With Regard to Breastfeeding

Part 2: Magic. MAGIC!


As my pregnancy teeters on the cusp of it’s last trimester, I find myself thinking more and more on the preparation of breastfeeding Scarlett. Growing up, it felt like sixty percent of my childhood tales relayed to me through my mom were of breastfeeding. My mom was apparently one of those “breastfeeding rock stars,” and was able to feed me that way even until AFTER my brother was born. There were literally times that she breastfed both of us at the same time! (And lived to tell about it!!) It wasn’t just something I’d heard about here and there, it was something that my mom still looks back on nostalgically. Something she still brags about to everyone in my life that she’s ever been introduced to (there are a lot of people walking the planet right now with the incriminating knowledge that I breastfed until I was, like, 13 and a half). When she talks about our breastfeeding relationship, she gushes. Still. And I’m 24. I never completely understood it, until of course, I became a breastfeeding mother myself and have since heard dozens and dozens of accounts of women who breastfeed their babies almost addictively… who take pictures of themselves regularly with their babies to their breast and who can dedicate half a purchased website toward the miraculous and emotional journey of breastfeeding their infants (and yes, even toddlers). Turns out, my mom was not the only breast-feeding weirdo out there.

I get breastfeeding being popular, and I’m well-schooled on all of the reasons why. If I was a rock star at it – which at first, I felt like I was – I’d probably be all about talking that shit up, too. That part has never shocked me. What intrigues me so much more is the widespread use of the word magic (MAGIC) to describe the experince of giving a child a breast. Really. MAGIC. Not “horrifically-uncomfortable-and-at-times-even-unmanageably-painful-but-because-it’s-whats-best-for-my-child-on-a-higher-level-I-can-discipline-myself-and-toil-through-the-distress.” No.
Magic.



Part 3: Okay, my turn.

When it came time for my son’s first feeding, I remember feeling distinctly proud that we caught on to it so quickly. True to what the books had all promised: he rooted, I guided, he latched, and we were off. I breastfed him exclusively for four and a half months. The fifth month was where the frustrations really rooted themselves into our routine and basically fucked it all up. I won’t go into every blasé detail of what ended our breastfeeding relationship, because it isn’t too terribly different from all of the rest, (scarred, chaffed nipples; insufficient production; hours upon hours of fruitless pumping) but I will say that it was in the fifth month that we shook up that first formidable bottle of poison -- I MEAN powder and fed it to our son. He guzzled it like nothing I’d ever seen before. After a good straight month of battling to overcome the unshakable fear that my son wasn’t getting enough to satiate himself at any of his GAZILLION feedings, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t feel both soothing and rewarding to watch him suckle down that first bottle in the middle of the night while his father and I both nestled him to sleep between us in a way that we had never able to while he was at my breast.

Our time spent breastfeeding was beautiful for sure, but it’d be kind of stretch to use a word like “magical” to describe it. I remember spending entire days on end traipsing through the house without a shirt on my back because I was always on call for a feeding - which happened more than hourly because he wasn’t getting his fill at any one of them. And what time wasn’t spent feeding him was spent with sticky medicinal cream on my nipples which went on like molasses, dried like superglue and needed to be aired out between feedings. Instead of feeling like MORE of a woman by breastfeeding, I felt like an empty shell of one. What was for a few good months a beautiful and fulfilling exchange between mother and child, just no longer was. We phased out breastfeeding without even trying to -- my body just naturally seemed ready to be done. And shortly thereafter, that was that.

Since then, I’ve become more aware of just how normal it is to struggle at times through breastfeeding. I’ve met women who have endured far, FAR worse than I have for the betterment of their breastfeeding relationships and have still succeeded in sustaining a long and much more easygoing twelve month run. I've learned how perfectly normal it is to cry and to want to give up about fourteen times. Now, I knew this about childbirth. HAD I KNOWN THIS ABOUT BREASTFEEDING IT MAY HAVE HELPED KIND OF A LOT. It seems to be one of those undertakings that has to get worse before it can start to get better.
But once it does, it’s apparently magic. And you know what. I beleive it.

Knowing that there is at least the chance of a light at the end of that nipple-blistered tunnel, (if not even a little bit of pixie dust) I will definitely try harder to see where my efforts can take me with Scarlett. Maybe my MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE breast development will be an indication of easier things to come and I’ll be luckier this time around. Maybe I’ll get to see where a little more persistence could have taken me with Matthew had I stuck it out more stubbornly. Or maybe I’ll get validation that sometimes, it’s just out of our hands. In any scenario, my plan is to breastfeed Scarlett; to give it my very, very best; to aim for around nine months of it, and to be proud - regardless of how far we get - of wherever our breastfeeding relationship takes us.

Maybe this so called “magic” everyone talks about will help me keep my pregnant boobs…
(I’m just saying).

With Regard to Breastfeeding

Part 1: Pregnant Boobs Are All Sorts of Awesome.




Man, how I wouldn’t have killed for a symptom like THIS in my younger days -- then again I’m not complaining. I guess, if you’re going to have your boobs abruptly catch up on all of the growing they‘ve neglected to do since puberty let you down so many years ago, it’s probably best that it gets to happen while you’re married, and can, you know, show it off shamelessly. Which, let me tell you, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable doing lately. So much so in fact, that I’ve actually become a little wistful at the thought of this pregnancy being over in just a short couple of months. There are so many things that I’ll miss about being pregnant, not the least of which will be my remarkable pregnant boobs.

Yeah, pregnant boobs are all sorts of awesome. For those of us who have never been particularly privileged with regard to that portion of our bodies, pregnancy can be sort of a haven. Now last time, I ended up with kind of a raw deal. I remember being eighteen thousand pounds of pregnant and still having to squint into the mirror with my shirt off wondering… Is that the change I’m supposed to notice? I mean, I think I see it. Kind of. Maybe. Then about two days after Matthew came home from the hospital with us, my milk came in and literally all at once I woke up with breasts swollen to the size of watermelons, so painfully full they even rivaled the rock solid texture of one. This is not just a cute exaggeration - it nearly frightened me to tears. My most conservative bras barely covered my nipples. And when the fear didn’t make me cry, the pain that followed soon afterward did. I still remember the double take Spencer did that morning. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. A double take that made his jaw drop… and my stitches hurt! The mere idea of him being turned on two days after returning from the hospital would have been laughable if I weren’t so busy crying.

This time around, my body has made it up to me. From about ten minutes after I learned that I was pregnant, the ladies have gradually come in full and voluptuous and at a pace I can keep up with. At six months along now, all I have to do is pull up my jeans and one or both of them is likely to bounce right up out of my bra. IT’S AWESOME. I’m loving those jaw-dropping double takes a lot more now that they’re happening at a time when my boobs aren’t leaking baby-milk all through the night and my vagina isn’t - you know, wrapped up in stitches.

I realize that the second time around, most every change that the body is supposed to undergo throughout pregnancy just comes much more agreeably. My boobs are the best proof of this. Yup, I agree with these boobs.

But in another light, I can’t help but respect that the changes in my breasts are beautiful for more than just the way that they make me feel like Jessica Rabbit. When I look at them and I realize with a nostalgic tilt of my head in the mirror that they won’t last forever, I also feel good knowing that the reason they won’t last forever is because they have a higher purpose. My breasts are preparing before my eyes to nourish my child – this child that already exists -- and that is exciting. Watching the womanly figure evolve so dramatically for the sake of her child is astounding, even from an outsider’s perspective. There is absolutely nothing in the world that trumps surrendering your own body to the process of creating life. Watching your body - hair, skin, belly, breasts, posture – blossom from that of a woman into that of a mother is equal parts humbling and empowering. It is, more than anything, something to cherish on a superior level.

In a word: Awesome.

Twenty-Four Weeks

~May 22nd, 2010~

twenty-two weeks along

Well, baby Scarlett, we are already more than half-way through our pregnancy together.

This is us hanging out by a river, watching daddy fish with Matthew - looking beautiful together as Daddy always says we do.

The picture at the top was taken a couple of weekends ago beside the garage - and believe me, we’ve grown just since then. My belly has taken on about the rough diameter of a small basketball now. With Baby Scarlett being just over a foot long and her first full pound, I can not only feel her kick about three dozen times a day - I can actually watch her do it. I’m not so crowded in the abdomen yet that my lungs are battling for space to breathe, but my growing stomach has definitely begun to stake claim in some areas of my life. It’s big enough now that I have to wear all new clothes. It’s big enough now that after a large meal, it can actually begin to feel like somewhat of an extra extremity to carry around; and it’s not so much because of the extra weight as it is because the weight literally feels like it’s out in front of me rather than resting somewhere above my hip bones, where it used to be more in line with my equilibrium. The laundry basket doesn’t rest as easily above my right hip as it used to when I carried it up and down the stairs. And the barrier between Spencer and I when we kiss has indignantly established itself. He can still hold me pretty close at this early stage, but not without pressing his daughter at least a little into my last digested meal. It won’t be long before we have to reach over the bulge again, like we’re kissing over a table.

So all of that being said, we’ve covered a lot of ground in my prenatal state. Our baby finally has her own, established gender, a definite first name, the healthy beginnings of a first-year’s wardrobe, and a paint color for her room.

When we first decided that we would have another baby, we discussed at length that we had a lot of changes to take care of first. Of course, when it comes to baby-making Spencer and I have never been the patient kind. So instead of taking care of these changes before the baby was conceived, we knew from the beginning that these were projects we’d have no intention of starting until after I had probably already started to show. And that is exactly what happened. Maybe it’s the motivation that a growing belly drives home, or maybe we’re just the kind of team that works better under the pressure of a strict deadline. Whatever it is, Spencer and I always seem to do our best work whilst growing little ones on the other side of my belly button.

The first, and by far largest of our major projects was transforming our half-finished basement into a suitable master bedroom. And I’ll be damned if we didn’t pull it off with zest. Spencer sawed wood and plastered drywall and pulled up ancient shag, poison-green carpeting; he installed all brand new lighting and wired new outlets in all of the best places and (finishing right on schedule) we were able to spend the very first night in our beautiful new master bedroom just days after finding out the sex of the baby.

Finishing the largest part of the preparation projects before we found out the sex of the baby was important to me. I knew that I wouldn’t want to buy things for the baby (usually the largest part of preparing that there is for a new baby) until we knew the sex. That gave us roughly twenty weeks to focus all of our labor and finances into working on projects that weren’t directly related to the baby, but that needed to be done before we could begin with her little section of the house anyway. Once the bedroom was out of the way, we were able to start taking care of more baby-focused business. I went through all of the boxes and boxes and boxes of all of Matthew’s old clothes that we’d been collecting in case of another son, and boxed them all up to be donated. That same day we dedicated a few hours to shopping, and came home with the beginnings of Scarlett’s first wardrobe (probably close to fifty articles of clothing; maybe 25 complete outfits). Next, we took out both the kids and let them help pick out paint colors for their new rooms. We narrowed down the paint samples to the chosen three and have put in the order with Spencer’s dad who’ll either be able to get them for us for free or at least at his company’s discount.

With our old room being unoccupied now, it’s the first to be worked on. It’s the one Mary will be upgrading to - which gives her about an extra foot lengthwise and more than double the closet space. Spencer painted the ceiling, trim and doors, then pulled up the carpeting. We’re fortunate to have good hardwood floors underneath of the carpeting throughout the upstairs of our house, but because not all of it in the bedrooms is as pristine as the rest of the house, our next step is to find out which ones can be left uncarpeted and which ones can’t. Hers can’t, so she’ll be getting new carpet along with Matthew. Once we pull up the carpet in the baby’s room this weekend, our next step will be to paint all three of the bedrooms, install new ceiling lights in all of them, order the carpet, buy Matthew’s new bedroom furniture, and then put Matthew and Mary into their new rooms, and lastly start girly-ing up the nursery with all of the bedroom stuff that I don’t want to buy until we have a room ready for them to be set up in.

You might remember that before the baby was conceived, while she was still just a thought floating about in our heads, I made a list of all of the things I wanted to have done before we had our next baby. I’ve since deleted the list, but so far we’ve accomplished almost everything that was on it -- from getting Matthew potty trained to Spencer getting his new job. We’ve figured out our new childcare situation, we’ve gotten the perfect family dog, and I’ve ever started my family scrapbook. Things are looking good!