Pregnancy wistfulness and mom thoughts

Posted on by
Reply

I went to visit my neighbor yesterday to drop off a few baby related things that were either brand new that I never got to use, as well as a few lightly used baby items. She is 37 weeks pregnant, also from IVF, and she is expecting her first, which is a girl. She is 40 years old, and her husband is 51. She told me that she is very well aware that even though she has two more embryos that are frozen, that those may not ever make it. So this could be her one and only child. She told me that even though she was excited to meet her baby soon, she was really sad that her pregnancy was ending. It wasn’t that she wanted her pregnancy to last forever, but time just passed way too quickly. She wanted to relish the little moments more and more. Similar to me, she had a very smooth and straightforward pregnancy after IVF. She has loved every moment of being pregnant and has been incredibly grateful that IVF worked out and that she was pregnant, though at a much later age than she had hoped. She and her husband had been trying for over eight years to conceive naturally, and it just never worked. It wasn’t until last year that they finally tried IVF.

I relate a lot to her sadness about her pregnancy ending. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I also felt a little bit sad, though obviously I was at the same time very excited. I also have a similar sentiment as she does when it comes to that thought that this could be her only child. It seems that only other moms can relate to this feeling of sadness. Many parts of pregnancy as well as new motherhood and motherhood in general are difficult, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t love it and enjoy it. As far as I know, there has been no deeper meaning in life to me than raising my baby and growing her in my womb. As much as I have tried to relish every moment of pregnancy as well as new motherhood, it all just felt like it’s going too fast. Even today, it is going far too quickly for me. Our baby is growing well, but I just can’t believe that she is already four months old. I told my neighbor my feelings around this, and I told her that those complicated emotions of happiness and sadness  at your baby progressing and growing are just going to continue. Because obviously as mothers, while we want our babies to grow, we all wish that we could just freeze time so that they didn’t grow too fast. I tried to explain this to Chris, and his response was, she’s not growing too fast! She’s right on the curve! …Well, that is not what I mean. I do not literally mean that she is growing too fast. What I mean is that these moments are all passing me by too quickly, and before I know it, she is not going to need me to feed her or to get her from place to place. She’s going to be an independent woman before we even know it. And that is just crazy to me.

high chair is ready

Posted on by
Reply

At our baby’s last doctor’s appointment when she reached 4 months of age, they sent us home with an infant feeding guide for solids. Given that our baby still needs assistance sitting up and hasn’t shown much interest in food at all, I don’t think she is ready just yet for solids, but it certainly made us think about that next stage a bit more. Chris got excited by this and wanted to start putting the high chair together, so our friend/handyman came over today to build it for us (he just likes doing these things, so no, this is not in scope).

Well, we placed the baby into the high chair just to see how she’d look in it… and she immediately started leaning to one side, indicating there was no way she would sit in this thing unassisted. Granted, the high chair comes with a harness that you can strap the baby into, but she still didn’t seem stable enough. None of this was surprising to me, as I already knew she wasn’t ready. But it was hilarious to see her hunching over to the side a bit, wondering what the heck we were trying to make her do.

Second time in a car seat or car

Posted on by
Reply

Today, Chris decided to get a Zipcar for a few hours so that we could make a Costco run and also go to Little Italy along Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. We took the baby with us, as well. It was actually funny to think about the fact that in the nearly 19 weeks she’s been here, she’s only been in a car one time, and that was during her trip home from the hospital after discharge. When I took the car seat out to get ready for this quick trip, I even had to remove the newborn insert in the seat; she used it only once!!

This time, she’s obviously way more alert and aware of her surroundings than she was when she was only two days old, and barely even that. I wasn’t sure how she’d be while I buckled her into her five-point straps, but she wasn’t fussy in the least bit and actually seemed entertained. She enjoyed being in her car seat and even babbled a bit. She definitely looked and sounded very comfortable.

And it’s a good thing that they make car seats like ours without a base being required because if we had to install a base into every single rental car, that would be absolutely frustrating and annoying.

Daycare center visit

Posted on by
Reply

Today, I went to visit the Bright Horizons daycare center location that is closest to our apartment. It’s about two blocks away, so very convenient. I was not very keen at all on our baby going to daycare this early. I really didn’t think that she would benefit much from being there. The number one benefit to being at a daycare center as opposed to having a nanny, at least in my opinion, is that the child would have more socializing opportunities with other kids of a similar age. And that would give them the opportunity to learn to be around others and share and communicate. Well, my baby is just over four months old, and she doesn’t really care who is around as long as her mom and dad are there. She’s pretty oblivious to other kids now, as we learned from the time when my friend visited with her 18-month-old daughter, as well as when we took our baby to a friend’s twin girls’ third birthday party. So this visit was really to scope out what a day in the life could look like when our baby is at least one year old. I am still not certain I want her to attend daycare at one year old, as I think it may be better for her to go to daycare when she can actually talk, but I am still open to the idea, sort of.

Bright Horizons doesn’t really consider itself a daycare center. It’s really more like school. And when the director showed me around and showed me the schedule of activities per age on the walls, I completely understood why. There is actually a set curriculum that varies every single day. There are different learning targets for each stage of growth. They have scheduled nap times and scheduled play times and scheduled learning times. They also have things that the kids are evaluated on. And those evaluations are shared with parents via parent-teacher conferences. Yes, that is what I meant to say: parent-teacher conferences. Your one year-old will have a parent teacher conference if your child attends Bright Horizons!

The center looked the way I kind of imagined it in my head. It’s laid out the way that I imagined. They have areas where there are cots for naptime. They have play areas and tables for activities. All of the instructors have bachelors degrees or higher in early childhood education or related areas of study. These are people who are not only passionate about children, but they are passionate about learning. I watched some of the teachers interact with the children through the glass, and it was really clear that these people are very engaged and are not just there to collect a paycheck. 

Then again, given that this daycare center is essentially going to cost about $4,000 per month, these people better give a damn about the children and learning and be doing 120%. Honestly, at that rate, you would think that they would also be serving the children high end sushi, like toro and uni, for lunch. 

I remember looking at the rate card and thinking to myself, how the hell do everyday working class families afford this type of daycare?? This is not affordable for the average family. We are clearly not the average family to even consider this daycare center for our child. This country is so screwed when it comes to child care in general. It is embarrassing just to think about it.

Maternity leave is nearing its end

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t believe that I’m already in my 19th week of maternity leave. That means that I’m almost 19 weeks postpartum, which also means my baby is almost 19 weeks old. Time has gone by so quickly that I almost want to just freeze time so that I can really enjoy all these little moments with my baby close to me. I was packing up some of her newborn and 0-3 month old clothing and getting a little emotional about it. It reminded me of the conversation I had recently with my friend, who told me she was really sad to organize and bag up all of her 18-month old daughters’ clothes to hand down to me.

“This is the first and only girl I’ll have,” she said. She’s scheduling an embryo transfer for boy embryos moving forward so that they can have one girl and one boy. “It just made me so sad to think she’s my one and only girl.” She said her husband didn’t get why she was being so emotional about it.

I get it, though. Even though my baby was slow to gain weight in the beginning, once we got her on track, she’s been growing very nicely and along the curve. She’s getting longer and longer every day; in the next month or so, we’ll likely need to transition her out of her bassinet into her crib. Every time she squawks or shrieks or lets out what sounds like a little laugh, I just want to bottle it all up so that I can hear it over and over and remember these moments. Even when I was sleep deprived, even when I wanted to throw my breast pump out the window and give up on pumping, even when she’s had her fussy moments with her spitting up and pre-teething pain, I always remembered in the back of my head just how lucky I was to even be dealing with her fussiness; I have a baby who needs me. She’s healthy and growing. She’s my baby. It makes me sad to think that she could be my first and only child, that this could be my one and only time ever experiencing raising a newborn, doing tummy time with a baby, breastfeeding a baby. It all seems to be coming and going too quickly. Even in the frustrating moments noted previously or when having the inevitable argument with Chris about something baby related, I’ve still felt so thankful to have her. I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life than having her as my baby, than being able to call myself a mother. It’s not like anything I’ve done is unique or novel given that obviously, women have been giving birth since the beginning of time, but I really do mean it: I have never felt so amazed at what my body has been capable of doing, in growing this tiny human, and giving me the greatest gift of my life.

Pushing milk out of your breasts

Posted on by
Reply

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 your Instant Pot lid melts

Posted on by
Reply

I usually use my instant Pot a lot, as in probably every other week. However, since the baby has arrived, I really haven’t used it that much. I made a lot of things that were ready to eat and placed in our freezer before the baby came, and a number of those things were actually made in the Instant Pot. During this time, I also made food that was pretty simple and quick… At least, by my own standards. Most of those things did not involve the Instant Pot. So I’ve had the Instant Pot sitting near the window by the stove, and occasionally, I would put the lid on the counter right by the stove. Usually, I will try to be careful and will make sure that the lid would be on the counter. But occasionally, I have left the lid on the stove and I never really thought that much about it. 

That is…. until today. I got everything ready to make a dal in my Instant Pot, and I realized that for some reason, the lid was not fitting onto the top of the pot. It was just not clicking shut. I even got a little notification on the Instant Pot screen telling me that the lid was not secure. This was very strange. I had never encountered this issue before. I removed the lid and inspected it on the inside and out. Oh crap, I realized. I noticed that one part of the lid had actually melted, and it had melted in such a way that the lid would no longer fit on the Instant Pot. And even if it did, it would not close. And if the pressure cooker were on, an explosion would probably happen. But well, Instant Pot is super safe, so the pot would never get to that point because it would not turn on for safety reasons.

We contacted their support, and they offered a 20% discount, but their lids are all out of stock. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Two more nanny trials 

Posted on by
Reply

We had two more trial nannies come, one yesterday and one today. Yesterday’s trial nanny was very kind and sweet. She clearly loved babies. But her notes were atrocious and she kept on trying to force our baby to take naps. She also didn’t always follow instructions even though I wrote her very clear notes. Chris was not really a fan of her, but I told him that because she was so nice and amiable, I had confidence that she could take constructive criticism and improve based on what we shared we wanted ongoing. She wouldn’t be the first choice, but she could be a decent second choice.

Today’s trial nanny almost never even came. Like with most of the nannies who have come for trials, Chris suggested that I write some brief notes to all of them before they came, just with basics such as the baby’s eating schedule, the fact that she is going through pre-teething, her vitamin D supplement, and the fact that she does not have a nap schedule per se right now but that the nanny would need to use her own judgment to decide when she was tired and needed to nap. I wrote the same notes and copied and pasted these to every trial Nanny after the first one. I guess the length of the notes threw off today’s trial nanny because when she took a quick glance at my notes, she tried to rule herself out and said that she did not think that she could meet my expectations and that she would need to pass on this job. I was initially really disappointed, especially because she was so warm and friendly over the phone. Plus, her references raved about how attentive to detail she was. She seemed like a genuinely good person who would do her best job. So I messaged her back and asked if there was anything in particular in my notes that she thought she could not actually do. I told her what her references shared with me, and I told her that I thought she would be a fit based on all of this. She responded and said, yes, she did pride herself on her attention to detail. And she did take the time to re-read my notes, and she said that it all sounded very straightforward. Maybe it was just the length that caught her off guard. So she would still come. I told her that we wanted all of the trial nannies to have the same information ahead of time but that I would walk them through all of this when they came on site. I just wanted to give the information ahead of time so that there were no surprises.

Well, it seems like it’s a good thing that I messaged her back and didn’t accept her eliminating herself from the process. Aside from the fact that she seemed extremely shy and reserved when she came in, which was so different from how warm and smiley she was on our video chat, she did an amazing job. She was really thorough with everything, whether it was bottle cleaning, cleaning up the play area or the bathroom after the bath, and the notes… The notes that she took were so, so thorough. They basically were like the notes that Annie used to leave us. She wrote down exactly what I wanted her to write, from the poops and pees to the amounts that the baby ate to even the activities that they did and how long they did the activities. I did not always like how she held the baby (actually, I’ve already seen this multiple times now: why is it that some nannies think it’s comfortable to hold a baby with your arms between her legs??), but I corrected her a couple of times so that she understood how my baby likes to be held. And she was fine with that. I also didn’t think that her bath was that thorough, but I gave her some feedback and she took it. I am not expecting the trial nannies to be perfect. But with hiring a nanny, it’s similar or the same as how you would hire someone at work: there are certain things that you can coach on and then there are other things that you just cannot teach. You can coach someone on how to hold your baby the way that she likes to be held or tell them that you want things laid out a certain way on the kitchen counter for the baby, but you cannot coach someone on how to love babies and actually care. That just doesn’t work.

So today’s nanny may be it. That is, unless someone else makes an offer and we go through another ridiculous situation as we did a couple weeks ago. Fingers crossed.

When Beddy Bear burns your boobs

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Taking forever to empty my breasts

Posted on by
Reply

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.