Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings

So, I am perplexed as to why I feel this way.

I have made the decision to quit pumping. I am now down to two pumpings a day. This morning I pumped my smallest amount after going all night. I only pumped 3 oz. My normal amount for the morning was 10 oz. I think overall, for us, there are many more positives to switching to formula than there are negatives. Nevertheless I am plagued by thoughts of sadness about it. For one, it's the "breast milk is so much better your baby will waste away and be sick more often and not be smart in school and how could you use formula?" camp. They are loud. They make me feel guilty. They claim that if you just stick with it your baby will catch on, it will be better in the end. Sometimes it is just not the case. Believe me when I say we tried. Numerous times. We had 1/2 hour scream-fests in the middle of the might. She knew how to latch and I knew she was hungry. She just wouldn't eat. Even though I know my milk was abundant, she would eat every hour around the clock. After 3 weeks I caved and started pumping. She was like a different baby (in some ways). She started eating every 2-3 hours (still does!) and sleeping for longer stretches. As soon as the bottle hit her lips, it was like I could see the relief on her face; like she was just waiting for it. Occasionally she wanted to breast feed for comfort, but she won't even do that now. Several times I tried going back to exclusive BFing, but she wouldn't have it. I know the benefits of breast milk; that's why I chose to pump for the first few months. I have a bit of a supply frozen, so she'll still be getting 2 oz. of milk in each bottle for close to another month, which I feel good about. I wanted to freeze more than that, but my supply was not keeping up with her hearty appetite, so she was already getting half formula anyway.

I do not love my baby any less because we are switching to formula. In fact, quite the opposite. I am doing this because I feel it is best. Not only is it less stress for me, but she is dealing with it much better, too. Dorothy is a fussy child most of the time. She frequently arches her back and screams. Sometimes she is so mad she refuses to eat her bottle. In the few days we have been doing 2/3 formula and 1/3 breast milk, she has not had one episode where she was screaming/refusing her bottle. She still fusses a lot of the time and gets mad (a lot of it must be personality). She also has had less (only one episode in a week) excema flare-ups on her cheeks. When it flares up, it is all of a sudden. Her cheeks will get bright red, as well as dry and scaly. This will last for several hours to a day or so. My thought is that she has food sensitivities. These two things paired with constant spitting up told me that she was not comfortable. Since the switch to mostly formula she also spits up less. She still spits, but generally not the large volume that she was doing after almost every feeding, and not one projectile. I have a feeling it will improve even more once we have made the switch entirely.

So, being that we have found it best to switch, after months of thinking about the timing of it, why do I now feel sadness? Is it the bond I want to keep with her? Is it the fact that I am pretty sure I won't have many opportunities to do the breast feeding thing again? This is all compounded by the fact that I went on the regular pill yesterday. I was on the nursing pill until then. I don't know what it is about the pill that I hate so much. I even had this issue when I was on it when we first got married. I much prefer charting. It's something about preventing children that bothers me. Even though I know charting is essentially doing the same thing, it is not physically altering my body to do so. Something that is hard for me to explain is the fact that the cutting back on pumping and going on the pill has brought me similar feelings as when we lost the baby. I know it sounds strange, but I think a lot of it has to do with the process I have to go through mentally/emotionally now that things are different. Of course I knew from the moment I was diagnosed with IC that things were going to be much different than I had dreamed....

I think most women who want children spend their young lives dreaming and hoping about what their life will be like. It's funny to say it, but I just saw my life barefoot and pregnant. Call me crazy, I don't care. I saw myself having several babies close together; happily cooking and cleaning; wiping noses and wiping tears. You know, generally doing all that domestic crap that a lot of women don't want these days. And with each pill it feels to me like that dream dies. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but that's what I feel.

Adventures in Pumping

We tried breastfeeding from the very start with Dorothy. Less than an hour after birth she was breastfeeding for the first time, although even during those first sessions she was latching wrong. The nurses all said everything looked great, her latch looked good, blah, blah, blah. But the more we did it, the worse it got. By the time we got home, not only were my nipples bruised and bleeding, but we would have half an hour long scream-fests in the middle of the night. Dorothy would obviously be hungry, but she wouldn't latch no matter what I did. All she did was get more mad as the minutes went by. Of course it didn't help that my milk didn't come in until Saturday afternoon when she was born Tuesday morning. After seeing the lactation specialist a couple of times, trying the nipple shield (my production dropped with that one) and being exhausted trying to make a baby breastfeed when she didn't want to, I tried pumping.

It was in the middle of the night when she was about two weeks old when I didn't know what else to do. I only had a hand pump, but I pumped her the milk and she took the bottle! It was like she had been waiting for me to do it. Not a whine or a whimper. No trying to figure out what this thing was for. I had tried giving formula to her once or twice, but she didn't like the taste. Pumping it was.

For the next few days I pumped with the hand pump. Even with that, the feeding time was less than it was with trying to get her to latch. So we decided to get the Medela Pump In Style Advanced electric breast pump. I can pump both sides at the same time in 10 minutes now (sometimes 8 or 9). The only thing that is decidedly inconvenient is having to be away from home and carry the bag around. Not to mention trying to find a place to go where I CAN do two sides at a time. If we are anywhere but home, I have to pump one side and then the other, hiding myself with a blanket. This process takes more like 20-25 minutes. Plus the time to give her the bottle. Even so, this takes about the same amount of time as it still takes for her to nurse. Yes, I do still nurse occasionally, but she still takes 20 minutes on each side and then she's hungry an hour later instead of 2 or 3 hours with the bottle. Plus the fact that she has the same pattern of getting progressively worse (and more agitated) with each subsequent breastfeeding session; something neither she or I have the patience for.

Our routine at home goes something like this:

In the morning I either breastfeed her (if I have gone all night and am engorged) and then pump. Or I just pump after I give her a bottle from the fridge. I have a "station" set up on the end of the couch so I can keep an eye on Dorothy in the swing and be comfy at the same time.



When I'm done I rinse out her dirty bottle and put the pumped milk in fresh bottles for storage in the fridge. I always have the sink full of soapy water so the dirty stuff can soak until it's ready to be scrubbed and rinsed.



The drying rack is almost always full of pumping parts and baby bottles (we use the Avent bottles, but may try the Playtex bottles soon on recommendation from a friend) for all who enter to see.



I keep about five 5 oz bottles in the fridge at all times. Anything extra at the end of a pumping session gets stored in the freezer in 4-5 oz. portions for later use (say, a sitter, perhaps).



Dorothy eats every 2-3 hours (I have done demand feeding so far, even with the bottle) and I pump every 3-4 hours. At night I just go however long she goes between. Last night she went 9 hours. My boobs were HUGE (and painful)!

There are positives and negatives for both sides, and I find myself wavering between whether to keep pumping exclusively, breastfeed exclusively (requiring more patience than I have with a fussy baby), do a combo of both (my current choice), or just scrap it all and go to formula (by far the fastest in our situation, yet more of a financial burden). I know the benefits of breast milk. That's the reason I have pumped this long. But I find that I am tied to the pump at all times. No longer can I go out and have a relaxing time somewhere, even if she's with a sitter (always Grandma at this point). I am always thinking about how I need to get home and pump because the battery pack dies so fast (and it takes 10 AA batteries to boot).

Yes, we've seen a lactation specialist. Twice. AND talked to her on the phone.

No, she's not tongue tied.

Yes, I'm still trying to get her to breastfeed.

No, I don't have inverted nipples.

Yes, her latch is good when she DOES latch without pulling off every 5 seconds.

No, she's not satisfied for a good length of time after a breastfeeding session.

Yes, I've tried a nipple shield.

What would you do?

Breastfeeding and more....

Many apologies for being MIA for a couple of weeks. I'm sure you understand what with a new baby in the house. We are all adjusting to life together. The waking up at least twice a night and the poopy diapers and so on.

Breastfeeding:
I promised to write about our trials with breastfeeding. We seemed to have a lot of trouble, and I kept waiting for it to get better. It didn't. Dorothy would not latch on, and instead of getting better as we went along, she got worse. We had several episodes of her screaming for long periods of time, obviously hungry... but she would not latch. And when she did it was a bad latch. So we went back to the lactation specialist and she gave me a nipple shield, which worked. For a short while. Something in Dorothy's latch would make the edges of the shield flip up and onto her face. And she was waking up every one to two hours. Something was telling me that she was not getting much milk, and within a couple days of pumping, I saw that my milk supply had actually decreased from a few days prior. With how lazy she was with nursing.... falling asleep within minutes and not sucking properly.... there was no way she was draining me. So We went and got a Pump in Style Advanced Breast Pump for $320!! A small price to pay for sanity for both parties involved. She's still getting my milk and I am getting more sleep. It's a beautiful thing. Granted, I can't pump in public like I could nurse, but it takes less time for me to pump her and bottle feed than it is to try to get her on the boob. And the last few tries with the boob. She just licks it or sucks on the very tippy-tip of the nipple. It smarts. So I think it's safe to say that pumping is the best option for us. Not to mention that she makes horrible faces when we try to put formula in the bottle.

Diapering:
I made the choice to cloth diaper. The choice was actually made about a month prior to Dorothy's arrival, for a number of different reasons. One of them being that I kept getting cloth diapers at baby showers. Cloth diapering is much better than it used to be with fitted diapers and velcro covers. And the cloth is so much better on her skin! I'll have to go in to more detail on the diapers I'm using and how we launder them at a later date. Right now we're still alternating between cloth and disposables because of the number of disposable diapers I got at baby showers, too. Cloth at home, "sposies" while out.

Cleaning:
I won't even tell you what my house looks like right now. There is too much to do in the day now. And Dorothy likes to be held. A lot.