When your milk supply drops after your period returns

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I was never going to be sure when my period came back, but based on everything I had previously read and what all my mom friends and colleagues warned me about, once my menstrual cycles resumed, my milk supply would drop. I was mentally bracing myself at around the six month mark, since my doctor had told me that around six months would be a “normal” time for my period to come back, assuming actively breastfeeding. My friends told me theirs came back between 8-9 months with active nursing/pumping. Well, lucky me, mine didn’t come back until the 10.5 month mark, so it was later than I guessed. But the decrease in supply was not welcome, and as it started plummeting days before my period, I’d figured that was the sign it was back. Seeing my output numbers decrease day after day and the sharp drop in milk output on my day over day graph hurt. I’d spent the last 10.5 months exclusively pumping. The first 2 months were the greatest struggle. The next four months, I saw my maximum output and was so proud of what I’d achieved after the slow and miserable start. And to see all of that hard work starting to get chipped away with a decrease in output just felt so sad to me. Academically and logically, I knew pumping would be an emotional journey, but I would’ve never imagined at the beginning how much I could tie my self worth as a mother to my milk output. And to see the numbers decrease the way they have in the last two weeks just felt miserable. Even if Kaia is drinking less milk now, it still made me sad. It’s work I did solely to provide sustenance for her and no one else. I saw it as my duty as her mother to do this, to nourish her for as long as I physically could.

One day, I’ll look back on this journey and be grateful and extremely proud of what I’ve done, despite how grueling and miserable at times it was. Even now when it’s “easy” because I have my routine down pat and know what I am doing, it’s still annoying to be tied up to an electric nipple sucker for 4 hours each day. Each day of this journey, I have been grateful for my body. I hope one day, when Kaia is old enough, I can share this with her, and maybe, just maybe she will appreciate all the time I sacrificed, attempting to give her the very best.

A new approach to shopping for groceries with baby

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On average, I go to Trader Joe’s about once a week, if not a little less. And when I do, I usually have my eye out for staples that we normally eat, as well as new seasonal items that we either have tried and liked, or could try out for the first time that are temporarily available. But another thought I have that is top of mind is: what is a new food that Kaia hasn’t had yet that would be baby friendly (low or no salt) for her to eat?

This week, it ended up including: ground turkey, shiitake mushrooms, couscous, and acai puree. I also get a few things that only she eats: bell peppers (she loves these roasted), European style whole milk yogurt, and sweet potato.

I told my nanny that this is top of mind when I go to Trader Joe’s, and she laughed. “Kaia has no idea how good she has it! She had…. *only* 7 things to eat for her lunch today! What a life!”

Left hand cortisone shot and tendon adhesions

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I went back to the orthopedic doctor this morning for a second cortisone shot in my left wrist. I let him know that the pain had pretty much subsided in my right since he gave me a shot there about two weeks ago, but it was clicking a lot more in the last few days, plus I’d had a little pain in it depending on the type of movement. He told me clicking was normal at this stage and was a sign of healing, which was good. But he did take a look at both wrists and noted there was still a lot of stiffness, likely from tendon adhesions as a result of lack of full mobility from the pain I’d had. So he suggested I do hand therapy, at least 1-2 sessions, to learn exercises to get my mobility back. I didn’t want to cause any permanent loss of mobility in my tendons in my hands; my hands are pretty damn important and integral to my health.

Recovery is on the horizon, I thought, as I walked home and made call to set up an OT evaluation for my wrists. I can’t believe there’s finally a potential to be pain free in my wrists soon. It feels like forever since my wrists and thumbs felt completely normal and I didn’t even notice them. I suppose that’s how you know you take your good health for granted; you don’t even appreciate your limbs until something like this happens, and everything just feels like it’s going wrong.

Baby’s first lobster

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While on the road today, Kaia had a few new “firsts” for foods today: lobster, cream, mayonnaise, and oyster. She absolutely loved the lobster. Not sure if it was the lobster itself or the butter/mayo that was in it, but she gobbled it up. We tried to limit how much she had since we didn’t want her exposed to too much salt. Luckily for her (AND us), she didn’t have any negative reactions to it. We also gave her a couple tastes of the lobster bisque we ordered, as well as a small taste of the oysters we got. She’d definitely been teething quite a bit over the last few days, as she’d been drooling a lot more and had a few bouts of fussiness. But while at a restaurant on Saturday night in Wilmington, she started making this strange wheezing sound, which immediately had me disturbed. Why would she make that strange sound? Is it just a new sound she’s learned to use her vocal chords to attract attention, or was she actually having issues breathing? And did it have anything to do with her exposure to shellfish earlier…?

She stopped doing it once Chris picked her up to hold her, which was good news, but it still had me a little worried. So we decided that even though our mains had just arrived, we’d down our drinks and take the food back to the hotel to eat. We’d never done that before with her, but we just wanted to make sure she was comfortable and warm.

In the end, she was fine. I think it was probably just more teething, as I do feel the teeth on her top of her mouth coming in; I can already feel the ridges poking out. But these things will always cause a little alarm, especially when you are on the road and not near home/the doctor.

What people hear about New York on the news

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Last night, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up a couple snacks and small food items for Kaia. When I went to ring up my items at the register, the cashier asked me if I had a rewards card. I said no, since I’m not from the area. He asked me where we were traveling from, and I said New York City.

“New York City, huh?” he replied with wide eyes. “Been hearing a lot about the Big Apple on the news. It sounds like the crime is out of control there! How are you handling all that?”

I wrinkled my brow as I paid for my items and took them. “There’s crime everywhere. New York is a great place to live. I love it. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the news all the time. It’s a bit of a warped picture.”

Inevitably, whenever we travel to smaller towns, some person will make an ignorant comment about how dirty and crime-filled big cities are, or a specific critique of New York. I’d assume most of these people have never even been to New York, or if they have, they may have visited once or twice at most. They’ll assume we “put up” with rather than willingly choose to live in New York. They’ll assume we don’t like it. But we choose to be in New York. We enjoy living there. Certainly no one has forced us to live there. It must be quite a revelation for them to hear that we actually like New York and would prefer living there to wherever they hell they live. It is an active choice to choose New York City as your place of residence. Delaware has had lots of nice, friendly people so far, so I’m not going knock anyone here. But I wouldn’t willingly choose to live in this state, even with all the friendliness, the additional space, and the pretty autumn foliage.

Pumping in the car en route to Delaware

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There is no such thing as a convenient time to pump. Even when people say that when you wake up or go to sleep, those could be good times to pump, well… those are also good times to go exercise and… SLEEP EARLIER. But it’s especially annoying when it comes to travel. Because not only do you have to think about how to pump and cover up if in public, but how do you store your milk once it’s pumped? So on the way to Wilmington today, I pumped while in the car. Chris drove. Kaia babbled and napped. I pumped. I set myself up while Chris stopped the car to get gas, and I pumped en route, which actually wasn’t so bad after all. It was a good way to pass time during the 2+ hour drive. When you’re in a fast moving vehicle on a highway, you don’t have to worry much about people noticing that your nipples are out and exposed, connected to an electric nipple sucker. It was just a bit nerve wracking to disconnect and empty out the milk while the car was still moving. I just got lucky and there were no sudden stops or bumps as I was consolidating the milk and getting the last drops out of the flanges and duck bill valves.

I told my friend, who has also breastfed and pumped, that next month, I would go down to 3 pumps per day once Kaia reached 11 months of age. Then, when Kaia turns 1, I’ll go down to two pumps per day. It’s a bittersweet thought: I’ve both hated and been grateful for pumping this whole time. It’s been massively inconvenient, but I’ve been grateful to my body for what it’s been able to provide my baby, and I’ve taken great pride and joy in knowing I can feed my baby food that my body produces just for her. She insisted to me that although it would make me feel a little sad to not do this for Kaia anymore, it would also be extremely liberating, which I know would be the case. But it’s what our night nurse originally told me: everything has its time, and cumbersome things like pumping have a definitive start and end point. I’m closer to the end of my pumping journey than the beginning of it.

“You’ll have many other ways to bond with her,” my friend said to me. “Your relationship will grow.”

I hope so.

Shishito pepper for baby

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“Are you CRAZY?! Do you want me to call child protective services on you?!”

My nanny was going a little ballistic at me this afternoon when I told her that as part of her dinner, I’d add some shishito peppers to Kaia’s plate. I would pan fry them on the stove until blistered, then slice them in half. I’d test a half of each and then give her the other half to ensure they weren’t hot. With shishito peppers, there’s always a bit of a “surprise” element: you never know if you will get one that is mild to plain, medium heat, or HOT. I’ve been eating these tiny peppers for years, and while the vast majority have had no heat, a handful have had mild heat, and maybe one or two ever were actually spicy hot. Our nanny had never had shishito peppers, and she seemed wary when I described them to her. She thought it seemed a bit suspect that it was not predictable whether they’d be hot or not hot at all; she’d never heard of these peppers before. So I cooked them, then offered her some. She tried and said she liked them. Plus, neither of the ones she had were hot, so she seemed more open to having Kaia eat them for the first time.

“This is a very different house,” our nanny declared. “Kaia has quite the life!”

192nd food tried will now be shishito pepper. She’s doing pretty well at 10.5 months of age for variety.

10-month doctor’s visit and freebies at the pediatrician’s office

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The nanny and I brought Kaia to the doctor’s office today thinking that we were just going in to get her second flu vaccine (baby flu vaccines are two doses), but they ended up taking all her vitals and doing a semi-thorough examination of her. I wasn’t expecting that, but it was nice to see her get measured and weighed again. The doctor is very pleased at her growth and proud of how much solids (and the variety of which!) she’s been getting. She was also not surprised at exactly how much Kaia hated being at the office. My baby cried the entire time she was getting measured. Then, when the doctor came in to examine her, she cried the whole time, not even stopping to allow the doctor to take a quick look at her little pupils. It was absolutely tortuous for her.

The funny thing I always notice every time I go to the pediatrician’s office is all the free samples: baby lotion, baby body/hair wash/shampoo, diaper rash cream, booger wipes. It’s always something different each visit. So me being me, I always scope out the new stuff to see if it would be anything interesting we could take with us during our travels given their size. I also leave a few items like rash cream or lotion in Kaia’s diaper bag. This time, there were booger wipes (yes, that’s what they are actually called), which I still haven’t used, as we had some other samples we were given previously. But there was also something completely not baby related: face wash with exfoliating beads in them. It looked like an item you’d get at the doctor’s office if you were a teenager, trying to figure out how to maintain and care for your skin.

Not sure how targeted those free samples were, but I guess free is still free, even if it’s not relevant to the audience. I suppose parents do need to wash their faces after all, so I grabbed two!

First period since pregnancy and giving birth

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One of the greatest things about being pregnant (other than being pregnant, duh) was never having to worry about a period. And in my postpartum state, because I have been actively breastfeeding and pumping, unless I was one of those rare, unlucky mothers, I could count on keeping my period at bay for at least six months according to my OB-GYN, or eight to nine months according to my mom friends. Well, I was able to be period-free for even longer than any of them guessed: I lasted 44.5 weeks, or 10.5 months, before finally getting my period today. Well, I don’t know if it’s an official period, per se, but I guess I will count it as one since it’s the first time I’ve had any menstrual anything since before pre-pregnancy. That means that the last period I ever had was in March 2021 — that was INCREDIBLE!!! That’s 19.5 months being PERIOD FREE! Weeee!

I had a feeling I was ovulating because this and last month, I saw discharge that was egg-white in consistency, which is a sign that ovulation is near and approaching. And my period coming back is also an explanation for why the last few days, my milk supply has decreased quite a bit. I wonder if I will be one of those lucky moms who have a temporary decrease in milk supply at certain points of their cycle, and then it goes right back up!

Lots of cooking on a Sunday, like in old times

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Pre Kaia’s arrival, Sunday was always the day I did most of the cooking for the week. We’d usually never go anywhere or make plans that day unless it was near home, and I’d focus on food for the week. Then, I’d usually experiment with something new, project-type cooking that would require lots of different ingredients sourced from all over the place, lots of steps, and potentially take hours if not all day. Not much of that type of cooking has happened since she was born, but today almost felt like it. I finally decided that since I saw beef chuck on sale at Whole Foods that I would get to making beef rendang with Auria’s spice blend. I’d had so many rendang packets accumulated, but never got around to making it because I knew that even though she simplified the process by putting all the necessary spices in one pouch, it would still take hours of nursing over the stove and stirring every ten minutes. I decided this was the weekend. I put the oil, water, coconut milk, and spice blend in the Dutch oven. I let it come to a bubble, then added the beef chuck chunks, and then simmered… for FOUR hours. I had to stir it periodically in the beginning, then the last hour, stir every ten minutes, but the result was worth it: it tasted restaurant quality, and it was HOT. I just added some extra sliced makrut lime leaves and salt to the adult portion, and set aside a small bowl for Kaia’s meals this week. I knew it would be good, but I didn’t think that much about HOW good it would be.

On top of the beef rendang, which was already a project, I also made pumpkin spiced mini muffins, quinoa with homemade frozen stock, as well as pessarattu (spiced whole green moong dal pancakes) for the baby, plus white jasmine rice to go with the rendang. That’s five different things in a single day! This was almost like pre-Kaia Sunday cooking, except this time around, I was way more tired. I did all this in between feeding her, pumping, and cleaning. This is really what multi tasking looks like now as a working mom.