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.

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: