It’s been almost three weeks since I gave birth to Kaia and came home with her. In that time, while I was anticipating postpartum pain such as uterus contractions during breastfeeding, difficulties peeing and pooping given my postpartum pelvic floor, and related vaginal burning and itching given the stitches I got, one thing I was not actively thinking about was the re-emergence of my carpal/cubital tunnel pain, or pain in my thumbs.

It makes sense that your ulnar nerve via your cubital tunnel and your median nerve via your carpal tunnel would be aggravated with a newborn at home: You will always be picking up and putting down and holding your baby, and you need those nerves to do those actions. In addition, if you are hand expressing breast milk, as I do in preparation for pumping milk with my breast pump, you may end up with sore thumbs at the base of your palm from that repetitive motion. So any constant, repetitive motion using any nerve or limb will inevitably act up as a result, especially if you are like me and had previously battled carpal/cubital tunnel problems. I actually had my carpal/cubital tunnel pain under control since March/April 2020, so right around the time of the embryo transfer. I achieved that via doing more voice-to-text, getting a more ergonomic setup for my work station, and resting and icing my hands/elbows more. But towards the end of pregnancy, I realized the pain was coming back again, likely due to pregnancy hormones (pregnancy carpal tunnel is really a thing, and for many women, it lasts even past their 4th trimester!). And now with the demands of caring for Kaia, the pain and burning are flaring up again, whether it’s from cradling her, bottle feeding her, or doing breast compressions during pumping and hand expression. I have less time to ice and pretty much no time to rest at all. I try to ice sometimes while I pump. When I am not caring for her or pumping, I am cleaning things up or cooking because I refuse to eat all delivery/takeout food, nor do I want nasty living spaces.

Chris suggested I look into a better PT or medical help than last time, but I honestly don’t think it will help: the number 1 thing you need with issues like this is REST. And that’s pretty much impossible. They also tell you to stop doing the activities that aggravate it, but that’s also unrealistic: what, I’m not supposed to care for my baby or pump milk for her…?!

Oftentimes when people who have never been parents think about the dreads of having a baby, they immediately think of how gross and unpleasant it would be to do diaper changes. While initially it does sound pleasant and obviously messy, when you do become a parent, you quickly realize that diaper changes are just an everyday reality of well, being a parent to an infant, and that it’s just a practical obvious thing that just needs to get done. In addition to that, sometimes, especially when your baby’s poops and pees are lagging, as a parent you can get very excited to finally see that long awaited poop or pee diaper.

To track growth and how much a baby is consuming, assuming they are not exclusively formula fed, if they are breast fed, the only way to fully understand (or as close as possible) what they are consuming is to see their “output,” in other words, their poops and pees. Your baby’s pediatrician will always ask the same questions at the beginning of every visit: are they formula or breast fed? If combo fed, what is the approximate ratio of formula to breast milk? What number of poop and pee diapers have we seen on average?

Breast milk diapers will have lots of pee, and the poop will always be a mustard-seedy texture and color. Funnily enough, breast fed baby diapers don’t have a very strong odor, either. I still remember when we saw Kaia’s first poopy diaper post meconium and how excited I was to see that it was mustard seedy, meaning that in fact, my milk HAD come in and she was actually consuming milk through my breasts. In subsequent diaper changes, when she has been backed up and constipated, I have gotten excited and well, even admired her poopy diapers when they finally came… after 2-3 days of waiting. Chris thought this was so weird that he told our night nurse about this, who found this all at once cute, funny, and strange.

So, want to track your baby’s progress outside of using a scale? Keep a log of their poops and pees. Everyone will expect you to do this.

I was gifted two pumping/nursing bras off the baby registry that I really didn’t think I’d be using until I went back to work, which is when I was hoping to use my breast pump regularly. I certainly didn’t imagine having to use my breast pump as soon as I left the hospital, so alas, I’ve been getting acquainted with my Spectra S1 pump settings and the two different pumping bras I have.

The Spectra S1 is considered a hospital-grade breast pump, with the addition of a battery, which means I do not have to be stuck to a wall or outlet every time I pump (health insurance doesn’t think you should be mobile while you pump, though, and so I had to pay a $75 co-pay just for the addition of the stupid battery). However, while it’s a very popular and respected breast pump, it’s basically a mini bowling ball in that it’s round and you really need to be careful when walking around with it. I have managed to make oatmeal, measure ingredients and formula, cut fruit and vegetables, and even brush my teeth with it hooked up. But you really need to be SUPER careful that you don’t knock it over or even worse, spill all your milk, which is literally like liquid gold. My night nurse told me that there’s a big black market for breast milk, and on average, people are charging $18 per oz (30 ml) for breast milk!!

Despite having a hands-free pumping bra and using it while pumping, it’s kind of ridiculous to think that a best practice of pumping is to actually be “hands on” — so to do breast compressions while you are actually using the breast pump to pump milk. Multiple studies have been done about this that have shown that doing breast compressions while pumping (meaning squeezing/pushing on your breasts) will increase your output and ensure that you are actually draining your breasts properly, which then signals to your body to make more milk and will also prevent clogged ducts. And logically, this makes sense: during nursing, a baby is not only sucking the milk out, but she’s gently compressing your breasts to push the milk out, as well. Even the most sophisticated breast pump is only capable of the sucking part of that combination, sadly. So, the only way to do this is with a hands-free pumping bra so that you don’t need to hold the flanges in place where your nipples are. But.. if you think about it, doesn’t that seem counterintuitive: I got a hands-free pumping bra so that I can.. do HANDS ON breast compressions?? You see all these ads for pumping bras showing women at their computers typing away or reading a book leisurely while a machine pumps out their milk, but if you are actually draining effectively, that’s not really how the picture should look.

You would think that at this point in time, we would have come up with better solutions or technology for this, and that there would be more science than art around nursing and breastfeeding. What a journey, and I’m only at the beginning of it…

I always imagined that postpartum home life would mean a lot of my boobs sticking out all the time, but I never really thought much about how that would actually feel. Why would I have my breasts out all the time, you ask? Well, if you are nursing and/or pumping milk, your breasts and your nipples are going to be sorer than sore, and they will need to be aired out to prevent any cracking or additional discomfort. In between feeds and pumps, I try to air my nipples out as much as possible, which means I am either walking around topless or with my nursing tanks half down. But I’m cold sensitive, and even with the heat on, I need to at least have a hoodie on to keep the rest of me warm. When you’ve either got your nipples constantly being suckled on by a teeny tiny human, while also in between feeds having a breast pump suck milk out of your breasts at a hospital-grade rate, your breasts in the postpartum period are in for the workout of their life! And yes, this DOES burn calories whether you are nursing or pumping – wee!

I’m lucky so far in that I haven’t experienced cracked nipples, and given multiple lactation consultants and nurses have complimented Kaia on her “perfect” and “beautiful” latch, I haven’t really hurt at all, so I’m thankful for that. Occasionally, though, when she is finished eating on the breast, she will try to chew my nipple at the end as sort of a “send off,” which is not particularly nice. It’s a chew in a “twist” kind of fashion, and boy, is it NOT pleasant AT ALL. But I love nursing her; I love the closeness I feel to her, I love being able to stroke her hair and head and feel her warmth against me. I love the smell of her coming off of me, her mouth covered in my breast milk. I love the fact that my body is able (well, sort of, given the weight gain issue) to nourish my little baby. I’m hell bent on making sure that she has as much breast milk as possible, so if it cannot be directly from my breasts, I’m trying to pump as much milk as possible.

So yeah, I get why a lot of moms postpartum don’t want that many visitors over in the several weeks or even months post birth. How can you have visitors over if you constantly have your nipples sticking out everywhere? You need to prioritize comfort postpartum, and having your nipples covered would be uncomfortable. And if you don’t take care of your nipples and breasts, your nipples will be pissed at you and give you all kinds of issues, ranging from thrush (fungal infection on nipple that also affects the baby) to blebs (milk blisters) to the worst of the worst — mastitis (clogged milk ducts that go untreated and result in inflammation and breast infection requiring antibiotics – NOOOO).

So word from the wise: take care of your boobs.

It doesn’t seem to matter what point in your life you are at with trying to conceive, being pregnant, or being postpartum — people will always manage to say stupid shit to you that is insensitive, stupid, uneducated/ignorant, and/or not helpful or supportive. Some of these comments are well meaning, but they really just do not help at all, nor do they make you feel good or better about your current situation.

After learning that I had given birth vaginally, my mom raved over how “easy” and “simple” I had it since I didn’t have to go through a c-section or a c-section recovery. “You are SO lucky,” my mom said, partly happy for me and partly resentful about the two c-sections she had. She kept saying this over and over on pretty much every single call as though I didn’t hear it the first time she said it. Seriously? Just because I had a vaginal birth does NOT mean my labor was “easy” or “simple,” nor does it mean that I won’t have pain postpartum. What the fuck? I was in labor for TWENTY FIVE hours, and NINE of those hours I had nearly non stop contractions. Who is she to tell me that I had it “easy”??

Then, my mother-in-law made similar dumb comments. She called my birth “easy” because it was vaginal and said multiple times that I would forget the pain from labor because of the sweet bundle I brought home. Okay, let’s all not be delusional here: while I am extremely grateful and feel blessed that my baby was born healthy and is home now, I have NOT forgotten how intense and painful labor was, nor will I ever forget the extreme agony I was in. Then, she continues to make comments about how she hopes that the two of us are getting “plenty of rest” or sleep given we hired a night nurse.

Yes, it’s true that we are getting more sleep on average with help via a night nurse. That does NOT mean I am getting adequate or “plenty” of sleep… because what parents of a newborn in this world are getting plenty of sleep unless they have chosen to 100 percent formula feed their baby and hand them off to help, whether that is by a family member or hired help???

I’ve also gotten comments from some friends regarding whether I regretted having an unmedicated birth. Given I was mobile within two hours of giving birth and have been able to do most things around the house unassisted, why the hell would I have WANTED an epidural in hindsight, which would have prolonged my overall recovery?? And given I am more mobile, that also means Chris needs to help me with fewer things, so he’s likely happy that I went unmedicated in the end, as well!