It was my second day back at work, virtually, and I set up a couple of catch ups with some colleagues that I am friendly with. One of them has shared that one of my other colleague friends was out on leave… Indefinitely. This colleague had given birth in June last year, and I had spoken with her quite a bit when she came back to work. She had been doing really well then and had a very easy breast-feeding journey… Which she acknowledged she was so lucky to have. She had been in the process of weaning off of nursing and pumping, and it appears that the hormonal changes of weaning really affected her negatively. She had gone through some emotional downward spirals and needed to take time off from work. My colleague told me that it was doubtful that she was going to return. I was completely shocked.

She had had a really smooth pregnancy, a precipitous labor, meaning that end to end, her labor was less than seven hours, and her breast-feeding journey was immediately successful. So this news of her experiencing postpartum anxiety was completely unexpected. I felt really terrible when I heard this and immediately reached out to her to see how she was doing. 

Unfortunately, I know based on what I have read that postpartum depression and anxiety are not just confined to the first few months after birth. Postpartum depression can actually affect mothers nine months, 12 months, even 18 months later due to hormonal changes, not to mention shifts in lifestyle, meaning a return to work, bringing a child to daycare, a mother’s changing body and weight, etc. It’s hard to know when and how it could potentially affect you. So far, my postpartum journey has been relatively smooth, and the only real negatives, other than the rocky breast-feeding journey (that I didn’t realize was rocky until I found out my baby wasn’t gaining weight…) and my slightly unhealthy obsession with pumping and increasing my milk supply, was the effect on my elbows and wrists, as well as my new mommy thumb condition. I have been decreasing the motions that cause the pain as much as possible as well as doing exercises to help relieve the pain. I definitely don’t feel as terrible as I did in February. And although I am back to work, as my work friend’s situation has shown me, my postpartum journey is still not over. Hopefully, things will continue looking up for me.

Since dropping pumps, not only have my pump sessions become longer to fully empty, but I have also had to do more breast compressions. I particularly have to do more of these in my first morning pump when my boobs are super full of milk, lumpy , and they are nearly rock hard. I was also told by my Cleo lactation consultant that I needed to spend a little bit more time massaging my breasts first thing every morning before pumping to loosen any potential clogs that could be there. This would also make it easier for the milk to come out.  While I was fine doing the extra breast massaging, doing more breast compressions at this point is really, really exhausting. I have given myself numb fingers as well as mommy thumb and wrist pain from all of the breast compressions that I have done during pumping. My mommy thumb condition does not really seem to be getting better. Some days, it is more tolerable than others, but the pain still persists depending on the type of movement my thumb does. Even the term mommy thumb is a misnomer because the pain is not actually in my thumb. The pain results from movement of my thumb, but the pain is actually in my wrist because of the tendons that are connected to my thumb. See? That’s another interesting thing that you learn as a pumping Mama: you learn more about how everything in your body is connected.

So every morning, on top of my extra breast massaging, I have to spend more time pushing down on my boobs to get the milk out. I am literally pushing milk out of my breasts every morning to get the milk out not just for my baby to eat, but also so that I do not get clogged. And so as I do this every morning, I think to myself, Do cows get milk clogs? They don’t have hands. So how would they get their milk clogs out?? What other animals in the animal kingdom get clogged milk ducts…? 

When you are pumping milk, a number of best practices should be followed in order to maximize the milk that you produce for each pump session. Some of these include applying heat to and massaging your breasts before pumping, breast compressions while pumping, and making sure to moisturize your nipples with something that is baby safe like shea butter to prevent cracking or drying out. I usually do all of these things, but I especially applied heat a lot during the first several months of pumping, particularly because it was just very cold since we were in the dead of winter. I used different types of heating pads that needed to be boiled and rehydrated over the stove, and while I used them pretty religiously for the first three months, I got tired of how much preparation went into rehydrating them every single day, multiple times per day, particularly since at that point, I was pumping seven times per day. I ended up reserving the heat pads mostly for my last evening pump as well as my middle of the night pumps. That reduced the amount of heat pad preparation that I had to do. In the beginning, Chris would always boil all of the heat pads for me, but as time went on, I ended up doing it myself and got annoyed at the tedious process. But then, I remembered while rummaging through one of our closets that we had Beddy Bear. 

Beddy Bear is a teddy bear that has raw rice stuffed into his belly. You warm him up in the microwave for about 2 1/2 minutes, and then he basically is a heat pad for you, without any need to rehydrate over boiling water on the stove. This certainly beats waiting for water to boil in a large pot and then allowing the heat pads to rehydrate for about 20 minutes every single time I use them. Because he was so low maintenance, I started just using him to heat up my boobs for certain pump sessions. And he was working quite well. Well, that is… until he actually burned me. A couple days ago, I heated him up for my last evening pump session, and when I put him on my breast, I must have been very sleepy because a few seconds later, I felt a strong burning sensation on the top of boob. I immediately removed him and touched my breast. Crap, I thought. I think I might have overheated him. Or did I? He must have gotten too hot, and I probably should have waited for him to cool a bit before I put him on my breasts. 

The next morning after my shower, I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed that the bruises that are on the top of my breast from breast compressions had gotten even more conspicuous and darker. I looked closely at my breasts in the mirror: ahhhh, I thought. These new bruises are burn marks from Beddy Bear! I can’t believe my teddy bear burned me! And this is all just for breast milk for my baby… 

I thought this before, and I still believe this now: breast-feeding is truly a mother’s gift to her child. It is completely selfless and done 100% out of pure love and the desire to give our babies the most we possibly and physically are able to give. Being a pumping mama is hard ass work, but I have not regretted a second of it. I love watching my baby thrive and grow while primarily having my breast milk as her main form of food. I will always be a little bit sad that nursing did not work out for us, but I am grateful for my milk production, even when it was not that great in the beginning, and even now, when it is still shy of 100% meeting my baby’s needs. I am grateful that I have this opportunity and privilege to feed my baby with food from my own body.

Ever since I started dropping pump sessions, I have been taking forever to empty. I used to pump for about 30 minutes each session, and now, I am noticing that I have to pump until at least 40 to 45 minutes in order to get the same output that I got previously with just 30 minutes. This is really really frustrating. Sometimes, I end up staying connected to my breast pump for an entire hour. This is supposed to be fairly common unfortunately: I’d read about this happening for a lot of women in my Facebook pumping mamas group, plus my Cleo lactation consultant says this is normal, as well. This is not necessarily the end of the world, as because my pump is battery operated, I do not need to be stuck to a wall. I can actually move about the apartment, and most of the time while I am pumping, I am playing with my baby on the floor. But it is definitely not convenient to have bottles stuck and connected to my nipples. I cannot do exactly everything that I could be doing without the pump connected  because of this. On top of that, my total time connected to a pump is actually longer now than it was when I was doing seven pumps per day. This was not how I was envisioning pumping at five times per day, which is what I am currently at. Plus, in just a couple of short weeks, I am going back to work. Granted, I am lucky in that I am not going back into an office, and that instead, I am going to be working from home at my desk in the second bedroom, so I can still pump while I am at home without being forced to go into a tiny, windowless and soulless pumping room for moms. However, I do not necessarily want to be pumping milk during all of my meetings. I am planning to block out my calendar twice during the workday to pump milk, and so during that time, I will not be doing any video meetings or external meetings. But I was originally envisioning that my pumping breaks would only be 30 minutes. It’s not a big deal for me to be connected to a pump while I am outside of work hours, but this can get really annoying once I am actually doing work meetings again. And I already do all of the things that have been recommended to me to empty faster: I do breast compressions. I apply heat. I massage my breasts before I pump. I have played around with the settings to see what else can empty me faster, but I was already doing that, anyway.

This is annoying, but this still beats pumping seven times per day, every three hours during the day and every four hours at night. I have to wash my pump parts two times less than I did previously. My output per pump is a lot higher now, which makes pumping feel a lot more gratifying now. I am going to get through this.

Women go through a lot of crap in their lives, particularly if they have to go through pregnancy and childbirth. While most people are aware of the pains and annoyances of pregnancy, not many people, other than those who have actually experienced it themselves, are aware of all the postpartum side effects that women face. Of course, while most logical and reasonably aware people would know that childbirth would require your uterus and vagina to heal, it is less well known that postpartum hormones can really go haywire after the birth of a child. Some of the potential things that can happen can include but are not limited to:  hot flashes, cold night sweats, mood swings, acne, hair loss, and a massively itchy scalp. Oh, that massively itchy scalp is actually affecting me literally as I write this.

A bunch of my friends and colleagues warned me about postpartum hair loss. This tends to be most common about 3 to 4 months after giving birth when most of the pregnancy hormones have left your body, and your body is starting to regulate once again into a non-pregnant body. If that happens, your hair can suddenly start falling out in huge clumps. While I have not yet experienced any hair loss that is notable, fingers crossed, I have repeatedly experience a scalp that is so itchy that all I want to do is scratch it until I bleed. And the most annoying part is that whenever it gets super itchy, it’s when I am supposed to be resting. 

When I actually have a quiet moment and can lie down and not use my arms or hands at all, that is when I itch the most. And it drives me absolutely nuts because all I want to do is rest. I don’t have that much time to rest during the day or night. And so it’s like my body is trying to mess with me and tell me that I’m not allowed to rest, and and instead, it is going to drive me crazy by making my scalp itch. That is just not fun at all for me. I wash my hair about 2 to 3 times a week, and if the itchiness continues, I may actually have to increase the number of times I wash it, which I absolutely hate because I hate washing my hair. It is one of the self grooming things that I abhor. It is annoying to wash my hair particularly because ever since I started dying it, I get massive knots trying to get my fingers through my hair while I am washing. And the knots are super frustrating. That’s why during the very few times during the year when I actually get my hair done, I am so happy to have someone else wash my hair for me.

Oh, postpartum life.