Last month, we started noticing that the baby would have a bit of mucus in her nose, and it would accumulate as the night went on. We could actually hear her breathing loudly while sleeping, and at times, it actually sounded like she was struggling to breathe. This was when I started clearing out her boogers and mucus before bed every night as well as each morning before her mid morning feed. It was actually crazy to think how much mucus this tiny little human had in both of her little nostrils. It made me so sad, and my heart hurt to think about how she could be struggling to breathe.  

We talked about it with our Night Nurse, and she suggested that her nighttime feeds only be breast milk if I could produce enough. Luckily, I had gotten my supply up to a level where I could provide all of her nighttime feeds with breast milk. So during the day, even if I was producing and pacing well with my breast milk output, I would try to save breastmilk for all of her feeds overnight. Even if I did have enough to give her 100% breast milk for an entire 24 hour period, we would still give her one bottle of formula just to make sure that we had enough and then some. It’s almost like my own way of “saving” for the next day, which may be a “rainy day“ in terms of my breastmilk production… Because I had no idea when I might get a clogged milk duct or if my supply would just randomly tank because I still had not regulated my milk supply at that point in time.

On top of this, when Chris would do her bottle feeds, he noticed that she always seemed more satisfied when she had breastmilk. She could have less breastmilk than formula and still be more satiated. This makes sense when you think about breastmilk consumption versus formula consumption in babies: every time you read guidelines on how much babies should eat a different ages by week as well as by month, you can see that many babies from month 2 onward can gain a healthy amount of weight but still consume the exact same amount of breastmilk in a day, Which is approximately 90 to 150 mL per feed. That is a big range, but that depends on the number of feeds in a day. Formula fed babies are not like this, though. As formula fed babies get older and bigger, the amount of formula they need steadily increases. They will eventually need massive bottles of formula to drink. In the one feed a day when she would have Bobbie formula, she would kind of grimace after taking a sip from the nipple of a bottle and look at Chris, like, “what the heck is this? You’re making me drink this?”

Chris told me this, and he told me that she very clearly prefers drinking breastmilk. And I looked at him and said, “great! No pressure to produce more!“ He gave me this exasperated look and retorted back, “why do you have to be so negative? I’m telling you that she prefers your milk over formula! That’s supposed to be a compliment! All of the hard work you are doing to pump milk is paying off! She clearly enjoys it!”

He’s right. I am being negative. I see this as additional pressure to find ways to increase my output to get to as close as 100% as possible even when I originally set a goal of getting to 75 to 80%. But doesn’t it make sense that once you have set a goal in terms of quantity that once you hit it, you keep on reaching higher and higher? So not only does my baby have a clear preference for breastmilk, but she also gets more mucus when she has formula, which is not good. If you knew that your baby was more susceptible to mucus because of an increase in formula consumption, wouldn’t that be pressure for yourself to try to produce more breast milk?

When you are a new parent, of course, you’ll think that your baby is cute. You may even think that your baby is the cutest baby on earth, and who could blame you? Every day of my baby‘s life, she gets a little bit older, bigger, and is constantly changing. Every day, I marvel over how cute and sweet she is, and all I want to do is eat her little face. Her face is taking shape, her skin tone is morphing, and she is slowly developing little rolls in her neck. Her cheeks have filled out so that they are super pinch-able. But one thing that doesn’t seem to be changing that the pediatrician and my mom friends around me have encouraged me about is her suck. Most of them were optimistic, and they said that as the baby got older, she would also get stronger. This would mean that her sucking would likely also become stronger. And while she does have some good days on my breast, other days, it’s just as though she is just as weak and lazy on the boob as she was in the first couple of weeks of her life. Sometimes, it honestly just feels like she is licking my nipple, and I am not sure that achieves anything. Who even knows if that counts as “nipple stimulation“ to help my milk supply? I told Chris this, and he said that this was simply foreplay on my breast, and this was not a good use of time for anyone!

A friend suggested that I look into a nipple shield, as nipple shields are supposed to help babies with a weak suck, as it is evidence-based from babies in the NICU, most of whom are premature. The idea is that the babies do not have as much bucal fat in their mouths to be able to properly suck because they are so small, so they need something firmer like a nipple shield to grip their mouths on. My Cleo LC also suggested that I look into this, as well. I was even further encouraged by this when I read a promising story by someone who posted in the breastfeeding group on Reddit, who said that she had a baby who also had poor milk transfer and a weak suck. By using a nipple shield on and off while nursing up until week 13, she was able to get her baby to transfer enough milk so that baby started rejecting all of her bottles that were offered after nursing because she was full. Throughout this period, she maintained her milk supply by pumping milk around the clock, similar to what I have been doing. The crappy thing about the story though, is that she had to go back to work at that point, so she just had to continue pumping milk (this stupid fucking country). But she was still able to nurse her baby successfully in the evenings until her baby was full. 

Well, I spent the five dollars it cost to get a fitted nipple shield for my nipples, and I tried using the nipple shield on and off on one breast while nursing my baby for about two weeks. In the beginning, it actually seems like it was working. She was sucking harder, and when she switched to the other breast, she actually seemed like she was working harder to suck the milk out. But then, there were other sessions when it seemed like it just stressed her out too much, and she would start fighting with the nipple shield. It upset me to see her so stressed, and I didn’t want to make every nursing session this stressful, even if I only used a nipple shield on one breast. And on and off, to make things worse, she was just as lazy as she was before I introduced the nipple shield. So in the end, after about 2 1/2 weeks, I gave up on the nipple shield. Granted, I only spent about five dollars on the nipple shield, so I didn’t feel that bad about it.  I still just really wanted nursing to work, and after using the nipple shield as a last ditch effort, I finally accepted the fact that this is not going to be part of our path forward in nourishing my baby. Pumping was going to be how I would continue to primarily feed her. At least, as long as my sanity was intact, I would continue doing this. My goal is to get to a minimum six months of her diet mostly being breastmilk. Ideally, I would still be providing some breastmilk until she is one year old.  And honestly, I also rationalize this because of the co-pay I paid for my Spectra S1 pump, as well as the new portable pump I just bought, the Baby Buddha, along with the Legendairy milk cups that make it a wearable pump. Well, can you blame me? I’m trying to get the biggest ROI possible out of my investments. And these are all investments in my baby’s health, so I don’t think that there is anything bad about this decision or goal.

Before I had gotten discharged from the hospital, the nurse packed me a sitz bath to bring home to use in order to heal my rectum and vagina. A sitz bath is essentially a bath for your nether regions: you set it up on top of your toilet after lifting the lid and the seat up. You fill the shallow bath with warm water along with Epsom salts and mix it up. Then, you takeoff your pants and underwear and sit on top of it for about 5 to 15 minutes. The Epson salts as well as the heat of the water are supposed to help heal your rectum and vagina from all of the trauma that you experienced during childbirth. I had read about sitz baths leading up to giving birth, but I wasn’t set on buying a sitz bath for myself, so lucky me, I got one for free at the hospital… Or, you can also say that nothing is free at any U.S. private hospital in reality because the raw cost of giving birth at Lenox Hill, when you combine the costs for both you and your baby (because yes, your baby does get a separate bill as soon as she pops out) is over $80,000. But that’s another story for another day.

Anyway, this was part of the many things that were packed for us to take home after giving birth. I did not get around to actually using it until about one week postpartum. I finally took a little bit of time during  one evening to do a sitz bath for myself. I considered it part of my self care and healing. So I would set myself up in the second bathroom, fill the sitz bath with warm water and lavender Epsom salts that Chris’s brother bought me for Christmas, and then just sit there. I would have my phone away and literally just sit in stillness for 10-15 minutes. It was a short, sweet time every day almost every day for about 3-4 weeks when I would just meditate in silence by myself and have warmth enveloping my nether regions. And I could not believe how good it felt the very first time, and every subsequent time. I felt an immediate “ahhhhhhh.”

I pretty much got hooked on doing this. It especially felt good when the few stitches I had inside my vagina started to heal, which tends to cause itchiness. As soon as my bottom hit that warm water and salt, it was as though all the itchiness just dissipated just like that. And even though the time that I spent on top of that sitz bath was short, it was a really calming time, and I looked forward to it every evening.

One of the fun things about the sitz bath is that it has the slits in it to allow the water to drain. That way, if you overfill it by accident and you put your bottom on it, the water will just drain directly into the toilet bowl. But if you think about it, the sound of the water dripping into the toilet bowl is going to sound just like urine dripping into the toilet. And so, one day, Chris decided to carry the baby into the bathroom to come check up on what I was doing. And he looked at me, then looked at the baby, and kind of smiled. 

“It sounds like you are peeing!”

“You are really loving that thing!” 

“How long are you going to be using that vag bath?”

I thought that I would no longer need it anymore at this point of my postpartum state.  But then, out of nowhere while peeing one day recently, I started getting a burning sensation in my vagina after wiping. So, it looks like I may not be retiring my sitz bath as soon as I thought.