mama cloth

After giving birth to P it became apparent that I have a prolapse of some sort. I think I actually got it carrying my first even though I delivered via c-section. I think the pressure of just being pregnant with a ten pound baby did it to me. This time around my VBAC sealed the deal though >.<. I will not be able to use my diva anymore so its cloth pads for me. My friend is starting to make them and is making me a set. I am kinda excited for my period to return so I can try them!

Did I give birth to a bulldog?

As my little newb is closing in on three weeks old she is developing mad skills at demanding to be nursed. She has this shrill little panicked cry that she recently learned. She likes to use this in combination with a little pout and a shriek of desperation to let me know that she will indeed die if there is not boob in her mouth in the next 3 seconds.

 At this point with little #1 we were just getting her latched regularly for the first time. She was given bottles when she was taken (taken is really an inaccurate word, in fact I never got her in the first place, she was more accurately never given to me after she was surgically removed from my body) from me for the 5 hours after birth. She ended up being “that baby” the one who actually gets nipple confusion, however her confusion was more a flat out refusal. And what she refused was my breast. Was there something wrong with her, that she needed to be withheld from her mother, the only home she had ever known for so long? No. Did they just not know she was breastfeeding, is that why she was given a bottle? No, there was a card on her bassinet. They sabotaged my breastfeeding out of pure laziness. They didn’t want to hurry the exams and bring my my baby. Meanwhile I was sitting in my bed desperately needing to my child in my arms, yet afraid to speak up and demand they bring her to me. I asked (yes I asked, like I needed their permission) after an hour and they told me that she was coming. Yet hours past before she was in my arms.

Then after only an hour of bonding with my child they informed me she was turning blue and had to go to the newborn ICU because of a potential infection where she would spend the next three days. I felt so desperate, I had spent the last week being induced (was sent home for a two day break) had not been informed there was meconium found in my water. I had to listen to my daughters heart literally stop on the monitor, before being rushed off to an emergency c-section. I waited hours to see my baby, this beautiful baby that I  gestated for 42 weeks, had spent a week in agony to finally get to hold and nurse, and now I don’t get to “have” her for DAYS?!?! Meanwhile I was confined to my bed after my surgery and couldn’t get up and walk to my little baby. I was devastated.

During her stay in the NICU they again snuck her bottles in between feeds, because it was easier than calling down to my room to come feed her when she woke. This prevented my daughter from latching again for weeks.

So I pumped and pumped and pumped. Our midnight feedings would consist of waking up, trying to latch her without the nipple shield, trying to latch her with the nipple shield, breaking down and giving her the bottle of pumped milk I had out from last waking, pull her off the bottle a few times and try to latch her again. Then I would swaddle her again and pump both breasts and set the milk out (most people are unaware how long breast-milk can last at room temperature, if you have a newborn that is waking every 2 hours and you have to pump, there is no need to refrigerate and then heat, just leave the milk out http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/milkstorage/milkstorage/). Then I would try one more time to latch her. I would finally lay down next to her, exhausted, and get another 1- 2 hours of sleep before I would have to wake and do it all over again. To be honest, near the end when I finally got her to latch I almost stopped trying. I was sure that she was never going to latch, and I was never going to be able to breastfeed and this was what my life was just going to look like.

But she did latch! I nursed with a shield for the next 6 months before I was finally able to wean her to straight breast. And now at 3 years and 9 months she is nursing right next to her sister. But when little #1 was 3 weeks old she was not a desperate boob addict like little #2. She had just began her breastfeeding journey and to her the boob was just a source of food. She didn’t much like to be held and wasn’t very attached to either of us. At two weeks she developed a sort of “colic” (meaning there was no medical reason, yet she was very distressed with life) and would scream all day long. My newborn days consisted of soothing her.

So this whole “easy newborn” thing is new to me. When people ask how many times little #2 wakes up a night I answer I don’t know. I don’t know how often, I don’t know how long, I don’t know the increments, I don’t know because I am not awake myself. I sleepily will lean over and sleep boob her. I wake long enough to latch her, and re-latch her, and re-latch her, and re-latch her (you get the picture, I didn’t realize how bad newbs suck at breastfeeding). My only recent experience is with a almost 4 year old, I half expected the newb to climb on me and unclasp my bra and latch herself on like her sister. >__<

Something I am experiencing this time that I never got to with #1 is this newborn boob addiction. Little #1 didn’t develop this until much later. I have to giggle a bit at her desperate shrill cries. At her sniffing out the boob in the middle of the night like a bulldog. Then the snorts when she finally does find it. The frantic snort-rooting while she tries desperately to get it in her mouth. And then when she lets it fall back out the 5 times before she is successful, the screaming because well, ya know, she is never going to ever ever nurse again. Then the grunting and the slopping, combined with the wet sniffing. If I didn’t know any better I would assume that I had not only birthed a bulldog, but I was the first human to successfully nurse a bulldog. (especially when you add her reflux induced growling into the picture)

And let me just say, I couldn’t be happier. As difficult as this transition from one to two has been, the postpartum migraines, the lack of sleep, the constant nursing of both of my children. Never being able to put my newb down, the washing of a million loads of clothes and one load of diapers a day. The not being able to have time to make myself food. The trashed house. Even with all of these new aspects of my life, I feel like I just won the lottery. I had an amazing VBAC, I chose how my daughter entered this world. I was able to stand up and protect her at the hospital, she never left my side. No one performed unnecessary tests on her, injected anything into her body. No one fed her a bottle. She laid on my chest the moment she was born and hasn’t left my side since. She sleeps next to me at night time. She nurses!! She is a happy baby that does not cry for hours on end from the traumatic experience of her birth and beginning of her life in the ICU.

My poor baby doesn’t have to overcome her journey into this world. She doesn’t have to spend the first 6 months pf her life learning to trust and love her caregivers. Its not going to take co-bathing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, baby-wearing to FIX what was done to her in the first days of her life. We can just both enjoy the experience together.

As thankful as I am for this babies disposition and the lack of trauma in her little brain. My heart breaks for my older child, and what she had to overcome from her journey earth-side. And I am sure as little #2 grows, there will be many more moments of grief for my eldest and what she had to go through during this time. And I am thankful that I am still nursing her, so she can experience what being a newborn should be like right along side her baby sister.