I have to admit that I have in the past given women nursing “older” babies the side eye (though by older I mean 2-3 years) before having Jasper so I understand the cultural bias, but it irks me still the same.

People very close to me including people who have Jasper’s best interests at heart, educated well meaning people that SHOULD know better have confessed to thinking it’s “creepy” that he now asks for it (in his own way which is by pulling down my shirt and saying “Nuh Nuh Nuh,” his word for milk for some reason.)

I wasn’t prepared for the defensiveness and well, defiance that I would have to this judgemental crap.  I mean I GET it, but the logical part of my brain won’t let me give in as long as I and my body still have some fight left in us  – which may not be much longer.

I just don’t understand why I should feed my baby cow’s milk when a) he doesn’t like it b) I can still provide him with all of the nutritional and immunological benefits of breast milk c) Jasper doesn’t want to stop nursing yet

This has all been on my mind a lot lately because since Friday night my boobs have been on a mini strike. I was unable to let down even WITH the oxytocin spray and continued to have issues throughout the weekend with let down not occurring.

I finally decided to cut out the afternoon session figuring it would ramp up my supply and ability to nurse Jasper before bed -  so that would mean nursing him at waking up, at lunch and before bed (and still once at 5am – yeah, I know). But yesterday when I got to daycare to nurse him at lunch I had nothing. And he wanted it so badly it broke my heart. Then at bedtime it took almost 20 minutes to finally achieve a let down – even after going a whole day without expressing any milk I still barely could produce.

I have no idea what is causing this sudden cessation of milk supply and I’m not inclined to fight it too much because maybe it’s just my body’s way of saying “it’s time.”

But I’ll be damned if anyone else is going to dictate to me when that time is.

You can all go examine what exactly it is about providing RECOMMENDED and optimal nutrition for my baby that bothers you and go to hell. Yeah, that’s right, I said it… my boobs, my body, my baby.

Who knew I’d become such a lactavist?

In the complete OPPOSITE scenario to when you take your car to the mechanic and it operates perfectly, Jasper picked yesterday – the day we visit the pediatrician – to get his first ever stomach bug.  Poor little guy must have pooped 12 times!   Not being a veteran of this PARTICULAR scenario, I was worried he’d poop all night waking us both up numerous times.. thankfully he managed to save one big one for this morning when I got him out of bed.  But I digress..

Jasper weighed 22.4 lbs, which is up from 21.9 at his last visit at 12 months and keeps him firmly in 25th% according to our pedi’s chart (which is a bit higher than those I’ve seen online which place him closer to 20th%). So as the pedi put it, whatever nutrients he IS getting from my milk (mostly) and a bit of food here and there is satisfying his caloric requirements if not nutritional diversity.

His take on it was that eventually, my milk will dry up and/or Jasper will wean himself and naturally start to make up for the caloric deficit by eating more foods.

When I brought up the red esophagus and my discussion with the ENT, he said that the fact that Jasper WILL eat goldfish and cheerios would seem to indicate that it’s not an anatomical issue.  I told him I’d thought of that, but my theory was that some foods Jasper deems exciting enough to be a bit uncomfortable for, but the other not so exciting things just aren’t worth it to him.  Luckily our pediatrician is so collaborative and we basically brainstormed together and came up with the plan that we would try him back on prevacid for up to a month to see if the situation improves any.

I think it’s a good plan, but I still have lingering doubts weather prevacid is an effective drug for Jasper given that he was scoped by the ENT once while on prevacid and still had mild redness.  I’m not sure what to do about that one since it seems that both my pediatrician and his GI doc are reluctant to try different medication.

My other question to him was weather or not I should let Jasper snack to his heart’s content vs. holding out in hopes that his hunger would build toward an actual meal and he thought he shouldn’t be snacking on filler foods. Not sure how I feel about that either because it doesn’t seem to be working!

In other medical(ish) news, I forgot to mention that we ran into my lactation consultant at the pumpkin patch of all places (told you it was crowded, the whole county seemed to be there!)

She asked me how things were going and I told her not great. I haven’t blogged about it too much (but I want to mention it now because there is a HUGE lack of information about this problem on the internet) but my let down has become elusive again, but this time it’s been going on for a month or so. Usually when I’ve gone through periods of disappearing or delayed let down it’s come back to normal after a few days.  I hadn’t called her because this is an issue that there doesn’t seem to be much help for, my normal method of taking domperidone to “top off” my supply wasn’t working.

She told me that she has been using oxytocin nasal spray for this issue with another client with success, so I’m really excited to try it.  For example I haven’t been able to let down for Jasper’s before bed nursing session in 3 weeks now, which means that I’ve had to put him to bed with no milk and then go pump for a few minutes (which strangely enough I CAN let down more easily for) and then go back and get him out of bed to nurse him.

I should probably just cut out the evening nursing session, I think my supply is really low then, but for some reason it just SEEMS like before bed is such a natural time for nursing (plus I’m reluctant to cut out ANY sessions until he starts eating better!) Most people drop that session or morning sessions last right?  I suppose I could cut out the 4pm feeding, but then he’s going from 12 – 7 with no milk because he’s still not taking it in the sippy.. any tips on how to get him to do that? He gets SOOOOO mad when he realizes there is anything but water in there – even juice or something sweet makes him angry!

By popular demand, we’re going to have one more breast feeding post, this time focused on tips/tricks and just plain survival being a breastfeeding/pumping/working mom.

Jennilyn asked me for this post in general terms and I wrote her back asking what specifically she had questions about, here’s what she said:

I guess my pumping questions are pretty basic- what did others find worked
best to keep supply up? Just pumping a lot, teas, straight up fenugreek? How
much tea should I be drinking a day? Is it better to pump more often (I
still get WAY less if I pump often) or wait a while to get more milk @ once?
I’m completely paranoid about my supply dropping, and since Rowan will not
take frozen milk I don’t really have a back-up. My BIGGEST concern is my job
is not a typical set up- I work at Starbucks and am finding it hard to
figure out WHERE to pump. The back room is open to the front area, and the
real only place is the bathroom! Yuck! So I know I’m entitled to an actual
place to pump, but they obviously cannot remodel the store for me! So as of
right now I am pumping in my car. I’m wondering if any of your readers have
had a similar situation and figured something out. Pumping in a car is not
the most comfortable situation!

I’m going to address a few of these concerns, but I don’t have any experience pumping in a car or bathroom, so we definitely need to hear from those of you that do/did!

1) Most important tip of all:  If you plan on continuing breastfeeding, you MUST get a good double electric pump (I have the Medela Pump In Style.) Anything less will not only keep you out on break pumping for ever, but will also not be efficient enough at removing milk from the breast to keep up your supply.

2) I read this online somewhere and it has been a lifesaver: If you have a fridge at work where you can store your pump parts, you can pump and then just store them in between pumps in the fridge and pump using the same parts again without washing/sterilizing inbetween! Obviously you wash and sterilize at the end of the day, but not having to do it multiple times during the day saves so much time.

3) Get an extra pair of horns/collection bottles – makes things easier all around. Worth the investment if you plan on BF for any length of time.

4) Some of you asked about schedule & when to pump: I always pumped when baby would normally be breastfeeding if with me. That’s what I read to do and that always worked for me. To build my stash and/or make up for the fact that I may pump a little less than baby eats I pump at night after he’s in bed at 11pm. Some people pump in the morning, but he always drains me in the morning so the nightime pump is what worked for me.

5) Always give baby the oldest frozen milk you have stored so that you are constantly rotating the supply so it doesn’ t go over the 3 month mark! The exception to this rule is when baby is sick and you should give fresh milk so baby benefits from the antibodies your body is producing to combat the illness.

6) As far as bras go, I wear a sports type bra that isn’t very tight and doesn’t have a ton of coverage, it’s not a specialty nursing bra but it has no underwires and actually allows me to sort of flip the bra part over the horns of the pump so I can effectively be hands free! (The suction assists in them staying on).

7) If you have problems letting down for the pump, bring a picture or even a recording (on your phone for example) of your baby, this should help. Also, bach flowers rescue remedy taken a few minutes before pumping is said to help.

8) Fenugreek is a great galactogogue, but please be aware that up to 20% of babies reportedly get VERY gassy in response to mommy taking fenugreek, so be sure to watch for the signs of tummy distress. If you have a serious supply problem and want to continue breastfeeding, domperidone is a wonderdrug (obviously consult your LC about that first.) Other small things  personally do to ensure my supply is eat oatmeal everyday for breakfast (or a cereal with oats as primary ingredients), drink 1 beer a day (this is my favorite!) and Caffix, which is a natural instant barley based hot beverage that tastes incredibly yummy.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, I’m sure the rest of you breastfeeding/working mommies have lots of your own tips and tricks to share, so please do!

Fiona wrote:

I was wondering if it would be possible for you to post a blog about breast feeding.  All the ins and outs: how to do it, how often, what to do when it hurts, how to manage milk supply when expressing, what to expect in the first few hours, days, weeks and months, to feed on demand or by schedule.  Answers to all these questions from someone with experience would be very helpful to me, and I am sure, other expectant mummies out there who read your blog.

The topics that Fiona asks about are pretty big ones, too big to fit into one blog post, so I’m going to do my top 5 breastfeeding tips and ask any of you experienced breastfeeding mommies to add your own in the comments!

Trying to nurse a baby with a bili blanket on and a splint to keep his IV in place was challenging!

1)  I don’t care what anyone tells you, breastfeeding HURTS in the beginning!!!! I never wrote about my mini melt down in the hospital, I was too exhausted to do an in depth post about it at the time, but let me relay it to you now.

I delivered at Phelps,  a fairly progressive hospital as far as rooming in, breastfeeding, natural birth etc, which is why I chose to deliver there. I also knew that they had lactation consultants on staff.  I requested that one come visit with us as soon as possible after Jasper’s birth  ( Here’s another thing about breastfeeding that most people don’t tell you: Just holding your baby and getting them latched on at first is incredibly awkward, be prepared to feel like you have two left hands!) The lactation consultant asked me if it hurt when he latched, to which I answered quite honestly “yes!”

Without even examining our latch she proclaimed “I don’t look, I go by what you are telling me you are feeling. If it hurts, you aren’t doing it right.” So she attempted to assist me in getting him to latch deeper, differently all the while with Jasper screaming every time we unlatched him.

Up until that point I had been feeling fairly confident, even though things weren’t particularly “comfortable” in that area, I wasn’t bleeding, didn’t have any cracked nipples, infections or any other major hurdles.  But that brief visit with the hospital lactation consultant completely undermined what little confidence I had and threw me into a complete panic.. I’m doing it wrong! How do I do it right? If I don’t get it right I’m going to end up with cracked and bleeding nipples which will effect my supply, and then I’m going to have to pump and botttle feed, and then Jasper will get nipple confusion and then OH MY GOD THIS ISN’T GOING TO WORK!

It was in this state of mind that I hobbled down to the nursing station the following (last) day of our hospital stay to request another meeting with the lactation consultant.

“She’s not here” they told me.

“What do you mean she’s not here?” I asked. “Do you mean she’s not here but she’s on call and will come in if I need her?”

“No, she has the day off and there’s no lactation consultant in the hospital today” they explained, as if it was no big deal.

At this point I began bawling… all of the stress of the delivery, the pain I was in, the lack of sleep, the sadness at having Jasper in a little incubator with the bili lights intstead of rooming in with us, the leads and wires connected to his little body, the screaming baby that wouldn’t stop that shared the special care nursery with him.. it all just came out:  “How can there be no lactation consultant? That’s one of the reasons I CHOSE this hospital in the firstplace” I wailed.

Jasper under the bili lights in the special care nursery

Later that night, our favorite night nurse was on duty in the special care nursery.  She saw the tears in my eyes while I was trying to feed Jasper (which was further complicated by the wires and bili blanket they insisted he wear even while I fed him) and asked me what was wrong. When I told her that I was worried my latch was wrong because it hurt, she looked me straight in the eye and put her hand over mine and said “I don’t care what anyone tells you, I breastfed six children and IT HURTS!”.

I can’t even tell you the relief this statement brought me.. it wasn’t the pain I couldn’t deal with, it was the uncertainty and anxiety that I was doing something wrong that would lead to big problems later.  After that moment, I felt so much more confident and relaxed and to this day I get annoyed thinking about that first lactation consultant who was so unhelpful.

When I later found my own lactation consultant a few weeks later when Jasper started screaming at the breast (which we later found out was from reflux) she couldn’t believe that the hospital LC said that!  She also examined Jasper extremely thoroughly and discovered his posterior tongue tie and high palate as well as his labial tongue tie (which caused his upper lip to never flange correctly.)  These things SHOULD have been discovered in the hospital by the lactation consultant there. Which brings me to my next point:

2) Make an initial appointment with your own lactation consultant early on. I can’t stress this enough. Even if everything is going well for you in the beginning, I believe it is critically important to establish a first time visit and a relationship with someone you can call in an emergency.  Because you know what? Breastfeeding is not ONLY hard in the beginning!

There will be later challenges too, things like nursing strikes, thrush, mastitis, clogged ducts, low supply and any number of things that I’ve called our lactation consultant about in a panic. Things that were pretty urgent that I wouldn’t have wanted to wait a few days to get seen as a new patient, things that I could call and ask her about immediately.  If you can find a LC that is also a registered health care worker she may even be covered by your insurance like mine is.  And even better if she has proscribing power!

3) Use Medela Lanolin, not Lansinoh Lanolin! It’s so much easier to spread which is a life saver on tender nipples.

4) Generously apply lanolin to your nipples before you pump! I haven’t used lanolin on my nipples for anything but this in probably 10 months, but I NEVER attempt to pump without it – it really reduces the friction between the plastic and your delicate skin

5) Be prepared! Read as many books as you can, attend classes, La Leche League meetings and anything else you can do to raise your awareness of what is and is not normal to expect.  Just having read that it is extremely rare for a baby to self wean kept me going when Jasper started really rejecting the breast around the time he started teething.  If I hadn’t known that,  I may have stopped trying and started giving him bottles instead which would have probably meant the end of our nursing relationship.

6) Yes I know I said there would only be 5 but this is too important to leave out: Make sure you don’t try introducing the bottle too late! I read in several very pro breastfeeding books that you should wait as long as 6 or 10 weeks so as not to cause nipple confusion.. for babies that take well to the breast this can be much too long. In fact my pediatrician recommended NO LATER than 4 weeks.   You don’t want to be in the situation where you can not leave your baby with any one else.

OK, now that I’ve written my own book, here are the books I had in my library that have great breastfeeding information.

• So That’s What They’re For!: The Definitive Breastfeeding Guide
• The Nursing Mother’s Companion
• The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two (has a ton of other info too!)

And the two best websites for breastfeeding information – the forums are great for asking questions and getting support:

• Kellymom.com
• La Leche League

Breastfeeding mommies, please add your tips and advice for our expectant moms!

PS:  expectant moms, you may want to read this old post .  It has a list of some of the things we couldn’t live without those first few weeks. – #6 includes a link to a handy spreadsheet that you can download to keep track of baby’s feedings & diaper changes!

Shot with my Canon Digital Rebel Xsi and Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens
Image Post Processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.0

One of the best things about being married to Jeff is his family.

I had NO first cousins until I was 13, and to this day he is still our only first cousin.  Jeff’s Italian clan is much more prolific!

Lucky Jasper will never be at a loss for second and third cousins to play with (or to babysit for him as he is one of the youngest.)  They are a beautiful bunch of kids, and I seized the opportunity to practice getting some portraits.

Photographing a 7 month old may be challenging, but have you tried photographing a two-year old? Makes me realize this is only going to get more difficult. Or at least until tactics such as bribery and other methods of coercion become effective.

So we had a nice family filled weekend -  even  my boobs were cooperating.   Every nursing session went really well Sunday and yesterday too. This morning went like clockwork.. then I get to daycare to do my usual noon nursing of Jasper and NADA. They just would NOT let down. Poor little Jasper sucked and sucked but the let down just never came. Luckily I had brought extra milk to daycare so they made him a bottle and I ran back to work to pump.

I pumped and pumped and after about 5-10 minutes of no let down I was just about to give up when it finally happened. And then three ounces came out.  So once again, the milk is there, it just won’t come out. This is just soooo damn frustrating! I really thought the problem had resolved itself, but this just came out of the blue completely.

I really appreciate all of your comments and suggestions, it helps just to know that I’m not the only one who’s been through some sort of breastfeeding wringer.  This feeling of being betrayed by my own body is one that I haven’t really dealt with since doing infertility treatments. I’d done a pretty good job of burying those emotions – and here they are again, good as new.

Damn.

Jasper Bunny Says "Happy Easter!"

Shot with my Canon Digital Rebel Xsi
Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens at these settings:
F 2.2
Shutter speed 1/200th
ISO 200.
Image Post Processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.0
Furry white thing underneath Jasper: Ikea Sheepskin

It’s official, Jasper is staging an all out hunger strike.

Yesterday was one of the most stressful days in recent memory.. knowing full well that every nursing session he skips is making my now dwindling supply vanish that much faster, it seems like every feeding session is a do or die situation.

With the exception of two times when my let-down came fast enough to keep him interested, he passed on all other feedings.

Two of those times I think he was hungry but my stupid breasts would NOT let down.  I’m pretty sure there was milk in there, I just couldn’t get it out, not with the pump and not with Jasper being too uncooperative to stay latched long enough to elicit let down.

The More Milk Plus tincture my LC gave me hasn’t been doing much as far as I can tell. Maybe there is a bit more when I am able to let down, but the delayed (or never arriving at all) let down seems to be the real problem.

Last night before we went out to our anniversary dinner I really wanted Jasper at LEAST to eat his last meal before bed so he wouldn’t have to go to sleep on an empty belly, but we were completely unsuccessful. It was really hard for me to enjoy our dinner with the memory and stress of that experience on my mind.

This morning, Jasper nursed fine at 3:30am and again on waking at 6:ooam, but I could NOT get him to eat again before we left for my mom’s in the morning.

And to make an already bad situation worse, he started biting me!!

There have been a handful of times in the past when at the end of a nursing session he has lost focus or interest and he just sort of mindlessly clamps down, but at the end it’s no big deal to just take him off.  This morning it was before the milk let down, so what do I do?

Normally the advice is to say a firm “NO!” and remove baby from the breast and end that nursing session. But in our case, with me DESPERATELY wanting him to nurse that seems so counterproductive.  So after three or four bites I did have to end that session and resort to pumping.

I got a call from my mom at 10am that he absolutely REFUSED the bottle at 10am before his morning nap. Pushed it away with his hands. I guess the only bright side is that me and my boobs can’t take it personally since he’s refusing the bottle too.

So my only hope in the world of keeping my supply going until this ordeal is over is pumping, which hasn’t been going all that great either.

Then I read on Kellymom’s messageboards that it is suggested that you change your pump valves and membranes out every 3 months.

Whoa! What?

Maybe it’s because I lost my Medela PISA manual, but that was news to me . So before work this morning I headed over to BRU to pick up some new ones.  I also double pumped for the first time and it did seem to make a difference.

And now for the Public Service Announcement Portion of Today’s Post

BRU is having a buy two Pamper’s value pacs and get a $15 Gift Card promotion today, and also buy 10 Earth’s Best Jars for $10 and 10 Gerber organic or DHA for $10 sale, so if you need to stock up on baby food, today is a great day to do it! They also have a nice online Easter Sale going on, there are some good deals on an exersaucer, skip hop items etc.

So I’m sorry today’s post is such a downer, I am just in a pretty dark place about all of this. Perhaps it was a pipe dream to think I’d make it to at least a year exclusively breastfeeding, but I NEVER thought my supply would fail me because it has always been so abundant in the past.  I took it for granted that it would always be there even when Jasper started to markedly decrease his time/interest in the breast over the past month or so.

My advice to anyone approaching the 7-8 month mark who notices the same thing is to be more proactive and take steps to bolster your supply before it takes a drastic nosedive like mine.

I don’t know if it’s normal when supply dwindles for let down to be so elusive (I always thought let down was a given, it was just he amount of milk that flowed after that would vary depending on supply) but in our case, a delayed let down + distractable dissinterested in eating baby is a very bad combination.

Thanks for bearing with me through this post, I know not all of you breastfeed and I hesitated to even write about this today..

But then I realized that if I’m going through it, there must be others too and maybe someone will have advice for me, or maybe if we come through this ordeal still breastfeeding well I’ll be able to help someone going through this in the future.

Wish us luck, and Happy Easter or Passover!

Have you seen my appetite?

Yesterday our lactation consultant came for a visit.

I mentioned last week that Jasper had been eating very little compared to normal and he was in acute discomfort,  so I figured it was just teething… The thing is that the teething monster disappeared this past weekend as quickly and mysteriously as he appeared – but still no tooth!

So now we are on week three of loss of appetite, no active teething and my supply is adjusting down to his decreased needs. Which would be ok I guess, except I still need to pump which is becoming very difficult. (Where I normally used to pump about 2.5 oz from one breast I am now lucky to get 2 – 2.5 oz  from both!)

When I say loss of appetite I’m talking about him taking about 1-3 ounces of his bottles at daycare when his normal intake is about 5 to 5.5 oz.

I really wanted to know how much he was getting from me when he nurses, which is one of the reasons I had the LC come because she does a before and after nursing weight check so we know exactly what he took in.

With our L.C. Julie in the room, Jasper was really distractable – he wanted to check her out and flirt rather than stay on the breast so he popped on and off and nursed for maybe 3 minutes. But then again, that is fairly normal behavior for him at this point.  In that time he took in 2.4 oz, a fairly big drop from his normal intake.

Julie said that loss of appetite is normal while teething (some babies even go on nursing strikes!) as is distractability at his age, but that we would need to plot his growth to know if it is a concern at this point. Clearly he is thriving (he is 18 lbs 1 oz) and not withering away, but my feeling is he’s living off previously accumulated chub!

Julie didn’t have her growth chart with her to plot his data points and of course I am too impatient to wait for her to email it to me so I found this great website babygrowthchart.org where you can enter your baby’s height, weight and the date they were recorded and it outputs the height and weight percentiles for you and plots them on a chart.

Here is Jasper’s:

His weight is the shorter green line in the middle and the yellowish/whitish line in the middle is the 50th percentile. You can see how he started out above (at 68th% ) when born, and then hugs the 50% for a while, briefly going above it in December (56th%) and since then has steadily declined until now when he is at the 38th%.

Clearly his lack of appetite is causing a corresponding dip in his weight gain.  Interestingly though he has shot up in height from the 20th% when born to the 70th% now!  That at least is a relief.

Has anyone experienced a prolonged lack of appetite during teething (i.e. more than just the few days or week before the tooth comes in)? Do you all think I should make an appointment with the pediatrician? If not, how long do I let this go on before wondering if there something else wrong? Or is this nothing to be concerned about at all?

Gratuitous Jasper Photo..

Before I forget, I have a strange little story to relay that you breastfeeding moms may appreciate..

New Years Eve we went to my parents’ house for a small party with some of their friends.  Jasper was doing his normal “I will sleep when I am dead” routine, only worse than normal.

It took us AGES to get him down, and then some imbecile wandered into the room where he was sleeping and woke him up. Jasper proceeded to wake up crying every 15 minutes for a good 2 hours thereafter (thank you four month wakeful!) and Jeff and I tag teamed going in to soothe him back down.

There was point where Jeff came back in from putting him down and declared “He’s Out” with enough confidence and hubris that he actually turned the sound down on the monitor which he placed on the coffee table just to the left of me.

I was deep in conversation and sort of nodded “Okay Great” and went back to talking..

A minute or so later I got the unmistakable sensation of my milk letting down.  (My let down is very strong – imagine the sensation of your breasts being squeezed in a vice and then multiply it by 100!)

The weird thing is that I haven’t had a let down randomly – i.e while NOT nursing – since the early days of leaking, engorgement etc. probably since month 2 or so?

Anyway, the sensation made me think of Jasper of course, so I turned my head and looked at the monitor that was not in my line of vision before and guess what? It was red lining.. Jasper was awake and crying.

I couldn’t hear it but my breasts obviously did!

How wonderful, powerful and bizarre is this physical/emotional connection we have with our babies that our bodies could respond to their cry without us even knowing they were crying?

It leaves me speechless..