AP Baby

Lately, other moms are driving me nuts. I am on no high horse; I'm well aware that mothering is a journey we are all on, and most of us are trying to do our best for our kids. Some, I'm happy to judge, like Racist Mom (who believes that the 9th Ward destruction was really "no big deal"), and Sexist Mom. But mostly, no, I don't judge. I'm not perfect. I have yelled, cried, sobbed, ran into the bathroom and locked myself in while my daughter cried for me, I've done all kinds of things to cope with being a mom. I do the best I can, and I try harder when I screw it up (which is often).

But... screaming it out?

First, I do disagree with CIO (cry it out) as a parenting method for most kids. I know that for some kids it works great; they cry for a few minutes and then settle down and go to sleep. Excellent! I don't have a problem with that. But most parents hear "cry it out" and believe that they should let their child cry for as long as it takes. (Which is, btw, not at all what Ferber recommends!) So you wind up with situations like this one.

Today in preschool my daughter was all enamored of one of her friends, little 2 year old G, and her big sister, 4 year old M. They were loving on each other, hugging each other, playing together, and my daughter was just in love. She was following them around with stars in her little eyes. I have baby lust anyways, so I said something about how Bella obviously wants a sibling just as much as I do. Her mom said "Yeah, good luck with that!" I replied with something about how Bella has been really challenging and I hope my next child is a bit easier, and asked if G (her second) was easier?

She rolled her eyes and said NO, G is *worse.* Would I believe that she didn't get any sleep the night before because G screamed all night long?

She told me that G screamed and screamed and screamed for three solid hours before she lost track. But that she can't give in because "then it would all be downhill!" (As if it could get worse? How exactly could it get worse?)

I was dumbfounded, and rendered speechless. Not a state I am used to. I really like this little girl, G, and she is adorable! Bella likes her and was saying her name. So it felt personal to me in a way that hearing stories of babies on the internet does not. I stammered out something about us co-sleeping, and the mom responded that she did co-sleep with M, but couldn't with G. "It's not fair to M, you know? Since she is not allowed to do it anymore, I don't see how we can let G do it."

But it's FAIR to let the little one scream alone in a crib all night?

What is fair about that?

I myself have succumbed to the "You're just not being firm enough" monster of popular parenting several times myself, always to have it blow up in my face. Bella doesn't respond well to strong arm tactics. There are more than one way to do things. So why do so many parents paint themselves into a corner like this? Why is this the hill she wants to die on?

I was still thinking about all of this while I put Bella down for her nap. We've been working on her night time sleep and it has gotten much better this week, but naps are still kind of askew. I held her snuggled up close to me while she had a bottle. She lay there staring dreamily off into space and very gently stroking my eyelashes. She has never done that before, but it was pretty amazing. Then when she clearly was unable to fall asleep, I threw her on my back and pulled out the vacuum. Within three minutes, she was out like a light, and has been for the past two hours.

Why not invest the time to parent your child to sleep instead of leaving them to scream? Let's say that it takes 45 minutes of your day. That is still better than hour upon hour of screaming, isn't it?

This has certainly given me a new perspective into my own child's sleep woes.

I don't get it. And this is one of the very few times when I'm glad to say that my way is better.

Posted by JoAnna at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I'm having my second post-baby cycle, and it has just knocked me on my ass. I slept for three hours during Bella's nap today, which is *nuts* for me. I'm just wiped. So tonight, after her bath, when Bella asked to go on Daddy's back, I thought.. YES! Score! They went out for a walk, and I was left to my own devices. Peace and quiet, for a change. It was almost 10 pm, so I felt perfectly reasonable to assume that Bella would be sleeping when they returned. I pulled out the laundry that needed folding, ordered The Boleyn Girl on OnDemand, and settled in to enjoy myself when...

...

Yep, they came back. "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii," echoing up through the hallway.

My husband said she wouldn't stop asking for me.

Er... and that matters to me HOW exactly? I don't think he gets, sometimes, that she spends All. Day. Long. asking for him. But he is at work, there is no option. Why not pretend I'm at work? *sigh*

Sometimes I just have a hard time shifting gears, and tonight was one of those times. Of course she immediately is getting into the laundry (she "helps" by picking up my nice neat piles and tossing them willy nilly), climbing all over me, wanting to nurse, wanting this and that and to watch Elmo and crocodiles and.. ARGH. Finally I get up, start straightening up, having decided to wear/vacuum her down.

I get to vacuuming, figuring it will only take a few minutes.

Er...

Well, 20 minutes later I am dripping with sweat, but she wakes up as soon as I turn off the vacuum. I decide that's ok, because she should really go to sleep on her own anyways now that she is wound down and sleepy. Put her in bed and she wants to nurse, she wants mama, she wants this and that. I nurse her for a minute (sometimes I think this nursing is like her way of proving that mama is really there with her), give her her bottle, and hope for the best. A few minutes later, thinking she is sleeping, I try to sneak away and...

She wakes completely.

So now she is out being driven down by my husband.

But you can't say I didn't try!

Of course now it is too late to watch the Boleyn Girl if I want to be functional in the morning.

Posted by JoAnna at 04:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up a few weeks ago with my wrist in excruciating pain. I figured I'd slept on it weird, and ignored it. It has gotten progressively worse and worse, to the point where the pain was waking me up when I was sleeping. Yikes! It's hard having a hurting wrist when you have a 19lb baby who wants to be held all the time!

I finally went and bought a brace, took some advil, and iced it. I made an appointment to see a sports medicine doctor. (All the orthopedists I can find are orthopedic surgeons.) By the time I got to the doctor appointment, it was feeling a little bit better.

So I'm holding Bella on my lap and talking to this doctor about my wrist, and he tells me that tendonitis is common in new mothers. Then he says that it probably has to do with the fact that I am still breastfeeding, causing my hormones to be out of whack. Then he made a very big deal of saying "Now, *I* am not telling you not to breastfeed!" It was so funny, in hindsight, I wish I'd said... "It doesn't matter if you are!" After all I've been through, as if I'd let a little tendonitis scare me! HA! I laugh at your tendonitis!

But, hormones causing tendonitis? Breastfeeding causing tendonitis? Man they will grasp at any straw to imply moms should stop breastfeeding, won't they? Funny, I thought it was all my time online using a MOUSE that was causing me tendonitis.

I'm back to wearing my brace, icing it and using advil, and it's taking forever to get better. The other funny thing is that he offered me a cortisone shot, which I have no idea if it is safe during breastfeeding. (I'm going to find out.) But he assured me it was safe, while telling me that advil was unsafe. I know for a fact that ibuprofen is safe to take during breastfeeding, so this guy just heaped cluelessness upon cluelessness during my appointment.

But at least now if I decide I want the shot, I can go get it!

Posted by JoAnna at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been told recently that, "Formula Kills!" What a horrible thing to say. Formula is not perfect. But we are blessed to live in a time when we have a viable alternative for mamas like me whose babies WOULD DIE without another source of milk. The only reason I'm sitting here typing is because I'm chained to the breastpump popping domperidone and doing everything I can to get every last drop of breastmilk in my baby. But apparently it's all for naught as FORMULA KILLS.

Argh. A little compassion, people. Not only that, but a little REASON. Formula is certainly better than giving a newborn cow's milk and karo syrup which is what used to be done.

You can be a lactivist without shoving hate out into the world. To me, being a lactivist is about loving our babies as best we can, and showing other moms how great it is by example. NOT by trying to shove lactivism down their throats by implying that they will KILL their babies if they don't breastfeed.

Here's a photo of my beautiful baby nursing with the lact-aid. Which has either formula or breastmilk in it, depending.

Posted by JoAnna at 05:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm participating in the cyber nurse-in on Myspace...

Posted by JoAnna at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is getting old.

You know I really do understand why interactions with doctors could turn people against modern medicine altogether and make you into a crazy anti-vaxer running around trying to cure the world's ills with sodium ascorbate. I really, really do.

I have been feeling like no one is listening to me ever since Bella was born, and I am still feeling that way. Not a single care provider that I am seeing gives the slightest bit of validity to anything I say. I get blown off, brushed off, and pushed aside with every single concern I raise about every single thing.

At my gyn appt yesterday, he looked at my swollen infected yoni and mumbled something about sitz baths while trying to run out the door. No, I said. We tried sitz baths. This is an infection and responded very well to clindamycin, but clindamycin was making me very sick. Please prescribe me something else.

He finally gave me a scrip for zithromax, but said if I just waited it would probably go away. "Then why did it respond to the clindamycin so well?" Ah, said he. Because it is an infection. "YES, exactly." Idiot! Why not just trust me that I know that my body is not ok? Why do people keep looking at this swelling which is causing me intense pelvic pains and making me scared for my fertility, and telling me "Well, you had a baby." Yes, I had a baby. I would like to have more! Please help me NOT be infected anymore!

My midwife said the same thing, along with blowing off my concerns about my babies weight gain. Why not trust me that I know my body and baby are not ok?

My doctor told me my baby needed energy healing instead of food, and that my diet wasn't good enough. Yeah, my diet is not the greatest, but it is more than adequate. Just because I can't tell you every meal I've had for the last three days (Hello? New tired mama!) doesn't mean I haven't eaten sufficiently to make milk. Why not just trust me that I know what my body needs? And maybe I should see an energy healer too. I asked if my low thyroid might be an issue (yes, it might be, many people with thyroid problems have problems with milk supply), and she totally blew me off. "No, just make sure you're eating enough." Eating enough! I have never been fatter in my life than I am right now. I am not even attempting to diet due to fear of my milk supply. I'm EATING PLENTY!

Today at the endocrinologists I got to feel scorn heaped upon me for listening to lactation consultants, and then felt like the floor dropped out from under me when I said that there were resources online discussing PCOS, low milk supply, and use of metformin to resolve it. You know what she said? Are you ready? Pro-vaxer that I am? Believer in sound medical research that I am? "Well, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I will look it up, but I need solid, peer-reviewed studies to believe it." HA! She thought I was a whacko anti-vaxer!

She went on to say... "The problem is sleep. You're not getting enough sleep." Huh? I get plenty of sleep! More, probably, than most first time moms! Why not just TRUST ME that I know how much sleep my body needs? Why not trust evolution to not create a situation where a tired new mama cannot feed her baby! Why not recognize the fact that even if my diet were pure crap, even if I were starving to death, even if I hadn't slept all week, my body would still make feeding my baby a priority... if it were working right... and take from me to give to her!

Plus, she told me that women with PCOS do not have low supply problems. And that I can't use a scale to tell how much my baby is getting at a feeding, because a fluid ounce does not equal an ounce of weight. Well, dammit.. I just weighed a fluid ounce and it does too. Perhaps not on a super duper scientific scale, but on my special scale which counts tenths of an ounce, it weighs exactly one ounce. That may not be perfectly scientific, but it is certainly sufficient to get an idea of how much volume a baby is taking in!

I am so tired of people not listening to me, I am about to blow. All I want is just one care provider who will listen to my concerns and say, "OK. Let's figure out what is going on," instead of trying to tell ME what is going on with my body WITHOUT LISTENING TO ME.

I know there are good doctors out there... I just don't know where!

Posted by JoAnna at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my flaky pediatrician recommended I take Bella to an energy healer. According to her, the reason Bella was not gaining weight is because we have some unresolved "issues" surrounding... well, something. Maybe the birth, maybe something else. But an energy healer is what she recommended.

For a six week old baby still a pound below her birthweight.

There is so much about this that pisses me off, I hardly know where to begin. First of all, why not cut this complex Gordian knot and just find out if the baby is, you know... getting enough to eat?!?!

Next... Bella was being herself at the visit. Herself, meaning, alert, beautiful, wide-eyed and happy, smiling and rapt with fascination at the world. Full of pep and vim. How can you say that baby is unhappy?

The catch-22 here is, of course, that if my baby *were* unhappy and screaming all the time, I would've known much sooner that she wasn't getting enough to eat. As it was, she was so darned happy *all the time*... as long as I didn't put her down (which for me was not such a big problem)... that I had no idea she was hungry the whole time.

Of course now that we are supplementing, Bella is gaining normally. There is not a thing wrong with this child, and she certainly doesn't seem traumatized in any way, by any thing. I have to wonder what she *would* be traumatized by. She has not had a single moment to cry alone since she was born. The few times she's woken up alone recently (when I've snuck out of bed with her to go pump), I've come in to check on her and found her lying there smiling at the ceiling fan, happy as a clam. This child is *happy!* I would know if she weren't and go to the ends of the earth to remedy it. What mama wouldn't?!?!

Energy healing. Pshaw. This is, btw, another way of saying "Reiki." I mean no offense, either to anyone who enjoys such a thing. Whatever floats your boat. But "energy healing" is not going to fix a baby who is not getting enough to eat!

(Yes, we have a new pediatrician now!)

Posted by JoAnna at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm *furious.*

I really didn't feel this way at first, but now... I am so angry. I'm angry that my midwives didn't see a red flag when my baby had lost more weight by her two week checkup. I'm angry that they didn't say anything when, at 3 weeks I had to come in for problems with my stitches, and put her on the scale, she still hadn't gained. Or at my 6 week. Seriously... they NEVER said that her lack of weight gain was a concern, just kept advising me to give her hindmilk. Yeah? How about ANY milk?

I'm angry that my doctor didn't say anything either, and wound up recommending I take her to a frickin' energy healer instead of giving her some formula and getting her tested for metabolic disorders.

I'm angry that I had massive internal swelling at the site of my stitches, which responded to antibiotics, but my midwife had told me was "Just the way I am now," that it was normal, and that it might go down in six months. "You had a big baby," she said. IT IS AN INFECTION!

I'm angry that when I discussed it with her, she did not remember that I'd had stitches in my vaginal wall and did not believe me when I told her that I had. I'm angry that she made me trek all the way into her office again today to prove that the MASSIVE SWELLING which is presenting with sharp, shooting pains through my pelvis, wasn't just a yeast infection. I'm angry that she is trying to tell me now it is from bacterial vaginosis, when I first showed her this swelling weeks and weeks before she diagnosed me with vaginosis. (Which, apparently I do have NOW. But I did not have THEN.) I'm angry that even now, she maintains that this swelling is not related to any stitches I may have had post-birth. Right. The swelling just... yanno.. magically appeared. I can't believe that she would shrug her shoulders and say she just *doesn't know* how I got such an infection. It's not rocket science; infections happen when you sew people up and cut bits of them off! (Did I mention that they actually cut off a flap of skin from my vaginal wall when they were stitching me? Fun! She doesn't remember that! I DO!)

I'm angry that she claims to "trust birth" so much, but she doesn't trust at all my knowledge of my own body. I'm angry that I would come to her with something so clearly wrong with me, and she'd tell me this is my new normal, that nothing would ever be the same "down there," and that I shouldn't worry about it.

I am positively *furious* that all along with both of these things, I was concerned and kept raising my concerns, and kept getting brushed off. I'm angry at myself that I wasn't pushier, especially on behalf of my baby girl. I wish I'd gotten this infection dealt with sooner as I'm now actually concerned that it could effect my fertility. (Infection raging for the past 4 weeks!)

Now that I'm finally on some antibiotics that aren't making me horribly sick, and my baby is getting supplements and gaining weight... wtf am I supposed to do with all this anger?

(Bella has gained EIGHT OUNCES since Friday.)

Posted by JoAnna at 04:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)