.  Fortunately, this gave the prompting to talk about whether or not we’re doing “cry it out” (which we’re not), and whether to go in to her.  (I take a minute or two to gauge her cry.  10% of the time, it’s a single vocalization or two before going back to sleep, and I try not to disturb her for those.  The rest of the time, it’s that she wants someone with her, and I am happy to do so.  (I’m not knocking cry it out – if it works for you, great.  I’m opting to parent a different way, and, while it is fairly demanding on my time, it is generally working for us.)

I did my best “back-off mommy” attempts, and let Tracy handle it.  She ended up getting her up, which sometimes happens despite the best efforts, so it wasn’t surprising when I got home from the errands I was running that, three hours after first waking up, she was overtired and now just getting hungry.  It was the first time in quite a while that I had heard a really intense cry from Daphne, and I think she had gotten so overtired and hungry that she didn’t know what to do with herself.  Fortunately, that’s exactly what boobs are for.

In general news, she is having a great time playing with a few toys she has around.  She particularly enjoys Mr. Wuffles, the toy links that Jen got her, and her O’ball.  But her hands are a pretty fun toy too.  She is learning more about her feet, and can touch them when she sits and leans over.  She often tilts over in that position too, but I have no idea what that’s teaching her, other than gravity.  She’s started doing what I think of as babbling.  She has no consonants yet, but will string together, for at least a full minute, whatever sounds she can make, complete with varied intonation, just like she’s trying to tell you a story.  It is quite cute.  She has also decided that, though she can’t do it on her own yet, sitting is so last month, so whenever you try to pull her to a sitting position, she plants her heels and tries to stand up instead.  She can hold virtually all of her weight on her legs, though she does a whole lot of booty shaking in the process.

In the few months since Daphne’s birth, I’ve heard the term “infant/mother dyad” a couple of times.  Basically, the idea that mom and baby are really just one unit for a while after birth.  The dictionary definition calls a dyad a pair, a set of two, but the colloquial use seems to imply more of a “two as one” sense.  Whatever the semantics, I get it now.

We often hear people talking about “the better half” in a marriage, or the whole “two become one” idea.  But that always seems silly to me.  Yes, in marriage, we’re a team.  We have some functionality that is as though we are one unit, but we are two whole individuals making up that one unit.  Like a team at work is a single unit, but made up of completely individual people.  And sure, in a good marriage, I think the unit that’s made up of two individuals is more than just the sum of those two individuals.  But we’re still individual.

In this mom/baby dyad thing, though, it feels different.  I feel like, on my own, I’m half of something.  It’s as though something is missing to make the unit complete if Daphne’s not with me.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it just is.  Like getting an apple pie without the crust – something’s missing, but it’s not bad.

I realized this yesterday during the first class in the yoga teacher training I’m starting.  I was away from Daphne for about four hours, while she was well cared for by Jason.  By the time the asana portion of class was over, I realized that I didn’t feel entirely there.  Not spacey, or absent minded, but as though, despite giving my all, I was only partially present.  And the other part was Daphne.  As though we are a single unit that can be split into two parts, but are still designed/intended as one unit.

That realization didn’t really change anything, but the extent of it is a little bit mind boggling.

This is the breastfeeding edition of the list of things they never tell you. There are just so many things, so many tips, so many hidden pieces of information – and misinformation – that it’s a miracle we can feed out babies in this day of unlimited virtual information, but little direct observation. I’ve got more lined up, and I’m sure they’ll keep coming as I learn them, but here’s the start.

Oh, sure, they tell you breastfeeding isn’t easy for everyone. Then they go on to talk about just making sure you have a good latch and hoping you aren’t someone who will have supply issues. There’s a whole cartload not being said there. I have to devote a list to it entirely.

a. True, ideopathic, low supply issues really are not common, and if you want a good supply, you have to build it.
What’s funny about this one is that they do tell you that breastfeeding is a supply and demand related. They don’t tell you that means you really do need to try nursing every two hours (start to start) from the moment the baby wakes up from the first long sleep, and keep doing that for the two or three (exhausting) days until your milk comes in without skipping a single one. And just suck up the sleep loss. And just suck up the overwhelming frustration that is getting that brand newborn to stay awake and suck. And just suck up the pain that comes with you both learning (tears falling on the baby won’t hurt her, and may make you feel better). And keep doing it until she gets to a weight that your practitioner is happy with. The more stimulation, the better. Yeah, I know oversupply sucks and carries its own significant problems; they aren’t as bad as chronic low supply in the long run.

b. The baby can be the cause of low supply issues that you can’t solve just by putting him to breast more often.
If the little one can’t effectively remove milk from your breasts, you won’t make more. This requires working with specialists (and I don’t mean your pediatrician) to find out if there is a physiological issue, a neurologic issue, or a habitual issue. No book, no online forum, no friend-with-breastfeeding-experience will be able to “solve” your problem.

c. You can’t tell if your baby is getting too little milk just by watching/timing/listening to a feed.
They get creatively efficient, and don’t have the same “x ounces per day” requirements. There are differing opinions on whether they need an increasing amount as they grow (up to around 36oz per day) or if they eat around the same amount from one month to six months. Doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that your baby is looking satisfied after eating, and is gaining weight “appropriately”. Basically, trust your instincts. If you’re not certain baby is getting enough to eat, he or she probably is, because you’d know if they weren’t. (This, of course, assumes that you have the opportunity to regularly observe your child through the day and once every week or two get to a baby weighing scale.)

d. Babies do not come knowing how to unlatch.
This one struck me as shocking. I mean, they have to know how to breastfeed, right? They have to have the reflex to suck, and they have the reflex to find the boob (which is really an amazing thing, by the way – they can push with their feet on mom’s belly and bob their head around until they find a nipple from the moment they’re born, if not efficiently, then at least effectively). But they don’t have the coordination and muscle control to voluntarily relax all of the right muscles when they recognize a full signal from their belly. (They won’t overeat, but they will spit a bunch of food back onto you!) At 11 weeks, Daphne is currently learning this one.

e. Baby’s know what they have to do, but they may not know how to do it.
If the fact that babies don’t know how to unlatch shocked me, this one was flabbergasting. But if you think about it, it’s not the most surprising thing in the world. There are a LOT of muscles involved in sucking. More so when you add swallowing. And then the tricky timing to add breathing in with the whole mix. It’s not easy! And the physical difficulty of a birth can leave a baby tired and, relatively, stiff as well, which can also affect feeding. So, if nursing isn’t going well, and you can’t figure out how to improve the latch, consider that it really is the baby’s fault, and they need some specialized help figuring it out correctly, instead of inventing a not-so-pleasant-to-mom way of feeding.

f. There is more than one kind of tongue tie.
While tongue ties aren’t all that common, they can wreak total havoc on breastfeeding. But, apparently, a lot of doctors don’t think so. Well, they are wrong. (And it’s not me saying this, it’s the occupational therapist, physical therapist, and MD that I’ve seen saying this, besides the lactation consultants and doulas and friends who’ve worked with the issue.) A tongue tie keeps the little one from effectively using their tongue, and if you can’t use your tongue well, you can’t suck well. Go ahead – try not extending your tongue at all on sucking on something. But not only is there the standard, short-frenulum, tongue tie. But also posterior tongue ties where the base of the tongue is tighter than average all the way at the back.

g. Pain between feeds is not normal – nipples should not look chaffed or be randomly quite hard.
Another “who knew!”. Pinkness, irritation, and hardness are all signs of mechanical irritation, and are not normal past the first few days, maybe week or two. Yes, there’s a lot of contact on the nipple, but it should not cause abrasive pain or damage. (Another who knew – you can use hydrocortizone ointment (NOT cream) to help heal chronic inflammation – but always talk to your doctor/pediatrician/etc. before thinking of doing this!)

h. It is possible to have circulatory issues at the breast – either inherent, or caused by mechanical trauma.
Called “Raynaud’s of the nipple” (or something like that), it’s possible to have vasospasm that causes a stabbing pain in the nipple AFTER nursing is over. It’s usually a delayed reaction (by at least 10 minutes) and often comes in waves (two or three times in a row, spaced out). Usually, the nipple blanches and turns a much lighter color, sometimes then turning either blue or purple before returning to a normal color. There are some things to do about this – work on any source of mechanical irritation, heat compresses after feeding, avoiding “dry wound care”, and medications if you want to try it. But it’s not normal.

i. Oversupply sucks too.
Oversupply itself can be fairly painful, and getting rid of it just takes time for your boobs to learn to make less. If you try to pump to relieve the pain, you are – to a small extent – exacerbating the problem, because you’re signalling for the production of more milk. And if you have an overactive letdown to go along with your oversupply (which isn’t uncommon), the little one can find that he or she needs to make some sort of adjustment to eating, or will gag/choke when they are firehosed with milk. This can even end up lactose overloading the little belly that gets lots of foremilk (higher in lactose) and fills up before being able to fill up on hindmilk (higher in fat). Various ways of changing nursing patterns can help this, but you’ve got to figure out it’s a problem to start with!

j. That advice about “both the chin and the nose should dimple the breast”? For most everyone, it’s bad advice. And, like most “how to” bits of advice, is overgeneralized to the point where maybe it is useful for you and maybe it isn’t.
Think about it – there’s a breast, with a lovely easy-access port of a nipple in front of you, and a baby’s head. (Let’s assume an infinitely cooperative baby’e head here, for the sake of the thought experiment, but keep in mind that it’s never the case that a baby’s head is even almost entirely cooperative. It’s got a brain of it’s own, and muscles it can’t quite control.) You want an asymmetric latch (more breast on the chin side of the nipple), you want a head that’s either neutral or slightly tilted up, you want the head symmetric from cheek to cheek on the breast, you want the nipple lined up somewhere between directly at the nose to towards the top lip (to encourage the head tilt and aim the nipple at the baby’s palate), and you want a big wide open mouth. Put all that together, and unless your baby has one heck of a schnoze, it’s not going to dimple your breast. If it does, something else has given. All the little tips for “place here, here, and here” are these lovely over-generalizations that don’t take into account breast size/shape/direction. (Yes, nipple direction is not a given!)

The “guide baby’s head onto the breast” advice doesn’t even half get at it.
Babies, as mentioned above, have minds of their own. They know they want the boob, but don’t have the coordination to get there nicely for a while, and don’t have the patience or awareness to let you get them to it. So, it’s more like, grab their head firmly with the tips of your fingers trying to reach for as much skull as possible, keep them from wrenching it out of place, and smoosh it into the boob as soon as the stars align. That’s a slight exaggeration on the forcefulness of the maneuver, but not as much as you might think. You’ve got to be prepared to make this thing happen regardless of the resistance. And nothing I’ve ever read prepared me for the sweat-inducing fight that it can be.

Three months in (almost) and I feel like I’m learning new things every day.  Perhaps one day this will be “easy-peasy”, but for now, not so much.  If only I had known some of these things in advance – and for that, I blame our societal, irrational, obsession with sexy breasts (as opposed to functional breasts). 🙂

The weekend had me quite productive. The dog got a bath, brush, and other miscellaneous grooming done. Much laundry was done (though it still in the process of being put up). Hiking was accomplished, and other things I don’t even remember – it just feels productive. Yesterday was no exception, and included our second hike-a-thon hike – the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, part of the King County Regional Trail System.

We picked up the trail at Rattlesnake Lake. While I look forward to the short trip up to Rattlesnake Ledge with her soon, I am not ready for that sort of elevation gain with her on me at the moment. So, to the flat, gravel trail instead. The Snoqualmie Valley Trail runs something like 36 miles, but we just did a short stretch a mile and a half out from the Rattlesnake Lake parking lot and then back. She was due for a nap during the walk, but mostly was unhappy or looking around. (I was unhappy at the mosquitoes, but they mostly left me alone.) It took a while for her to settle, but she eventually did, and used her special magic talents to fall asleep less than half a mile until we got back to the car. Sigh. But it was good to get out.

Neo always has a good time, and since I’ve got a bag of treats attached to the stroller, he’s generally pretty darn well behaved as well.

Time does indeed fly with a newborn. It seems like both yesterday, and a month ago, that I posted.  In those not one, not thirty, but only eight days since I last posted, she’s accomplished a lot and I’ve started making some distinct changes.

I forgot to put it in the blog, but she learned to roll over on her own. She’s only done it a handful of times, and doesn’t have a preference for which way, but seems to be a little surprised when it happens. We’re on our way to mobile!

Last Sunday, she learned to laugh out loud. It was really quite hilarious, and sounds the most amusing sort of odd. So far, she only does it in the Bjorn, bouncing on the ball, while we’re playing Dominion, but she thought about doing it on the changing table this morning. We’re on our way to communicating!

And the fourth time is a charm when it comes to introducing Daphne to hiking. I tried the slough – totally forgetting it’s mosquito season. She didn’t get a bite on her, but missed two naps due to bumpy paths and interesting sights, and I got eight bites and a not-well-behaving dog. I tried the arboretum, knowing that there wouldn’t be the mosquito problem, and the paths were smooth (one even paves), but again, she wouldn’t nap with all the interesting sights. I tried the carrier on a local trail off a main road, and was too annoyed by the over-excited puppy and the bugs to get anywhere. But today is the first day of Hike-a-thon (you know you want to sponsor us), and we went out with some friends for her first real hike. She enjoyed it, and despite missing a nap, was quite happy (even when woken up from falling asleep at the very end to be put in the car).

I continue to hope that she will learn to sleep in a stroller, as that will make the long walks on the regional trail system that I want to take much more enjoyable. But, for now, at least she’s just enjoying the view.