carvedangel.net

i detailed where my breastfeeding woes began – in the hospital – in the last post. but i’ve kept trying regardless. to start with, i went to see the lactation consultant at the hospital. (after trying and failing on my own for a few days at home.) she suggested a specific type of bottle, which my father-in-law bought and brought to me during a visit. she also recommended some strategies, like a lot of skin-to-skin contact, etc. so i started feeding him with the specified bottle, mostly with hand-pumped breastmilk. the hand pump was a pain to use, but i knew if i quit pumping, i’d lose my supply. i used it for almost four weeks. anyway, when we went to see the consultant, she felt his tongue tie (his tongue was tied down a bit with tissue and couldn’t extend past his gums) was impeding his ability to stay latched, so we went to get it clipped the next day. the ent guy who clipped him said it was a medium tongue tie and could indeed be keeping him from nursing. also, if we didn’t have it fixed, he could have speech problems later. so clip the excess tissue we did. it didn’t seem to hurt him much, thankfully, because i wasn’t sure i wanted to have it done.

that should have been that, but of course it wasn’t. he still was refusing to latch, so i called the consultant a few days after the procedure and asked how long it might take for him to be able to latch, etc. she said to give him a week or so. but then another problem cropped up, and we had to focus on that, so it ended up being more like two weeks after the clipping that i called her again. (i’ll detail the digestive issues in another post, maybe. like mother like son. in a nutshell, i had to restrict my diet again due to little bear’s apparent cow’s milk allergy.) she said to go ahead and come back in, which we did. during the session, he shrieked until we gave him his bottle – like at home – and managed to completely fill himself up on that. like at home. (he screams and cries until he’s full, and will refuse to even try to nurse when he’s like that.) so once he was full, after a lot of work, he finally latched. then sucked a couple times and let go. she said his latch was fine, but agreed that his impatience was an issue. unfortunately, there is no real answer for that. i’d just have to keep trying. thankfully, no-chan rented me a hospital-grade double pump a couple days beforehand, so at least it was just annoying to pump now and not painful. to my hands and wrists, anyway.

i was starting to lose hope, but at least we were doing everything right. all i had to do now was keep pumping, keep my supply up, and maybe he’d learn. then today my supply started to dwindle. i’ve barely been able to produce enough today to keep up with demand. i’d had literally more milk stored in the fridge than i’d known what to do with, and now i hardly have enough to give him at each feeding. so despite weeks of pumping and going to the consultant and buying expensive and hard to use bottles and restricting my diet and trying to patiently teach little bear to do what should come naturally to a baby, it’s pretty much over. now i’ll have to feed him formula primarily and supplement with breastmilk until it dries up entirely.

this entire ordeal has been really upsetting to me. i had kind of expected my labor and delivery experience to suck, as i’d been warned about that from the get-go. and i knew that breastfeeding could be difficult, but i thought if i tried hard enough, we could do it. i wanted him to be able to do it for health reasons, so the pumping was annoying but at least somewhat rewarding. but i also wanted to do it for bonding reasons, and it really hurts that i won’t have that. i missed out on all the post-delivery bonding stuff because of my surgery, and i can’t have this, either.

[i wrote this about a week ago, and guess i must have intended to say more, but i don't know what... anyway, my supply just keeps getting worse. i bet it'll dry up within the next month.]

okay, i have a lot of catching up to do…

so, first off, little bear’s birth story. i went to bed around 3 am on 9/5, because i couldn’t sleep. at 4ish, i had a dream that i was peeing myself and woke up immediately. i had either just peed the bed (a lot) or my water broke. i jumped out of bed to assess the damage, and as the liquid didn’t stop flowing down my legs, i figured it must be amniotic fluid rather than pee. sohei, who had been jolted out of slumber after the first frantic “uh oh” i uttered upon waking, wanted to know whether it was time. i said i figured it was and pretty much started panicking. he was supposed to wait until tuesday! what if the velamentous cord thing really was a problem and he was bleeding to death? this was about the last thing i wanted to happen. i’d hoped my water wouldn’t break until i was in the hospital and labor was well underway. no such luck. as it turned out, this would be only the first thing to go exactly the way i didn’t want it to.

after changing my underwear twice, and finally figuring out that the flow wasn’t going to stop, i grabbed a towel and we headed out to the car. i was kind of excited but mostly still panicky as we made our way to the hospital. i was dying to know what was going on in there and whether little bear was okay. also, why hadn’t any contractions started? sohei dropped me off at the women’s center and i went upstairs while he parked the car. i signed in, still dripping all over the floor and my shoes, and wondering if i was ever going to stop leaking. (short answer: not for quite a while.) i put a gown on and a hep lock was placed. i was assessed and – after two tries – found to still be at 2 cm dilated, 50% effaced. so no change since my last appointment. the prodding started some contractions going, anyway.

i was moved to the room where i was to labor and deliver, and they pretty much started me on pitocin right away. i wasn’t happy about that, as i wanted a chance to do things on my own, but i was still nervous and they made it sound like the pitocin would make things move a lot faster. fine. i wasn’t allowed to walk around, either, because they said his head wasn’t engaged and if i dilated too much, the cord could slip out or something. so i was stuck in bed on a monitor, with the pitocin flowing. exactly what i didn’t want to happen. still, i was relieved that little bear was okay, and that the most dangerous part for him re: cord was over. sohei and i hung out for a while, and he got some breakfast. i wasn’t allowed anything more than ice chips. i didn’t care that much, because i wasn’t all that hungry anyway. the contractions weren’t terrible, but they hardly stimulated my appetite. sohei’s mum showed up sometime between 8ish and 9, and stayed with us the entire time. i was really glad to have her there. before everything started, i thought i’d want to be alone or just have sohei there, at the most. but that wasn’t how i ended up feeling.

the nurse kept turning up the pitocin and the contractions kept getting worse. i finally ended up begging to be allowed to get up and at least shuffle around my bed, because when i got up to pee, that was the only time the contractions weren’t fucking awful. they said it should be fine at that point, so, with a monitor on my abdomen, a monitor in my uterus, and dragging around an i.v. pole, i stood up and paced a couple of steps back and forth and shifted my weight from foot to foot. it was about all i could do with all that shit strapped to me. it wasn’t long before i started feeling tired and frustrated, what with only having had one hour of sleep and not being able to actually move. so i went back to bed. more time went by, and i had a contraction that lasted at least three minutes non-stop. i told sohei to call the nurse, because the pitocin was killing me. i had been able to deal with the contractions up to that point, but having one that long with no break was too much. she turned it down or off – i don’t remember now, it being a month later – and i got to rest for a bit.

once the pitocin was started again, though, i couldn’t handle it anymore. by that point, i’d been laboring for ten hours, on one hour of sleep. and for the entire ten hours, i’d had the nurse and sohei pushing me to get an epidural every few minutes, and i was just sick of the whole thing. i finally relented and said i wanted the damn epidural. i knew that if i didn’t get to rest soon, i wouldn’t have energy to push when the time came. also, i was tired of people bothering me about just getting the epidural already. the procedure, which freaked me the fuck out to begin with, wasn’t pleasant. i was told i’d feel pressure or maybe a shock. what i felt was like someone thumped me right on the spine, and this weird dull ache followed. after what seemed like a bunch of futzing around, they had me lay back down again and kept asking me all these assessment questions. i guess it all checked out, because everyone finally left me alone. i couldn’t feel the contractions anymore at all. sohei and his mum decided to leave for a bit and let me sleep. i tried, but all this weird shit kept racing through my brain. it wasn’t at all restful and felt a lot more like a bad trip. then some alert started going off on one of my many machines, and no one came to check on me. worried that things were going south with little bear, i panicked and called sohei. he didn’t answer, and i was too foggy to think to do anything other than keep calling him. he showed up a few minutes later and asked the nurse about the beeping, and she said it was nothing and turned it off.

time had pretty much lost all meaning by this point, and i don’t know how much later it was when the epidural started to wear off. i could feel the contractions again, and they started to hurt pretty bad. an anesthesiologist (or some kind of tech, i don’t remember) showed up and fiddled with the catheter going into my back and pushed more medicine. it took the edge off, but i could still feel contractions. i was told that they were getting so intense, i was bound to feel some pressure. since “pressure” seems to be the medical terminology for “pain” i decided that this was just as good as it was going to get and gave up on getting any sort of pain relief from then on. not much later i noticed that i couldn’t feel – or move – my legs at all. i was pretty terrified as this hadn’t happened before. initially, i’d been able to feel it if someone pressed on my legs, and had been able to wiggle my toes a bit, etc. now i couldn’t feel or do anything, leg-wise. i still felt my contractions, though. after a while, they got excruciating. the pitocin was literally cranked up to 11, and the epidural was wearing off completely. i was afraid to ask for more meds, after the whole leg thing, but i couldn’t manage contractions that strong that went on for that length of time. they pushed more meds, which did fuck all this time, and said i couldn’t have any more for at least an hour.

they checked me and i was stuck at 9.5 cm. there was a little lip of cervix that was refusing to budge. but because i was starting to feel a lot of pressure, i could start pushing if i wanted, and the nurse would just hold that part out of the way. i tried pushing a few times and nothing was happening. i took a break, and was rolled over on my side to engage the baby’s head better. he was kind of stuck at an angle or something. then i felt more pressure and we tried again. nothing. the nurse went to get the doctor, and he came back and assessed the situation. then he informed me that everything had pretty much stalled and the baby wasn’t doing much in the way of moving downward. he said the baby was perfectly fine at that point and i could keep trying until he wasn’t, or i could go ahead and have the c-section now. i completely broke down. “i’ve been laboring for 17 hours, and now i have to have a fucking c-section?” (i had already lost any sense of decorum hours ago, when everyone including my mother-in-law saw everything there is to see below my waist.) the doctor wisely chose to leave to let me make my decision. i just sobbed. i didn’t want to keep going and end up hurting the baby. also, i just couldn’t do this anymore. especially when continuing meant they were going to increase the pitocin levels some more. i told sohei to tell the doctor i’d do it. but i made sure everyone was aware that i did not want to be knocked out. i was then told that they’d try not to, but it might be necessary. whatever. this wasn’t going to go the way i wanted it to no matter what anyway.

i’d had the shakes pretty bad off and on for a while, but after getting the surgical-strength dose of epidural meds, they became more like seizures. my teeth were chattering and my arms were jerking around like i was being electrocuted. i knew that the more i tried to stop shaking, the worse it would be, so i tried to relax. ha. they prepped me for surgery and wheeled me to the room, but i was really out of it. i didn’t think epidurals were supposed to affect anything above the waist, but they’d been making me sleepy and my mind all fitful, and this last one just about knocked me the fuck out. as far as i could tell, at least all the shaking was happening up top, so it probably wouldn’t interfere with the surgery. but i really felt like i was pretty much going to die anyway. once they had me all set up, they had sohei come in and sit next to me. the curtain was set up so high, neither of us could see anything from where we were. i felt a whole lot of pushing and shoving, and the nurse anesthetist told sohei to stand up and watch the baby be born. he said he’d rather not, and she pushed him to do it, so he stood up. i was watching him, as i couldn’t see the birth myself, and his face was priceless. “holy shit,” was about all he could manage, and not much later i heard little bear’s unique cry. he was brought to me a bit later, but i couldn’t hold him or anything. so i kissed his little face instead.

sohei left with little bear to do all the stuff they do with babies after they’re born, and he got to cut the cord and all. i wasn’t there for any of it, because i was being put back together. and the epidural was wearing off. it started as shooting chest pain. then i started to feel what was going on below the waist. it hurt. a lot. i started crying out in pain and the nurse asked if i was feeling anything. to which i replied that i was damn near feeling everything, and was promptly knocked out. when i came to, it was all done, and i was wheeled to the recovery room. i finally got to hold my little bear. they had me breastfeed him for a bit, did some other stuff i don’t remember, and we were then sent to my hospital room. at some point, i think sohei and little bear went to the nursery for his first bath, and someone came to try to get me up and walking. if i recall, it was about four hours post-op. i wasn’t ready. i tried, but my legs were still very shaky and wouldn’t hold me. i hadn’t had anything to eat in over a day, and wouldn’t be allowed to eat until sometime the next day. i explained that the epidural must still be lingering and i was shaky from not eating, but maybe we could try again later.

the rest of the hospital stay is kind of a blur. i know the next day we couldn’t wake little bear to eat, and the nurse on call said it was fine, and that he’d sleep a lot to start with. so, despite our attempts, he didn’t eat all day. and though i asked to see the promised lactation consultant, that never happened. the night nurse didn’t think it was okay that little bear hadn’t eaten all day and got me a pump and took him to the nursery for a cup feeding. i hadn’t wanted him to do anything but breastfeed, but she said he’d be too sluggish to try after not eating all day, and that cup feeding shouldn’t hurt anything. so off he went with sohei and the nurse, and i pumped. the next morning, sohei was gone to take care of the dog when all hell broke loose. i was yelled at for not feeding the baby the previous day, and was told that he was jaundiced and if he didn’t start eating, he’d have to be put under a lamp in the nursery. i asked whether i could keep trying to breastfeed, and whether i could at least go sit with him if he was taken away. no and no. and if the jaundice wasn’t cleared up on our checkout date, little bear would have to stay and we’d be leaving without him. by the time sohei got back, i was crying and trying to explain how i hadn’t wanted to starve him, but he just wouldn’t wake up, and the nurse from the day before had acted like it was normal. we had to force-feed little bear bottles all day, and this was the beginning of the end of my breastfeeding career. the rest of our hospital stay was fucking awful. i didn’t want visitors, but had them anyway. my attempts at nursing my son were futile, and i kept pumping while sohei kept giving him bottles. on the morning of our last day, i finally saw a lactation consultant, but by then it was pretty much too late. it was tuesday, and my son hadn’t breastfed since late saturday night, right after he was born. after a lot of struggling, we finally got him to latch, but he wouldn’t stay on long. he didn’t have the patience for it. (nor has he had the patience for alternative feeding methods or further nursing attempts since we got home. he seems to be permanently bottle-spoiled. and so goes any hope of my being able to breastfeed my baby, despite how important that was to me.)

so that’s the story of little bear’s birth, etc. i’m glad he got here safely, and that he’s mostly well. but now i know for sure i will not put myself through that again.