While I’ve generally followed the Solid Starts guide and database when it comes to introducing solids and finger foods to Kaia, I haven’t always taken all of their advice. Things I haven’t followed include: avoiding introduction of “hot” spices until after age 1 (why??? If she gets mad about it, she’ll get over it at the next feed, if not sooner), and introducing one allergen at a time (yeah, so maybe I did introduce dairy AND nuts at the same time…). Some solids feeding guides suggest introducing one food at a time for three days before moving on to the next one, but Solid Starts doesn’t do that. Plus, there are only so many days in a year, so if you did that, you’d be severely limiting how many new foods your child would be introduced to, and there’s a finite amount of time before they hit their toddler years, which is inevitably what everyone says is the time that “picky eating” habits tend to descend upon us.. even with toddlers who as babies, pretty much accepted everything. So I am cognizant of this and trying to get Kaia to try as many new foods and spices as possible before she hits her first birthday.

I clearly have had my priorities, though. Things that may seem a bit unorthodox to introduce her to, like Thai chilies, cayenne, kasoor methi, or amchur, she’s already had countless times that I can’t even remember. But it wasn’t until today that I finally gave her a potato. Potato seems like a pretty normal thing to give a baby learning to eat solids, especially if it’s mashed. But lo and behold, after steaming it and serving it with a little olive oil, pepper, and nutritional yeast (the “vegan substitute” for cheese), she took about two bites of it and started swatting it away. That’s a strong sign she’s not a fan. When I tried to insist she try some, she started whining. Welp.

What was she probably saying? “Too bland!” “Boring!” “Where’s the flavor?” I served it in a big wedge. Maybe next time, I will do it mashed, or even in a curry to give to her. We shall see how it goes, but she seems to prefer big flavors over plainer foods so far.

I always offer my nanny the things I make because I think that’s just a nice thing to do. She oftentimes declines, but I still continue offering because I’m sure something will be of interest at some point. She’s tried things I’ve made that she’s really enjoyed, like black bean soup, butter chicken and noodles. She’s also tried things she didn’t think she would like, such as the various types of dal I’ve made. She said that the versions her husband likes (he’s Indian ethnically) she didn’t care for, but after seeing how well Kaia ate the dals I made, she wanted to try mine. And she said she really enjoyed mine. She said that if Kaia likes it, it’s probably good. Well, I guess Kaia’s palate is more trustworthy to her than mine is…

This morning, I woke up around 5:45 to a text from my nanny, who was letting me know she wasn’t feeling well and would be unable to come in today. While it was obviously fine for her to not come in when feeling ill, especially since I knew I only had two meetings today, I also woke up to a weird feeling in my right breast, like a little rock on the side of it. Ugh, I thought. I had a similar feeling a couple days ago, but luckily it never resulted in a clog and cleared up after I pumped that morning. But this time, after my morning pump, which was much lower than usual in terms of output, I realized that “rock” was still in my breast.

Ughhhhhh. Not only did I not have childcare today, but I’d also have to deal with another stupid milk clog… my third one ever, and my first since I started religiously taking sunflower lecithin supplements twice a day as a preventive measure for clogs to thin out the milk fat. WHY did it have to happen on the day the nanny called in sick?

While it would have been an enjoyable day feeding and spending time with my baby, it ended up being an exhausting day of taking care of her while also trying to get the clog out… which in many ways, took more mental energy out of me because there’s always the stress of not knowing when or if the clog will come out. Plus, it physically hurts. It feels sore and hot since a milk clog is essentially an enflamed milk duct, with milk fat that has gotten stuck. Eventually, it finally went away after a lot of massaging, pumping, and ibuprofen, but it was still exhausting. By the end of the day, I was totally pooped and just wanted to pass out. And I did just that… and even skipped my last pump. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do given my clog just came out, but I was just too tired to stay up for yet another hour to pump. I’m now at over nine months of exclusively pumping — no one understands exactly how much time and mental energy this takes to do, not to mention the extreme discipline. My body is still not my own as long as I am pumping, but it’s a sacrifice I’m making for my baby.

When I was at my parents’ while in San Francisco, I basically made myself at home with all my pumping gear and bottles: I laid out a towel to put all the bottles in the kitchen. I set up my pump with the pump parts on Ed’s old desk. I also walked around liberally with my breast pump connected as though no one was there. No one really commented on it; my mom knew I was pumping, so she didn’t say anything. My aunt and her roommate upstairs never said a word or even acknowledged that I had a nipple sucker connected. And my dad? Well, he averted his eyes whenever he saw I had my “brrr, brrr” device on.

One day, I did leave the cap on my second pump tube on the dining table. My dad found it and came over to me. “You left your… device piece on the dining room table,” he said.

My “device”? Do you mean… my breast pump piece?

Hahahahhahahahahaha. My dad is so awkward that he couldn’t even say “breast pump” or “pump.”

All parents want to do what is best for their kids regardless of the choices that they make. So when I read about how immature babies’ digestive systems are when it comes to processing salt, I decided that I wanted to do my best to keep table salt out of Kaia’s diet as much as possible before the age of 1. What this ultimately meant was not allowing her to taste food at restaurants or food that’s pre-prepared, and looking at all canned or jarred items like tomatoes, sauces, or even peanut butter, to ensure no salt was on the ingredients list. But a little salt here and there would not hurt them: I’d already given her some ricotta and goat cheese, both of which have a little salt, but not too much (cheese is not cheese with salt, by definition). And she really loved both. Plus, I wanted to expose her to kimchi, and the Solid Starts app suggested rinsing it of excess salt and hot pepper, and she gobbled this up. One day last week, when I was multitasking, I finely minced kimchi for her and completely forgot to rinse the salt off. And in the middle of her feed when our nanny was feeding her, I remembered and panicked and ran out of the room to tell her. Our nanny nearly jumped out of her seat.

“You scared me!” she exclaimed. “I thought a real emergency happened!”

I told her I had forgotten to rinse the kimchi of the excess salt, but she had already fed some of it to Kaia. And granted, there was barely a teaspoon of kimchi in total on her plate, but I still felt bad. Our nanny reassured me that this would not kill her.

“A little is fine,” our nanny insisted. “She’s going to have some salt eventually, and she’s already getting some from the kimchi even when it’s rinsed because you can’t get it *all* off. It’s okay. Don’t worry so much about it. Plus, you can tell she LOVES it.”

Of course she does. Human beings are wired to enjoy salty things. But… It’s hard not to worry a little, though. I don’t want her to get addicted to salty foods or depend on salt for flavor. I don’t want her kidneys to malfunction because she has too much salt. There are lots of worries all parents have about setting their kids up for success as early as possible, and in this case, it’s in the realm of eating. As she approaches 9 months of age in a couple days, she’s just around the corner from her 1-year birthday, and so eventually, I will need to stop obsessing about the salt and just focus on making sure she’s getting a well-rounded diet.

On Friday morning, we had access to the hotel lounge for breakfast, so Chris insisted we all go downstairs to eat together and try to feed Kaia some solids while down there. I had to keep my pumping schedule in line as much as possible, so I went downstairs with my Spectra pump on and connected, just with a shawl covering it. Occasionally while sitting and eating, I would remove my shawl from one of my breasts to do a breast compression or check the flow. The other times I’ve pumped in the hotel hobby in Poughkeepsie or Philadelphia, no one really seemed to notice anything I was doing. But here, alas, someone finally noticed! Some white guy eating breakfast and on his phone looked over at me as I was doing breast compressions, initially had a confused look on his face, which then changed to a frown with a little disgust, lingered looking at our table, and eventually minded his own business. Regardless of what he was really thinking, I could really care less.

The way I feel about pumping in public is the same way I feel about breastfeeding directly/nursing in public: I am allowed to feed my child as I see fit, and if someone has a problem with it, they can go fuck off. If he had tried to come over and say anything, I would have already pre-prepared a very aggressive response, but I’m happy to say he kept to himself.

Other than home, these are all the places I can now say I have pumped milk:

Ever since Kaia started eating solids in June, I’ve been preparing all of her food. There’s a section of the fridge with little containers to store food I’ve either prepped, cut, or made specifically for her. Most of the food is just the same food Chris and I eat, just separately portioned out for her, cut a little differently for easier/safer consumption for her, and also with no added salt/sugar and less heat/chili. Originally when we started feeding her solids in the early weeks, I only gave her one or two things at a time, but I realized that it probably wasn’t enough variety for her because there are only so many meals she can eat in a day in addition to her breast milk, which will continue to make up the majority of her calories until she turns 1. So now, I try to give her anywhere from 5-8 different things for each of her two solid meals per day. Part of it is for exposure and familiarity so these things are just normal to her. The other part of it is that I want her to know what variety in food exists… because if she isn’t exposed to variety early on, then she will never be comfortable with it and may write off new foods as “foreign” or scary. I never expect her to eat everything I portion out for her, nor do I expect her to eat every single thing I present, but I want her to get used to different foods, textures, flavors, and to at least see it and feel it with her own eyes and hands.

My nanny thought I was a crazy woman when I first started putting her solids plates together. “This new mom is putting 6 things on her plate… is she crazy? Kaia is not going to eat all these things!” she thought to herself. She did imply a few times that she thought I was giving a bit much for variety, but I insisted to her that I wanted Kaia just to have the exposure, and if she didn’t eat it, I’d be okay with it. I didn’t want to force feed her because force feeding early on can lead to unhealthy associations with food as early as before the age of 1, which I obviously don’t want. But to my nanny’s surprise, Kaia has at least tried every single thing I’ve ever presented to her. Most things she has embraced. A few things took two or three tries, like plantains or eggs, but by the second or third time, Kaia has always willingly self-fed herself and eaten. And after the last two months, our nanny admitted to me that she was wrong. She watched Kaia self feed herself cut up buckwheat noodles today, and our nanny was so intrigued that she asked me if she could try some herself (our nanny didn’t know what buckwheat noodles were).

“I didn’t think she’d eat everything you gave her, but she does!” the nanny exclaimed. “She really does eat everything. I’m just used to moms only giving 2-3 things at most for solids meals. Some moms don’t give anything and expect me to whip up food for their children with their empty fridge with just condiments in it! Then, they come up at the end of the day, and the first question they ask me is what their son/daughter ate for lunch or dinner!”

I cannot guarantee that my baby will embrace all foods and not be a picky eater. But I think that the proactive steps we’re taking right now with finger foods, self feeding, and a wide variety of exposure to different foods will set the best possible foundation for her to be a good, confident eater who loves and appreciates foods from all cultures. It’s a huge time investment, as her self feeding meals takes about 45 minutes to an hour per meal on the weekends, but I love watching her explore food and hope this helps her future.

Given that my friend had to be hospitalized for postpartum hypertension about two weeks after giving birth, this meant she had to be separated from her baby. And when you have the intention/desire to breastfeed, this means that to keep your milk supply up, you will need to pump if baby is not physically there with you to nurse. Somehow, a nurse said that her blood pressure spiked a bit after each pumping session, so they suggested that she not pump for two days….

She said she felt fine, and I’m not 100 percent sure that not expressing milk for two straight days in the first two weeks postpartum is a good idea if a mom has explicitly said she wants to breastfeed her child. Where do people come up with these awful suggestions? Do they ever listen to mothers’ desires… EVER?

I went to the hospital today to visit my friend, who had recently given birth about two weeks ago, but had to get re-admitted to the hospital for postpartum hypertension. She realized something was wrong when this past weekend, she had a lingering, painful headache that just wouldn’t go away. She had a blood pressure monitor and used it, and the result was far higher than anyone would be comfortable with, so her doctor told her to go to the ER and get admitted. She is being monitored closely now and on medication, but she is unsure when she will get discharged. I also visited when my friend, her husband, was also there with the baby, so the added bonus I got was seeing their newborn for the very first time and holding her.

The scary thing that most people don’t realize is that child birth.. is VERY TRAUMATIC on the female body. It’s actually considered physical trauma. Most women tear to some degree in their vagina or even outside of that when having a vaginal birth. A caesarian section cuts through something like 8-9 layers of the human body to take the baby out. A lot of complications can happen, such as postpartum hypertension, which is one of the most common side effects after child birth. Hemorrhaging is extremely terrifying and common, and these conditions can result in seizures, strokes, and even heart attacks. A friend’s friend got a brain aneurysm as a result of the birth of her second child and was in the ICU for over four weeks. These conditions can happen as late as up to a year after the birth of a child. But no one talks about this. Women’s healthcare in this country is just beyond abysmal. No one proactively tells you this; you just have to Google search it all and figure it out yourself.