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Saturday, January 21, 2006
Another post about my boobs
I am not an entirely crunchy granola type. I have elements of that in my personality, but it does not define me. Unless of course we're talking about my views on parenthood and what makes a good parent.
For myself (ok, and the lowercase, but his involvement in all of these is obvious and I assure you that my desires are what I want based on what I want for him), I wanted a full term pregnancy.
I wanted a natural delivery without medications. Granted, I wanted this in a hospital with a perinatologist delivering my son, but "natural" nonetheless.
I wanted to breastfeed from the start and never give my child a bottle of formula. I was a breastfed baby who self weaned at 3 years old. I wanted to let my son self wean at the age of his choosing (and if that meant I was offering my breast to a 5 year old before bed and any naps he might take, so be it). Please note that I was not opposed to bottles of breastmilk and intended for my son to have at least one of those per day to keep his daddy involved.
Now, for some brutal honesty. I know that "breastmilk is best." And I know that modern formulas are supposed to be healthy, good alternatives. I know that it's a matter of personal choice, etc. But...and here's where I've been afraid to admit it before...I think mothers who never attempt to nurse their babies at breast are bad mothers. And no, I don't really mean that. It's irrational and I know it isn't so. But when I give my son a bottle? That is how I feel. Like a bad mother.
I've had to give up a lot of things in my quest for a child, and I have admittedly gotten a rather perfect one, but there are some things I didn't want to give up.
Until recently, I have been a pseudo-vegetarian. I say that because it's become a bit ridiculous to classify what I am otherwise. When I met my husband, I was an "ovo-lacto-vegetarian" (I ate eggs, dairy, and veggies). He introduced me to sushi and I became an "ovo-lacto-pescatarian" (same as before but with the addition of fish). Now, because of increased protein needs and utter hatred of things like nuts (they make me gag), I eat lots of turkey and chicken. And I know there are proteins in things like beans and tofu and the aforementioned nuts...they aren't "complete" proteins. Meaning it takes more for your body to get the proper protein chains and they have to be consumed in certain combinations or whatever (or maybe I'm totally not remembering that correctly from when I stopped eating meat as a teenager twelve years ago). So, for my little one, I started eating things I wouldn't otherwise.
And then this week it happened. Even though all the medications I am on had my supply increasing and the supplements all seemed to be working, my son went on a nursing strike. He refuses to latch to the breast even with the nipple shield and after much finagling when I do get him latched, it is a decidedly poor latch (it makes the shield crinkle up around my nipple. It will stay smooth with a good latch). He isn't suckling much there.
Then when I take him off after my maximum try of 40 minutes of trying to get there and actual nursing, I offer him a supplemental bottle. Since mid-week, he now has trouble "finding" the nipple of the bottle once it is in his mouth. He shakes his head back and forth searching it out -- the same way a baby will do when searching for the nipple when latching to breast. And he cries. And I have to get a nipple to touch his tongue or the roof of his mouth just so all while he's moving about in order for him to recognize it's there and latch to the bottle.
Feeding time now makes me cry. A lot. And I hate breastfeeding. I have been trying for nearly 3 months (Monday morning at 4am it will be 12 weeks since his birth) and he still has not mastered nursing. My supply is a delicate bitch and simply won't stick around if he isn't nursing. And he isn't. I can only do this for so long.
Tomorrow I will meet with the lactation consultant. Three weeks ago when I began working with her, I felt that I hadn't given it my best shot yet. But now I feel like I have. I have tried desperately to nurse my son. It is something that I want more than anything.
But at this moment I have very little hope left. I have nothing telling me to persevere and I will be successful. I know he will never be exclusively breastfed, but I had hoped that he would be mostly breastfed. I had hoped to get down to only 1-2 bottles per day necessary. I had wanted to be able to wear my son out in public and nurse him from the safety of a sling (Dee has kindly offered to send me one she has never used). I had visions of sitting beneath a tree this summer overlooking the lake nursing my son. I imagined the freedom I would have to just be out and about without having to worry about carrying around bottles and keeping them from spoiling or lugging water to mix them up on the fly.
It's still what I want. I still don't want to give up. But I feel like yet another of the things that I felt I needed to do for me to be a good mother is being taken from me. I wanted to have that special bond with my son, that special thing that nobody else could do for him but me. And the truth is, I don't. Since this is my only chance, I felt like I deserved it. And I gave the effort all that I have. But I just can't get him to latch and it just isn't working.
I think I may have to give up. And my heart is broken. It's so broken that today I haven't fed my son at all -- I try to nurse and when he won't, I pass him off to Mr. W to give him a bottle and I leave the room.
I have an emergency appointment with my LC tomorrow afternoon. Maybe after the visit with her I will feel better about the situation, but I find it highly unlikely. Be prepared folks. Either I'm going to be full on enthusiastically telling everyone they should persevere no matter what because IT WILL WORK... or I'll be depressed to all hell at having to fold away yet another of my dreams of what motherhood would be for me.
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Friday, January 20, 2006
Changing fonts
Sunday my little lowercase weighed 5 lb 8 oz. Today he went in for a weight check and a vaccine. He now weighs 6 pounds even.
To quote Mr. W: He's still a lowercase, but now he's in a different font. He's gone from 6 point to 8 point.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Expert advice needed!
Mr. W and I are taking the lowercase to visit his grandparents (there is no logical, sound reason they won't come to us, but since his birth they have been here a total of two times and his grandmother has never held him and touched his skin only once). It's not so much that we're going to see them as it is that Mr. W moonlights as the network engineer for a real estate agency in the county in which his parents live and needs to do some work there.
Now, the tricky part. My mother-in-law is slightly insane and loves to shop. She decided that our pack and play wasn't good enough for her grandson (you know, the baby she won't touch) to sleep in at her home. So, she bought a port-a-crib for him to sleep in there. She went all out and bought a full bedding set for it as well.
While this is nice, it poses quite a problem. They have quite a large house. The lowercase will sleep in the room with Mr. W and myself on the second floor. The family room where daytime hours are spent is on the first floor in another wing of the house. They have no other baby furniture. They will be offended if I bring my pack and play. My baby still sleeps most of the time and will need to be in bed.
This means that either I will have to take my monitors and be far away from my son while we are there or spend all of my time in the bedroom and not associate with anyone else (not a good option as they will be offended at that).
I decided that I'll buy a sling and wear my baby while he sleeps so that he is with me and nobody will be offended. But I don't know what makes a sling "good." I had initially registered for this one, but that isn't based on any type of research, just that I wanted a sling and that was the one that I found at Babies'r'Us. But is this one any better? Or this one? Or from Babystyle, this one or this one? Or is there another one entirely?
We're likely going next weekend (January 27-29) so I need your words of wisdom right away to ensure that it gets here in time. In fact, I'd like to order it by Friday of this week. Be very specific in your comments on which one is best, why you like it, what makes it better, etc. Also, if there is one that just won't work for someone who is only 5'0" and has a baby who is 5 1/2 lb (yes, he reached 5 lb 8.5 oz on Sunday!) or one that will work better for that...let me know that too. If any of them come with accessories that are "must haves" or things to avoid (I've heard both about the support pillows that can be placed inside the sling for newborns) tell me as I'll order that at the same time.
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Friday, January 13, 2006
Housekeeping
I realized I never posted the end of the Great Cell Phone Caper.
There's a really good reason for that. I just did not want to believe that the end had actually come.
You see, I like to think that even those who live in the most poverty-stricken and crime filled neighborhoods are truly good people. I want to think the best of everyone. Quite frankly, I do think the best of everyone which is likely why I find myself hurting much of the time (many of you probably remember that when I'm working, I'm an elementary teacher in the inner city).
After the phone call from the boy who has my phone, we were fairly confident that he would, in fact, return the cell phone. Honestly, why else would he have called to tell us he isn't that kind of person and how truly sorry he was that we were going through all that we have.
And then? He didn't return the phone. We waited a day or so and ordered a new phone. Ver1z0n overnighted the phone to us and I got it yesterday at noon. It's been activated and at some point the voice mail will change to stop saying that the boy has stolen the phone and to please urge him to return it.
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Thursday, January 12, 2006
Adjusted age: Zero
It has been ten weeks and three days since my son was born. He is now officially developmentally zero.
In many ways he is a typical newborn but in so many others he is lightyears beyond that. Of course, in some ways, he is behind the typical newborn.
He still basically just eats and sleeps, however he has a few times a day where he is alert and exploring his environment with his hands and eyes. Those alert times last anywhere from an hour to (occasionally) two or three hours -- on those occasions he won't sleep again until after his next feeding.
He can support his head better than most newborns that I've seen and every now and then will roll from his belly to his back or his back to his belly. The rolls they are rare and I believe will eventually become nonexistent.
He responds to noises, to light and dark, to toys placed in front of him.
But he is behind typical newborns in other areas, particularly in size. He weighs just over 5 pounds now. He is only now starting to outgrow some of his preemie clothes.
He is behind in his ability to feed. He simply doesn't get breastfeeding, and as a result my supply is quite low. I'm taking medications and herbal supplements in order to correct the problem and am using a supplemental nursing system (a bottle that clips to my clothing with a tube that is inserted into his mouth along with my nipple; the system works on negative pressure such that when he is getting milk from me, none comes from the supplemental tube and when I am not actively letting down, he is getting milk from the bottle. This is an all around good thing because even when I am not directly supplying his milk, I am getting the stimulation that is required to cause me to produce more milk. It may allow my body to catch up and cause the supplemental system to be unnecessary, or it may not. Either way, I am able to feed my son at my breast.)
In an odd twist, I find myself slightly saddened at the loss of my teeny-tiny little man. Yet at the same time, I am ecstatic at the development that I see on a daily basis and find myself looking forward to what is to come.
In short, his story is very similar now to that of any other premature baby. He is developmentally ahead, behind, and on target with other age zero babies. What the future holds, I don't know. I only know that I can't wait to get to know this miraculous little boy.
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Sunday, January 08, 2006
The saga continues
I am in shock. My faith in humanity has been somewhat restored.
I was on the phone with my grandparents tonight when I answered a beep. The caller was my cell phone thief. He said he got my number because it showed up on the caller id of my cell phone when we called it while searching the house for it.
He was well spoken and polite. He told me that he couldn't get a cell phone on his own because of credit issues (he's about 16 or 17 and thus has no credit yet). Because of that, his cousin told him that she would just get him a phone on her plan and then he could pay her for it. He already paid her for the phone and thought he just had to pay her the monthly usage for the phone.
He said the phone was brand new and appeared to have never been used (apparently his cousin erased my phone book and the pictures that I had stored on the phone). And he said he wasn't going to return it because he thought it was his friends messing with him. He heard my son crying and apologized for waking him up and felt bad because he knows what it's like to have a family member in the neonatal/pediatric icu as his niece was there, too. In fact, he said he thought he knew who we were because he had been in to visit his niece. I have a feeling that he was one of the very large African-American family who were in the waiting room a lot of the times that I was in there making calls on my phone and that he recognized my voice when I answered the phone.
He wanted us to know that he was not a thief, that he had never stolen anything in his life and was not the kind of person who would do something like that.
And he assured us that he would drop the phone off for Mr. W at the newspaper office tomorrow morning. I'm realy hoping that he's telling the truth, because I just so want to believe in this boy...in the good of humanity. In the fact that there are decent people in neighborhoods where the police assume that all young people are gang members and refuse to get involved (I mean, who knows, if they did get involved maybe the whole gang violence problem that resulted in 54 homicides in 2004 in this relatively small city would ease up and eventually just go away?).
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Friday, January 06, 2006
A thief in the NICU
Before I launch into a tirade, I'll give you the goods...the stuff you want to hear. The lowercase update.
My little man is now huge. He had his two month physical and vaccinations. He weighed in at a whopping FIVE pounds and is 18 1/4 inches long. To most of you this seems small, and for a two month old it is. Hell, for a newborn it is. But, we are still a full week away from his due date. He will turn "zero" on Thursday, January 12. We're celebrating with cupcakes and ice cream. In two weeks we have to return to the pediatrician for a weight check and his Prevnar vaccine -- the office had run out today and didn't expect the shipment in until late afternoon. Obviously, with his size and his history of temperature instability, they didn't want to put any more stress on him and agreed to let it wait for two weeks.
Now...the tirade. And oh, what a tirade!
On Dec. 20, I remember using my cell phone in the lobby of the hospital during the nursing change of shift. After that, I don't remember using it specifically, though a call from my phone does show up on my parent's caller ID on Dec. 22 (the day we brought the lowercase home).
I always keep my phone in the back zippered compartment inside my diaper bag (along with my wallet and iPod) and so I assumed that is where it has been for the last two weeks. Two nights ago, we decided it would be a good idea to charge it, so we went to my diaper bag and pulled out my wallet and my iPod and realized the phone was GONE.
We called it and it went straight to voicemail. We searched our coat pockets, closets and both of our cars (even though mine hadn't been driven since late November). We checked the online statement and the last call it showed was on December 20. Obviously, it hadn't been stolen. If it was lost outside the home, some kind soul turned it in to hospital security.
Yesterday afternoon I called the NICU. I spoke to my favorite PCT (similar to an orderly) and she hadn't seen it but transferred me to the charge nurse who also hadn't seen it. Because we were in an annex of the NICU during part of his stay, I had them transfer me to the PICU. The charge nurse on that floor hadn't seen it either but put up a sign telling anyone to call me if they found my phone (a brand new $300 camera phone -- GAH!). Then I had them transfer me to the information desk in the main lobby as the last calls I remembered placing were from there. They said they keep lost items at the desk for 24 hours before sending them to hospital lost and found which is housed in another building. Again my call was transferred.
For a split second, we thought my phone had been found. One was turned in on December 20. It was a flip phone. It was silver. It was an LG. Mine was a Motorola.
Yesterday evening, Mr. W decided to call it again. Some boy answered my phone. He said that it was his. Mr. W was taken aback and hung up. Then he got mad and called it again. He asked the boy where he found my phone, only now the boy effected a spanish accent and pretended to speak very little english.
We called Ver1z0n and were told that the theft/loss insurance we had taken out was never entered on our plan and so we were liable for all charges. The statement that we saw online was the DECEMBER billing cycle. As of yesterday, the kid with my phone had gone above my 600 free minutes and racked up over EIGHT HUNDRED dollars in charges. That we are responsible for. Because we have no insurance on the phone. Even though we thought we did.
We then called my voice mail and found that the thief had been getting lots of mail on my phone. Most of the calls were from his grandmother asking him to bring her things. So...we called her. And we asked her what her grandson Will's last name is. She gave us his full name and his address. In the WORST part of the city. We told her where it was lost and she went on a tirade about what a low thing her grandson did, stealing from someone with a baby in ICU. We told her we wouldn't press charges or ask for any money for his bill if she could get her grandson to turn the phone in to security at my husband's office (the local newspaper). She said that she would try. She also told us that he said he had been given the phone as a gift by "some fat girl."
Today, when we called his grandmother, she said that he told her he would not return the phone. She instructed us to press charges so that he could finally be taught a lesson. She said she was tired of his nonsense. He also told her the truth. He said, and this is a direct quote:
I stole it from some white lady's purse in the ICU with all the sick babies.
Mr. W called the police to file a report and they highly reccomended we didn't. When he told the officer the boy's name and address, he said that it would be hard to prove and repeatedly said that if he is a gang member you don't want your name and address on file, because if he is a gang member your personal safety is at risk over a few hundred dollars, and if he is a gang member you just don't want to deal with that on top of everything else, because, you know, if he is a gang member your wife and child might not be safe either.
Apparently...he's a gang member. And he has my fucking phone. And I can't do anything about it. He can't be held accountable because he's in a gang and it's just not safe. So, he gets to do what he wants when he wants and to whom he wants with no consequences. Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair.
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