The Breastfeeding Dilemma

This week I reached a crossroads in breastfeeding Harper: start pumping more times a day, including the middle of the night, or start supplementing with formula. For almost a month now I've had to use some of my frozen supply in order to have enough for her bottles each day at day care. Most days I go to the day care to nurse at noon so I only need to send two six ounce bottles instead of three, but even so I generally can only pump enough for one of those bottles. I knew my use of the frozen supply wasn't sustainable, but on Wednesday this week I counted the remaining frozen packets in my freezer and realized I only have enough for two more weeks.

When I mentioned this dilemma to Harper's doctor at her six month appointment he said, "Well, you really shouldn't go more than six hours, so you'll just have to pump in the night."

"Yeah right," I thought. For five months I've been counting the days until the baby will sleep all the way through the night, and then once she does, you're telling me I have to keep getting up at 3am to pump? Only a man could tell you that with a smile on his face and a tone that says, "See, problem solved!"

When Harper first started skipping that last nighttime feeding at 3am, I did have to get up and pump because my body was used to needing milk at that time, but within a week and a half I could make it until 6am when she woke up for the day. I enjoyed about three weeks of a full night's sleep, but my milk supply definitely took a hit. And so here I am, weighing my options of re-establishing a 3am pumping or just making a gradual switch to formula.

I'm a little surprised at how reluctant I feel about making that switch. It's hard to know that if I wasn't working and relying on pumping, we could continue breastfeeding without any problems. At the same time, I'm really, really, really looking forward to being able to wear my regular bras again. Nursing bras have to be the most irritating things on the planet. They're itchy because they're cheaply made, they either make your boobs look even larger or they have no support, they gap at the sides, they have gigantic unattractive padded straps...that's just a separate post in itself. And of course pumping is no walk in the park either, particularly when I'm traveling to client sites for meetings or otherwise needing to be away from the house for more than two hours. I've pumped many times in my car in the corner of a parking lot somewhere, hunkered down with blankets over the windows hoping no one wanders by. Other than one guy in a Target parking lot who I think took a picture of me with his camera phone, I've succeeded. Most definitely not ideal, but what else can you do?

Anyway, I surprised myself and decided to make an attempt at the midnight pumping and have done it the last three nights...and then spent 45 minutes lying in bed trying to get back to sleep, adding up to about an hour of lost sleep. Harper has been waking up coughing several times between 2 and 5am thanks to a bad cold, which has led to an overall night of a few hours of sleep between hours spent awake. While I know Harper's cold is temporary, the experience hasn't left me feeling very committed to the midnight schedule. I figure I'll give it a try for a week, and if it's not making a significant impact on the amount I get for her bottles, it'll be time for formula. She will have had breastmilk for seven months at that point, and while I know that it would be better if we could make it a year, I'm not ready to turn pumping into my full time, round-the-clock job. Plus it would be great if there were no more incidents with camera phones in parking lots.

Milestones

Last week Harper reached a couple of baby milestones. First, she slept through the night on Friday. She's been sleeping about ten hours for months now, but since she goes to sleep at 6pm, that means our "morning" has been starting somewhere between 4 and 4:30am. Friday night, however, she slept from 6:15pm to 6:15am. That would have been wonderful, except that I fell into the universal parent trap of "It's 4:30 and she's not up yet." First I thought, "This is great, she's going to sleep longer, so I can too!" which was followed by "It's 5am and she's not up yet. Oh my god, it's 5:30 and she's not up. Now it's 5:45. 5:50. Doesn't she need to eat? 5:57. She's actually going to sleep through the night! 6:03. How much longer can she go? 6:07. When should I just wake her up? 6:12. Don't get up and stand in her room. She's fine. 6:14. Don't get up. 6:15. Thank god, she's awake!"

For those nursing moms reading this, you'll also understand that this meant 12 hours of no feedings, so the last two hours weren't exactly comfortable, and there was a parallel conversation in my head of "Oh my god it's 5am and she's not up yet. How much longer can I go? Should I pump? If I pump now she'll be up wanting to eat 10 minutes later." Once it was 5:30 and I'd upgraded from baseballs to softballs and lying on my side was no longer an option, I finally did get up. I look forward to the days when sleeping in isn't such a complicated and stressful event...and might even be defined as sleeping past 6:15am. For now, though, 6:15 will work, especially since the 12-hour sleep only lasted for the one night, and the past two nights we've been back to starting our mornings at 4:30.

In the last few weeks we've started giving Harper some rice cereal in the evenings, and on Friday she finally figured out how the spoon-and-goo process was supposed to work (which maybe contributed to the big sleep). Last night she had her first taste of squash, which went over much better than I thought it would. At first she was confused and just held the food in her mouth, staring at us with big eyes that said, "What did you just do to me?"

After a few bites, though, she figured it out again and started "helping" with the spoon, which included sucking on it like a bottle and shoving all her fingers into her mouth after the squash. Then she started playing and waving her arms around, which helped us achieve the milestone of "baby needs a bath after feeding."

 

 

And finally, she'd had quite enough squash and tried very hard to arch her way out of her infant seat. The double arms and legs flailing caught Joe and his loaded spoon by surprise, which led to the next milestone of "parent also needs a bath after feeding."

After we'd cleaned her up and gotten her pajamas on, she threw in one last achievement for the day: a sit-up. I'm not sure I can say she sat up on her own, because she only lasted about three seconds once she was upright, but while she was lying on Joe's lap (supposedly going to sleep) she managed to do a sit-up all by herself. I saw her sit up and I looked at Joe with a mix of wonder and frown, just in case he had propped her up to see the football game when he was supposed to be putting her to sleep. He saw the frown and raised his hands above his head to say, "Look Mom, no hands" and prove that she was doing it all on her own. She did it one more time, and then it was off to her bedroom with Mom for the real bedtime. Besides, someone needed to spare her the pain of watching the Vikings tank.

The Monster Returns

Harper made it through my second solo weekend without incident, despite my prediction of three new teeth and another round of sleepless nights. She slept like her usual angelic self and we had a much better time together because of it.

This weekend, however, she decided to show Dad what he'd missed out on the first weekend he was away. Last night she was up about once an hour, kicking, coughing, and sneezing out giant green boogers. Are boogers a symptom of teething? I don't know how she can be just fine all day, and then suddenly develop a nose full of snot 20 minutes before bedtime. I'll lay her down to eat one last time before bed and suddenly she's snorting and wheezing through a plugged up nose, and instead of falling asleep in my lap, she'll fall asleep only to startle herself awake coughing on a booger she inhaled with a deep breath. Where do these things come from? And how do they know it's bedtime?

After several rounds with the snot-sucker I finally retrieved some of what was in her nose, but new stuff quickly replaced whatever I removed. I think Harper actually likes the snot-sucker. She smiles whenever I get it out and holds very still while I stick it in her nose. While I appreciate the complicity, I'm not sure it's healthy to like having something stuck up your nose. I see disappearing M&Ms, raisins and other small objects in our future...

Long story short, she seemed to have some of the same symptoms she had two weekends ago, when the pointy little tooth corner appeared. I haven't been able to see anything new in her mouth today, though, so maybe the corner just grew a little--or thought about growing.

She had her four month check-up today, where we got official confirmation that we have a long, skinny baby: slightly above average for length (25.5 inches) and slightly below average for weight (13.5 lbs). Despite a pretty sleepless night our little monster was very happy and talkative for the doctor. So much so that he said "She's a very bonding baby. I think she'll have a high EQ." I can see how a smiling baby might lead you to say that, but other than that, I'm not sure I really understand the diagnosis. She grabs people's fingers and attempts to shove them in her mouth...does that make her friendly? Then again, maybe my perspective is just tainted because I was awake half the night sucking her boogers. After all, she did smile at me as I did it.

The Teething Monster

How is it that babies know the exact moment when you have finally returned to your bed after being up with them in the middle of the night? How can they consistently choose the exact moment when you've gotten comfortable and started drifting off to sleep to start crying again?

It's not like there's some clear explanation, like "it takes me 1.5 minutes to walk from her room back to my room, another minute to get a drink and lie down, another 1.5 minutes to fix the covers and get comfortable, and another 30 seconds to fall asleep because I'm so darn exhausted." Because after that scenario plays out more than twice, you start thinking, "Hey, she's figured this out, so I'm just going to stand here at her crib and catch her at it." So you wait and watch, looking for signs that your peaceful sleeping babe is starting to wake up and turn into a wailing monster. But nothing happens. You wait five more minutes, and still nothing happens.

So you sneak to the door and wait there. Nothing. You go to the bathroom. Nothing. You go down and put the wash in the dryer. Nothing. You go stand in the door to your bedroom. You stand next to your bed. You sit on your bed. You lie down but don't fix the covers. You lie down and put just your toes under the covers. You pull the covers to your knees. You hold the monitor against your ear and listen for any little rustlings. Nothing. Finally, you rest your head and close your eyes. You take a deep breath, sigh, and let your whole body relax. Then you open your eyes and grab the monitor. Nothing. "Ok," you think, lying back down, and before you even realize you've closed your eyes and let your guard down, "WAHHHH!"

This past weekend was my first solo weekend with my dear little child. After over a month of sleeping through the night, the very first night that Dad was gone she woke up at 11:30 pm and refused to fall asleep again. After two hours of rocking she finally slept...for 45 minutes, and then was ready to eat. We repeated this scenario on a three hour loop for the rest of the night. And Saturday night. Sunday I finally realized that she had a tooth coming in: just one pointy little corner sticking out of her bottom gum. This most likely explained the midnight wakefulness and vast amounts of drool we'd been experiencing, but it didn't really solve my problem.

I talked to my sister (the wise and experienced parent of two) and she suggested infant Tylenol and the motorized swing. I said, "Yeah, but I feel bad leaving her strapped in the swing in the living room when I'm in the bedroom, and I can't sleep very well on the couch."

"Bring the swing into your room," she said. I had to pause and just breathe at the sheer genius of this suggestion.

"Why couldn't I think of that?" I asked. "How did I go two nights without thinking of that?"

"Because you're exhausted," she said. And it was true.

So, I tried it, it worked, and we both finally slept. Then Dad got home, I told him all about it, I cried, I took a nap, he prepared for a sleepless night on duty to give me a break--and she slept for ten hours straight. It seems the tooth is just hanging out now as a pointy little corner and not making any further progress. But Joe leaves tomorrow morning for another weekend away, so most likely she grow two more this weekend and I'll have something to tell you about when he gets back and I've recovered enough to post about it.