After the meeting with the occupational therapist, we now have a bunch of stuff to do to work on Daphne’s feeding. I’m starting to get the hang of giving resistance on her chin when she’s opening and closing her mouth, and she’s getting used to the lip exercises. But neither of us is doing great with the tongue exercises yet. She hates it with the pacifier (as in turning red, looks like she’s choking, and screaming hates it) and I’m not a whole heck of a lot better with my finger yet. I can feel what she’s doing with her tongue (no wonder my nipples hurt!), but she has a strong tongue and it’s hard to press against it without REALLY pissing her off. But we’re working on it.

It’s probably just the resistance on the chin getting a better suck, but feedings have definitely changed since we started this. They are MUCH shorter – 10 minutes on a side is a long feeding – and they’ve been almost all spaced out farther, to at least two hours between feedings. She is still, however, crying like mad for hours in the evening, and we don’t know if it’s too much food in her stomach, too fast of a fill of the stomach, or some other digestive issue. It’s fairly clearly digestive, and gripe water is somewhat helpful (though sometimes she need two doses, and it seems to also be helpful if I drink tea with the same fennel, chamomile, ginger ingredients) and she seems to have some degree of reflux (based on the spitting up and pain she’s displaying), but we’re not sure the best way of dealing with it. At the moment, though, those “now 20 minute” feedings are still close to an hour, as I try to keep her upright and not slumping on her stomach for half an hour after she eats.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can get the tongue exercises worked out, and she’ll stop trying to squish my nipple to get milk.

well, I’ve got hope for there being light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see the light yet, but I now have hope it is there, and after the past couple days, that’s saying something.

we met with the OT, Judy Simmons, this morning. Daphne cooperated well, just barely making it to 9:30a after her last feeding ending at 6:30a (we got kinda lucky, and I made Jason take her when she started thinking about waking up so I could remove the smell of milk). The OT liked her suck/swallow pattern, but first had to correct my handling of her. since my nipples point to the side, rather than straight forward, the traditional advice of wrapping the baby around my body and lining up her nose to my nipple doesn’t quite apply. I do want the nipple pointing up into her palate, but I also want her body lined up with my breasts, and her head in a closer to neutral position (mostly due to the nipple pointing issue). my tendancy is to turn my body into her, in order to get ahold of her head, but it leads me to, as Judy described it, chase the baby around.

after watching and listening to Daphne and I nurse, she checked out some anatomy and physiology. one of the first things she noted was that, particularly after the initial feed, which goes relatively well, she would start over opening her mouth which led her to close too forcefully, much like babies start flailing their arms, rather than move then with control. so, she put a finger on the bony part under the chin to offer a little resistance when Daphne opens her mouth – not enough to move her head, just to stabilize her jaw muscles. this makes her not ram her jaw open, but pause to get a good draw that’s not possible with a flailing jaw, and not over close her mouth as well. of course, timing the resistance on her chin to when she’s opening her mouth isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it does seem to be helping. over time, as her jaw strengthens, I shouldn’t need to do this for her.

she also noted that Daphne was doing a pretty good job curling her tongue (which they need to do in order to wrap around the nipple and get a good long suck), but only the first third of her tongue, and only at that initial suck where the milk was flowing fast. she was adapting to using a weaker tongue to pull milk out by rounding the middle of her tongue and compressing my nipple! (this is what’s been leaving the big tell-tale crease across my nipple, and rubbing one half of it raw.) so, we have exercises to do to help press down and draw forward on her mid-tongue as she sucks, either using a finger or a pacifier like a soothie. I’m happy and all that she’s adaptable and figured out a way around the slower flow and weak suck issues, but not when she causes another problem! besides the tongue exercises, though, we’re going to try occasional use of a nipple shield, not only to let my nipples heal, but to encourage her to use her tongue properly, since it changes things just slightly. (nipple shields, however, are a pain in the butt to use. I’m sure we’ll get the hang of it, but I look forward to not having to use it for the next year!)

additionally, she saw the lip curl that Daphne often likes to do, and thinks that she’s got tight muscles around the lips at the moment. it’s particularly hard to try to suck properly with your bottom lip is curled under (go ahead, try it), so we have a couple of lip exercises to work on that as well. the top lip curls under a bit too, and Judy is hopeful that it will only be a couple of days before I notice her not curling them under so often with these exercises.

she talked to us a bit about bottles, and finding the slowest possible flow rate we can for when we have Jason give her a bottle in the evening to help me keep my sanity. she also gave us a reference guide that gives us estimations on how much she should be getting in each feeding if she’s eating breastmilk alone. (she gave us that along with the caveat that the numbers on it are rough approximations, she’ll vary from feeding to feeding and from day to day. as best we can tell from weighings and her growth rate, she’s doing just fine.) she was fully supportive of not only taking her off the breast if she’s just hanging out there flutter-sucking (as it doesn’t encourage proper sucking action), but mentioned that babies this young don’t yet have the ability to unlatch themselves (without falling asleep and having their muscles relax involuntarily) so the pulling and flailing at the end of a feeding is her trying to get off the boob, but not knowing how. oh, it’s wonderful to know that it’s a sign I should unlatch her, because that is an uncomfortable experience.

in the end, we hope to get to feedings that are 20 to 30 minutes, as the 60 minute feedings are hard on her (tiring from all that work) and me (tiring from all that work!). and she was supportive of encouraging Daphne to try to get two or even two and a half hours between most feedings, not only because Daphne feeds better that way. she clearly didn’t suggest putting her on a schedule, but reinforced our current plan of trying to distract her for a little while if she starts indicating hunger an hour or hour and a half after she’s eaten.

finally, Judy mentioned that she saw a number of minor signs of reflux – the wet burping, the distinctive swallow, spitting up a bit after eating (fairly regularly), the fussiness in the evenings, and even the short time between feedings. so, keeping up the burping, keeping her upright after feeding, looking into an elevated surface for sleeping, not trying to get her to go too long between feedings, and possibly more regular use of the gripe water. I’ll also keep an eye out to see if anything I’m eating is making it worse (I’ve already eliminated onions, though I’m not certain I had to; chocolate may be next, which would be sad).

so, we had a lovely combination of (at least) three or four small issues that came together to make breastfeeding quite less than ideal.

all in all, I see hope in the tunnel of breastfeeding problems we’ve had. not quite light yet, though her first feeding after that appointment went better than they had in a little while. this may have been essentially a placebo effect – there were things I could do, so I felt better about it – since I still had some creases on the nipples. but we don’t expect this to be an overnight fix; it may take three or four days to notice a difference, and may take longer than that to provide a bigger change. still, in times like these, hope is almost as important as a fix. and I’ll take whatever hope I can get.

Four weeks (well, four and a half), and we’re still dealing with breastfeeding issues. “It’s learned, by both mom and baby,” is an understatement at best. The real trouble is that there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of support in that learning, and let’s just say that self-teaching breastfeeding is a recipe for disasters of the “oh, I didn’t know that wasn’t normal” kind. Really, there should be like a daily “meeting” with someone who knows about good/bad latching/feeding every other day for the first two weeks of breastfeeding. Because the line drawings in books and that movies on the internet (which is still a big step up for my generation) just aren’t good enough – this is the sort of thing, much like yoga, where it’s really quite useful and important to have someone give you feedback from an external viewpoint.

The story so far: I have been concerned that Daphne’s frequent feedings (eat for 30-60 minutes, then eat again 60-90 minutes later; lather, rinse, repeat the whole day long) were a sign of something not being right. Add to that the crease across my nipple, and I was pretty sure *something* was up. Since she’s feeding regularly and gaining weight well (8lb 0.5oz at birth, 7lb 6oz at day 4, 7lb 10oz at day 9, 8lb 7oz at day 25), Jason hasn’t been convinced there’s a problem. Of course, he’s not the one with her mouth chained to his boob. (Seriously, I picture a pierced nipple with a link chain attached to it that ends at a studded bracelet on Daphne’s wrist. S&M for the mom/baby dyad. -Speaking of which, apparently, english is one of the few languages that does not have a unique word for the mother/baby pair as a single item! Who knew!) But I followed up with a rambling, no-actual-question-asked email to my doula, which Jason pointed out was kind of unfair since it didn’t really have a clear question/issue. While true, it was one of those “my brain can’t function but thinks something is wrong” sorts of things. Seems to be a specialty of motherhood.

Following up on her suggestion, though, I went to a La Leche League meeting that was the next available day. It was interesting, and seemed very open ended (“what do you think of when you think of breastfeeding”, “have there been issues with the family about it”, etc.) but then did have some help from the leaders for two of us with feeding issues. The woman who worked with me for a bit tried a number of holds (which I seem to be fairly terrible at – it seems like I have oddly short arms and small hands for the things they want me to do, but maybe I’m just not getting the hang of it yet) but overall seemed to think I had a latch problem related to her not opening her mouth enough. We thought we had worked through this problem earlier, and to some degree, we must have, since my nipples had been able to heal, but there is clearly some variety of issue going on preventing a deep enough latch since there is nipple evidence to show.

After everything we’ve tried, however, we’re on to stage 3 – the pros. After a referral from the midwives, we’ll be seeing an occupational therapist Friday morning. Let me say, I *KNOW* that this issue is not life or death, or even “emergency”, but it feels like waiting three days to fix a latching issue is horrid. I’m hoping that we’ll discover something more useful than “well, she has a small mouth compared to the size of your nipple”, because that problem will take a lot longer to fix, I expect, than many other options.

It’s certainly not comfortable to continue with the latch issue as it is now, but it’s manageable, from my end of things. I am hopeful, however, that fixing this issue will make breastfeeding less uncomfortable, and perhaps help make her more efficient, which would be nice so we don’t always have to spend 30-60 minutes feeding! In the hopes of preventing a supply issue due to bad latch, however, I’m taking fenugreek in the meantime, and continuing to pump once a day so we can have some spare around for supplementing on those nights she seems ravenous.

In other news, but baby related, she’s had a couple days where she’s had a couple smiles (not intentional yet, but she had enough stomach upset that she was doing mostly a lot of less than happy faces). Those make everything a little more bearable, because hours on end with a stink-face baby is tiring, and with a crying baby is exhausting. In an effort to address that digestive upset, however, I’m trying to be more consistent in her supplementation with probiotics (I just came off antibiotics myself) and will be making my own gripe water (fennel, ginger, and chamomile) and probably give her a bit more regular dosing. She definitely seems to NOT like the process of farting, and seems to get fussy a good fifteen minutes before she needs to. Pretty much the same for pooping.

She’s also getting stronger – if I have her in my lap, facing me, leaning forward, she’ll push herself off my chest and sit upright momentarily before falling to either side or backwards into my hands. Her head control is improving right along with it, able to keep her head up for a few seconds at a time, and seemingly able to often stop it from just rolling around. That doesn’t mean she’s really enjoying the non-chest-to-chest tummy time she gets, but she tolerates it for a while. (Which is ironic, because – bad parents that we are – we allow her to sleep on her belly when we’re in the room, and she much prefers sleeping on her belly, but if she’s awake, she wants to be upright!) Fortunately, I picked up a K’tan baby carrier yesterday, which is easier to use than the Moby and lets my hands be free while she’s snuggled against me.

The trip out to pick up the carrier and attend the meeting, however, was slightly more than I had brain space and energy for yesterday. (As you can see by the disjointed nature of this post, brain space and concentration are at a minimum these days.) The driving was taxing, even without significant traffic, and the frustration of trying to feed her without the pillow I usually use for support and dealing with the bad latch AND what was growing gas just made for a draining day. When followed, upon getting home, with two and a half hours of feeding back and forth trying to get a good latch, it was exhausting and emotionally draining, and I just had to have Jason sit with me while I fed her – eventually giving up on trying to improve the latch – because I was overwhelmed with it all by that time. I’m glad he got home soon after I did so he could just be there. And I’m very glad that she slept relatively well last night so that I could recover a bit.

Hmm… perhaps some day soon I can have things in a blog post that aren’t entirely baby. But right now, my life revolves around my boobs and her digestion. What a life!

Last night was… interesting. As with all things at the moment, my life revolves around my boobs and my baby’s mouth/stomach. In keeping with the trend of the day of eating again approximately an hour after finishing her last meal, Daphne had her last meal of the night before I head to bed at – we thought – 8:30-9:30p. I encouraged her to take her time, go for repeated letdowns, and stay nice and relaxed. And then I headed to bed for the “hurry up and fall asleep already” rush (which, I might add, is not really all that conducive to falling asleep.) 11:15p rolls around, and I wake to the crying of a baby, and commence eyerolls and groans.

Jason and I had a deal – if she went less than two hours before wanting more food, he was going to defrost the frozen breast milk, that I had managed to pump in the past few days (I pump for about 10 minutes after a feeding once a day – not really trying to increase my supply so much as save up a bit of milk for this scenario), and feed her while I continued to sleep. Only I woke up before he got to it, and opted to feed her anyway since it was so close to two hours. So, her last feeding of the night before I head to bed (we still hoped) was more like 11:30p-12:30a.

I thought it went well. Granted, less than two hours doesn’t give me much time to restock supplies, but boobs aren’t primarily milk storage devices, they’re milk production devices. Babies get the bit that’s stored to get them started, then they have to work to get the milk in the real-time production mode the boob goes into. So, I again encouraged her to take her time. She spend almost 30 minutes latched on to each side. She wasn’t the voracious eater she can be, but she seemed to fairly consistently wait for let down, drink fairly efficiently, and then wait again. As best I can tell by the sucking of her tongue and sound of her swallow, she ate fairly well. I kept my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t be up until 3:30a for the next one. (Yes, I was praying for a three hour interval. Really. Seems sad, but it’s a dream I hope to some day achieve.) Jason, trying to get me a break from what had been a mentally exhausting day, kept on for another shift with her. (He is a life-saver, sanity-saver, and all around hero, quite honestly.)

But no. 2:30a rolls around, and I am again awoken to the sound of a crying, hungry baby. My breasts were still not replenished, but it’d been two hours, so I headed out of bed to feed her. This time, however, I was too late, and Jason had gotten out the milk and set her up with a bottle. He was moments away from sticking it in her mouth, actually, when I got to the nursery to ask if she was looking hungry. Tired, and seeing he was already set up, we both decided that he’d take this feeding, and give her the four and a half ounces (well, probably three and a half or four after he spilled some trying to get it in the bottle) that were in the freezer. She took about 30 or 40 minutes, but ate it all. And then slept until 6:45a.

If you know much about breastfeeding, you probably realize that *I* didn’t sleep until 6:45a, since I woke up with implant-simulating breasts, quite filled, and not the texture you expect normal breasts to be. I thought about trying to go back to sleep, but I was probably half an hour away from a rather uncomfortable engorgement, so I got up, expressed about a quarter ounce (between both sides) by hand, and by then, she was starting to stir. Quite reasonably so, I thought, and I’ve got a pretty big bevy of food for her to partake in; this should go fairly well. So, 7:00-7:30a she ate, and – again as far as I could tell – ate well. Not much sleeping, not much pausing, but a lot of swallowing. Ok. Back down for a little while. Maybe until 11:00, if I’m lucky, I thought. But no, less than two hours later, she wanted more. I don’t even remember when she finished, sometime around 10? I pumped afterwards, since I want another supply in the freezer and she didn’t seem to really drain me (she seemed to mostly want to snack and then sleep – I spent 20 minutes trying to wake her up, accomplishing it only by putting her down in her crib!). And I’m hoping we can go until 1:00p, so I have some supply built back up.

This could be a growth spurt. They come about every two weeks, and she’ll be four weeks on Monday. It could be a day time supply issue; perhaps I make enough milk for her throughout the day (she’s gaining weight just fine), but not in the time pattern she wants. It could be something else entirely, I suppose. It’s nice to know we have a partial solution (bottle feeding expressed milk) but it’s frustrating to know why we suddenly need to do this, how to avoid nighttime engorgement without losing supply, and if there’s any way of not having to go through this every night.

I suppose it’s not a lesson yet, but I’m certainly sitting at my desk, watching the chalkboard carefully.

Bite my tongue when I mention “settling in”; it almost begs for something to go wrong. I’m not one to normally be superstitious, but there are times when there’s just no way you want to risk something – and lengthy crying spurts from a baby is not something to gamble with!

Things are starting to turn a corner. It’s probably more from us learning what to do that much actually changing, but so be it. I’m still not able to get anything more than about two and a half hours of sleep at a time, but I have been able to get that long of a stretch of sleep usually at least once a day, and can make it to six or seven hours total sleep in a day (in three or four chunks), so I’m functional. It’s kind of like recharging your phone battery, though. You go for a while without getting a chance to charge it, then you plug it in, but you have to run off (with your phone) shortly there after, so you’re charging it for a few minutes, then using it, then charging it again. Not very good for a battery’s charge capacity, and leaves you, at least some days, with a dead phone. (And let’s keep in mind that in this analogy, a dead phone is the equivalent of not just sleep deprivation, but non-functional bitch version of sleep deprivation.)

We’ve definitely reduced Daphne’s discomfort. While the midwives noted at her appointment that three weeks is about when the digestive system starts “noticing the world” and tends to be a bit unhappy about things, they suggested things we’d be starting to try – burping (yeah, yeah… she never burped, and we didn’t take this seriously enough), probiotics (for her), feeding her a bit more upright (head above stomach), and wedging her up a bit more if she’s sleeping on her back. The combination of these things, along with improving our swaddling technique (Halo Sleepsack (light weight version), tucking the feet up so they’re crossed like she likes) and using a noise generator (set to the “ocean waves” setting) have been helping. That’s not to say she doesn’t have her fussy periods, or that there’s likelihood of her loss of “easy baby” status being reversed, but there’s distinct improvement.

Which gives me time to ponder the whole parenthood thing. She’s still not interactive, so it’s hard to really form a strong bond for me. As I was explaining to Jason, and he put it in the best words, I’ve got the instinct to love her, but not the emotion yet. And, given the sleep deprivation and extreme dependence, I’m ok with that state of affairs. It makes all the difference in the world that she actually smiles once in a while, now that her digestive system isn’t bothering her. Going two days without a smile out of her – even if it’s accidental and has no meaning behind it just yet – makes it harder to attach to her. But I’m not yet to the “I’m loving parenthood” phase. Perhaps it’s just still too overwhelming to make such decisions. And perhaps I’m just waiting out the 4th trimester, until she’s more person.

I do look forward to seeing her progress – gaining a surprising amount of head control, making more extended eye contact with us, and… well, that’s mostly it at the moment. I’m sure the first intentional smile will be wonderful. In the meantime, we continue to get by as we can.

it hardly seems like it’s been a week already, or only a week. The time doesn’t fly, it blurs. (Oh yes, and I’m typing this one handed while Daphne sucks on a boob, so who knows the typos I’ll have.)

“It’ll get better,” is such lovely, generic advice. “It’ll get different,” perhaps. We thought we were getting into the “better” stage. After one of the later feedings (sometime between 8 and 10pm), Jason will take Daphne, and try to keep her… well, awake or asleep doesn’t matter – away from me for three to four hours. Sine he doesn’t lactate anyway, I take the feedings and try to keep her quiet – or I’ll head out of the room – so he can get nearly a full night of sleep. (We have a co-sleeper attached to our bed, so if she’s cooperative, I don’t have to get out of bed to feed her. It’s got the potential to be absolutely wonderful, and some nights, it has been.) This has worked twice.

But then there were two nights of incessant crying. Ok, it’s not fair to call it incessant, because she’d stop if you did something – changed positions or holds or a new movement patter – but then she’d start again. For hours. The first time she did this, after three hours, I just headed upstairs (after staying downstairs to try to let Jason sleep) and said “Your turn. I’m done.” It’s so very frustrating to figure out what an infant wants, and when you think you know (hey, she’s rooting, and making those mouth movements and that little cry/whine she gives when she’s hungry, she must be hungry!) but you’re wrong – well, at least, it’s not right (no, no, my stomach is unhappy, and I just wanted a nipple to suck on until I’m too unhappy for that and try to rip your boob off your body). These are the times you don’t want to, but you’re too tired, and you take that stern voice to your baby in a hopelessly futile way “What? What do you want? I know you don’t want food, you’ve been bouncing back and forth boob to boob without really eating.”

You try the advice – the 5 S’s: swaddling (but oh god is she squirmy, and just roots more and continues to make stink faces after being swaddled), sidelying (honestly, despite all the advice against it, she often gets to sleep – propped appropriately – on her side, particularly in the cosleeper; she’s much happier there), shh’ing (works great, until you stop longer than the length of time it takes to get a breath for your next shh), swaying (well, find the right rhythmic movement, and be prepared to change it every five minutes as she changes her mind about what she wants), and sucking (oh, the great debate! pacifier, finger, nipple-confusion, latch problems… it’s a can of worms I tell ya!). You try the gripe water. You try walking. Everything that works only works for a little while and you’re back to squre one, never having gotten a sleeping baby. Which, I have to add, is 10 times worse at night, when it’s dark, than during the middle of the day.

I continue to be very thankful for our doula, Kate, as she’s continued to offer us advice, which we try, with varying success, but gives us *something* to try doing. I realize this was probably partially our doing, the crying stints, as we hadn’t really been burping her – I had understood breastfed babies to need less burping and she seemed to be perfectly happy to be put down after eating. Well, either I was wrong, things change, or both. Burping a baby, however, is one other thing “they” don’t say a damn thing about. I don’t think it’s fundamentally any easier than breastfeeding, though it’s certainly a lot less painful (for the parent, definitely). Daphne, at least, has very little interest in burping, and if you keep her in the “over the shoulder burp” position too long, she starts rooting for food and bobbing her head – which makes keeping her from falling sideways tricky. We’re working on a good technique for us, but she still isn’t a big burper.

The other suspicion I had was something I consumed bothered her. At the moment, there is a sebaceous cyst on the back of my neck. It’s been there for nearly a year, but we didn’t do anything for it during the pregnancy because we wanted to wait until she was born. But about a week and a half after delivery, when I’m still in no state of mind to take care of anything but the immediate, either the cyst or a hair follicle right next to it became inflammed. Think almost ping-pong ball sized bump of painful inflammation approximately an inch away from your spine half way down your neck. Since side (or stomach) sleeping doesn’t work with freshly lactating boobs (mine, anyway – another thing they don’t tell you – you might not get to choose your sleeping positions after birth either!), it makes sleeping on your back less than comfortable. After much this and that, a doctor put me on antibiotics for it – a questionable move, but one of the options. It was the next night that she started going unhappy. Of course, it was also the same night I had my first post-baby spicy curry. And my first cup of green tea.

Only in hindsight can I say that there’s a chance it’s the curry (based on a similar, but not so bad stint, after I had leftovers for breakfast a day later), but it might also be the antibiotics (which, for the first time in my life, I stopped very early on). So, now I get to try to figure out what I’m eating that might bother her, and try to avoid it before I know what it is so that we don’t go through this again.

In theory, in three weeks, things get better. I’m keeping my fingers and toes cross and knocking on wood.

the first two weeks have been hard. everyone knows that being a first time parent is hard. everyone knows that newborns are hard. everyone says that you’ll be sleep deprived, and worn out. but I just don’t feel like the experience is adequately conveyed. maybe, like childbirth, the memory dims with time. we probably would never have sustained enough births for population growth if the memory stayed clear.

the first two days aren’t so bad. granted, I was exhausted from being up for 48 hours, in labor for 36, and having lost lots of blood. but Daphne was tired too. and there was no milk for her to get, just enough colostrum to give her the energy to practice feeding. and so Jason and I could sleep. maybe not long stretches, since we had to wake her evey two to three hours, but sleep none the less. sure, both is us learning to breastfeeding was hard, and it took less than a day to start getting thrashed nipples that had a lovely, nasty, bruise line righ along the top. sure, working with the doula for three hours to try to improve the latch from a little girl who doesn’t like openin her mouth terribly wide was frustrating beyond belief. (if I can’t get this to work, how am I going to feed my baby?!) and sure, not everyone has this instant “all the love in the world” attachment to their baby. but it was doable. and, at this point, stuck in bed as I was, thanking the doula for having suggested to swallow modesty and wear depends for a few days, Jason had the harder task of the two if us – make food, clean dishes, clean clothing, keep shoving food at me, takig the baby between feedings so I could sleep, and so on.

the midwives came over on day four for her checkup, weighing her and doing the PKU test. she was down 10oz, but that wasn’t worrying. my milk was in as of the night before, and she seemed to be feeding relatively well, outside if the difficulty of her trying to sleep through her feedings. so, keep her awake as much as possible during a feeding, they said. hah! we already worked on this one withthe doula. at some point, usually 5-10 min into a feeding, Daphne just didn’t care if you jostled her (gently), tickled her feet, flapped her hands, pinched her back, stroke her neck, blow in her face, or just about anything. keep her awake indeed. after the battle that was just getting her to open her mouth wide enough, instead of squirming her rather strong head and neck everywhere away from the nipple, this was another feeding fight I didn’t want. add to that the worry about her not pooping for the 36hours after my milk came in as her digestive system got working.

but with Jason helping to latch her on while laying on me side, and Jasons parents coming to help out around the house, things were a little easier. her ten day appointment showed she had only regained half of what she lost, so we needed to keep trying to make sure she didn’t go more than three hours between feedings. and by herself, she didn’t go longer than that. then she started cluster feeding. and wouldn’t go more than two hours between feeds. was she getting enough? we thougt so because it seemed like my firehose supply (which only makes feeding harder when she rips herself off the breast after her first incredibly powerful suck unleashes a waterfall in her mouth) was plenty. but we weren’t sure. and I was getting less and less sleep as she woke every two hours at night, leaving me at most an hour and a half of napping in between, and did the same during the day, when it was even harder to nap, despite adding curtains in front of the blinds to make the bedroom even darker.

but then came real cluster feedings. three instances of five to seven hours, over the course of three days, where she ditched her “feed me every two hours” and wouldn’t go longer than 15minutes between nursings. the sleep deprivation from too-short naps escalated, and I became clear that the sleep deprivation, coupled with the continued paid of feeding – particularly the hour of burning breast pain after feeding her from an unrelieved letdown – was leading to my nearly nightly meltdowns of just crying without any particular reason. clearly, the hormone shift contributes to this problem, but somehow, getting just enough sleep is what I need to not actually have hot tears suddenly streaming down my eyes.

the days like these make me wonder how I can last until “it gets better at six weeks”. or how parents can survive if it lasts six months. sleep cycles require at least an hour and a half just to get to the first cycle of REM sleep, and getting at least some nonREM sleep after that is important to avoid sleep deprivation. without it, you become nonfunctional. I couldn’t answer Jasons questions about having chicken or steak for dinner. I couldn’t answe if we should swaddled her one way or another. I couldn’t form the thoughts to make a decision.

maybe all babies aren’t like this, but we still seem to have q relatively easy baby. and it’s hard to fight over keeping her awake, hard to fight through the pain – the searing, toe-curling pain – of learning breastfeeding and getting it well established and dealing with the first few ungodly powerful sucks that feel like your nipples are being ripped off with a pair of clamps, hard to deal with the unrelentless demands for your food, and really hard to deal with trying to function under physiologically nonfunctionable situations.

don’t get me wrong; I know that it will be worth it in the end. but every strain-you-to-your-limits experience will make you wonder just how much you can endure, and how you can possibly endure it.

Announcing Daphne Anastasia Berry.
Born May 3 ae 9:43am at 8lbs, 0.5oz and 21in long.

This is a long, play by play account o my labor and delivery. Its not a flowery, wasnt my birth awesome, sort of thing, even though im quite happy with how things went. If you’re not sure if the full, real details of labor are for you, you might want to stop now.

While Jason put his guess in at baby Berry being a few days past my due date, I maintained that she’d come early – sometime between the 1st and the 7th. So I wasn’t surprised when my mucus plug started to come out 10pm Saturday, May 1st. Of course, I realized that this might just be a random coincidence, but I had been experiencing sporadic, non-progressing, little tiny contractions (I don’t think they were Braxton-Hicks, but they might have been) the week previous. Sure enough, starting with the mucus plug coming out, they became more frequent. By midnight, I was sure labor was starting.

Jason had already gone to bed, but I found the contractions a bit too much to sleep through, so I wandered around the house and spent some time elsewhere. I was timing them and they started out around five minutes apart and lasting about half a minute. They certainly weren’t huge, but they also weren’t little contractions that I could talk through. Around 4:30, I pulled Jason into the party, finding that it was easiest to try to rest against his back and have him time the contractions (thank goodness for phone apps!).

We called the doula (Kate) and the midwives (Val) around 6 or 7 in the morning, letting them know what was going on. Contractions at this point were fairly consistently around three and a half to five minutes apart, and were definitely work to get through. I had been hoping that, after all this time, I was going to make some progress, but no – with the daylight came the stall. The contractions didn’t get much farther apart (averaging five minutes apart and half a minute long), but did stall out around six minutes apart. Despite the fact that it sounded completely ridiculous, I tried to take the advice of both Val and Kate from our second call of the day (at which point I told Val “I certainly hope to get to the birth center before midnight tonight – but I don’t think she’ll be born until tomorrow.”) and get some rest between contractions. I may have got in a total of 2 hours of little tiny naps during the day while resting on the couch, walking around between contractions (including around the block – spurring our neighbor to ask if I needed a ride to the hospital).

Unfortunately, the evening and the walking did not bring a lot of change to the contractions. Despite them continuing to hover in the 3-4 minutes apart, 45 seconds a piece range, and getting stronger in intensity throughout the day, both Jason and I knew this was a very, very slow, almost stalled progression. By Sunday night, not knowing how in the world it would work, both logistically at 39 weeks, and with the contractions at the same time, I told Jason it was his turn to help – we were going to have sex. (Insert appropriate Jupiter joke of your choice here. 🙂 )

Sure enough, things started picking up shortly thereafter. The contractions didn’t really get all that much closer together (maybe by half a minute?), and only a bit longer (now about 50-60 seconds) (actually, the first one we timed after having sex was 83, then 79, then 70, then consistently around 60), but it was clear from how they were shaping up, and how I was acting, that they were more productive. Unfortunately, more productive means more painful, and it had become clear during the afternoon that I would be experiencing back labor for a while.

At some point – probably around 10:30pm Sunday night, I was hit with uncontrollable shivers (as though I was very cold), crying, and practically hyperventilating. I knew it wasn’t transition, but for some reason, I got hit with a big adrenaline surge. As I was feeling quite cold, however, and it was clear something was progressing, I made my way downstairs to ride out contractions in front of our fireplace, sitting cross legged on the floor, rocking front to back, on one side of a footstool and squeezing Jason’s hands as he faced me on the other side. He continued to time contractions and by 11pm it certainly seemed like something was changing. It’s hard to say how we knew – the contractions were getting not a lot closer together – 2 to 3 minutes rather than 3 to 4 – but it was pretty obvious that I was getting less able to cope and there was a quantitative shift in the quality of them, even though I hadn’t been able to talk through them for quite a while, or really talk well between them either.

Jason sez – I thought the timing of the contractions at this point in the evening was strange. After we had sex, Tiffany spent the next half hour of contractions in bed, lying on her side – and during that time they were consistently 4.5-6 minutes apart, but lasting 60 or more seconds. This was certainly indicative of progress to me. However, as soon as we went downstairs (and to a sitting position) the contractions went back to 30-45 seconds long and 2-4 minutes apart. I was worried that this might have meant that labor was stalling again, but although the timing was varying in an unexpected fashion, these contractions were clearly more serious than the ones from the day before; and after Val heard Tiffany go through 5 of them in 10 minutes, she was ready for us to head in to the birth center.

At this time, we called Kate and Val back, and though we were expressing our uncertainty, given the pattern of labor over the previous day, Val decided that we should meet at the birth center at midnight. And, sure enough, we got there a few minutes before midnight. Kate met us there – though I’m certainly not sure when she actually arrived. I do remember the car ride being less unpleasant than I had heard – it wasn’t fun by any means, and quick turns made for horrid back pain, but it wasn’t the most horrid thing ever. And when we arrived, I recall stumbling along with my eyes mostly closed, holding tightly on to Jason, as I walked in the door and down the hall, hearing Val say “well, the good news is that we won’t be sending you home tonight”. Here kicked in the inner mental snarky dialog, as the only thing my brain could think in response was “no shit!”. The inner snark was a trend that continued, only rarely being said outloud.

We set up in room 3, and I resumed my cross legged position on the floor, squeezing either Kate’s hands or Jason’s, depending on who was available. I recall the midwives take my vitals, but I really am not sure what other hustle and bustle was setting out.

Things kind of turn into a blur from here. The midwives wanted me to rest, and I wanted me to rest, so I spent some time in bed on my side, with Jason on the other side, doing whatever I could to breath and squeeze the life out of his hands. Apparently, the midwives often came to check on me when I got up to go to the bathroom, with everyone shocked that I was up when I needed to be getting some rest. Lying on my side on the bed became far too excruciating, however, as it made the back pain all the worse.

At some point, I got into the tub by myself, and found that it helped momentarily, but it was also very difficult to get my hips comfortable. The back labor seemed to make my hips incredibly sore when they did just about anything. I did stay in for a while, though, because I had been getting quite shivery and cold again, and being in the tub, with a towel draped over my back and water being poured over it kept me warm enough to avoid shivering. Shivering made the contractions physically worse, and mentally significantly worse. Of course, getting out of the tub to go to the bathroom was tricky if I wanted to avoid getting colder! Sometime around here they checked to see how much progress I had (after asking if I wanted to check) and the process of checking itself was surprisingly uncomfortable, and there is something disheartening about hearing that you’re 3-4cm more than 26 hours after labor started! Everyone was very positive about it, though, and very reassuring.

(Jason says – there’s a six hour gap here in the story. I would attempt to fill it in, but it would sound like contractions here, contractions there… contractions everywhere! 🙂 )

During the course of the next few hours there was some walking up and down the hall. I was hanging on to Jason while Kate was somewhere around us reminding me to make productive sounds. (Lesson learned, moaning through many, many hours of contractions makes your mouth very dry!) She would occasionally give suggestions on different things – like hanging both arms off Jason rather than one arm on his neck and one pushing down on his forearm, or swaying my hips – and it was fascinating to be aware, at the time, that my brain could either say “no, that’s a silly idea” or just go and do it, even if I never said a word (well, maybe sometimes NO!).

I also found myself on the birth stool at some point, so Val could check on how things were going, and we decided to break my bag as it was practically bulging out already. (and she was now 7+ cm dilated) It would be too easy to say that labor got harder from there – it had been hard all along – but I think doing this helped progression occur more quickly.

We tried getting back into the tub, and I tried continuing to take Kate’s advice and keep my eyes open and focused outward, rather than inward on the pain. I’ve often used inward focus for severe pain before, but Kate could see this wasn’t working. It was mentally VERY difficult to transition to keeping my eyes open during a contraction, and I’m not sure if it was the outward focus (usually staring at something very hard – the pattern on the terry cloth towel on the side of the tub, or into Jason’s left eye when we were back on the bed) or if it was the effort at keeping the focus outward, but it helped me “hold on” a little better.

We tried the tub again, with Jason in there for me to rest against between contractions, and it continued to be very difficult to find any relief. I recall, after one short break where my hips felt unbearably sore, and a contraction with ever increasing pressure occurred, I had the hardest time coping – I was even aware I was flailing around in the tub as Kate was trying to coax me back into a useful pattern. This wasn’t the first time that I felt that things were beyond me. The relentless nature of the contractions, the back pain, and the unending pressure made me think more than once that I couldn’t keep doing this. But I found that the effort of even trying to say that was too much. And when the idea of having to be transferred to get relief crossed my mind, knowing the option was there, I could only think of the pain that would happen DURING the transfer – getting in the car, driving, etc. And by the time that thought had happened, I was at the end of a contraction, and drained of everything until the next one.

Eventually, I even suggested getting out of the tub and laying on the bed. I was exhausted and – though I didn’t know it – was getting some sleep between contractions. My body knew the bed could offer rest, but the contractions were intolerable on the bed, and after two or three contractions, I practically lept out of the bed, no idea where I was going but having to get away from the back pain. (I think this is where Kate suggested we try a TENS, which we both had with us, but I was so focused on just not being where I was I couldn’t think of what else we could do.)

We tried the shower, but my hips were so incredibly sore that it was impossible to get comfortable. While in there, the asked if I had been getting the urge to push, and I noticed that I had – but it was this very, very slight suggestion of a push. I went with it, but again, very very slightly. Seemed to be appropriate, even though I had no real idea if what I felt is what they meant. I ended up on the birth stool again. I didn’t like the birth stool – the seat pan was too wide, it was slightly too high for my feet to comfortably reach the floor, but it was better than any of the other alternatives. So I stayed there, with Jason behind me for support, and Kate in front for a hand to squeeze and the reminder to breathe productively. The increasing pressure – and in this case, it felt like it was all directed right onto the rectum, creating an incredibly unpleasant, unsettling sensation – was scary, and it was tempting to try to go away from it, but they kept reminding me to go with the pressure (as they had been for the past few hours), and that was so important. When the urge to push actually came, there was a sudden revelation of “oh my god, there’s nothing else I can do here”.

Around that time, Val had “gone in to check” where things were, and found a very small anterior cervical lip that she helped push out of the way. She kept her hands there while that was moving, and having something to push against was exactly what I needed. It made it clear HOW to make progress and WHERE to move the baby. It was so much better than just the pressure on the rectum, even though it was incredibly difficult as well. There was, however, no stopping the pushing – even if I had to breath in the middle of a push, I couldn’t really!

It took about 33 minutes to push her out, a time I had no appreciation for – it was just one push after another. (Jason sez – the time between contractions actually got a lot longer in the pushing stages) It was certainly disconcerting to feel her head resting there between pushes. The crowning stage was almost too much, but everything that had come before it wasn’t an option either, so it wasn’t a matter of not doing it, it was how to best get it done so it was DONE! The stretching wasn’t too bad, or so I thought, until I could feel the full stretch. It was a sensation layered over top of the others that stood out quite brightly. And it caused me to scream pretty much at the top of my voice at, according to Jason, octaves he wasn’t sure I could hit. Everyone in the room was telling me to try to relax into it, but at that point, the scream almost felt like a battlecry – I was going to do this no matter what! Oddly enough, the rest of the pushes were much easier to do without making any noises.

There was a pause when the head was out – and as I’m pretty sure I could feel her nose pressing into already tight places, I was happy to have her head out. They discovered her shoulders were slightly stuck – not dystocia, but just a little caught funny since her head had rotated oddly in order to line up in the pelvis – and one of the midwives (that was Suzanne, one of the student midwives) had to try to “pry her” back and forth, while half still in me, to loosen the shoulders. (Suzanne was trying to shift the shoulders with the contractions, in order to get them free. At this point the baby was still active enough that she mistook some baby wiggling for a contraction, and started to try to shift them, only to realize that it wasn’t really a contraction, just a very active baby!) I didn’t like the sensation one bit, but once she got her shoulder around, she came out right away, in a push or two, and was handed up to me, purplish, bloody, and clearly tired. I rubbed her belly to get her attention (she didn’t want to breathe immediately) and she rewarded us with a lovely cry.

They clamped the cord fairly quickly, and asked to give me a shot of pit, as I had lost a LOT of blood with the delivery. The placenta came out almost right away, and it was almost a relief! I found myself soon in bed, with her on my stomach. She tried climbing up and rooting around, but looked a little too tired to get her head in just the right spot. They did some work pressing hard on my abdomen (oh my wasn’t that uncomfortable!) and we worked on getting the baby to nurse (which she did one side great!). Eventually, Val came over to stitch me up (I had a couple of small tears) while Jason held the baby. Fortunately, the lidocaine shot worked great, and I could hardly feel the stitching, just the tug of the thread.

About an hour and a half after the birth, they did the newborn exam, and went to help me to the bathroom while that happened. The exam got cut short, however, as – on the way to the bathroom – I got light headed, sat down on one of the benches, started to lose my hearing, and passed out. I found myself next aware of lying on the bed. I was only out for five seconds or so, but I was definitely quite light headed and not going anywhere any time soon. So, the next few hours were spent in bed, as they tried to make sure I got plenty of food and drink.

There was a catch, though – I still hadn’t gone to the bathroom. At some point, I noted that I really had to go. But couldn’t. We tried many things, but they didn’t really want me to get up and walk anywhere. They even tried wheeling me over to the tub on a chair. (And let’s just say that the suggestion of trying the birth stool, next to the bed, was not what I wanted to hear. Didn’t work anyway.) So, we tried a catheter, which was rather painful and couldn’t be gotten in. An hour later, after trying a couple of other things, I practically begged for them to try again – never in my life had I been so relieved to hear that, due to some misleading anatomy details, they had been trying to catheterize my clitoris, and my urethra was in a slightly different spot. Things like this are surprisingly happy news after you’ve given birth and after you haven’t peed in hours. So they drained 1500cc of urine! And bam, my uterus had space to contract back down! It’s humored me that, after all that, there could be so much pleasure in just getting to pee. And we all need that really humorous bit of a birth story.

They left us to sleep for a while, to make sure I continued to eat and drink, and to make sure that I had plenty of help if I was going to stand to head to the toilet. Eventually, they finished the newborn exam – she was 21 inches long, and weighed 8lbs 0.5oz, beating every single person’s guess immediately before she was put on the scale by more than a pound! As Suzanne recorded the newborn info, she asked us “what’s her name?”, and Jason and I looked at each other, still not havig named her, and seemed to agree on the same name of our short list (of two) – Daphne Anastasia Berry. And then there was little to do but wait until I felt steady enough to be upright. So, it wasn’t until about 6pm, after taking part in a take-out run to a local thai restaurant, that Jason packed our stuff up, put Daphne in the car seat and in the car, and I was lead out, into a glorious cool rain, by everyone.

The past few days since Daphne has been home, have been interesting. Without any milk yet, she pretty much just ate and slept. She has been a pretty good sleeper, not terribly disturbed by any noises, and generally alright with however she’s put down – but she does prefer being swaddled. Unfortunately, feeding didn’t continue to go so well, and there was clearly some variety of latch issue, as you could see bruised lines running up and down my nipples. And it continued to be quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, Kate came over and helped us troubleshoot the feeding. But we waited until Wednesday to have her over, and I can only say that I wish I had called sooner, and not even gone through the day and a half of letting Daphne continue the bad habits of not opening her mouth wide enough to establish a good latch. (And it showed us how dad’s can help with breastfeeding – the way that works best for us at the moment is side-lying, with Jason putting Daphne in place. And practicing this is definitely helping her learn what a good latch is like.) But even if feeding started to get easier, waking a sleep loving baby every two hours to feed (which is a great place to fall asleep) is quite challenging!

In the past two days since my milk has come in, she’s been more awake (though not for long periods of time) and more active. (This is a good thing, and a bad thing! 🙂 ) I didn’t know until this afternoon, however, that sometimes the transition to real breast milk is difficult on a baby’s digestive system, and I am hoping that the fussing of the past day and a half will pass as her digestion gets used to milk. Then I can stop saying that I’m really, *really* looking forward to seeing a poopy diaper. 🙂 And now that the milk is in, and her 2 day checkup didn’t show too much weight loss, we have transitioned her to four hour intervals at night (well, on demand, but not waiting more than four hours if she hasn’t woken to feed). This means I finally know how long between feeds she wants to go, which is the sort of trivial souding, but oh-so-valuable information that is starting to make up our lives.

– Tangy Tiffany, Jupiter Jason and Delectable Daphne

Pics!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarnalberry/sets/72157623869318279/