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.

Mama needs….

“Sweetheart… little angel whom I carried in my womb for 40 long weeks, mama needs you to go to sleep so she can take a bath. Her fever is climbing, her back hurts, these two hard rocks that used to be called breasts are hurting, a clogged duct in each of them.

Unfortunately mama overdid it this morning, not anticipating that she would catch whatever holy hell that big sister has and was kind enough to bring home from pre-school so the rest of us can get sick to. She got up and nursed you and big sister until sister felt better, and you passed out. That took two hours. Then she scrubbed the kitchen, mopped the floors made big sister food, did two loads of laundry (nursed you back to sleep a few times) managed to complete an assignment for school, and feed myself breakfast (only 4 hours after I woke up)!!!

And then for the first time in your short little life I went grocery shopping, alone, with both of you. I wore you in the mei tai, stopping a million times to awkwardly re-latch you. While big sister tried as hard as she could to wake up back up again. Mid-way through the store I started loosing energy, and started to feel like I was going to pass out, I got hot and sweaty and I kept going because the only way out was through the checkout line. I threatened big sister that if she did not start listening we wouldn’t buy honey sticks and she wouldn’t have any for treats all week long. It was so bad a guy who worked there walked up to me and asked if everything was ok… I must have looked so flushed and overwhelmed. But we made it, we finished shopping and made it home.

And now, mama needs a bath. Mama needs a bath more than the groceries that are perishing on the floor of the kitchen need to be put away. Mama needs a bath enough to swaddle you, put you in your vibrating chair and put you in the bathroom. Mama needs a bath enough to say poo poo to the environment, she will leave the hot water running with the stopper out of the tub so accomplish both a hot hot bath, and to attempt to hypnotize you into forgetting that you are not nursing.

Mama is going to slip into this water now, but not far enough to get my freshly dyed-red hair get wet, my neck is pink enough already. And you, big sister do not come in here and make noise, if you remind your sister that there isn’t boob in her mouth I am going to cry. And put that peri-bottle down, I know that you intend to squirt me in the face with that cold water that is left over from the last bath. In fact leave, get out of the bathroom. I will have told you this fifty more times by the time I am done.

I can feel my fever reduce, and the pain melt away in my back, and my breasts are feeling a little better as well. Now if I can only make it to the bed without passing out, where my organic sea salt chocolate and my crackers with wild-caught, boneless, skinless sardines and crackers with stone ground mustard wait. Because for the first time in your short little life, you sat in your chair awake, for 15 minutes straight, without being held, without boob and that…. is a miracle.”