Donating IVF medications

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When I look back, I always feel extremely grateful and lucky that I only had to do one IVF cycle to have Kaia. Through all of the IVF support groups, Instagram handles, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances I know who have gone through and are currently going through IVF, I know that I am not the rule: I am the exception when it comes to a successful IVF journey. Every single day, when I look at Kaia‘s face, I am so grateful that I have her because I know others are nowhere as lucky as I have been. Even though I only had one embryo that made it, that one embryo is now my healthy baby. And for that, I am beyond blessed. I read real stories of people’s endless IVF cycles, failed transfers, zero embryos that made it through genetic testing, and sometimes, I have broken down and cried. All these people want to do is start a family or expand their family. It’s not like they are asking for much, but given the environmental factors that we are facing in a very polluted world now, our eggs and sperm have collectively been compromised. And so, some of us face more challenges than others when it comes to conceiving and carrying babies to term. And because I can relate to that pain, as there were many moments in the last two years when I wondered if I would ever have my own biological child, I wanted to be able to help others in some small way.

I knew I had a lot of IVF medication left over from my single cycle last year. I was also fortunate from a financial standpoint and that I had Chris’s amazing health insurance that paid for the vast majority of the IVF costs. The total raw cost of all of the medication that I got was likely around $15-18K. What did I pay? Only about $300 out-of-pocket. When I looked at my remaining medication that would be expiring in the second half of this year, I realized that I had about $7000 of medication that was still sealed, brand new, and never used. This would completely go to waste if I just left it in my closet. It’s illegal to resell medication, and so that never even crossed my mind for a second… Even though I am sure that people would have bought it from me, and I could’ve made a decent amount of money. For me, to resell IVF medication feels very wrong, to play on the hearts and minds of those who are the most vulnerable. And so, in the one private IVF support group that I have continue to stay in on Facebook, I posted that I would be giving the medications away for free to anyone who would be willing to pick them up from my apartment here in New York. I asked for them to follow the honor code and only request the medication if they were a self pay patient. Of course, I got a lot of responses. Some of the people who responded lived as far away as Pennsylvania and Chicago. They were willing to either come here or have a friend or relative pick it up from me who is local. All of them asked if there was any way for them to repay me. I told them I did not want to accept any money… But if they really wanted to give me something in return, then I would appreciate something sweet, maybe ice cream.

Well, these women were very grateful and thoughtful, as well. They all asked me about what flavors of ice cream I liked and what brands, and so I rattled off a short list of flavors as well as brands that I liked. And now, after having given away all of my medication to three different self-pay IVF patients in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, we now have over seven different types of ice cream that are sitting in the back of our freezer. We have Häagen-Dazs, Malai Ice Cream, Tollhouse ice cream sandwiches, and Adirondack Creamery. Is the value the same as value of the medication? Of course it isn’t. But none of that really matters to me. When I heard their brief stories of their own IVF journeys, my heart just broke. All of them have done multiple IVF cycles. One was on her fourth IVF cycle. Two of out of three of them have paid completely out of pocket… Just for the mere chance of having a baby. I have not forgotten the pain and suffering that I went through when going through the exact same process as they did. So I hope this little bit that I have done will help give them some hope for the future and help with the expenses.

My growing baby

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Being a parent, as I can personally attest to now, is most certainly a full-time job, and not a 9-to-5 job but a true 24–7 job. It is the most exhausting thing I have ever done in my entire life, but now, I finally understand why parents say that it is also the most rewarding thing that you can do. As Kaia has gotten older and now that she is over 13 weeks old, she is getting more and more attentive, active, and playful. Watching her develop every single day brings me the greatest joy. It’s almost like I can feel my heart is being squeezed. She does the most quirky and cheeky things: sometimes, when I am swaddling her, she farts and I exclaim in response, she gives me a huge grin, as though she knows that what she did is stinky and silly.  Every time she smiles when I smile, my heart melts just a little bit. And last night, when I was bottle feeding her before putting her down to bed, out of nowhere, she reached her hand out to hold my pinky finger and let it stay there the entire time. And I just thought that was the cutest thing ever.

 Lately, she has been cooing and babbling nonstop during certain periods of the day when she is very awake. She particularly loves it when I am singing to her. I have captured her cooing and babbling many times, but she seems to be picking up on the fact that I am recording her on my phone. In the last two days, when I put my phone up to record her babbling and squawking, as soon as she sees my phone, she immediately stops talking. It’s as if she is saying in response, “Get that rectangle thing out of my face and let me be!“

 I suppose that is also another reminder to me that I don’t necessarily need to record and capture every single thing that she does on photo or video, but I really should be more in the moment and just enjoy her for the time and the moment itself. But I really do love sharing these photos and videos with her grandparents and some of my friends who truly adore her and look at her like a niece. At the same time, though, I want to document her growth and development. I want to be able to share these photos and videos with her when she gets older. When I was young, I always loved it when my family showed me photos and videos of me when I was a baby. Because even though I could not remember that time clearly, it was still fun to see me, myself, at a younger age. It was also fun to be able to see how others, like my cousins and brother, interacted with me as a baby. It’s almost like you are making memories of something that you don’t actually have a memory of for your child. And I really like that.

Socializing again post birth

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Last Saturday, I went to the first social event since giving birth to my baby. It was also the first party that I had attended since pre-pandemic, so almost 2 years. It’s kind of crazy to think that once upon a time, bridal showers, baby showers, birthday gatherings, and family gatherings were just a normal part of life. And now, it feels like it’s all new and something that we are getting adapted to attending again.

My neighbor, who I had been friended while spending a lot of time at the gym over the last two years, is having a baby in May, and so her friends threw her a bridal shower in our building’s lounge room. She is 40 years old expecting her first child, and we have IVF in common. She and her husband were trying for over eight years to conceive and did not resort to IVF until the last year. She was so excited for me when she found out that I was pregnant, and I found it peculiar at the time when she knew so much about pregnancy as well as baby stores that were in the neighborhood. At the time, she had said she knew about all of this because she had so many friends and family who had recently given birth, and so that’s why she was so knowledgeable. When she told me right away that she had conceived via IVF, I had also told her that we had the same journey. I generally don’t tell people that I went through IVF unless they are close friends or I know they have gone through it themselves. It’s one of those things that I’m happy and comfortable to discuss, but only if I think that the people who are there want to hear about it.

Anyway, the baby shower was really beautiful: her friends clearly went all out for her. She is expecting a little girl, so there was a lot of pink all over the lounge room. There was even a drink station with water with strawberries sliced in it, all pink drinks, and even pink books decorating it. Because she works in child literacy and as a literacy professor, she asked for only children’s books as gifts. And given the book theme, the entire lounge room was decked out with the most extensive collection of children’s books I had ever seen, strategically placed at all of the food and drink stations as well as at the sitting areas. A bunch of her friends had pitched in to make a variety of beautiful salads and put together some meat, cheese, and cracker trays. There were also gorgeous spreads of fruit and veggies. I especially loved the cookie and cupcake station, where they set up little boxes for you to take these home as party favors.

As for me, I was excited to finally wear something that was different than just my nursing tops, pumping bras, and sweat pants. I actually wore jewelry and makeup, put on a dress, and shaved my legs. When I looked at myself in the mirror before leaving, I smiled: I actually remember this person… This person who had a life before pregnancy and birth and outside of just being a mother. I no longer saw just the dark circles under my eyes or the split ends in my greasy hair or the post-birth belly I still hadn’t lost. I wasn’t focused on all the bruises on the tops of my breasts. But given that it was a baby shower, I still talked a lot about my baby as well as my birth experience and pumping, since there were a lot of other moms there who asked me about these details and wanted to know about my experience. But it just felt nice to be socializing again and in the midst of a lot of people who were just gathering to have some fun. Gatherings in general were missing obviously during the pandemic, and it felt really good to be in a group setting once again.

Pumping at Central Park

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As the weather has been slowly getting warmer, Chris and I have been eager to get out and about more. For the last three months, neither of us has sat down at a restaurant, with the exception of his going out for a regular colleague lunch about once a month. We have pretty much been in hibernation mode given our baby was born in the middle of December, and this time of year, it’s pretty freaking cold here in New York. So even if we didn’t have a baby, we would unlikely to be going out much anyway. But now that she has gotten her vaccinations and the weather is getting warmer, we are looking for ways to get out more little by little. This week, we took her out to Central Park for a second stroll, and we went through the Ramble… All while I was connected to my portable, wearable breast pump. I have been a little bit self-conscious with using the wearable portion of the new breast pump that I bought. The breast pump itself is actually not wearable. It is just supposed to be portable, as it is smaller than an iPhone. But with the Legendairy milk cups, you are able to hack the tubing so that you can connect the milk cups to the pump and add the cups into your bra. I connected the cups and the breast pump and turned it on right before we left. I even made sure to prime my breasts before we left by doing some breast massage and applying heat. 

This was my second time using the wearable cups component, and I will say that it actually worked pretty well. The thing is, the cups just assume that you either have a 24 or 28 mm diameter nipple. I am actually a lot smaller than a 24 mm measure, and so I know I need to buy an insert for the flange in order to maximize my output, but for now, the 24 mm will do. With flanges, you really need to have the exact measurement to fit you as an individual, otherwise, you will either experience pain or you will not have the maximum output. The first time I used the cups, I did not have a great output, and I wasn’t sure if it was just because the flange size was not correct or I just wasn’t using the cups correctly. The other thought that I had was that because my output is not consistent throughout the day, perhaps I would have gotten that similar output if not just five or 10 mL more if I had used my regular Spectra pump. I would never know for sure. 

But when I wore the cups out at Central Park that day, I actually had a pretty high output, all things being equal. And so I was pretty satisfied, particularly since I was not able to “see“ my let down,  nor was I able to do breast compressions. Because that would defeat the “wearable“ component of this breast pump set up, right? Being able to see a let down is really key for me to control the settings of the breast pump to maximize my output. Some women are able to feel their let down reflex, as it will feel prickly or like a tingle, but I am rarely able to feel that and instead, I have to rely on being able to see the milk spraying out of my nipples through my milk ducts while connected to the breast pump flanges. But alas, if you are wearing a wearable pump, you are not able to see any of this, nor would you want to because you would probably be in public. So, I have factored that into my judgment of whether these wearable cups are really doing their job and giving me as much output as I ideally would want out of a wearable pump. Because based on all of the above, you cannot really judge a wearable pump and its output against a regular electric breast pump given you are not using it in exactly the same way and being able to control it the same way with the same pieces of information during use. 

I was letting my friend know about this, who is considering getting this portable and wearable breast pump set up assuming that she gets pregnant a second time. It really does make a huge difference if you are pumping a lot and need to be on the go. A couple of things to factor in, though: you probably should not be bending down when you are wearing this pump because the tops of the cups have holes in them where the tubing is connected. And so, if you were to bend down, you could potentially risk spilling milk. That would not be great. Anyone who ever said, “Don’t cry over spilled milk“ clearly has never pumped milk exclusively for their baby to eat before. 

Another thing to factor in is: if you were going to be away from home for a while, you will need a place to be able to empty and store the milk cleanly and safely. You would not want to walk around with these cups all day long not just because they will make you look like you wear an E cup bra, but also because it just would not be comfortable. Plus, you need the milk to be stored at a lower temperature for safe eating for your baby. So, it would be smart to have a portable cold storage container where you could pack ice to keep the milk cold in bottles. You will also need a place where you are comfortable enough to take the cups out from your bra, set them down, and tip them out into bottles that you can then store in a cold place. These are all the things you have to think about if you are choosing to use a wearable breast pump out in public.

So, it’s really not as convenient as you would originally imagine, as there are a lot of other things to factor in when it comes to comfort, breast milk storage, portability, sanitary places to empty out the milk, clean surfaces, etc. But I was happy to be able to be out and about with Chris and our baby while also knowing that I was able to pump. It felt good to know that I was not being hindered from going outside just because I needed to pump milk. And that is not just to pump milk just because the baby needs milk, but because I know that if I go too long without pumping, I will get very uncomfortable and potentially engorged. And I definitely do not want that.

Goodbye, newborn diapers

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Today, my baby turns 3 months old. She is no longer a newborn, which is a bittersweet thing to think about. While it was obviously tiring having a newborn to care for around the clock, it made me a little sad to realize that she was outgrowing her newborn diapers. She was teeny tiny and swimming in the going-home outfit I put her in while at the hospital in mid-December. And now, she just about fills it out. She has already outgrown the two Christmas newborn outfits I got her, the only two newborn onesies she had. Chris unpacked her Size 1 diapers last week and added them to her diaper caddy, and I immediately felt both sad and happy. It’s true what they say: the days are long but the weeks are so short. While I am looking forward to that day soon when she will be eating solids and will rely less on me for pumped breast milk or nursing for comfort, it also makes me a little sad to think she will be less reliant on me for nourishment, as insane as that sounds given how exhausting and mentally challenging that has been for me. Pumping has overtaken my life, but it has given me joy to know that my body is capable of nourishing my baby as much as it is. My baby is getting to be a bigger baby as the days go by, and it’s so gratifying to see.

Milk manager

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Since the beginning, Chris has taken the lead in managing the baby’s feeding, from her schedule to what she eats (breast milk vs. formula) to the amounts she has per bottle. He also has been maintaining a very extensive Google Sheet that documents all details of her inputs (feeds), as well as her outputs (poops and pees). Though endless apps exist to track all of these details, Chris insists that he enjoys updating this and that he wants to own the data. Each evening at around 8:30, when we are preparing the baby’s bottles for her 10pm, 3am, and 8am feeds for our night nurse, I am usually pumping or arising from taking a nap to pump, and he is at the kitchen counter, taking a look at all my pumped milk bottles, emptying them into Avent bottles for the baby’s feeds, and figuring out much more I need to pump before we can reach the ideal amounts for her to eat during each of these feeds with the night nurse (or ourselves when she’s not here). I thought about this while getting ready to pump this evening and started laughing to myself, and I told him that he’s basically the Milk Manager.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to make sure that this shit gets done,” he responded proudly. “There needs to be data integrity and accuracy!”

He doesn’t seem to trust the night nurses when it comes to their reporting on how much the baby has eaten at a feed. This has happened a few times when we have asked how much the baby has eaten, and they have claimed she ate a certain amount, but the difference remaining in the bottles we see is far greater than what it should be if what they said was true. He also, annoyingly enough, doesn’t trust my judgment and nitpicks at me for 5ml here and there.

It’s okay. I’m happy for him to take the lead as Milk Manager. That’s just one less thing I have to think about.

Quiet moments

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Since Chris has gone back on family leave, the only bottle feeds that I do for the baby now are at 10 PM three days a week, on the nights when our night nurse is not with us. While doing her bottle feeds when Chris was on leave was stressful and exhausting on top of managing my pumping schedule, doing her bottle feeds on these evenings is actually a bit enjoyable now, if I do want to admit it out loud. These are the times when it’s just the two of us in the living room, and I am feeding her, observing her, listening to her little sounds, and enjoying quiet time together. My favorite time while feeding her on these evenings is while I am burping her and figuring out whether she is still hungry or not. I have her positioned so that her head is just over my shoulder, and I am holding her body up while patting and massaging her back. Often times, when she is full, she will start to fall asleep and get into a koala position while on me. And while I hear the sound of her little breath and feel her chest go up and down, I remember how lucky I am to have her, happy and healthy. I stroke her hair and rub her back, and I lean back to relax with my baby in my arms. And I think to myself, even though today was a shitty day in terms of the amount of pain I had in my left elbow and my right wrist, and even though I am still sleep deprived and really dying for a full night’s sleep, while also trying to reconfigure my pumping schedule down to six pumps a day so that I hopefully don’t compromise my milk supply, but also try to regain back some of my life and perhaps some sleep, I am so grateful. This tiny human is slowly becoming a little bit less tiny every single day. She is cooing and babbling, taking in the world around her and observing more and more. Her wake windows are longer, and she wants more interaction and stimulation from us. I can see that she looks for me in rooms now, and she can see farther and farther away. Sometimes, she turns when she hears my voice. And in the mornings when I am pumping and entertaining her at the same time, while she is babbling, she will stop and carefully study my face when I sing to her. These are the moments that make me unbelievably happy.

“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?

Horrifying stories in Labor and Delivery at Lenox Hill

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I was at my neighbor friend’s baby shower this afternoon. To be honest, it felt really good to actually dress up, wear makeup and jewelry, and get out of the house, even if it was just in our building’s lounge for a few hours. It felt good to wear something other than sweats, my nursing top, and a pumping bra for once. I met her friend, who is a labor and delivery nurse at Lenox Hill, and she shared this horrifying story that nearly left me in tears when I heard it.

At some point in the last two years, a woman gave birth to a healthy baby.. and within hours of being born, the baby was on the dad’s chest doing skin to skin while he was on his phone busily texting family/friends… and he had no idea that the baby’s nose was pressed up against his chest too much and it blocked off his oxygen, and he died. He was dead for over an hour without the dad being aware. Since then, Lenox Hill has a policy that no partner/support person can do skin to skin with baby until after 6-8 hours post birth.

I was so disturbed and upset when she shared this story with me that I nearly started crying. Since going through the insanity of IVF and the emotional intensity of pregnancy and childbirth, and now having Kaia, I physically feel pain when I hear stories like this. I cannot even imagine what that couple’s conversations were like after the death of their child, or if their partnership even survived that.