Our nanny grows callaloo, a West African cousin of spinach in her backyard, among other vegetables. She said she will bring us some since it’s just sprouting now. She said she knows I will like it… because my baby farts a lot, so she knows I eat a lot of vegetables.

“Mommy eats lots of vegetables and fiber!” the nanny exclaimed while feeding the baby last week. “That’s why Kaia farts so much! So much fiber in the breast milk! In the booby milk! So much good stuff in this booby milk for baby Kaia pookie!”

It’s debatable how much of what a breastfeeding mother eats will end up in her breast milk. It’s already been widely established that alcohol, certain medicines and drugs, among other things, can get into breast milk in traces, but the concentrations of which are still debated. Either way, I try to eat a wide variety of things not just for myself, but also in hopes that our baby will develop an affinity for all these different foods. I’ve intentionally eaten nuts daily, hoping she won’t have any nut allergies. I especially hope she will love all leafy green vegetables and mangoes.

“You produce a lot of milk,” our nanny said one morning, as she watched me measure out freshly pumped breast milk for the baby’s second morning bottle.

She was trying to compliment me and be kind. But when she said that, it made me think about how long it took me to get to this level of output. “It’s definitely a lot more than it was before, but it’s still not enough,” I responded. “That’s why she has at least one formula bottle per day. She’s a hungry little hippo!”

I told her that I did not always produce this much milk; in fact, if you asked our first night nurse a few months ago what my milk output was, she would not have had a positive response like this. She told me that the ratio of breast milk to formula our baby was getting was in reverse to what her son’s wife was able to produce for her grandson when he was a baby. He’s now just over 2 years old. She said she barely produced a few ounces of breast milk per day. Well, I can relate to that; once upon a time, I was in her painful shoes.

She exclusively breast fed her first child, a son. But with her second child, a daughter, she refused to eat from her breast; and when she pumped milk, she just wouldn’t take it, so she ended up having to be fully formula fed. “Breastfeeding is so, so much work,” she lamented. “Nursing directly or pumping; it’s just so hard. People just don’t understand unless they’ve done it themselves.”

It was funny we were talking about this as there is a nationwide formula shortage. Lots of people on social media are blaming moms who choose not to breastfeed, saying that “breast milk is free” but we choose not to use it. It’s sad because those accusations are rooted in ignorance. Hell, I’ve even made that ignorant statement myself once upon a time. Not all of us can breastfeed, and those of us who do, like myself, just don’t produce enough for our babies to eat, so that’s why we use formula. Then, there are situations like our nanny’s daughter who just refused breast milk. What do you do in those cases – let your baby starve and die?

But her comments just go to show how relative the amount of breastmilk we produce is, whether it’s a lot or a little. I really should stop focusing on the negative, as in, “I do not produce enough,” and rather focus on the fact that my baby is growing and thriving with a majority diet of the milk my body is producing. I have come a long way and should give credit where it is due. I feel very thankful for this.

I had my first dentist appointment since the baby was born last Sunday. Initially, the dentist said all my x-rays looked good, but upon further review a day later, he said that one of my teeth may have a cavity, but it was unclear based on the angle of the x-ray. So he asked me to come back in for another x-ray that would take a closer look today. I complied, especially since I had noticed that on the tooth he was referring to, I had experienced some strange tingling sensation when I would floss each night for the last month or so. I didn’t think much of coming in other than that I would be able to score some homemade sour cherry wine, plum jam, and herbal cherry leaf tea that they made (they are huge gardeners and love talking about their fruits and vegetables with me). He and his wife, also a dentist, clearly love me. They love telling me pretty much everything on their mind. So as the wife babbled away, I waited for the result of my x-ray.

Well, it looks like the result was worse than a cavity: he showed me a huge hole that was in one of my molars: it looked like the cavity had lingered and affected the root canal, thus causing an infection, which would mean that I’d need a root canal treatment… today.

Wait, WHAT? I was having a root canal.. TODAY? How the hell did this happen?

I had always heard of root canals, but I never knew much about them until today. The dentist explained that it’s really a “root canal treatment” because all teeth have root canals. An infection occurs in the tooth, likely from a cavity that went on too long, and thus the hollowed tooth needs to be cleaned out, given medicine, and then filled up to prevent further decay or worse… death. No one wants their teeth to die. He told me he was shocked when he saw this for me, as I’ve always had good teeth and take very good care of my dental hygiene. He suspects I likely got tooth decay from pregnancy, as during pregnancy, all the hormones that support the baby’s growth actually weaken the bones and ligaments in the mother’s body; These hormonal changes also increase the acid level in the mother’s mouth, which can make her more prone to tooth decay.

I couldn’t believe it. I was 36 years old and having my first root canal treatment. I was hoping I would at least make it to my 40s before having such a procedure done on me, but I guess this is another downside of the effects of pregnancy on a mother’s body.

“In Russia, we have this saying when women get pregnant: ‘one baby, one tooth!'” the dentist wife exclaimed. “Pregnancy can cause tooth decay even for people like you who take great care of their teeth!”

Well, that just made me feel worse. Actually, what did make me feel physically worse was that the local anesthesia took forever to work, and my body just didn’t respond well to it. It took the highest dosage for the numbness to be adequate to perform the procedure without hurting. So half of my mouth, tongue, and even throat were numb until I went to bed.