Category Archives: Health

“Breast milk is not free”

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A few months ago before I gave birth, I was in a session with my therapist discussing my hopes for a feeding plan for my baby. We were listing out the pros and cons of breastfeeding and formula feeding, and as a pro for breastfeeding, I said, “well, one big pro is that breast milk is free, so I don’t have to pay for it!” She gave me this look that said part shock, part horror, and part comic and responded, “Oh, breast milk is NOT free!!”

And while on my pumping journey, I have heard her voice so wisely repeat this in my head, over and over and over. The literal dozens of hours I have spent with my nipples connected to a breast pump, the time I have spent doing hand expression, breast compressions and jiggling (to get the milk ducts active), breast warming and massaging; milk duct clog expelling, breast milk measuring, spilling (yes, there were a couple small yet painful spills.. every drop counts); researching ways to increase my milk supply, trying different and useless supplements, my nipples being sore and pointy to the point I cannot even wear my regular bras or my sports bras; power pumping, all the exacerbation of pain in my fingers, hands, wrists, and elbows as a result of all the above — I have reflected on all of this almost every single time I have connected myself to my breast pump. BREAST MILK IS ABSOLUTELY NOT FREE. I was stupid and naive to have ever made such an ignorant statement. Pumping has tested my mental health in ways that is close to the roller coaster I went through with IVF — In-vitro fertilization!! Who would have ever thought this??

In those moments, I feel deeply resentful of all the women who told me that they “just got lucky” because breastfeeding just worked out for them right away — they had babies who latched right away (well, mine did: that was a very FALSE sense of security), babies who sucked hard enough to get all their milk out so there was no milk transfer problem as in my case, babies who rapidly gained weight during nursing. When they connected their pump, they always pumped enough to get a feeding or more for their baby, or all their pumps had a consistent or predictable output. I wanted to say to all of them, “I hate all of you, but that’s because I’m envious as fuck.”

I also think about the total lack of understanding that men have when it comes to the pain and toil that pumping milk around the clock takes, or the potential harm that a clogged milk duct can take on a woman’s body. Example: the other day when I was dealing with a milk clog, I spent a good three hours shuffling between two pumping sessions and a manic attempt to get the clog out. In that time, Chris went out for a haircut, but before that, he was obsessed with AirPods he lost. When he got back, the first thing he asked me was, “Any luck finding my AirPods?” I told him that I spent that entire time either pumping or trying to get my clog out. “That’s it?” he responded, in terms of what I had accomplished during that time.

Seriously? Was he more concerned about his lost AirPods than the fact that a milk clog could result in 1) less milk for the baby to eat, 2) a total reduction in my overall milk supply if the clog persisted for too long, 3) my potentially getting mastitis, resulting in extreme flu-like symptoms, needing antibiotics, and in the absolute worst cases, potentially even going to the ER? And let’s also not fail to mention that… I was in pain! And when I said this to him, he responded, “Someone’s being a snowflake today.”

I told my friend this, who has two children, breastfed both, and dealt with many painful and stubborn clogged ducts. She got exasperated listening to this and said her husband was the same. “Men just don’t understand the crap women go through to feed their kids!” she said in response. “(Husband’s name) always bugs me about the times I pump and asks why I always have to pump at those times… like it’s a HOBBY!”

This is why I have mom friends and a pumping support group. If I didn’t, I probably would have given up on pumping after the first month. Because while formula may be expensive, breast milk is the most expensive food that exists. Women sacrifice their bodies and their mental health just to nourish their children. And there’s really no greater gift or sacrifice than that.

No pressure (to pump)

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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?

A continued weak suck and a second clogged duct 

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Two nights ago, it was just me and Chris with the baby at home. Usually when it’s just Chris and me, I will do the baby’s last feed of the night at around 10 PM. Afterwards, I will do my last pump for the night and go to sleep for approximately three hours. Then, I’ll wake up around 3 AM to do my middle of the night pump. However, I have noticed that the baby tends to be a little bit more feisty on the nights when I have her. That night, she had about 3/4 of her bottle when she started falling asleep. I figured that this was a sign that she was full, so I burped her, held her upright for an additional 10 minutes, and then started to swaddle her to bring her to her bassinet. She was totally fine throughout this entire process… Until I started swaddling her, and she started crying for more food. So I said OK, I can give you more food. I fed her about 20 mL more breastmilk, and then, she started falling asleep yet again. This time, I went through the exact same process as I did above, and then at the exact point when I started swaddling her, she started crying…  again. I was like, seriously?! You need to go to bed and make up your mind and stop grazing! This is your last meal of the night, and it is not a buffet spread that you can just graze at and pick at little bit of foods with on tiny toothpicks!

I gave her about 10 mL more breastmilk until she started falling asleep again. Then, for the third time, I started swaddling her, and she started crying. This is when my patience really wore thin. I continued swaddling her and then picked her up, rocked her, and sang her a song. I told her that this time, she was not getting any more food, and I did not care how much she was going to cry. I needed to pump, and then I needed to go to sleep. She needed to sleep right then and there.

She eventually complied and started falling asleep. I put her in her bassinet and immediately went to set up my pump. I did my last evening pump, and then I went to sleep. I looked at the clock, and it was just a couple minutes past midnight. That was so frustrating. I needed to wake up in three hours to do my middle of the night pump, and the thought made me miserable. I told myself OK, maybe I’ll give myself an extra hour of sleep and get up to pump at 4am. One additional hour of sleep felt very nice and luxurious, and I was going to give it to myself.

Well, I woke up after my alarm went off, and Chris asked if I was going to get up to pump. He was up waiting for the baby to stir so that she could have her middle of the night feed. I immediately felt a weird lumpy sensation in my right breast, in addition to the same tingly sensation on both my boobs, telling me I needed to pump ASAP or risk engorgement. I started massaging both of my breasts as I normally do before a pump, but I noticed that there were two lumps on the top of my right breast… and I was not happy. Seriously? I gave myself one extra hour of sleep, just four consecutive hours, and my punishment is milk duct clogs?? 

I went to do my pump and got a good amount of milk, more than I normally do around this time of night. I actively massaged out both lumps to see if I could loosen them. One of them seemed to have gone away, but one of them still remained. It was strange that my milk output was higher than usual despite having these lumps, because most of the time when you have clogs, they actually block the milk from flowing. That ends up reducing your output from what you normally get. When I finished my pump, I went back to sleep and woke up again in about three hours to do my first morning pump. And this was when I realized that the clog was not going away unless I manually got rid of it: my right breast produced just half of what my left breast produced this time. The unevenness in both of the bottles that I was pumping really unnerved to me. I knew I had to get this clog out, and get it out ASAP.

I went up to the hot tub on the roof and actively massaged the clog. I used the Haakaa and Epsom salt hack with warm water, and soaked my nipple in it about four times throughout the day. I also applied my Theragun on the clog and pushed it down towards towards my nipple. I made sure to be prepared, as I put a bottle under my nipple, and thankfully I did: milk sprayed everywhere when I did this, and I even got it all over my shirt. I am stingy with breastmilk as an under supplier, and there was no way that I was just going to let the milk spray everywhere and lose it if I could control it. I tried massaging the clog out in the shower, and I also noticed milk spraying. I took sunflower lecithin pills throughout the day, which are supposed to loosen fatty milk and prevent clogged ducts.

Finally that evening, I did more Theragun massage, as painful as that was, and did a last Haakaa and Epsom salt nipple soak for the night. this resulted in the clog finally loosening in a way that looked promising: in the Epsom salt soak, which was colored purple because of the lavender in the Epsom salt mixture, I saw a big, slow gush of white fluid in the Haakaa breast pump that eventually spilled out. While it made me sad to lose this milk, it made me really happy to actually see this Haakaa hack in action and actually working. I continued to massage the clog and gradually felt that it was getting smaller and flatter. Then, I thought that it would be a good measure to get into another hot shower, use a hot wet hand towel, and continue to apply pressure to ensure that the clog was gone while bending over to let gravity help me. I used the heel of my hand as my friend suggested and more milk sprayed out. Did I finally get it all?

I did my 8:30 PM pump, and my right breast produced just over 10 mL… That was miserable to see. And unfortunately, I did not see milk spraying out of the milk ducts that I know this clog is associated with on the top of my breast. I didn’t think the clog was fully out. When I massaged the top part of my breast, I still felt a lump, though it was much flatter and smaller than it was before. However, it looked like my left breast wanted to over compensate for my right breast, and it actually produced the difference of what I normally produce for both breasts during this evening pump, which made me a little happy.

This morning, I took another hot shower after the gym and used the hot towel, the power of the heel of my hand, and bent over to get the clog out further. And this time, there was no doubt about it: The milk just gushed out of my right nipple. It started as long, fast sprays, and then it progressed into huge gushes of milk. I felt one part relief and one part sadness… I felt relief knowing that I was actually making progress to get rid of the clog, but I felt really sad because I was literally seeing my precious breast milk going down the drain and ultimately getting wasted.

 The day before, I had finally, in the last 12 weeks, reached over 20 ounces of breast milk output in a single day. I was proud of myself and my progress, as I had worked so hard to get my milk supply up. But then, as though to punish me and laugh at me, my body gave me a clog the day after. What the actual fuck?! It was like mother nature playing some cruel trick on me.

My mom friend told me that my baby would be able to help me get my clog out, as her baby had always helped her get her clogs out. They always say that a breast pump is never as efficient as a baby at the breast. Well, that is having the assumption that your baby is actually an efficient eater. Well, I knew that that was not going to be the case for me because my baby was not an efficient eater at the boob. And my suspicions were correct: when I placed her on the right side at my breast, she lasted about seven minutes tops before she started wailing loudly. And then this morning, she lasted just four minutes and kept on unlatching and cried yet again. This baby was not going to help me unclog myself at all… I can only hope that this laziness and weakness is not indicative of the person she will grow up to be.

The morale of the story is: take sunflower lecithin pills to prevent clogs. Don’t sleep too long between pumps otherwise your body will punish you. Don’t get too excited about your increased milk supply because your body may come back and bite you in the ass… or in my case, in the boob. MILK CLOGS HURT.

A weak and lazy suck

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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.

Hot tub time

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Since the baby has been born, Chris has been insistent that we do little things to indulge ourselves and relax. One of those things is to make sure that our freezer always has ice cream in it. For him, it means going to the pool regularly to have his morning swim. He started this probably about the time when he went back to work. For me, it has meant occasionally making time to go up to our roof to enjoy the Jacuzzi, or going to the gym to do a 30 minute workout between nursing and pumping after my six-week postpartum checkup.

Today, I went up to the roof to enjoy a quick 15 minutes of the Jacuzzi. And, if I understand the way that hot tubs work, it is normal and expected to have the jets going. That means that there is plenty of water pressure for aching muscles and for relaxation. Having them on always feels good, especially given I have had achy muscles from gradually returning to the gym and working out. My hips have felt strange, and my core and thigh muscles are definitely feeling the transition into working out again. So you can imagine how surprised and weirded out I was when an older woman was in the Jacuzzi without the jets going, and I turned them on when I went in. The jets were going for about 10 minutes when she said to me that she wanted to turn them off for just about five minutes and then she would leave. She said that she just wanted to relax and that the jets were not relaxing.

I gave her a strange look and said it was fine  since I had to leave soon anyway, but in my mind, I was thinking: if you find the jets of a jacuzzi stressful, I really wonder what the hell kind of life you have led? 

This woman, along with her roommate, who is also an older woman, are often times up on the roof enjoying the pool and the Jacuzzi. Our handyman who is also our friend told us that the two of them were formerly doctors before they got retired and as friends, they decided that they would live together and rent an apartment together for company. That sounds like a great way to ensure that they are not lonely in their old age, but honestly, they are both a little neurotic and ridiculous. Yesterday, when I was up on the roof and trying to enjoy the Jacuzzi again, the same woman was in the Jacuzzi while her friend was getting out of the pool. The Jacuzzi has a setting where residents of this building can turn on and off the jets with a timer. The same woman was in the Jacuzzi without the jets and I turned the jets on and set the timer to 15 minutes. Her friend coming out of the pool got alarmed when I turned the jets on, and she looked at me with this crazed expression and asked if I had turned the temperature up on the Jacuzzi. I told her that it was not possible for us to control the temperature of the Jacuzzi and that instead, I had turned on the jets/timer. She was about to enter the Jacuzzi until we had this exchange, and even after I responded to her, she said to her friend/roommate that she was not comfortable getting into the Jacuzzi with the change I had made and would go immediately back to their apartment. I am not sure what the hell makes her think that any building would allow any resident to actually control the heat of a hot tub… Allowing residents to ultimately boil each other to death, but hey, it’s her neuroses that is preventing her from enjoying, and I really did not care.

So, while I do believe that it is cute that these two older women have decided in their golden years to become roommates, a la The Golden Girls, it is just unfortunate that they are both a bit psychotic and slightly spoiled my own relaxed time away from child care duties and pumping.

Visits to meet our baby while she is being nursed

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Last weekend, a friend and his wife came over to visit Kaia for the first time. Given she feeds so often, as in every three hours, and I nurse her during the day, I am pretty open about the fact that my breasts will be out, and no, I will not cover them up. I’m in my own damn house, so I need to be comfortable. So I tend to preface all visitors with this message: Just giving you the head’s up that my nipples will be out, so hope you’ll be comfortable with that!

So they came and visited for a short duration while I nursed Kaia on one breast and had my Haakaa breast pump that pumped and caught milk drops on the other breast. I felt totally comfortable during this while we chatted. But afterwards, Chris said that they were both extremely awkward; my friend was doing his very best to look away from the direction of my breasts, and his wife was trying hard to be extremely polite, staring straight ahead as though actively avoiding my view.

I wish that as a culture, we could be more open minded and “normal” about breast/chest feeding. It’s really not that big of a deal. This is how animals feed their children. There is absolutely nothing sexual or inappropriate or questionable about seeing a person breast/chest feeding their baby in the presence of other people. If I saw them staring at my breasts while I fed my baby, I really would not care. This is human and animal nature and thus is natural. Americans need to stop being so prudish about something that is just natural: feeding one’s child.

Multi-tasking while pumping milk

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It’s often been said that mothers are the best multi-taskers on earth. Why is that the case? Well, it’s because they don’t have the choice of multi-tasking; they MUST multitask simply to survive and ensure their children’s survival and comfort. This is also the only way shit gets done in the house.

Here is a list of things I’ve completed while connected to my Spectra S1 breast pump. I’m pretty proud of myself, if I can say that, given that this Spectra pump, even with its built-in battery, is basically like carrying around a mini bowling ball everywhere that’s connected to both my nipples.

Cutting vegetables and fruit

Preparing toast

Mashing up avocado

Preparing morning oatmeal

Eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Brushing my teeth (I do not recommend this; this was ominous!)

Flossing my teeth

Entertaining baby in Baby Bjorn bouncer chair

Double boiling and heat aerating Chai

Whisking matcha

Disinfecting kitchen counters and bathroom sink

Scrubbing toilet bowls

Preparing breast milk and formula bottles

Wiping up baby spit up on floor

Washing dishes

Writing blog posts, responding to emails

Listening to and reading the news

Phone calls with friends/family

Answering the door when food delivery comes (yes, I really did this)

Voice to text dictation for this blog

Sitz baths for postpartum healing

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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.

Almost skipped a MOTN (middle of the night) pump

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It was Valentine’s morning this morning, and oddly enough, I had a full five hours of continuous sleep, which is the longest stretch of sleep I have had since the day before my baby was born.

You would think that I would have been happy about this, but instead when I woke up on my own at around 4:20 AM this morning, I was in a panic because I realized that I had hit “off” on my alarm for 2:20 AM to wake up to pump. I usually will hit snooze, but in my sleep deprived and exhausted state, I hit “off“ instead, resulting in my continuing to sleep for an additional two hours. I had had dreams, or nightmares rather, of missing my middle of the night pump multiple times, so clearly this was a source of potential anxiety for me. In my dreams, I miss my middle of the night pump completely and of course panic about my milk supply dropping. If you follow any exclusive pumping blogs and websites, they all warn you to never skip your middle of the night pump up until the time that your supply regulates, which is around the 12-week postpartum mark, otherwise you could severely torpedo your milk supply for after your supply regulates.

I’d had at least a dozen dreams of missing my MOTN pump. In real life, I would wake up in a panic at around 5 or 5:30 AM, to see the milk I had expressed during my 2:30 AM pump sitting and cooling in the fridge where it usually is. This time, I literally jumped out of bed to go into the kitchen to get my pump ready. And well, it was not the end of the world because I actually expressed almost an ounce of additional milk more than I normally do during my 2:30 AM pump. So at least that made me happy.

I feel like my entire waking and subconscious thoughts surround themselves around my milk supply, my output, and how much breastmilk I am producing for my baby to drink and whether I will have enough for her. Granted, I recognize I do not have enough to 100% cover her needs every single day, but if I am able to get to about 75 to 80% of her needs and cover the rest with formula, I will be comfortable. That is not ideal, as I would love to be able to provide her 100% of her needs with a little to put away for a freezer stash, but I am not sure or confident that that is in the cards for me.

Baby laundry: not dryer safe

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Before having a baby, I was warned by many other parents about how much laundry I would end up doing. It wasn’t necessarily that babies need a lot of clothes or that they get that dirty that often. It was more that they will spit up a lot on their own clothes as well as on yours. It is also that they are unpredictable when it comes to how many blowouts they will have. You may also have situations when you are taking off one of their dirty diapers, and then, you accidentally get some of their pee or poop on their clothes. Then, the baby can no longer wear that onesie or shirt anymore, and you have to soak it and get it ready for the wash. Or, another situation that may arise during a diaper change when you are changing them: they suddenly decide, oftentimes reflexively, that they want to take one of their little feet or hands and shove it right into the dirty diaper. Then, while you are trying to block them from getting into that dirty diaper, the smear ends up happening. Voila: there, you have another situation of yet another piece of dirty clothing that you have to wash.

Also, when other parents warned me about how much laundry I was going to be doing as a parent, no one warned me that baby clothes and baby cloth items cannot be washed in the same way that I wash my own clothes. What I mean by that is, these items often times will say, wash in cold water only, wash on delicate cycle, do not tumble dry, do not put in dryer; not dryer safe. Why is this the case? Well, for the clothes, it’s because the baby clothes will shrink. They are already so small. For the other items? I have no freaking clue. These baby companies need to get their crap together and actually make their cloth items washer and dryer safe. Stat. 

So what the hell are you supposed to do? You’re just supposed to air dry everything? When did having a baby and her clothes become so unbelievably high maintenance? I don’t even do this for over 99% of my own clothes! And I am an adult! 

Not everyone has the luxury of having an outdoor space with clean, crisp air where they can just line dry clothes and hang them up in the midst of sun and nature. Some of us actually live in urban areas where we dwell in apartments and cannot line dry our clothes and have them be nice and soft and fluffy once they are dry. We don’t even have a rack to hang clothes to dry. When we have the occasional item that needs to be air dried, I will usually hang it on a clothing hanger and then put it on the shower rod in the bathroom. But I can’t really do that with the baby’s clothes because they are so small and would just fall off. So what we have ended up doing is just putting all of her wet clothes out of the washer all around the dining room table and chairs to dry. And sadly, once they are dry, they are not soft and fluffy. Some of them are actually a little bit rough, as sad as that sounds. It depends on the material of the item, but some of them really are just not soft… At all. And that makes me sad given the original state the clothing item was in. Luckily, most of those items, after a few days in her drawers, get a little bit softer by the time she wears it. So in the end, it’s not so bad. But it is definitely not in its original baby soft condition.

So yes, you can add this to the list of things that I was not anticipating when becoming a new parent. No one warned me how high maintenance baby clothes and baby cloth items would be to wash. And don’t even get me started on the lounger covers and how hard they are to take on and off, not to mention baby chair covers. Those items also need to be air dried. How riveting and fun for new, tired, sleep-deprived parents.