One of the greatest things about being pregnant (other than being pregnant, duh) was never having to worry about a period. And in my postpartum state, because I have been actively breastfeeding and pumping, unless I was one of those rare, unlucky mothers, I could count on keeping my period at bay for at least six months according to my OB-GYN, or eight to nine months according to my mom friends. Well, I was able to be period-free for even longer than any of them guessed: I lasted 44.5 weeks, or 10.5 months, before finally getting my period today. Well, I don’t know if it’s an official period, per se, but I guess I will count it as one since it’s the first time I’ve had any menstrual anything since before pre-pregnancy. That means that the last period I ever had was in March 2021 — that was INCREDIBLE!!! That’s 19.5 months being PERIOD FREE! Weeee!

I had a feeling I was ovulating because this and last month, I saw discharge that was egg-white in consistency, which is a sign that ovulation is near and approaching. And my period coming back is also an explanation for why the last few days, my milk supply has decreased quite a bit. I wonder if I will be one of those lucky moms who have a temporary decrease in milk supply at certain points of their cycle, and then it goes right back up!

I woke up this morning and for the very first time, I didn’t feel a need to loosen my right thumb. It actually felt… sort of normal?! It’s been so long since I haven’t had any hand, wrist, or elbow problems, so “normal” seems almost like a foreign feeling or thought to me. Four days after getting my first steroid shot in my right wrist, and I actually feel pretty good. I still feel a little tightness at the tendon area on the wrist with certain movements, but it actually feels like I can do everyday things without any sharp pains or snaps.

As I thought about this today, I really regretted waiting so long to see an orthopedic doctor. I guess I was so anti medical intervention, and the idea of a cortisone shot seemed so invasive. I also just didn’t want to deal with going to a doctor. But I wish I had gotten the referral sooner so I could have been free from pain sooner. I’ve already scheduled a second visit for a shot on my left wrist. As I’ve been overcompensating with my left since I can’t lift with my right this week, it unfortunately feels stiffer on my left side now. The orthopedic doctor I saw told me that between him and the other co-director of the hand and wrist center, they each get 2-3 people (usually postpartum or pregnant moms) every single DAY getting cortisone / steroid shots, so this is a very common condition, and a just as common procedure, and the vast majority of patients get relief that is permanent. With one couple, both the mom and dad had to get the shot in both wrists, and so they alternated weeks so the other could lift the baby!

So I’m hoping just one more shot on my left side will do the trick for me… I hope.

It’s been just over 24 hours since my cortisone shot. While I did wake up feeling like my right thumb is looser and more mobile, the pain point still seems to be there. I can even feel it when I’m fixing the bed and putting on the duvet cover after waking up. It’s so annoying. The doctor said I could experience relief within 24-48 hours, but it could take as long as two weeks for the inflammation to go away and to really heal. That makes me so sad and impatient. I just want immediate relief… like yesterday. The doctor did look at me and say that I probably shouldn’t have waited five months to see someone, as the more time elapses, the worse the condition could get, and the more likely surgery may be the only option for real relief.

But given my left hand is so much better than my right, I’m going to schedule a shot for my left hand in about two weeks, and hopefully, that will have a more immediate healing effect. At this point, I’m happy for all the drugs to feel better and like I have my hands fully back.

The last time I went to see an orthopedic doctor in spring 2021, it felt like a complete waste of time other than the exercise I got walking to and from the office. The staff seemed nonchalant. The doctor barely spent five minutes with me, nor did she seem to know anything about my cubital tunnel syndrome. They took an x-ray of my spine, but never bothered doing one of my hands or arms… you know, the area where I was actually having pain. I wondered in my head how orthopedic doctors got paid so much to do so little; is that what happens when you spend an insane amount on medical school tuition — you just get paid a lot to do absolutely nothing to genuinely care for patients…?! What a reward! That idiot doctor sent me to a neurologist to do some nerve testing to see if I had any nerve damage. I did not, and that neurologist sent my results to that doctor… And of course, she never followed up. I never even got a copy of my results.

This time, I got referred by my OB-GYN to an orthopedic doctor, specifically someone who specializes in hand and wrist, which makes sense given why I want to see this specialist at all. I quickly Googled the guy’s name, and not only is he apparently an award-winning physician, but he also seems to get good reviews from patients in terms of his bedside manner and general competence. So I went, and everything went really efficiently, from checking in, filling out paperwork, discussing my condition with the medical assistants, getting a (gasp) hand and arm x-ray, and the doctor came in pretty quickly. He asked me how I was feeling, discussed my condition as he examined me, tested some points for pain (well, pretty much everywhere), and then demonstrated how the tendons, ligaments, and bones are all connected and what had gone wrong with me. He also talked about how pregnancy and postpartum fluid retention makes pregnant and postpartum women more susceptible to de Quervain’s tenosynovitis. He said his wife had the same condition, albeit earlier than I did, in her third trimester of pregnancy, and how he administered the same shot for her. He discussed our options, mainly being the cortisone/steroid shot, potential risks (there are traces of this detected in breast milk, as he did ask if I was still breastfeeding). As suspected, my right side is far worse and stiffer than my left. He didn’t seem that concerned with my left side but did express he was worried about my right. He said we’d start with one cortisone shot today. In 6-8 weeks, if it’s still not 100 percent, we’d do another shot. And if that didn’t do the trick, surgery would be our last and most serious option. I really hope we don’t have to come to that.

So I got the shot in my right wrist, and yes, it hurt like hell for about 3 seconds, after the doctor gave me a cooling numbing spray. It immediately felt looser, which is what he said he expected, but he also said I may experience a flare up of pain after the numbing spray wears off after 2-3 hours. But in 24-48 hours, I should experience immediate relief. I had the option to do my left side, as well, but decided to hold off a week or two to see how my right side fared… plus, I don’t want to be incapacitated in BOTH hands — I’d feel totally useless. They told me not to do any heavy lifting for the next 2-4 days, but to try to lightly move my right thumb as much as possible to regain mobility in the tendon.

Fingers crossed that this all works, as who the heck wants to get surgery, even if it’s outpatient??

I was finally able to make an appointment to get my mommy thumb condition checked out this Tuesday. After over 5 months of dealing with pain in both my thumbs, oftentimes sharp and sudden, hopefully I’ll get some help with it all this week. Based on everything I’ve read, a cortisone/steroid shot seems to be the only path to any real reduction of pain, especially now that we’ve seen that ibuprofen does little to nothing for me. But I was told by the receptionist that I’d need to rest my thumbs for the next several days to allow the area to heal, assuming that is the chosen course of treatment. She said no heavy lifting — including of a baby. And my baby is not little anymore. She’s probably about 20 pounds now!

It makes me wonder… how the hell do mothers do this without any help at all – from a spouse, a mother, a friend, a nanny??

While I have been documenting all the raw ingredients and spices that Kaia has been exposed to, I’ve now created a new list of “dishes” she’s eaten, so things like… sesame noodles, peanut noodles, moong dal, black bean soup, etc. The latest soup she has eaten is my homemade and very chunky hot and sour soup, and it was the very first time she had finished something… and cried for more, as though furious that she was only given what she was given to eat. It was almost indignant – the look on her face and the way she yelled out. She happily had multiple spoonfuls of the soup I offered her, eagerly looking at me for more spoons full. And when she was done, she actually started yelling and trying to hold out to reach the bowl that the soup was in! I gave her a couple more spoonfuls. She finished, then yelled for even more, again!! Good thing I had set aside more of the soup that was unsalted, otherwise my demanding baby would have been very angry with me!

It was the first time she’d ever been upset at finishing something I’d given her to eat, solids-wise. The older she gets, the more opinionated she will get about what she eats, so this is the first taste I’ve had of her opinions. I’m just happy she’s embraced food this much so far.. and food that has had strong, bold flavors. I can only hope this will continue and she will be a true tiny foodie.

Most first-time parents, to track their newborn’s poops, pees, and feeds, use a mobile app of some sort to track, at least for the first few months, at the request of their child’s pediatrician. A lot of parents stop tracking after the first 3-6 months. In our case, Chris didn’t want to use an app like Huckleberry because he wanted to own the data, so he went ahead and constructed a massive Google Sheet complete with a raw data tab that links to multiple charts and pivots. I added some rudimentary tabs tracking breast milk output, solids introduced, and associated pivot tables. And this is how Chris has been, in real life and real time, making “data driven decisions” for our daughter. We still update it daily; Chris wants to update it until her 1st birthday. I will likely keep tracking my breast milk output until I fully wean, and I want to keep track of her solids introduction for as long as I can.

I reference the sheet occasionally to my colleagues, and two of them this week asked to see the doc. So I shared my screen to show them, and both of them had their jaws literally drop. One of them had a look of fear on her face.

“Ohmigod, this is unreal,” one of my colleagues said. “Chris did all of this? And you guys update it… EVERY SINGLE DAY?”

I insisted that it was really just a raw data tab that needs updated, that everything else gets automatically updated. But they all looked in awe of the tabs, charts, and pivot tables, saying that this document was really “#goals” as a parent.

“I hope I can build something similar when I have a child!” a colleague marveled in total admiration.

Since Kaia’s birth, my cubital tunnel has flared up again. All the holding and picking up/putting down of a baby really wears at your hands, wrists, and arms. And then, in late March/early April, I started getting mommy thumb in one hand. Then, I got it in a second hand in May! What joy! While I’ve splinted, taken ibuprofen, and iced, the pain comes and goes. Certain things trigger it, and when I least expect it, some action I take aggravates it, and it feels like a tendon in my wrist snaps. As that probably sounds, it’s really, really painful — a sharp pain that makes you think… FML.

This afternoon while grabbing something while feeding Kaia solids, I accidentally knocked my right thumb against the wall, which then caused a sharp pain to shoot into my wrist. From that point forward, the thumb side of my right wrist has been hurting. Even putting on a sweater sleeve makes my wrist feels tender, as pathetic as it sounds. So I finally contacted Galileo Health through work to see if I can get a referral to see an orthopedic specialist who may be able to give me a steroid injection. I was hoping I could avoid it, especially with gradually weaning down my number of pumps (hand expression is definitely contributing to the thumb/wrist pain), but it seems like the condition doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, sadly.

I wonder what it will be like, to be able to move my wrists and thumbs again without the threat of a sharp snapping pain. It will feel like I’ve been reborn if this actually works!

Before I gave birth to Kaia, I had this little fantasy in my head that I would have so much breast milk left over from her nursing sessions (thanks to using the trusty Haakaa!) that I’d already have built a small freezer stash of breast milk by the time I returned to work. I had two sample breast milk freezer bags as a part of a registry welcome gift box. I left it on the shelf of my bedroom closet as a motivation. While I had put a 100-count pack of Medela brand breast milk freezer storage bags on our baby registry, no one purchased them. And that was probably for the best because if someone had, every time I would have looked at them in the first 3 months of Kaia’s life, I’d likely feel guilt and shame that I was never able to use even one of them.

Well, fast forward to 9.5 months later of exclusive pumping and a long, unsuccessful attempt to nurse her, and we’ve finally come to a point where she is pretty much exclusively eating breast milk, along with her solids that she’s enthusiastically embraced. Her milk consumption has decreased as a result of two hefty solid meals a day, and now, every time I look at the top left shelf in the fridge, I’m a little overwhelmed when I see how much breast milk is there. I’m essentially pacing 1 to 1.5 days ahead of her eating. Breast milk is safe in the fridge for up to four days, at which point it either needs to be frozen or discarded (yes, there’s no pasteurization of breast milk being done here! And definitely no preservatives!).

“You should really consider freezing some breast milk,” the nanny said to me today, wide eyed while looking at all the bottles of breast milk in the fridge. “Kaia can’t keep up with your production!”

I looked into freezing again. I looked into the brands of pre-sterilized bags to buy and what would provide safety and also be cost effective. I also read about how much the nutrition of breast milk decreases after freezing. Fresh milk is the best milk. One day old milk is better than two days old milk, and so on. Refrigerated milk is better than frozen milk. And what goes into the freezer first should be the first to be removed for a defrosted feed. Antibodies for COVID (among other things) are still retained in frozen milk… but it starts to degrade after just one month of being frozen. So that was annoying to learn. All those moms who have huge freezer stashes… their milk is likely in the freezer for 4-6+ months. And while the nutrition doesn’t degrade entirely (it’s not like it becomes water!), it still degrades. And so that made me feel conflicted. I rather feed Kaia 2-day old refrigerated milk than feed her 2-3+ month frozen milk that has far less nutritional value due to the chilling. But I also want her to still have breast milk when she’s 15-16 months old.

I never thought I’d be conflicted about freezing breast milk. I thought I would get excited by it and be so proud of myself. But instead, I now feel confused about what I should do.

I was having a chat this week with a colleague who has two kids, ages 5 and 2. She asked me if I was still breastfeeding, and I said yes… exclusively pumping. Her eyes lit up, and she revealed to me that she exclusively pumped for both her kids. For her oldest, a boy, they had latching problems that frustrated her to no end, and he wasn’t gaining weight in the beginning, so she decided to switch to pumping completely and to forget about nursing in its entirety. She realized it liberated her so much from being the only one to feed him that when she had her second, she decided she didn’t even want to try nursing, and after birth, she asked the nurses to immediately bring a hospital grade pump to her room. She said she didn’t really care to nurse the way many moms initially intend; the direct breastfeeding didn’t really interest her anymore, and if anything, it stressed her out a lot during the first few weeks of her oldest’s life. And she didn’t want to stress over that. With exclusive pumping or “EPing” as we call it, she had total control: she knew how to build her milk supply at the most critical time, in the first two weeks of her child’s life. She didn’t have to deal with the trial and error of getting a baby to “learn” how to eat properly. She had done EPing with the first, so she knew exactly how to do it for her second and had nothing new to learn. The nurses scoffed at her, saying she really needed to at least try direct boob feeding, but she refused. And she went on to feed both of her kids pumped milk for 14 months.

I rarely meet people who talk about EPing, so it was comforting to have her share this with me, not just about her first experience, but how she willingly chose to do it for her second child. Most of the time when you hear about moms who EP, it’s because of issues like latching, poor milk transfer, weak suck — all the things I’ve heard of and have experienced first hand. So it was good to hear of someone who actually wanted to choose this path for herself and her baby.