Know why I don't criticize moms who don't breastfeed? It's f*cking hard. Sometimes impossible.
I've heard a bunch of lies about breastfeeding. Lies become material for criticizing formula feeders, lies make it difficult to distinguish the hard from impossible, and lies are just annoying.
So I'd like to debunk the following (I've always wanted to debunk something):
1. "Your body will produce the right amount." (My mom)
No. And I have no idea why she told me this, because she supplemented fairly early because she was afraid she wasn't making enough. (And despite not being EBF, I have always been very, very healthy. On the rare occasion that I stayed home from school (and now work), it was almost always because I was faking it.)
I've had a lot of friends give up once they first tried to pump and were only getting a couple ounces at a time. That's exactly what I was getting when I first started. I gave myself a month to get a backup supply for when I went back to work, which resulted in somewhere around 30 ounces, if that. But, that was buffer enough as long as I pumped the equivalent of what Finley ate while we were apart. But I didn't. At first.
I Googled the hell out of ways to increase milk supply and found some good stuff. Like this and this and this.
The best of that good stuff: snacking. The downside, though, is that you're snacking on oatmeal and carrot juice. And fenugreek supplements. (Spell check doesn't even know what fenugreek is. No, I don't mean "greenback".) And worse, no candy canes! I know. It's July. I'm not sure whether I'm turning into Buddy the Elf or if it's just forbidden fruit syndrome, but as soon as I read that peppermint decreases milk supply, all I've wanted is a stupid candy cane. And then there's the unthinkable horror that I'll still be breastfeeding and stocking when it actually is Christmastime. I wonder how many Christmas cookies I'll have to eat to compensate for not having candy canes. I digress.
And, it's even harder than giving up peppermint. For a long stretch, I had to be rocking the dairy cow setup for about four hours of the work day to yield four bottles, and sometimes I'd still come up short. As long as Finley only downed three a day, we were cool. But then he started going for four, so we did a little role reversal and I started waking him up in the night for more feedings to give production a kick and fill him up. It took a couple months to get out of the woods, and if I drop the ball on any part of my routine, it's instant regression.
Even if you're willing to work your tail off to keep your kid on nothing but boob milk, it could be out of your hands. Not every mom has an office door and a job where it's usually okay to be in isolation for more than half the workday. And for those moms, hard might really be impossible. That's a big reason I get annoyed at moms judging other moms.
2. "If it hurts, you're doing it wrong." (The Internet)
Just because those mobsters over at La Leche League claim to know how to get it to work without pain, doesn't mean I'm doing it wrong. If my kid is eating, and he's not hungry, I'm doing it right. Listen, Internet, you can tell me that it doesn't HAVE to hurt or something, but don't tell me I'm doing it wrong. YOU'RE doing it wrong! (I kid. I know they're loving humans over at LLL. I know.)
It hurt bad. Like, I would have traded that pain for giving birth again. Toe-curling pain. I was in a constant state of fear of that latch.
And no, I didn't bother to get a consultant. Very often during those first few weeks, I was clothed in at least three bodily fluids. I didn't need to worry about a consultant smelling me, and the problem seemed pretty obvious: There was a creature sucking on my raw nipples for, I don't know, seven hours a day? My friend had a baby two months before me, and she took breastfeeding classes, read books, saw a consultant, maybe more than one. And while basically everything about her makes me feel like a bit of a slacker, I felt pretty okay about things when she told me it hurt for a month for her, too.
Praise the Lord, it got better around a month. I don't think I'd still be breastfeeding if it hadn't.
3. "You have to start supplementing to get enough sleep." (Friends with babies)
There's another option: co-sleeping. It's so easy. Call me lazy, but I prefer the easy way. You can also call me well rested. Because I am. And you get to dangle You've never had to wake up at night to take care of the baby over your spouse's head for, like, the rest of your lives.
I'm sure that's not always the silver bullet combo it has been for me. And, if you're not into co-sleeping, night feedings are what they are, in which case this number 3 isn't so much a lie for you. Lying about a lie. That's no good.
4. "The weight comes right off when you breastfeed." (Everyone who hasn't breastfed)
Seriously. Don't count on it.
I tried to make this happen. Around week two, I wanted to eat every pretzel, dark chocolate chip, bagel, granola bar, and piece of pizza I saw. And I more or less did. A box of granola bars would last one day in our house. And after a full day of eating, I could totally take care of one of those huge bags of Pirate's Booty all by myself. And then ask my husband to get me ice cream.
I hadn't been a big eater during pregnancy, so I actually watched myself gain weight since I gave birth, which I was pretty sure was backwards. So, after a few weeks, I foolishly attempted to get control of my lumberjack appetite. And my production went down.
So, I figured, f*ck that, I need to eat. Cheese. Chocolate. Peanut butter. Almond butter. Regular butter. Eventually my appetite got slightly less lumberjacky, but pounds are still not melting off of me. The only melting going on is in the form of cheese.
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
9 Things About Natural Childbirth
If you are looking for science, this post is not it. This is straight-up anecdotal, based exclusively on my one own experience. That said, I really liked reading anecdotal stuff about deliveries when I was pregnant (read: petrified of delivering).
Apparently I'm not the only one who was terrified of delivering a baby. The other day, my husband ran into the store while I stayed in the Jeep to feed the baby. He met an expecting couple, and learned that mom-to-be was already planning to have an epidural. (He makes friends just as quickly as he asks them intrusive personal questions. Sometimes I'm glad to have been awkwardly trying to breastfeed in the parking lot with un-tinted windows when he "makes friends".)
Now, word on my street was that if you don't get drugs, the pain is usually bearable, recovery is a lot easier, and that babies latch better. I figured it was worth a try. And it all proved true.
It is absolutely definitely certainly not always true. But, I didn't see all that much on my old friend the internet that encouraged me to at least try. I did, however, see quite a few mothers who opted for an epidural because they wanted the day to be nothing but puppies and rainbows, so they could really enjoy both the experience and the memory.
To each her own birth story, but I wanted to alert the masses (or the four people reading this) that you can have puppies and rainbows with a natural childbirth! The contrast between the displeasure (to, obviously, put it mildly) of labor and delivery and the elation (to, also, put it mildly) of your healthy baby plopped onto your chest is the definition of pure joy. I don't know, I mean, when your kid is born, you're probably maxed out on joy, no matter how you get there, so maybe it's all moot. But, in any event, my nine cents:
1. It is a GIFT. And if you get it, you feel like you should start changing into spandex in a phone booth.
For real, biggest high imaginable. Runners and drug addicts, step aside. Super hero high. Which might make you want to brag about the experience. But try to remember that it's a gift. Our prenatal care and labor and delivery was at a midwife-run birth center, where they don't do epidurals, etc. But, if you decide you want drugs, before or during labor, you can go across the parking lot to the hospital. (And they don't even judge you. Or, at least they say they don't.) We had a group meeting with other birth center patients called "the 36 week meeting", which is basically an orientation of the hospital, in case you end up there, whether it be your own, or Mother Nature's, decision. The birth center director had been explaining that we should write our birth plans, so that the midwives could try their best to do what we wanted. She mentioned that we probably won't be able to foresee everything, that the midwives will communicate everything they can during labor, and that any decisions they make will be in the best interest of mom and baby. Of course, that managed to piss off one particularly beast-willed mom-to-be. When she demanded that the director confirm right then and there that she would have the option to refuse any treatment they might think necessary, Linda Ann looked understandably irritated. But, she calmly replied, When people are hardcore against any real medical intervention, they've said, 'Well, what would you have done in this situation 200 years ago?' And I have to say, 'I would have watched you and/or your baby die.' Linda Ann: 1; Beast Mom: 0. It's serious business. So if you successfully deliver a baby naturally, consider yourself BLESSED to have felt what I can only describe as the most empowered, invincible feeling ever. That should be enough. You shouldn't feel compelled to judge the moms who didn't get to experience that, regardless of whether it was a choice for them.
2. That hypno-birthing stuff works.
I think. I actually still don't know for sure what it is. But, like a week before my due date, my also-pregnant cousin mentioned that she had been getting into it. I panicked, briefly, feeling like I was back in college and realizing the night before an exam that there was an entire section I hadn't studied. I Googled it (shout out to pregnancy's best friend), and read that it was about calm breathing and imagery. Sure there was more to it, but that much seemed pretty self-explanatory to me, so I just stopped there. And also, I think you're supposed to call contractions "pressure waves" or something. (Two days before my due date, I saw "pressure waves" in some other pregnant girl's blog post, and had to Google what the f--- those were, too. But it didn't really help.) Anyway, I didn't use the fancy jargon, but I did yoga breathing and sang Jack Johnson's 'Monsoon' in my head while picturing waves hitting the beach. I didn't practice it before labor like you're supposed to, so I definitely wavered between Jack Johnson's lyrics and profanity a little. But, I still think that stuff helped.
3. You forget the pain as easily as my husband forgets where things are kept in our house.
Contractions really hurt, no way around it. The only way to describe the pain is to say exactly what it was: It feels like a human is inside you, trying to get out. But even between contractions, I kept forgetting how bad they were. My contractions were really close together from the beginning; they were about five minutes apart right away. (Of course, this meant I was freaking out on the 5-1-1 rule, and got sent home from the birth center a bunch of times. My contractions aren't bad enough yet? Like, they get way worse? ... Yeah. They got way worse.) But still, those short five-, and later three-, minute segments were everything. Like, if I were live-tweeting active labor it'd go like this:
Please, Universe, make sure no one ever live tweets active labor.
4. You might want to give up after less than five hours even though you told yourself you'd only give up after, like, 20 hours.
Fortunately our magical midwife somehow knew exactly how I wanted to be coached through labor. (It sure as heck wasn't from my birth plan, because I never did get around to writing that.) At one point, pretty close to the end, I asked her through grimaced teeth, mid-contraction (you can, actually, "talk" through contractions until the end, but it is an odd mix of a yell-ish whimper) what percent of women chickened out and got the epidural, in her estimation. She assured me that my contractions were just about as bad as they were going to get, and from that point on it was just endurance. I don't know if she knew she was lying or not, because they definitely got worse. For all I know it was too late for the epidural anyway, and she thought I'd handle it better if I thought I still had the option, and was choosing not to use it. Either way, I really think my labor was easier without the epidural.
5. You'll know if you poop.
Yea, I mean that as a good thing. I guess. First, let me say how appalled I was when I first learned that you might poop while you're in labor. That was before I was pregnant, and when I expressed this shock to my mom, she laughed in my face. Obviously. Believe me, You won't care. But I was sure I'd be mortified. Mom was right: Did. Not. Care. I did apologize and thank them, though, because who wants to clean up poop? My sister is a nurse. My best friend is a nurse. Nurses are magical. Heroes. Magical heroes shouldn't have to clean poop. I was glad I had the awareness, so I could express a little appreciation.
6. You feel little limbs flail around as you're baby pops out!
Weird? Really weird. Gross? I don't know. But, in the moment, it's magical. (Yes, I know I used that word already. More than once.) Finley's head got stuck in between contractions, and the midwives' eyes were glued to the clock to make sure he would be okay. I knew I had a reason to be nervous. Thank God, another contraction came in time, and I managed to get him out, and feeling his lively limbs was the best moment of my life-- even better than hearing his cute little squeal a second later.
7. Your baby's arrival is like a triple espresso.
I was falling asleep in between contractions. My water had broken just before 2am, we hung out for a little while as I tried to convince myself that I just had lost bladder control, and then we went in to get checked at 4am. We had a stress test, ultrasound to confirm head position, etc., and got home around 7am. Contractions had gotten pretty uncomfortable around then, so there was no more resting for me. I was pooped from the start, and was falling asleep between contractions, which make the worst alarm clock in the history of the world. I remember telling my mom that she better be ready to take care of my baby for the next week because I was going to need to sleep for days and days. But, once that sucker was out and placed on my chest at 5:08pm, I was ready to go out for sushi. And, although I did pass out about 15 minutes after we got home at 10pm that night (another bonus, no hospital stay required, so our dogs didn't think we abandoned them), and although I did nap a lot with my new snuggle buddy the next day, I really never felt that exhaustion you hear about.
8. It's all cake after the baby's out.
Stitching. The thought still makes me cringe. After I had given birth naturally, I told the midwife I wanted local anesthesia for the ONE, SINGLE stitch I needed. She's the sweetest woman, who rolled her eyes at me in a loving way. She practically insisted that I not bother with it. I asked my husband for his opinion. He stared at me blankly. She reminded me that the needle for the local anesthesia would be basically half the pain of the stitch. Well, that was hard to argue with. She was right, it wasn't bad. Also not bad was the afterbirth. I know it's gross, but I just made a big deal about pooping, so, you know. I don't even remember what delivering the placenta felt like, so it couldn't have been bad. Oh, and I never got cramps as my uterus went back to its normal size and position. FYI.
9. Recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed was WAY worse.
I know I shouldn't write that, because it's not always the case, but, of course, none of this is a promise. A natural birth certainly doesn't guarantee minimal tearing. (I just happened to give birth at place that almost never needs to use more than two stitches. I'll say it again, they are magical.) I used the epi bottle every time I went to the bathroom, and I sat down kind of slowly just in case, but I was literally never in pain. Oh, and I didn't even think of using one of those pad-sicle things they tell you to load up your freezer with. (And all those blogs that promised me I would need them scared the crap out of me.)
Every experience is different. That cannot be said enough. But, I wish I had known natural childbirth could be as easy as it was for me. Please forgive me, moms who didn't have it so easy, but I had to write this. If it makes you feel any better, I'm so afraid I used all my luck delivering Fin that we're considering adoption if he wants a sibling.
Apparently I'm not the only one who was terrified of delivering a baby. The other day, my husband ran into the store while I stayed in the Jeep to feed the baby. He met an expecting couple, and learned that mom-to-be was already planning to have an epidural. (He makes friends just as quickly as he asks them intrusive personal questions. Sometimes I'm glad to have been awkwardly trying to breastfeed in the parking lot with un-tinted windows when he "makes friends".)
Now, word on my street was that if you don't get drugs, the pain is usually bearable, recovery is a lot easier, and that babies latch better. I figured it was worth a try. And it all proved true.
It is absolutely definitely certainly not always true. But, I didn't see all that much on my old friend the internet that encouraged me to at least try. I did, however, see quite a few mothers who opted for an epidural because they wanted the day to be nothing but puppies and rainbows, so they could really enjoy both the experience and the memory.
To each her own birth story, but I wanted to alert the masses (or the four people reading this) that you can have puppies and rainbows with a natural childbirth! The contrast between the displeasure (to, obviously, put it mildly) of labor and delivery and the elation (to, also, put it mildly) of your healthy baby plopped onto your chest is the definition of pure joy. I don't know, I mean, when your kid is born, you're probably maxed out on joy, no matter how you get there, so maybe it's all moot. But, in any event, my nine cents:
1. It is a GIFT. And if you get it, you feel like you should start changing into spandex in a phone booth.
For real, biggest high imaginable. Runners and drug addicts, step aside. Super hero high. Which might make you want to brag about the experience. But try to remember that it's a gift. Our prenatal care and labor and delivery was at a midwife-run birth center, where they don't do epidurals, etc. But, if you decide you want drugs, before or during labor, you can go across the parking lot to the hospital. (And they don't even judge you. Or, at least they say they don't.) We had a group meeting with other birth center patients called "the 36 week meeting", which is basically an orientation of the hospital, in case you end up there, whether it be your own, or Mother Nature's, decision. The birth center director had been explaining that we should write our birth plans, so that the midwives could try their best to do what we wanted. She mentioned that we probably won't be able to foresee everything, that the midwives will communicate everything they can during labor, and that any decisions they make will be in the best interest of mom and baby. Of course, that managed to piss off one particularly beast-willed mom-to-be. When she demanded that the director confirm right then and there that she would have the option to refuse any treatment they might think necessary, Linda Ann looked understandably irritated. But, she calmly replied, When people are hardcore against any real medical intervention, they've said, 'Well, what would you have done in this situation 200 years ago?' And I have to say, 'I would have watched you and/or your baby die.' Linda Ann: 1; Beast Mom: 0. It's serious business. So if you successfully deliver a baby naturally, consider yourself BLESSED to have felt what I can only describe as the most empowered, invincible feeling ever. That should be enough. You shouldn't feel compelled to judge the moms who didn't get to experience that, regardless of whether it was a choice for them.
2. That hypno-birthing stuff works.
I think. I actually still don't know for sure what it is. But, like a week before my due date, my also-pregnant cousin mentioned that she had been getting into it. I panicked, briefly, feeling like I was back in college and realizing the night before an exam that there was an entire section I hadn't studied. I Googled it (shout out to pregnancy's best friend), and read that it was about calm breathing and imagery. Sure there was more to it, but that much seemed pretty self-explanatory to me, so I just stopped there. And also, I think you're supposed to call contractions "pressure waves" or something. (Two days before my due date, I saw "pressure waves" in some other pregnant girl's blog post, and had to Google what the f--- those were, too. But it didn't really help.) Anyway, I didn't use the fancy jargon, but I did yoga breathing and sang Jack Johnson's 'Monsoon' in my head while picturing waves hitting the beach. I didn't practice it before labor like you're supposed to, so I definitely wavered between Jack Johnson's lyrics and profanity a little. But, I still think that stuff helped.
3. You forget the pain as easily as my husband forgets where things are kept in our house.
Contractions really hurt, no way around it. The only way to describe the pain is to say exactly what it was: It feels like a human is inside you, trying to get out. But even between contractions, I kept forgetting how bad they were. My contractions were really close together from the beginning; they were about five minutes apart right away. (Of course, this meant I was freaking out on the 5-1-1 rule, and got sent home from the birth center a bunch of times. My contractions aren't bad enough yet? Like, they get way worse? ... Yeah. They got way worse.) But still, those short five-, and later three-, minute segments were everything. Like, if I were live-tweeting active labor it'd go like this:
Please, Universe, make sure no one ever live tweets active labor.4. You might want to give up after less than five hours even though you told yourself you'd only give up after, like, 20 hours.
Fortunately our magical midwife somehow knew exactly how I wanted to be coached through labor. (It sure as heck wasn't from my birth plan, because I never did get around to writing that.) At one point, pretty close to the end, I asked her through grimaced teeth, mid-contraction (you can, actually, "talk" through contractions until the end, but it is an odd mix of a yell-ish whimper) what percent of women chickened out and got the epidural, in her estimation. She assured me that my contractions were just about as bad as they were going to get, and from that point on it was just endurance. I don't know if she knew she was lying or not, because they definitely got worse. For all I know it was too late for the epidural anyway, and she thought I'd handle it better if I thought I still had the option, and was choosing not to use it. Either way, I really think my labor was easier without the epidural.
5. You'll know if you poop.
Yea, I mean that as a good thing. I guess. First, let me say how appalled I was when I first learned that you might poop while you're in labor. That was before I was pregnant, and when I expressed this shock to my mom, she laughed in my face. Obviously. Believe me, You won't care. But I was sure I'd be mortified. Mom was right: Did. Not. Care. I did apologize and thank them, though, because who wants to clean up poop? My sister is a nurse. My best friend is a nurse. Nurses are magical. Heroes. Magical heroes shouldn't have to clean poop. I was glad I had the awareness, so I could express a little appreciation.
6. You feel little limbs flail around as you're baby pops out!
Weird? Really weird. Gross? I don't know. But, in the moment, it's magical. (Yes, I know I used that word already. More than once.) Finley's head got stuck in between contractions, and the midwives' eyes were glued to the clock to make sure he would be okay. I knew I had a reason to be nervous. Thank God, another contraction came in time, and I managed to get him out, and feeling his lively limbs was the best moment of my life-- even better than hearing his cute little squeal a second later.
7. Your baby's arrival is like a triple espresso.
I was falling asleep in between contractions. My water had broken just before 2am, we hung out for a little while as I tried to convince myself that I just had lost bladder control, and then we went in to get checked at 4am. We had a stress test, ultrasound to confirm head position, etc., and got home around 7am. Contractions had gotten pretty uncomfortable around then, so there was no more resting for me. I was pooped from the start, and was falling asleep between contractions, which make the worst alarm clock in the history of the world. I remember telling my mom that she better be ready to take care of my baby for the next week because I was going to need to sleep for days and days. But, once that sucker was out and placed on my chest at 5:08pm, I was ready to go out for sushi. And, although I did pass out about 15 minutes after we got home at 10pm that night (another bonus, no hospital stay required, so our dogs didn't think we abandoned them), and although I did nap a lot with my new snuggle buddy the next day, I really never felt that exhaustion you hear about.
8. It's all cake after the baby's out.
Stitching. The thought still makes me cringe. After I had given birth naturally, I told the midwife I wanted local anesthesia for the ONE, SINGLE stitch I needed. She's the sweetest woman, who rolled her eyes at me in a loving way. She practically insisted that I not bother with it. I asked my husband for his opinion. He stared at me blankly. She reminded me that the needle for the local anesthesia would be basically half the pain of the stitch. Well, that was hard to argue with. She was right, it wasn't bad. Also not bad was the afterbirth. I know it's gross, but I just made a big deal about pooping, so, you know. I don't even remember what delivering the placenta felt like, so it couldn't have been bad. Oh, and I never got cramps as my uterus went back to its normal size and position. FYI.
9. Recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed was WAY worse.
I know I shouldn't write that, because it's not always the case, but, of course, none of this is a promise. A natural birth certainly doesn't guarantee minimal tearing. (I just happened to give birth at place that almost never needs to use more than two stitches. I'll say it again, they are magical.) I used the epi bottle every time I went to the bathroom, and I sat down kind of slowly just in case, but I was literally never in pain. Oh, and I didn't even think of using one of those pad-sicle things they tell you to load up your freezer with. (And all those blogs that promised me I would need them scared the crap out of me.)
Every experience is different. That cannot be said enough. But, I wish I had known natural childbirth could be as easy as it was for me. Please forgive me, moms who didn't have it so easy, but I had to write this. If it makes you feel any better, I'm so afraid I used all my luck delivering Fin that we're considering adoption if he wants a sibling.
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