Clogged milk duct

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Around the time when I started using my new flanges last month, I noticed that my right breast was suddenly not producing its usual amount. To give you some context, the way that pumping tends to work, and nursing in general, is that one breast will tend to produce more milk than the other. For the vast majority of lactating women, the right breast produces more milk than the left. Whether this is a chicken and an egg situation, I have no idea, but since the beginning, my baby has always preferred nursing on my right side. And whenever I have pumped milk with my breast pump, my right breast has always produced approximately double what the left produces. That is really frustrating when you see the output and how different they are on both sides at the end of a pumping session. You wish, while looking at this, that they would both just produce the same amount and be more predictable like that. But, that’s just what you have to deal with. So, who knows if it is my baby who created this lack of evenness or if it’s just the way my breasts naturally are, but it’s still annoying regardless of the reason.

So you can imagine my annoyance, confusion, and horror when one day I was pumping with my new silicone flanges after seeing that my output had doubled for both breasts given my elastic nipple situation, and I saw that my right breast actually produced half of what my left breast produced. I looked at the output, put the bottles side-by-side, and just wrinkled my brow. Is this a fluke? I thought to myself. What the heck happened to my right breast? Why was it producing less than my left breast, which was supposed to be the slacker boob? I immediately went to take all of my plastic flanges of both side’s sizes and started doing some experimenting to see if the change in flange was what was freaking out my right breast. I spent the entire afternoon that day trying to troubleshoot. I did a bunch of Googling, to no avail. I had no idea what the hell was going on, and it was making me anxious because I was already an under supplier of breast milk, and to see that my dominant breast was not producing as much as my slacker breast terrified me. Was I drying up?? We are only just a month in! I need to produce more milk for my baby to drink!!

And then, like a knight in shining armor, Andrea, my Cleo lactation consultant, texted me. We were far outside the outreach window after our last meeting, when I was technically able to chat with her and ask for her advice, but nevertheless, she was a super human and part therapist to me, and she was asking me how I was doing. I told her the situation and explain to her what happened. I told her I was freaking out. I needed advice. With zero hesitation, she immediately texted me back and suggested that perhaps, I had a milk clog. She told me that I should go into a hot shower, and slowly and gently massage my breasts all over in circles to identify a lump. And once I found that lump, continue to increase the pressure while massaging and using a hot compress or the heat of the shower water to get the clog out, and to do it ASAP.

Oh shoot, I thought to myself. I have a milk clog already? A milk clog is basically a blockage in one of your milk ducts. When you are lactating, you have all of these milk ducts that are running through your breasts. The milk ducts all run with the same endpoint: your nipple. The goal is to get all of the milk out of your nipple. And at some point, depending on how thick and fatty your milk is, and how much you are pumping and or nursing, some of your milk may get clumped together and clogged up. The fat will accumulate in one of the ducts and just get stuck. This will cause a blockage of milk in your breasts, which would then result in your output decreasing. Women who are most susceptible to clogged milk ducts are, but not limited to: those who are not expressing, nursing, or pumping regularly enough, those who have a baby who is an inefficient eater on the boob (well, that sounds familiar), those who just happen to have fattier milk on average, and women who are attempting to wean off of breast-feeding altogether but do not do it slowly enough for their bodies to register this. If you do not address a clogged milk duct right away and quickly enough, this could result in a lot of pain, and in the absolute worst cases, mastitis, which is a condition that can give you a fever, chills, and have you go on a course of antibiotics that needs to be prescribed by your doctor. No one wants to experience that kind of hell while attempting to nourish their baby.

It was also confusing to think about having a milk clog when at that moment, I didn’t even feel anything. I wasn’t having pain, and in the beginning when Andrea suggested I massage around and look for a lump, I really did not feel one. But a few hours after this, I started feeling pain on the right side of my right breast closer towards my armpit. And when I started massaging in that area, I realized that there was a lump that was right there. And that was really freaky. That night, I told my night nurse that I had a clog, and she gave me this serious look. She said that I needed to spend time in a very hot shower and take a wide tooth comb and comb HARD down towards my nipple. Constantly put pressure on the lump and push on the lump towards the nipple over and over and over again until the clog came out. The grossest and messiest clogs actually come out as big thick white clots… and yes, that big, thick white clot is going to come out only one way, and that is through the tip of your nipple! I was terrified to think of what this was going to look and feel like, but alas, all women’s bodies are very different. For some women, it will come out as a big white clot, as though it’s a big fat white booger. Sometimes, that big white booger coming out of your nipple can also have blood in it. This is not for the faint of heart as you can tell. For other women, it will come out as milk gushing out of your breast like a fountain, fast and furious. And for others, they will not feel anything. It may just come out while pumping or while nursing your baby. And in that way, that would be the most ideal because you would not lose any of the milk.

So I spent the next couple of days trying to get the clog out. I used the wide tooth comb method, and I repeatedly used my Haakaa manual breast pump filled with Epsom salts and warm water and suctioned it onto my right breast. This is basically supposed to use heat, the healing power of Epsom salt, and suction to suck out the clog. I am not sure which method was actually the reason for my success in getting the clog out, but in the end, I was finally able to remove it. The lump was no longer there when I rubbed the right side of my breast, and my output had slowly but surely returned back to normal. I never experienced a big white booger flying out of my breast thankfully. I also never experienced milk spraying everywhere. So lucky me, no big mess. However, what was remaining was a big fat scab right where the clog was on the right side of my breast. And that eventually resulted in a very visible and ugly scar.

So I guess this is yet another postpartum scar, and one that I was not anticipating… at least not this early. I was anticipating getting a milk clog at some point during my breast-feeding journey, as most of my mom friends had warned me about this. I thought that I was preparing in advance by purchasing a bottle of sunflower lechithin pills and putting it in my cupboard. I even took one pill a day for the first couple of weeks as my milk came in to sort of smooth out the fattiness of the milk in case a clog were to appear that early. I increased my dosage during the period when I had that clog. Who knows if this actually helped. But I would like to think that since I spent money on these pills that they did help.

IBCLCs: one part lactation consultant, one part therapist

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Shortly after I purchased my Pumpinpal flanges for my elastic nipples, I got really frustrated because I felt like I was spending all of my time with my breast pump and not enough time with my baby. I had increased the number of pumps per day from 6 to 7, and I had also realized that a 20 minute pump recommendation from the lactation consultant at the pediatrician’s office would not be a one-size-fits-all situation, and I actually needed to pump for about 30 minutes to fully empty my breasts. Granted, it is actually impossible to “fully empty“ your breasts, as there is always milk that is still left. But the goal of pumping is to empty as much as possible to then signal to your body to create more milk. That is part of the supply and demand process of breast-feeding.  The supply and demand process of breast-feeding also does not consider your mental health: you need sleep (rest) to produce milk, but you also need to pump (or nurse) around the clock in order to continue producing milk and at the same levels. See how those are two very different messages?! It’s pretty ridiculous, and it boggles my mind, but that is a way that milk supply works with the human body. 

I was standing in the kitchen connecting my breast pump one day, and I got really exacerbated because all I really wanted to do was hold my baby and play with her, but I couldn’t because I needed a pump. I said to Chris, “I feel like I spent all of my time with the stupid pump.“ And he responded, yeah you do spend a lot of time with the pump. He didn’t really know what else to say, and I don’t really blame him. He knew that I wanted to give my baby as much breastmilk as possible and that I was upset nursing wasn’t working out, so there was really nothing else to be said. But that response did not satisfy me, and instead, it made me feel worse. I felt like I was having a downward spiral.

Well, during that pump, the Cleo lactation consultant Andrea had texted me to check in to see how things were going. It was almost like she heard the thoughts in my head and wanted to see if I was OK. So I texted her back and told her that I felt like I spent all of my time with the stupid pump and not enough time with my own baby, and it was pissing me off. I thought I was having a baby so that I could actually spend time with my baby. So why did it feel like I was spending all of my time with an electric breast pump of all things? I felt like I want to throw the pump out the window. 

She responded empathetically and said that she totally heard me, that it was a very common sentiment among women who are exclusive pumpers or who pumped milk at all for their babies. Even if you only occasionally pump milk, you still need to spend time with your breast pump to figure out the best settings for your body because every body responds to every pump differently. On top of that, we have to remember the end goal of pumping: that is to nourish our babies with breastmilk. That was what I wanted all along, and that was what I expressed to her during our very first meeting. She told me that if, at anytime, I wanted to stop pumping, then I should stop, and she would 100% support me and my decision. But, that was a decision that only I could make. Whatever way I chose to feed my baby would fit my baby, she assured me. I told her that if I was not able to give my baby breast milk through my breast directly, then the next best thing was my breast milk through a bottle, and I was determined to make this work. I was NOT giving up. She also reassured me and said that she knew I had dedicated so much time and energy into making sure that my baby had breastmilk, that I was a warrior, that I was not someone who easily gave up, and that because of all of this, I was a great mom.

 I saw this message, and I immediately started crying. I really didn’t feel like a great mom. I was upset that nursing was not working out. I felt like I wasn’t spending enough time with my baby. I blamed myself, even though it wasn’t fair or even true, for not having a great milk supply and ultimately crappy output every time I pumped. I wanted to fully nourish my baby so badly with my own breast milk, and I was failing. I really did feel like a failure. Even though my output was on an upward trend, I still didn’t think it was enough. It didn’t really help that on social media, most of the milk supply and pumping posts you see are of women who have an over supply. That is despite the fact that women who have an over supply are outliers. They are not the norm, but let’s face it: an over supply or freezer milk stash post is going to get a LOT more engagement than a “just enougher” pumping mom or an under supplier like myself. I highly doubt that I would ever have milk to stash in my freezer for my baby. I was not even sure that I would be able to get to 50% of her needs at that point. And it really bothered me because I was really doing everything within my power to ensure she had as much breastmilk as possible. I’d had such a frustrating journey to conceive, then the tumultuous roller coaster of IVF, and now, I was facing challenges feeding my child the way I wanted. It’s like everything was a struggle for my body and me, and it really just made me angry to no end.

I thought about all of the women I knew who formula fed, whose milk never came in because they had c-sections and their bodies never got the signal that hey, their baby came out, and therefore the milk needed to come in. The women whose milk never came in never had the option to breast-feed or pump. I really felt for them, because I knew that if that had happened to me that I would have blamed myself and agonized over it for a long time; that was also a major reason I was terrified of an emergency c-section: that afterwards, my body would not get the message to produce milk. I was lucky that my milk came in on day three after birth, and that I had any milk supply at all. I owed it to my baby to try harder to make this pumping journey work. I wanted to give her the world, and it started with breastmilk. 

This obsession was taking over my life, but I kept telling myself that this was temporary, that I would not be pumping milk forever. At the end of the day, my baby is a combo fed baby: she has both breast milk and formula because my body is not producing enough breastmilk to satiate her, and I had already made peace with that. But I also logically knew that if I were to switch her to formula completely, she would end up completely fine. I mostly had formula when I was a baby and Chris had only formula, and so we were fine. All of my acquaintances and friends who had formula fed – their children were completely fine. I had to stop pressuring myself so much to produce breastmilk and just go with the flow, literally, and accept what my body was able to produce and do what was in my power to increase my supply. Anything outside of that and any internal shaming that I was doing was not going to help. Stress does not help milk supply. Lack of sleep does not help milk supply. I had to keep reminding myself this so that I would not ruin my own goals.

Andrea, the Cleo lactation consultant, was like a godsend in many ways. I was never able to have the at-home lactation consultant visits I wanted that were covered by health insurance, but I had her, who helped not just as an IBCLC, but also as a make-shift therapist in some ways. She checked in on me regularly, whether that was through text or phone, and she even reached out when we were outside of the seven-day window when I would have access to her after our sessions arranged by Cleo. She genuinely seemed like she cared, and she was incredibly empathetic and always listened before she spoke. Unlike the hospital LC or the IBCLC/RN at the pediatrician’s office, Andrea genuinely centered her care and concern around me and my physical and mental health. The best IBCLCs are just that: one part therapist and one part lactation consultant. They respect your wishes and your boundaries, and they do their best to push you to meet your goals, and when you are not able to meet your goals, they reassure you and show you alternatives. She lives across the country, and so even if Covid did not exist, she would not be able to do a home visit with me. But I know that if she were able to, I probably would’ve had a better and more successful breast-feeding journey. But it’s okay. I can’t control everything. I am grateful for the support that I have received from her to date because I know that because of her, my journey has been more successful than it would’ve been if I did not have her.

Temporary single parenting and more guilt

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Yesterday was Chris’s first day officially back at work. Granted, he did not go back into the office physically, but instead set up his work laptop and monitor at my usual workstation in the second bedroom of our apartment. To go into the office, he would be required to wear a mask and get tested for Covid every week, And the requirement to wear a mask in the office at all times was a deal breaker for him. On top of that, even if he were to go back into the office, he wanted to do that later to ease into the transition of being back at work.

I was bracing myself for this week because I knew that it was going to be a challenge to balance the baby’s feeding schedule along with my pumping schedule. Everything had to align almost perfectly in order to get both done, and both really did need to get done. 

I was chatting with our night nurse about this last week and telling her that I was nervous about how I was going to manage both all by myself. She gave me a sympathetic look and said given that both the feeding schedule and the pumping schedule are happening every three hours, after diaper change, tummy time, feeding, burping, making sure the baby was upright for at least 15 to 20 minutes after a feed, and then setting up my pump and pumping milk, I would be lucky to have 30 minutes to myself, and that would be on a very, very good day. On really bad days, I may only have 10 to 15 minutes to myself, and that would likely not truly be for myself. That time would likely be spent preparing bottles, cleaning bottles, cleaning and prepping my pump parts, and stuffing food down my throat to make sure I had enough calories to produce enough breastmilk (I would also add here that I eat almost all my meals standing up while pumping now – breakfast, lunch, and most of the time even dinner). My night nurse was never one to sugarcoat things, and so she likes to keep it real. 

Well, the first day was absolutely exhausting, and I am saying this as someone who is already exhausted with her husband doing almost all the bottle feeds and taking care of most logistical baby-related things for the last seven weeks. I had limited experience bottle feeding my baby, and so, I was not equipped to read her signs the way that Chris was. I do not always immediately recognize when she is still hungry or if she is truly full. She ended up wanting more food after getting burped and falling asleep at the first and the second feed. I obviously got frustrated because I needed to pump after both, and so I ended up trying to appease her by feeding her a little, or holding off her feeding, and it didn’t really work out. Chris would occasionally come out of the second bedroom and check in to see how things were going, especially when she was crying. And he could tell that I was frustrated and feeling overwhelmed already.

The second day was also rough, but a little bit more manageable than the first day. But Chris had already seemed to make the decision that he was probably going to go back on leave again. I asked him if it was because of some work situation in terms of re-structure that he had alluded to in the previous week, and he said that it was more because in just two days, he noticed how even more exhausted I looked at the end of each day, and this was not sustainable for my overall health and well-being.

I felt really bad and guilty. It was clear that I wasn’t managing well, but I said that I needed more time to adjust and to read the baby’s cues. Two days provided very sparse data. But it seems like he had already made up his mind. And I was not going to push back on him going back on leave. I really wanted and needed the support. And honestly, parenting is just more enjoyable when both of us are together.

But I did not just feel bad and guilty towards him; I felt a deep guilt about all of the other mothers out there in this country who have no support, whose husbands or partners barely even had one day or one week of family leave off. I felt bad about all of the mothers who only had a week or two off from work and immediately had to go back to work, still with postpartum bleeding, painful vaginal tears, pelvic pain, C-section scars — you name it. My partner had originally taken seven weeks off, and as a dad, that is quite a foreign and luxurious concept in this country — that a dad would take off that much time when his child was born. So even if he did continue to go back to work, I still would have been an outlier in this abysmal country that does not value family or child rearing; I would have been an extremely privileged and lucky outlier. And now that he is going back on leave, I know that we are in the less than 1% of the population who has this much privilege. I guess that is also what motherhood is about:  always feeling bad and guilty about pretty much everything. That could be about not spending enough time with your children, not pumping enough milk for your children, going back to work, having more resources and help than other mothers, having more comfort than other others. 

We are not only lucky because we both have so much more leave than the average American, but also because we are able to afford help in the form of our night nurse. Her support does not come cheap by any standard, but we are able to afford it, unlike so many families out there. There are people who are fortunate enough to have family nearby who can help out, and then there are the people who, like us, have no immediate family nearby and pay for the support. But then, there are the people who literally do it all on their own. And for the single moms… I don’t even know where to start. My heart hurts for these people, and at the same time, I have deep admiration and respect for them. I particularly feel for the mothers out there whose partners don’t have much or any leave when they have a child, and they literally have to do everything by themselves, day and night. It is not easy to have a child in this country, and it truly does take a village. And we are lucky and privileged to be able to pay for our mini village.

Medication to dry up your milk supply

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Our night nurse Cheryl has been a great help, support, and resource to us since day 2 of our baby’s life, when we returned home from the hospital. At 9pm sharp that evening, she showed up with her expertise and wisdom in tow. She has taught us how to properly swaddle (and not using the usual method), how to bathe our baby, how to manually stimulate her when constipated. She has given us tips for burping, for increasing my milk supply, and for ensuring the baby does not get gassy from the foods I eat. She is now helping us stretch her sleep so that hopefully in the near future, our baby can sleep through the night. Given she is with us on average about four nights a week, she has spent more time with the baby than anyone else other than the two of us.

She wasn’t very talkative in the beginning, but as time has gone on, she’s become more conversational and open about everything. She knew that I was struggling with my milk supply and encouraged me to keep going. She also has very strong opinions that “breast is best” and encouraged me to continue nursing despite the baby’s weak suck. She told me the story of one of her previous clients who was adamant about NOT breast feeding in any form, whether that was directly from the breast or pumping. She was dead set on her baby being 100% formula fed even before birth. As soon as she got home from the hospital and her milk came in, she asked her doctor to prescribe her medication to dry her milk supply up. Honestly, I felt pain hearing this; I have tried so hard to increase my milk supply, and then there’s this woman who wanted the total opposite and just didn’t want to give any breast milk to her baby. To each her own, but ouch.

Cheryl made it really clear she hated this approach, but hey, it was her client, so she had to keep her mouth shut and just deal with it. Every mother has their own journey and their own decisions to make, and that includes how to feed one’s child. “I think that’s really selfish, but hey, I don’t judge,” Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone has to choose for themselves. I never said anything.”

Well, we are all entitled to our own opinions. I just thought it was funny that she had to try to pretend not to care while working for this client.

When an obsessive mom takes photos of her breast milk bottles

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In the beginning, I was only pumping a few ml of breast milk, which is considered normal. But 1 to 2 weeks into the journey of pumping  and during the triple feed program, I was still at best producing only about 1 1/2 ounces of breastmilk, with the random fluke of 2 ounces just once or twice. And I knew that the baby’s appetite would only increase as the size of her stomach increased as she grew. As I made a number of changes, including getting my flange size and type corrected, as well as increasing my number of power pumps so that I was doing them every single day since January 20, I have seen an increase in my supply, but the change has been gradual day over day. Chris has a Google Sheet he uses to chart all of the baby’s eating patterns, whether she is having breast milk versus formula and what type of formula, poops and pees, as well as time of day. I added two additional tabs: one for breastmilk output by time/day, as well as one for a pivot table to show this easily day over day. And I would be lying if I said that I did not get excited when I started seeing that my output was increasing. Not only did I get excited, but I also started taking photos of my combined output when I had reached certain levels, so if I finally reach 3 ounces, then I would take a photo of it. When I reached 3 1/2, I took a photo of that. And likely, when I reach four or five for one pump session, I will be taking photos of that, as well. Hell, one day when I put together a scrapbook documenting the babies first few months of life, whenever I get a chance to do that anyway, I will likely be including photos of breastmilk bottles… Just to remember and fully document my breast-feeding and pumping journey and how obsessed I was about this during this period.

I may never be able to fully produce enough breastmilk to 100% feed my baby with food that my body produces, especially given my relatively late ramp up one month in, but I have made peace with that. A big reason that I wanted her to have breastmilk and only breastmilk in an ideal world is because I hate the American formula industry. Yes, fed is best, but… Let’s just be real. Breast milk is the best milk. That is just a fact. How can any type of formula or milk made outside of the human body be better for a baby? It was designed to be the perfect food for a baby. That is just mother nature. That should not offend mothers who choose to formula feed. 

It is absolutely disgusting that mainstream brands of American formula such as Similac actually have hideous ingredients in them such as corn syrup. Corn syrup does not belong in a baby’s diet, much less a newborn baby’s diet. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that parents should not include any refined sugar in a baby’s diet (after starting solids, obviously) when she is one year of age or younger. If that is the case, then why the fuck does formula include corn syrup — and the most common and popular brand of formula in this stupid country, at that?? It’s like we are training babies in this country to have an immediate and early addiction to sweet, and even worse, CORN SYRUP and other processed nasty foods.

If we are able to reach about 75 to 80% of her diet to be breastmilk only, then I will feel satisfied and like I did enough to increase my output and ensure her diet was what I wanted it to be. This is my motherhood obsession.

When the husband goes back to work

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On Monday, Chris goes back to work. He has 26 weeks of family leave in total, but he chose to take just seven weeks upfront. Given that he had 26 total weeks, I didn’t think that it made sense for him to only take seven weeks upfront. When would he use all of the other 19 weeks? He was only planning to use about a month or so at the end of the year to go back to Australia, so I had no idea how he planned to use the other weeks. And I told him that it would get messy if we were to hire a nanny and then tell her that we didn’t need her for big blocks of time because he would be on leave. That is a very easy way to send the signal to your nanny indirectly that she should look for a new job.

Both Chris and I are extremely privileged by American standards in terms of the amount of family leave that we both have. I have 16 weeks, and he has 26 weeks off. Americans are lucky to even have one week off, as there is no official family leave that is recognized at a national level (the Democrats tried and failed to push through 12 weeks of leave, and are looking at a dismal 4. This is despite the fact that OUR tax payer dollars are paying for federal employees, which include Congress, to have 12 weeks of family leave). That goes to show how little this country values families. It’s quite pathetic and absolutely infuriating, and every day that we have gone further and further into my leave, the more viscerally angry I have gotten about how sad our society is. In Australia, new moms get an entire year off. It is very similar across all of Europe. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world to not have paid family leave. And yet, people who are so used to how stupid our system is defend it and say that they should not be responsible for paying for other people’s choices to have children. This completely ignores the fact that the same people benefit from future generations being born. Who the hell is going to be fund their Social Security? Who is going to be doing all the work at the stores and businesses that they need to survive?

So given our privilege, I told Chris that he really should be taking more time upfront and he disagreed. Men have a lot more pressure to not take all of their leave, even if they work at a company that has generous family leave. He was worried about how it would affect his career growth at his current company, plus general perception. While I understand all of this, I also am looking at how our day-to-day has been structured over the last seven weeks, and I am genuinely concerned.

While there are certainly pros and cons of having your baby exclusively nursed, one major pro is that whenever you feed your baby, you are actually interacting directly with your baby and taking care of her right then and there. However, when you are pumping, the only thing you are really interacting with is… the damn pump. And when you have bottles connected to your breasts, It is very difficult to try to hold your baby or feed her, particularly if she is still a newborn and needs to have her head held up. So I got worried about how I was going to be able to balance feeding her on schedule while also accommodating her grazing habits… Along with my pumping schedule, both have to happen every three hours during the day and one has to happen before the other… Because I cannot allow my baby to starve while I pump… That makes no sense. I am pumping milk specifically for her to eat. Having someone else bottle feed her has allowed me to pump on schedule pretty much every day in the last seven weeks. It has also given me a little free time to do things like shower, go to the gym, cook, clean, and nap. If I have to bottle feed her and pump, especially given that I pump seven times a day, this would be very challenging for me to accomplish all by myself with no help at all. I told him this, and he said that he would see how this would go for the first few days or the first week. So, I am bracing myself.

Pointy nipples

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My nipples do not feel the way they did pre-breastfeeding. In fact, they do not look OR feel the same. They are incredibly pointy now, which can mostly be blamed on using my electric breast pump so often. I was even told that for some women, their nipples stay that way and never go back to normal!

When going to the gym these last few times, it was a challenge to figure out what bra to even wear. The first time, I squeezed myself into one of my pre-pregnancy sports bras, which fit fine throughout pregnancy, But now, my nipples almost felt like they were being squeezed in and being inverted, and my breasts definitely were not happy with me after. The second gym workout, I tried to go sans bra altogether and just with an oversized t-shirt, and that was also terrible: my breasts were bouncing up and down like I’d never experienced before while on the elliptical, and it was also just very uncomfortable. Finally, the third visit, I did what felt the most comfortable: I wore one of my pregnancy/nursing bras that I started wearing in the second trimester of pregnancy onward, and my breasts were not only supported but comfortable. Plus, my nipples had space to exist and breathe.

So who knows what my nipples will be like after my breastfeeding journey with Kaia is completed. They may remain pointy. They may go back to pre-pregnancy size and shape. All I know is that this experience has really amazed me in terms of how much my body can change just because I birthed a baby into the world.

First workout since baby’s birth

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Today, I finally decided to do my first workout since giving birth to the baby. I had already had my six-week postpartum checkup on Monday, and my doctor had cleared me for exercise. I was actually feeling up to it even before that but decided to hold off on it anyway… partly due to laziness, and partly due to just not being in the mood between feeds and pumps.

Well, I suppose I was a bit aggressive, as I started with a one-mile jog on the treadmill, followed by about 20 minutes of core and leg exercises. When I began the jog, I felt pretty comfortable and light on my feet. But as it progressed, I started feeling like someone had put weights on my pelvic floor region, and it felt quite heavy. I went for about ten minutes and stopped to stretch, then proceeded to do core and butt exercises, which felt pretty comfortable and normal. But it’s been hours since that workout, and my pelvic region still feels heavy. When I sneeze now, it feels similar to the discomfort I felt in my pelvic region shortly after giving birth. I guess my clearance for exercise really didn’t factor in pelvic floor health, huh?

Pelvic floor and its importance and care are really ignored by the entire mainstream medical community here, and it’s so sad and pathetic, especially given it is the norm in postpartum care in the EU. I will need to continue doing kegels and find other pelvic floor exercises to do in order to strengthen myself down there, but obviously with no help from my doctor. I guess running and jogging will need to be on pause until my pelvic floor strengthens, whenever that may be, and I’ll need to do low impact cardio like elliptical and walking until then.

Weight loss since giving birth

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During pregnancy, I gained about 27 pounds. A woman of healthy and average weight can generally expect to gain between 25-35 pounds during a singleton pregnancy, and so that basically means I was average in my weight gain, as well. Within the first week after giving birth, I lost 11 pounds. This is likely due to the baby (about 6 lb), plus the loss of the placenta, umbilical chord, as well as the amniotic fluid that protected the baby within the uterus. I was told that with breastfeeding and pumping, I would be back to my pre-pregnancy size and weight in no time. But I was checking my weight once a week each week since giving birth, and my weight loss so far has stagnated to just 12 pounds overall despite consistent nursing and pumping, which confused me. My stomach is almost back to pre-pregnancy size, and I assume that the excess flab I still have there is not from my uterus, but rather from the fat that my body created in my core to protect the womb. This just means that once I start going back to the gym more regularly that I’ll need to rely on exercise to get back to my pre-baby size and weight… whenever that will be.

Mucus and snot sucking to another level

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So, I previously wrote a post about how snot sucking is one of the pleasures of becoming a new parent to a newborn baby. While I did take some delight in sucking snot out of my babies nose, I did that thinking that the situation would be isolated and she would only have the occasional booger for me to remove.

Unfortunately, what I thought would be an occasional booger ended up being daily boogers. And then, it progressed into mucus that she started developing in her nasal passages. We started noticing that it sounded like she was breathing heavier, and when she would cough or cry, She definitely started sounding more congested. And our Night Nurse mentioned to us that she needed to use a bulb to suck out some of the excess mucus because there were some nights when she was waking up because she was so stuffy and trying too hard to breathe. It’s normal at this time of year given the cold weather, the night nurse said, so nothing to be concerned about. As you could imagine, this did not sit well with me: the thought of my baby struggling to breathe really scared me, so I wanted to do everything we could to clear her. This ultimately meant sucking out snot and mucus before bedtime right before her 10 PM feed, and then also again before her 10 AM feed. She certainly did not enjoy this process because… who on earth would enjoy having anything sucked out of their nose? But alas, it must be done.

Sucking out her mucus and boogers ended up becoming a much lengthier task than I had originally imagined. While before, when I would suck out her boogers, it would usually only take a minute or two, in the mornings when I need to clear her, I end up having to allot about 10 minutes to getting all of the mucus and boogers out. And I am completely disgusted when every morning, there is so much mucus that I am shocked that it came from such a tiny little nose from a tiny little human. Part of the reason that it takes 10 minutes is not necessarily the fact that it is so deeply lodged and I am trying to suck it all out. It’s actually because I need to take breathing breaks for myself so that I don’t totally exhaust myself and need to pass out after getting this task done. So as you can tell, it is taxing on both the baby and me.

Chris will often times check in to see how much mucus there was that I was able to dislodge. And, being a very hands-on dad, he tends to stand by and look at the end result in the tube instead of actually watching this task in progress. And several times, I have asked him if he would like to suck the snot and mucus out of our daughter’s nose. And each time, he will respond, “No, that’s OK. You can do it.”

So, he is a hands-on dad to be clear, but he really does not enjoy tasks like this. He takes zero pleasure out of doing things like this… Whereas he knows that I actually feel a sense of accomplishment after doing it myself. But some days, it really does take the wind out of me… Literally. And I really want to just take a nap after. But I have a child to take care of, and so I can’t really do that.