Hi all,
I found this great group last year, and their advice actually stopped Tom’s cavities in their tracks. It wasn’t easy, but neither is losing teeth!
Check out the yahoo groups alternativekidsteeth and veryyoungkidsteeth.
La Leche League
The International Breast Feeding Organization
academy of breastfeeding medicine, resource page
Breastfeeding Made Simple
Mothering your nursing todler
The No Cry Sleep Solution
Breastfeeding is not intuitive. In my new parent class they announce that over 75% of moms give up by 6 months. But you do not need to be one of those women. Almost all women are capable of breastfeeding, given the right information, help, support, and confidence. And after you get the hang of it, it becomes one of the most emotionally rewarding activities of your life.
I was not expecting to have to learn to breastfeed, and I was certainly not expecting to have to teach our new baby to eat, but that is what we had to do. I was also taken by surprise to have to fight for the ability to breastfeed, given some very unhelpful things that our hospital, and later, our pediatrician did and recommended.
Because my baby was premature, he was not ready to have to eat. This seems common, as a lot of new parents from our new parent classes have had the finger-feeding experience.
He was hungry, but developmentally he was still expecting that ambilical cord to be there. In the hospital I pushed the button to have the lactation consultant come show me how to breastfeed over and over again. She showed me how to get Tom latched on, which was difficult because of his lack of interest, my c-section that we had to avoid, and the surprisingly unintuitive nature of breastfeeding. We ended up pumping - every 1 1/2 – 2 hours and then finger-feeding our baby with a syringe for the first week. This was, needless to say, exhausting. But slowly Tom got better at latching on and I got more confident.
In the first days after birth the mom’s body produces only a small amount of milk, which contains vitally important nutrients for your baby. I would pump for 20 minutes and get a tiny quantity of milk, which the lactation consultant would congratulate me on. We were told that our baby would lose weight, it was just a matter of making sure it was not too much weight. (Recently I listened to a great interview on the Le Leche site which explained that newborn baby’s stomachs do not expand, so they can not consume more than about a marble’s size amount of milk at a time…)
Some hospitals will automatically give newborns formula and pasifiers. For some babies this causes nipple confusion which makes breastfeeding extremely difficult if not impossible. Our hospital actually did both these things, and we were extremely lucky that Tom took the breast anyways. I do wonder if some of the huge 2 week struggle spent convincing him to take the breast was caused by the pacifier and bottle that the nurses gave him.
It takes several days for your milk to “come in”. Pumping can help to increase production before and after your milk comes in.
Tom was born by c-section, so it was aboujt 45 minutes before I got to hold him for the first time. That was an extremely long 45 minutes, waiting to be sewn up, rolled back to our room. In felt like I only got to hold him for a minute before the nurse took him to bathe him, but that was when I started falling in love with him. That night is a little bit of a blur, but at some point the lactation consultant came in and helped me latch Tom on. He was a tiny little bundle, looking so vulnerable and instinctive, but he was not that good at latching on, and I had no idea what to do. The lactation consultant told me that because Tom was premature he was not ready yet to need to breastfeed, and would need extra help figuring it out.
Shortly after we got back to the room the nurse washed Tom and neglected to put him under the warming light, his vitals all dropped and he had to go upstairs for observation. His dad went with him, and came back a couple times to let me know what was going on. While he was up there they gave him some formula and a passifier, both of which I later learned can cause nipple confusion but soothed Tom which I would have wanted (if I’d had the choice).
About four hours later Tom was warmed up and back down with me. He sleapt on the crook of my arm. Once every hour and a half my husband and I would wake Tom up and put him in the eating position and I would try to entice him to eat. To protect my stomach Tom was laid on a pillow stack next to me, the “football hold”. It was extremely awkward, frustrating and a little scarry. If I could not get him to latch on, which I usually couldn’t, I would push the button for the nurse and ask her to send the lactation consultant. I started getting concerned that I would not be able to figure out nursing when we were home from the hospital.
To make sure my milk production was adequate the lactation consultant brought in a breast pump and I started pumping every hour and a half and then we would put the tiny amount of milk into a syringe and put that in Tom’s mouth next to my nipple, or put it in his mouth next to a finger, to make sure he got the food. This was a lot of work, but was actually a relief to know for sure that he was getting food and exactly how much.
The lactation consultant told me that for the first 5 days, roughly, there is just a tiny amount of milk, but that this milk is increadibly rich in nutrients and in antibodies against all of the illnesses I had ever had, so this was really important to Tom’s immune system.
After we got home I could not get Tom latched on, so we finger-fed him most of the time. We woke up every hour and a half, I would pump, then we would wake him up and feed him. At night when he was fast asleap it would take 15 minutes to pump, 20 minutes to wake him up by taking off his clothes, talking to him, touching him, and another 25 minutes to finger-feed him. Needless to say, there was not a lot of sleep for us.
You are the only person who will breast feed your baby. That may seem weird or obvious now, but if your experience is anything like mine, after you are in the hang of breastfeeding it will fill with meaning and emotion. It will at times be frustrating, inconvenient, scary, a good excuse, soothing, pleasant, and wonderful. You get to bond with your baby in a way that no one else can, and you get to start doing it regularly, many times every day. Feedings become a small time-out from the rest of the world where you get to just sit and love each other.
I wish I had known what to expect. This site is for those of you who are breastfeeding, or will be soon, and want honest matter-of-fact information, so that you can get over the hard parts of breastfeeding and on to the wonderful parts.
As a new mom, there were a lot of surprises for me. I have captured here the things that I wish I had known in the first few months, some of the great products that helped (or that I wished I had found earlier), and the best resources I’ve come across. I hope you find this information useful! (This, of course, should not take the place of medical input.)
On Monday we had a play date with a really cool mom I met about a month ago at a park and her two charming boys (which was really fun!). It was a little earlier in the morning than we’re used to getting out the door, so the morning was a bit of a rush getting the house show-ready, eating, changing, changing again (oops), packing up all the beach toys and lunch…
When I got on the road I realized that I had not put on deodorant, and I should have. At the stop light I looked in the glove box where I used to keep spare toiletries, but there was no deodorant. Then I wondered for some reason if the antibacterial no-water-needed hand cleaner in the diaper bag would do any good. It did! I was shower clean for the whole play date!
I don’t know if other moms end up in situations like that, but if so, hope this tip helps!
We’ve been trying to sell our house for over three months now and it’s been hard for me and for Tom, and probably for Aaron as well (to a much lesser extent).
We’ve had over 50 shows, 10 offers (4 of which we accepted and they ended up using contingencies to get out of the deal, the fifth we just accepted today). So that’s been an emotional roller coaster.
And every day I spend a couple hours getting the house in show shape – and I try to make it fun for Tom, but when I have to hurry and get ready for a show he ends up neglected. He’s frustrated and I feel stuck and guilty.
Besides that, at least 30 of those shows have been during Tom’s nap, so I wake him up getting him out of the house.
And for me, his nap time used to be my time to read, paint, or work on the computer. Now I use it to clean… So I’m really drained and am irritated with Aaron’s view that his watching Tom for 2 hours on Sunday is about the break that I deserve. If I had nap times to do my own thing that would probably be OK, but as it is it seems pretty piddly. Not that I want to be away from Tom – I don’t – but I need some mental refreshing so that when I’m with Tom I can be patient and loving and think of those creative solutions to toy squables and that sort of thing.
Anyhow, we got an offer today and I spent several hours on the phone and email with the back-up realtor (ours is out of town again), printing, signing, making changes, initialing, scanning, PDFing…
Tom was as patient as a 16 month old can be. And by the end of that I really wanted someone to say something positive like “Congratulations, this one will surely work out!” because after 4 failed contracts I’m only mildly confident that this one will work out. So I wanted some cheerleader out there to make me feel like all this has been worth it. So I picked up the phone and called 2 different people. But there was no cheer leading. And now I feel more tired and drained than before I picked up the phone.
Anyhow, it made me want to re-read Susan Jeffer’s book ”Feel the Fear and Do It Anyways!” and maybe the dummy’s guide to assertiveness. Both of them talk about setting yourself up to get what you want instead of being passive-agressive and setting yourself up for what you don’t want. (As in the difference between saying “It would really make me happy if you brought me flowers tonight” instead of saying “You never bring me flowers.” And also, most likely, the difference between calling someone who almost always says something like “Congratulations, this one will surely work out!” instead of someone who almost always says things like “Don’t get your hopes up.”)
I’m guessing Jeffers would tell me that if I want someone to encourage me I should be that someone. Or maybe I should look inside myself and figure out why I’m so needy. But I’m not even close to there yet. I’m not even to where that sounds good.
Wow. Yesterday I thought this election was important. Today I watched as the entire convention chanted “drill! drill! drill!” holding up signs saying ’drill Alaska now’ with a huge image of some beautiful pristine area in the background. These guys will leave this country in ruins given the chance.
And then Sarah Palin spoke. Wow. She just said one remarkably untrue thing after another and the crowd ate it up. That was so creepy! And it must be said.
Sarah Palin = Dolores Umbridge.