we're moved

[aryanhwy]

For a while it looked problematic, because we simply couldn't find a driver for the moving truck. Then I thought to email a new friend in Tilburg and he was both able and willing to come up to Amsterdam, help us load, and drive the truck back down (and then return it to Eindhoven), so that happened yesterday. Since there were 6 living entities to transport and only three seats in the van, I had the fortune of being the one to make the trip by train, with 18 day old baby and 13 year old cat who HATES being in her cat carrier. (Joel and I will both bear scars from yesterday). Luckily, Slinky only yowled on the tram to the metro, but then settled down and was relatively relaxed and quiet for the rest of the 1.5 hour trip. When I let her out, she went straight for the bathroom and crawled behind the washing machine and spent a few hours rather -- rather like when I first brought her home from the humane society, she spent 6 hours sitting on the back of the toilet before venturing out. By night, she was meandering around the ground floor -- seemed pretty relaxed, and came and sat with me a few times while I was pumping/feeding. But while she finally ventured up the stairs for the first time this evening, she hasn't actually made it to the first floor.

Widget thinks that this has all been arranged for his pleasure and joy. He's calmed down now, but last night and much of today, he was dashing from place to place, climbing in nooks and crannies, sitting in an "I'm the king of the world" position all over (first floor hall, stairs, desk in attic, table, boxes, bookcases), except when one of us would walk by and he'd rush over and rub against our legs and purr and purr and purr. It's pretty sweet.

The house is a mess. Lots of things didn't go as planned today -- including the fact that I was so exhausted that I spent most of the day in bed. Gwen was up every 2 hours over night to eat (whereas during the day, she usually sleeps for long enough stretches that she goes 4 hours between feeds. Why oh why can't it be the other way around? I'd love to be able to get 3 hours of sleep straight), and since it takes me ~45 min. to change her/prepare the bottle, feed her, put her back in her basket and then pump 10 min. both sides, that meant about 4.5 hours of sleep for me. This is really hard.

Nursing still continues to be an utter failure. Tomorrow someone from the city pediatrics office is coming by for Gwen's intake appointment, and she will be bringing info about lactation consultants in the city, 'cause I think I need to see one again. I just wish it wasn't so damned expensive. At this point, I'm certainly not saving any money trying to nurse.

The food situation is very frustrating. Of course in a perfect world, we would nurse and we'd be calm and happy and contented. I would wake up at night, pick her up, get settled in a chair, she'd latch on, eat for 20 min., and then we'd all go back to bed. But that's clearly not working; no matter what I do I can't get her to get a good latch. All the tricks I've been told don't work -- I was told to feed her a bit from the bottle to calm her down so that she's not starving when we try, but if I feed her a small amount and then take the bottle away, she starts screaming in frustration. Even if I manage to get her while she's awake and calm, I can't get her to open her mouth wide enough. Even if I do get her to open her mouth wide enough, she just slides off when she tries to latch on; and even if I think she has latched on, she won't even bother trying to suck -- and it's not like there isn't milk already there, while I'm wrestling with her to get into position I'm usually leaking all down my front. Oh, and the sore that I got on the right side when she nommed me so badly on Thursday still is open and I sometimes get a small amount of bloody fluid in my bra shields.

And so I pump, every time she eats, and in a slightly less perfect world than the other, I'd be able to translate what is clearly adequate supply into adequate pumped supply, and I'd be OK with sacrificing an extra half an hour or so of sleep each time I feed her if it meant she was drinking primarily breastmilk from the bottle. But my pumping supply has gone down and down and down; I now get barely 20ml each time, if that.

And so I supplement, I top off whatever I got the previous time I pumped with enough formula to make ~100ml for each feeding, and in an even slightly less perfect world, she'd take this and be happy and would still grow up into a healthy, strong woman. But sometimes I don't even had any breastmilk to add -- I didn't pump in the afternoon yesterday as we packed and moved, last night after one feeding I just couldn't stand it any more I can tell that the formula interacts with her differently than the formula, she spits up quite a bit more. If it's half-formula, half-breastmilk (hah! been days since we had that ratio), then she may spit up a tiny bit, soon after eating, but with any different ratio she spits up quite a bit more and often half an hour to an hour after eating -- i.e., when she's lying in her basket and I've fallen back asleep and so I end up waking up with this filthy spit-up-on baby. I can't recall how many outfit changes we went through last night between this and leaking diapers.

But none of these worlds is the case and hence what we've actually got is a really pretty shitty world.

Oh, and did I mention that I think I have a blocked duct on the left? Which of course is best solved by lots and lots of nursing (which we don't get), or by good pumping sessions (which we don't get), so I've been stuck with hot compresses and massage and while I think it's a bit better than it was this morning, it still hurts.

It's hard to believe it hasn't even been three weeks yet. It feels more like three months.

Comments

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

Gwen was up every 2 hours over night to eat (whereas during the day, she usually sleeps for long enough stretches that she goes 4 hours between feeds. Why oh why can't it be the other way around?

With those hours, do I detect a college student in the making?

[sue-n-julia.livejournal.com]

*Hugs*

It sounds like you need them. I know it's hard, but the best thing you can do is relax. When you stress, you tense and that tension communicates itself to Gwen. Have you tried nursing a bit when she isn't hungry, when there isn't any pressure? Another sneaky trick I've been told about (I don't know how well it works or if it's advisable even) is to put a drop or two of sugar water on your breast to encourage a little suckling. I wouldn't do it with the open sore (and definitely get that looked at).

But most of all - *hugs*

S

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

One problem with trying to nurse when she's not hungry is that we're still mostly at the stage where she's either asleep or starving -- we don't actually have that much awake time, except right after she's eaten, and then she's not interested! But as she spends more time awake, maybe I'll try this.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

No breastfeeding advice, just very sympathetic noises in your direction.

wrt the blocked duct, I hear cabbage leaves actually do work. Tried them?

re clothes changes. When K was a baby, we had 12 babygros and they just about kept up with a daily laundry cycle. When A was a baby we had to have 50 bibs (I counted, carefully) to keep up with her dribbling and to have sufficient (~5 or 6) in every possible bag she might go out with. That doesn't make your situation at all easier to bear, of course.

Thinking of you

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Did you know that it only occurred to me yesterday that I should put a bib on her when she's having a bottle so that it catches the spit-up? It was a rather "doh" moment. I'd just been trying to anticipate it and catch it in the burp cloth.

[mamamoira.livejournal.com]

A bib or just a big burp cloth draped around her neck. I can't offer much advice (although I can offer sympathy!) as my youngest baby was 7 months old when we got her, and so I never nursed. But she also tended to spit up, still, quite a lot for the next couple of months, and so I gradually got the hang of anticipating and catching it... sometimes it's a insufficiently-burped issue, but sometimes it's just gonna come back up no matter what. (In my little girl's case, she would swallow such HUGE mouthfuls at a time that I think it was just more than her system could handle at once. She seemed to do better once I moved her to a nipple that had a smaller hole in it.)

You've done the really important part of nursing, that first week or two when it's a lot of immune system boosters! Anything beyond that is great, but if you wind up having to switch to formula entirely, it's not a failure. And no matter what -- it does get better. :)

[adelais.livejournal.com]

Massage and hand-express the crud (literally and figuratively) out of that duct. I never had any luck with anything else. If it helps to hear -- and I know it won't -- I was never a great pumper: I just barely kept up by pumping at work, but my output would drop remarkably over the course of the day, and the solo interview trip I took when Bug-boy was 4.5 months old I completely lost my let-down reflex about 40 hours in despite being utterly engorged (reference this post: http://adelais.livejournal.com/260961.html; if memory serves, I got a clogged duct on the other side out of that trip, too, and my supply never really completely recovered).