Tales from the Pump is an honest series from a new, 30-something mom — who writes quick posts while pumping for her baby since he isn’t yet latching, and she needs to stop using this time to buy cute things on Amazon since she no longer is getting a full paycheck and blogging doesn’t cost anything and her husband is starting to grow concerned about the number of boxes from Amazon arriving daily — but do you KNOW how many cute frog-related baby things there are on Amazon — do you?
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While the first two weeks of being a mother were interrupted sadly by the passing of my father, I’m focused now on documenting the happier and less tragically eventful moments of this period of my life since my child left the NICU and we were able to bring him home with us. One day I’ll be able to write about the painful situation with my dad, maybe a whole book on it, but today is not that day.
Ethan was brought home from the hospital on Wednesday, 8/8. That was my target delivery date (just because 8/8/18 is an awesome birthday) but with the induction Ethan came just one day after his due date, on 8/5/18, and we were thrilled that after a little help in the NICU to learn how to breathe on his own, he was able to be released to our recovery room on Monday afternoon and prepare for the journey home with mom and dad.
When your baby is healthy, this happens right away after birth, but since our baby went to the NICU my mind was so caught up in my child’s health situation that switching back to a more normal “and now we must take baby home and keep him alive” was a challenging but positive mental flip, especially on so little sleep.
It’s no joke that new mother’s have to recover from labor and take care of a newborn immediately — your body wants to sleep to heal but you can’t because you have to feed your baby every two hours either via breastfeeding or pumping. Even though my body actually fared relatively well after a rough induction, I was still in a lot of pain — maybe even worse pain because immediately after my epidural worse off I was in a wheelchair and then walking laps back and forth from my recovery room to the NICU.
Everything hurt — all of the obvious areas were sore and throbbing and the pain was minimized slightly with the help of massive amounts of ice (thank god for “ice diapers”), but still, pain persisted (and still does.) My legs and hands were more swollen then they had been right before I gave birth, likely due to all the fluids pumped into my body during the long labor and epidural. When I tried to so much as move my hands they throbbed in pain. And, I still wasn’t being allowed Motrin to help the swelling, because somewhere along the line some doctor of pharmacist at Kaiser decided I was allergic to Motrin without telling me (then, suddenly, after complaining about this for a full 48 hours, I was suddenly allowed Motrin with no explanation of what happened. Thanks Kaiser.)
Other than the swelling and expected pains, most disturbingly, my back felt strange, as if I no longer could hold my spine up and it was falling down like a building that lost its support and was being demolished. I worried there was some permanent damage due to the epidural but reminded myself baby was no longer inside and all of my organs and abs had to move back to where they belong to hold me up — and, also, I probably shouldn’t have been standing for that long right after birth… but there was no way anyone was keeping me from my child.
Even sans the pain, without a solid 4 hours of sleep, you quickly lose your mind. My husband surely showed signs of mental breakdown, and I know for sure he did not push a baby out his body.
Before we left the hospital they determined Ethan had a moderate case of jaundice and also had lost 11% of his birth weight so needed to be more closely monitored. That meant that the usual “first doctor’s appointment” that happens two days after birth required a visit in 24 hours. A visit in 24 hours with a 30 minute drive from our apartment on very little sleep seemed rather dangerous to me, but not any more dangerous than it would be on day two.
I don’t remember much about the first night being home from the hospital. The doula I hired, Amelia Protiva, came to our house when we got home. I really didn’t comprehend what I had purchased when I hired her as a doula, but she drove back to our apartment after getting some much-needed coffee for herself and helped us settle in, which was immensely helpful because Dan and I were delirious. We failed to meal prep in advance so she made a quick Whole Foods run and while we slept a bit and she watched Ethan she also made a few quick meals that we could eat when we woke up.
The next morning, Dan and I got into one of those fights you get into when your brain is no longer functioning. I was flipping out about how our medical office doesn’t allow us to call our doctor directly — I just wanted to find out if we should be late for our appointment to get our baby’s blood drawn, or if we should go to the appointment first then get the bloodwork. But Kaiser, which has its pros and cons, had the con of requiring us to call a general line and on that line I kept being asked if my child was having worsening symptoms and I was like I JUST WANT TO FIND OUT IF I SHOULD COME STRAIGHT TO THE APPOINTMENT OR GO TO THE LAB and eventually I just hung up because I was getting no where and we were going to be late to our appointment if we didn’t just leave. The fight, which is hard to even explain, consisted of me saying over and over again that I wanted to change our health insurance immediately and my husband wanting to get us out the door so we weren’t later to our appointment. I finally let it go, as did he, and we hugged each other because we know how ridiculous we both were being and that we were just so tired and out of it and irritable.
I was, and still am, frustrated that breastfeeding isn’t working for us. Ethan unfortunately had formula since day one with his NICU stay and he couldn’t latch once he returned to our recovery room. I managed to do a decent job pumping so I became a pumping + formula mom from the start. I don’t feel like a “failure” because of it, but I’m also determined to make breastfeeding work. Apparently sometimes a child can grow into it over time — and sometimes he can’t. Also there are other issues like tongue ties that can be surgically treated to help — but my doctor’s office doesn’t support that and we’d have to pay for that survey out of pocket if we want to do it (plus I don’t want to have an unnecessary procedure done on our infant if we can avoid it.)
But pumping takes a lot out of you as a new mom. I am supposed to be pumping every two hours for 15 minutes, from the start of the last session to the beginning of the next, night and day, with longer breaks at night and at least 8 sessions a day. That’s a lot of time because 15 minutes easily turns into 30 with setting up and then moving the milk into its proper storage. It makes it impossible to go out and do anything (yes, I have a hand pump but it’s not the easiest to use and it takes a lot longer ) and when I do go out and do anything, like a doctor’s appointment, I mess up my schedule and worry I’ll fail to make enough milk. I want to ensure that my milk production doesn’t decrease because my goal is to primarily milk feed baby for at least the first year… and right now I’m thinking how on earth is that going to happen — but I’m going to try.
Ethan’s first doctor’s appointment was frustrating as well… they paired us with a pediatrician who seemed annoyed by any question I asked. I’m sure she’s a fine doctor but just not the right fit for us. I was annoyed that at Kaiser they have you fill out this whole long survey on an iPad complete with a section for questions you want addressed at the appointment, and then those questions were not even brought up.
All that was focused on was how our child was still jaundiced and that he needed to eat more — which is fine, we needed to deal with this urgent issue, but we still had a lot of questions about our child and I don’t think they were answered. The feeding situation was frustrating too because I thought we had been feeding him a lot of both formula and milk. But he had somehow dropped another ounce from when he left the hospital, which was not good. His bilirubin levels were at 17.8 at this first appointment, which was almost enough to require further treatment (blanket or inpatient), but not quite. We were told to come back the next day for more bloodwork and to see the lactation specialist. So much for getting into a routine and getting any sleep. I really felt uncomfortable with my husband having to drive an hour a day again but we had no choice. I did my best to try to allow him longer chunks of sleep so we didn’t get in a car accident getting to and from the doctor…
Pump session complete. More next time.
life with interest 