Par For the Course

Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!

Both kids are napping at the same time! I should do the dishes. Or take a nap. So I'll write a blog entry. That makes the sense.

Enjoyed nursing on the Portland Streetcar this morning. Two men were brave and made smiley eye contact. Good on ya, fellas! Then we nursed in the dentist's chair during a cleaning - a bit tricky to be sure but preferable to having Jackie scream the house down. This led me to think once again of wacky nursing locations. I'm pretty sure the dental chair is my wackiest one - share yours with me in a comment! Which led me to think of locations - like blog locations. I'm probably not making the best use of blogger, but I wonder if there is somewhere more interesting to host my approximately twice monthly musings? It would also be fun to have more pages on a website - list of articles, list of places that are boobjuice friendly, topic-specific lists of links, lists of products I've found interesting/helpful. Perhaps I'm just feeling a bit listless... Ugh, sorry. Had to do it.

I have a plugged duct again. Usually these clear up on their own as long as one keeps on nursing, but this one is being stubborn. I've tried hot showers and baths, pumping, and yes, folks, I even managed to self nurse a bit to see if I could clear it. I feel pretty weird admitting that, which means everyone else probably feels even weirder, which means this is yet another subject around nursing which needs to be taken out of the closet and aired out. But anyway it didn't really accomplish anything. I also read at Dr. Newman's site that he has had success with localized ultrasound for clearing blocked ducts. Hm, what is ultrasound? Really high frequency vibrations. What else do we have around the house that vibrates? Suffice to say I don't think it worked. The thing that worked the best was going to bed and nursing side-lying until we both fell asleep. The nursing and the sleeping and the position probably all helped. Next step is some supplement starting with an L that my dear Dr. Rachael suggested. Ooo, I'm very linky today.

Pumping is going pretty well. Sukie and I are getting along. Currently I'm only running her off her internal rechargeable battery to see how long it takes to run it down. I'm planning to bring her to Indiana (visiting the in-laws) on the 8th though, so that experiment may get interrupted. Basically I don't want to go a week without pumping, just to keep supply up. I haven't decided what to do with the collected milk - will probably FedEx it home to my sister to put in the freezer. I've told a lot of breadwinning mamas to do that, so maybe I should try it to see what I'm getting these ladies into. Another possibility is to put it in the in-laws' freezer and Craig's list it for a local mama to pick up. Not sure if she would want to bother for what will probably be 9 ounces, though. Means a lot to me, but if you're going to the trouble of finding a donation and trusting a stranger, you probably want a bigger haul.

Post-partum anxiety is still a rat bastard and should be bitchslapped. I'm trying hypnotherapy. I found the hypnobirthing class did a great job reducing anxiety surrounding the birth, which went great, so why not? I know cognitive behavioral therapy is supposed to be very effective, too, but it sounds like a lot of work, and mamas, I am a busy busy lady!!! So far I like my new therapist, but I've had to bring Jackie each time, so we haven't gotten to the hypno part yet. After this week we'll probably try leaving her at home with Daddy, and the pumped milk stash as a back up. Good practice for going back to work. So I better go through the equipment in the cupboard - I bet all the nipples have aged past usefulness. Silicone is mortal, it would seem.

I go back to work 12/19, for three days a week, and 1/3/12 full time. This seems like an ideal way to ramp back up to the breadwinning. I also have the best boss at the kid-friendliest company on the planet. Okay, maybe not *the* kid-friendliest. But they let me use their dedicated lactation room at my second interview, and they throw an annual Hallowe'en party for the company kiddos. So when I said I wanted a little more leave than what was paid for, NiceBossMan said, "Just put it on the calendar so I know when to expect you." Ooo, which I haven't done yet, oops. Two other local mamas I know are not so lucky - one is going back full time from the get go (although perhaps no one suggested the "start back on a Wednesday" trick?) and the other only gets six weeks. The latter is criminal. The leave, not the mama. She seems very law abiding. But the Family Medical Leave Act promises 12 weeks, although not paid. Perhaps this is a financial decision and 6 weeks is what her company pays for. I can't imagine trying to show up showered, dressed, and coherent at 6 weeks. Tell me your return to work stories, mamas!

Ah, hubby is home. Maybe I'll go try to look useful, or take a nap, or help put groceries away.

Much love,

Suzi

Me and Sukie at the Crack 'o (three hours until) Dawn

Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!

It's 4:45 here in Stumptown, and of course pitch black out. I'm up with the other dairy farmers, pumping and hoping that I get to finish before Jackie wakes up hungry. Okay the other dairy farmers probably aren't worried about the baby cows waking up. And they are probably outside in the chilly air, so really I have it good.

Long-time readers may recall that I named my previous breastpump, a Medela Pump in Style, Bessie. Well, for reasons to be explored in another entry, Bessie has been put out to pasture, and I now have Sukie, a Hygeia EnJoye... something. There's a number after that. But it has an internal, rechargable battery, which is good, because I couldn't find an extension cord this morning to be able to plug it in to the fancy child-proof socket covers that Hubby has diligently installed throughout the living/kitchen/dining/playroom. (I did mention our current apartment is rather... efficient, didn't I?) Anyway, I was tearing around like a madwoman looking for where the heck Hubby has stored the extension cords and getting more and more upset when I realized, hey, this thing is supposed to be able to run without being plugged in. Which it is now doing like a little champ next to me as I type. And I'm sure Matt put the extension cords somewhere very sensible, which is why I can't find them in my anxious pre-pre-pre-dawn state. Or better yet I probably put that one somewhere and forgot. Or Kiddo relocated it to under a cat. Who knows. But the whole thing made me super anxious.

Okay, yes, I have post-partum anxiety and everything makes me anxious. But for some reason pumping tends to make me anxious, even when I'm not as anxious about other things. For Robert, I sort of constantly had barely enough milk in the fridge and freezer, and just when I thought I'd caught ahead, he'd have a growth spurt, or Matt would start feeding him another half ounce in a feeding, and the supply would disappear faster than donuts in an office kitchen. Add to that the 45 minute commute on the LA freeway (45 minutes was in good traffic) and the last round of PPA, and the whole experience was less than spa-like. I think mostly I'm just worried about having enough. It's also sort of unrelaxing that things aren't in a routine yet, I just have to hope that I'll wake up before Jackie's hungry in the morning enough times to collect enough before going back to work. I'm not getting the sort of amounts that I used to get at my early morning pumping sessions, or even that I got when I first started pumping this time. Probably just a normal function of supply waxing and waning, and how long ago I nursed, and being tired. As a "trained peer counselor" I have lots of places to look for ideas on that. But it makes me anxious too. (I hope it's not a difference in the pump... seems unlikely as this thing is working fine and I got more at a couple sessions.)

As much as I like to march around advocating for pumping and working outside the home, I gotta say, it's no picnic, and I totally want to acknowledge that for any other mamas feeling the same way.

I hear Jackie again... better proofread and get things wrapped up here with Sukie.

Much love,

Suzi