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.

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.

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.