Bring out your boobs

It's National Breastfeeding Week in Ireland, and once again I'm shocked by the statistics. Reading this article in the Irish Times, the basic takeaway is this part:

Just over half of mothers currently initiate breastfeeding in Ireland compared with 81 per cent in the UK and in the region of 98 per cent in Nordic states such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

What's going on?  Are Irish maternity practices that different from those of the UK? (Yes, I think they are.) But according to the finding cited later, that after a month, "women who gave birth in hospitals where there is a particular breastfeeding culture are no more likely to breastfeed than other women,"  that's not really where the problem lies.*

I think it's entirely about peer pressure. You do what your friends do. You don't want to be the weird one. You assume that what's "normal" is the most "right". The Irish psyche is also deeply suspicious of things that authority figures tell us to do. We're a lot more likely to listen to our friends than the experts or the media, at least when it comes to deciding how we're going to behave. We have a healthy scorn for experts.

In the comments on that article, several people mentioned that Irish mothers want to get back to the pub. They don't want to be tied to an infant, and they don't want to have to moderate their alcohol intake for an indefinite length of time. The idea of six more months without a pint or a (good) few glasses of red, after a whole nine months of self-denial already, is horrendous to your average Irish mother. Is that really true? Is it because the Irish doctors take the more USA-ian approach of no alcohol at all while pregnant or nursing rather than a Continental attitude of a little is fine? Or do Irish doctors know that "a little" is not an option once an Irishwoman goes out drinking?

On balance, I'd like to think this isn't true. The Scandinavian nations where breastfeeding rates are highest are not exactly known for their abstinence from hard liquor. The Swedes party hard, I'm told. But they are probably able to exercise a modicum of self-control too, and I imagine if the breastfeeding culture in Ireland was more like that in Sweden, Irish mothers would find that they could, let's see

• have one drink and stop
• have a few drinks once in a while and offer formula that evening instead
• pump enough to have a backup stash in the fridge for the babysitter to offer while you're out on the batter, and for you to give while you're still a little worse for wear once you get home

or even

• discover that it's no fun trying to care for an infant when you have a hangover, and realise that moderation might be a good thing

Lots of options there. Not having a drink is not enough of a reason not to breastfeed; but from the point of view of a first-time pregnant woman who's dying to get her life back and doesn't understand that her life is about to be irrevocably changed anyway, it might look like one. By the time the baby's out she's already told everyone that she's not going to do it, and bought the bottles and the formula, and made a date for her first girls' night out, there's no going back, so she goes forward, and there's one more baby who didn't even get a chance at the colostrum, one more set of potential siblings who probably won't either, one more bottle-feeding mother out there not changing the public perspective on what's "normal".

Yes, yes, there are many people who really really wanted to breastfeed, and it didn't work out. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the almost 50% who decided beforehand that they weren't even going to think about it, because it's weird. Or because it's not what anyone they know does.

If nobody ever does, then nobody ever will. Simple as that. Are we all sheep, Irishwomen? I'd like to think not. Don't just do what your friends are doing. Find out for yourself. Remember, in the immortal words of L'Oreal, you're worth it. And so is your baby.

Mind the Baby has some words to say about the week here. Coincidentally, since she talks about the PR campaign, my own post linked at the top of the page described my imaginary advertising campaign aimed at the Irish market. Perhaps we should add one that just says, "Why breastfeed? So your friends will too." Maybe it's just that simple.

*Although higher rates of intervention are statistically linked with lower rates of initiating breastfeeding, so it does have something to do with it.

Early days: a retrospective

Maybe it's the upcoming milestone birthday (five years!) or maybe it's because we visited friends with a newborn recently, or maybe it's reading Erin Shea's blog posts about her new baby, but I was thinking about the early days of life as parents, and all the things I never wrote down because when you're in the thick of it there's just too much everything and nothing going on to manage to parse it into paragraphs. (And I applaud Erin for doing just that. She's amazing.) So, on the better late than never principle, let me try to remember...

I remember sitting in the pediatrician's office looking down at my tiny pink-skinned baby in his blue blanket in his gender-neutral green carseat, thinking that he'd never be two days old again.

I remember going to another doctor's appointment with a slightly jaundiced baby who had a tiny, tiny hint of nappy rash. I was a little teary.
  "We've only had him three days, and he was so perfect, and I feel like we've broken him," I said to B; my rock, my compass.
  "He's not broken. He's just getting a little lived-in."
That made me feel better.

I remember taking him to show him off to my erstwhile office. My female co-workers oohed and aahed and dandled. "How's nursing going?" they asked. "It hurts," I said, unabashedly rubbing my nipples through my shirt. They laughed, but not in a mean way. More in an "I've been there" way. Funny, I had assumed that everyone in southmost Texas would think I was crazy to breastfeed - the numbers there are pretty bad, after all - but they didn't.

I remember sitting up in bed, nipples throbbing, seeing the days and weeks stretch out before me - days and weeks when I was going to have to keep doing this every two hours, no matter how much it hurt - and feeling hopeless.

Our apartment was tiny and filled with summer light. We sat on the floor a lot, because a changing table seemed like an extravagance, and I was paranoid about him rolling off the bed, even from day one. (In retrospect not a bad stance. He was a very active baby.) I gave him a sponge bath sitting on the floor in the living room, in the sunlight by the window where it was warmest. He screamed his head off and turned purple. After washing his top half, I had to stop and nurse him to calm him down, before proceeding with the bottom half. Later I realised that the UPS man had come to the door, and hoped I hadn't given him an eyeful as he passed the window.

I discovered daytime TV, watching all the birth stories and bringing-home-baby shows that I had never seen, nor wanted to see, while pregnant. I tutted at all the mothers labouring flat on their backs, and eating ice chips, and having the inevitable complications that turned into emergency c-sections, and I teared up and wept copiously at the birth every single time.

I remember lying on the bed trying to play sleep chicken with the baby: I'd close my eyes in the hopes that he would imitate me, and whoever fell asleep first was the loser. He won a lot. When I discovered that I could nurse him while talking on the phone, I felt like such a pro; when I found I could nurse him while standing up and swaying vigorously, to get him to sleep, I felt as if I'd invented electricity.

The days went slowly, because we had nothing to do. We were far from family members and didn't have friends with babies, but we muddled through and made it up as we went along, the three of us. It was a strange time, measured in three-hour chunks, full of resting but often not restful. Everything was new, but I was oddly comforted by the feeling that I was doing what women have done since time began: lying beside my baby and feeding him and marvelling at his very existence.

 

Nine months

He’ll be nine months old soon. Nine in, nine out. Before that is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to think that he just wasn’t. Or that the tiniest difference – a different spermatazoa, a different day, or minute, would have resulted in a different person. Anyway, I’ve been getting that urge to write things down again, composing in my head during midnight feeds, and it’s time to grab a rare good naptime and put it on paper.

He was a pretty easy newborn, I think, in retrospect. Of course, we didn’t know at the time, we were just muddling through and pleasantly surprised that it was less of a muddle than we had been afraid it might be.

Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday. We were out of the hospital on Tuesday before dinnertime, and happy to be driving the 25 miles back from Harlingen to Brownsville more carefully than we ever had before.

The first week was messy with inconveniences: he had jaundice and wasn’t producing as many wet nappies as the pediatrician’s office would have liked, so they made us feed him every two hours (we alternated breast and formula – I think they wanted us just to do formula, but I wasn’t going to let them sabotage my breastfeeding) and told us to put him under sunlight behind a window. We didn’t get any direct sunlight in our tiny flat, so we ended up barbecueing him in the car for five minutes a side a couple of times. It felt all wrong, even with the a/c running full blast, so I stopped doing that and the jaundice wore off just fine. Waking him to feed him as directed wasn’t easy either, we found ourselves undressing our tiny infant and lying him gently against the cold leather sofa, swearing that we’d never be so cruel again if he would just take an ounce of formula. He was so good when he was awake, complacently taking breast or bottle, whichever was on offer, but mostly he just wanted to sleep. I was angry with the doctors for taking away our unmitigated peaceful pleasure in this never-to-be-repeated week and making it vaguely worrisome instead. I knew he’d be fine if we could just leave him alone and let him sleep and grow and get used to life on the outside.

On the Friday we were sitting in the doctor’s office once more and he latched on and just kept eating. Forty-five minutes later he was still there and I reckoned my milk must have come in. After that, he growed and growed and never looked back.

He slept in a co-sleeper beside our bed, but often if he wouldn’t settle – or just if I was missing him from six inches away - I’d pull him into bed with me and think about how different it must be in his crib from what he was used to – so bright and air-filled, with nothing to push against beyond the swaddling blanket and no comforting ever-present thud of my heart beating over his. Early in the mornings I’d find him contemplating me, like a small alien with huge, almond-shaped eyes in the dawn grey, imprinting my face on his consciousness, learning me.

The early days were filled with sofa for me – I sat there and fed him, and winced at the pain that didn’t subside for 7 weeks, and learned to chat on the phone with a sleeping baby in one arm, or, later, an eating baby on one breast. In the evenings we’d sit in front of the telly and gingerly turn the pillow he was lying on so that he was between us and we could watch him between goes at Scrabble or reading one of the many baby books I had taken out of the library. By six weeks (first grandparental visit), feeding only hurt on my right breast, and he would only go to sleep when lying on someone’s chest. We did a lot of lazing around with a baby on us, and I pointlessly worried about how this would work with a second child. At nine weeks (second grandparental visit) he was already complaining about bedtime, crying because he was tired instead of just falling asleep.
“Why is he crying?” asked my parents. “You never did that.”
“He’s a baby. That’s what they do.” Apparently I was a superbaby. Or time has softened things. All my mother remembers is the night she walked the floor with me on her shoulder for hours because I wouldn’t burp, and nobody told her that if it didn’t happen in 20 minutes or so, it was okay to just put the baby down to sleep.

We had a system. I fed, his father changed, I fed again. One or other of us burped. He never had his days and nights mixed up like some babies do, and early on moved to three hours between feeds at night. The feeds would take 20-30 minutes, and then it was back to sleep for everyone; except for those times when he wouldn’t calm down and he’d kick me in the stomach for half an hour instead. I should have been used to it from all the kicking in pregnancy, I suppose.

When he was tiny, he hated baths and having his nappy changed when he was hungry. When he got upset he’d turn darker and darker pink until he was a little purple monkey squalling at us in rage. It was amazing to watch his colour come back to normal as he calmed down again when the trauma was over, as if someone had flipped a switch from Purple to White.

After about three weeks his umbilical cord stump fell off. I noticed it was gone and we found it down the side of the sofa later that evening.

His first year has been divided into Texas (first 4 months) and non-Texas (thereafter), split again into the first apartment in Maryland (months 5 to 7 inclusive) and the second (8 months on), and puncutated by visitors: the grandparents early on and a flurry of new people once we moved up north – friends, aunts, uncles, cousins. He has visited Boston for Thanksgiving and Ireland for Christmas. He has been to four countries and fifteen states, which is a lot more than many Americans. At the time of writing, he has two passports and four teeth. He’s the happiest baby all our relations have ever seen. We don’t know much about babies, but we think he’s pretty happy most of the time too.

Lover

I go to bed with my new lover. We lie forehead to forehead, whispering sweet nothings to each other. I gaze into his eyes, and he into mine, mirroring adoration, wondering how there could be a time when I didn't know him.

Then it all goes wrong. There are shouts and harsh sounds, kicks and scrapes and pinches. He won't lie still and just fall asleep beside me. I don't want to be with him any more, I just want to close my eyes and slide into oblivion.

Thus it is when one is mother to a three-month old who doesn't like to take his naps.

Living the dream

I'm officially a mommyblogger. I was going to type that while breastfeeding with one hand and eating lunch with the other, but that turned out to be just a little too ambitious so instead I'm typing it with a small baby on my lap trying to eat my elbow, which I fear means he's not done after all. I wish he'd make up his mind, because while my left breast is really getting the hang of this and hardly hurts at all, my right breast, the one he doesn't like and so is going to be a bit smaller for the next few months unless I really get into the pumping thing, makes me yelp in agony every time he latches on and is really quite uncomfortable for the whole feed.

Okay, now with the one-handed typing again. And the ouchiness.

The reason for all this eating-while-updating, well, it's mostly becase I can, because we just got the internet installed at home. And it's always on, for one low monthly rate, so I can surf in my pyjamas to my heart's content and and compare and contrast Babycenter.com and Babycentre.co.uk, and find recipies for things I won't have time to cook, and read blogs, and either post more regularly about my thrilling life at home with his lordship or, you know, not get round to doing that.

So far that's what I've learnt about the 'staying home with small infant' gig: I need to be satisfied with getting a lot less done. When he sleeps between munches there are always at least five things I could be doing, from making bread so I have something to eat for lunch tomorrow to doing pilates to cleaning the bathroom to napping when the baby naps like I'm supposed to. Sometimes it turns out that the best thing to do is just leave him flaked out on my lap and watch the food network or think about painting my toenails.

Birth Story Part I: The Flood

My nine-day old son (my son!) is asleep in the other room, wrapped up like a little parcel in a blue blanket, wearing the hat with the pom-pom that they gave us in the hospital. His eyes are scrunched up and a tiny wrinkle persists at the top of his nose, and it’s time for me to start telling this story. Every day the story grows with the boy, and if I don’t start soon I’ll have a book’s worth: the same book that every new mother would write, but it’s all new to me.

The weekend before last I was 38 weeks pregnant and my husband, B, was at a conference in Dallas, a mere two-flight hop away and within reach of any emergency phone calls. Of course there wouldn’t be any emergencies and he’d be back on Monday evening to the loving arms of his still-pregnant wife and the orderly home of the pre-baby era. I had a friend and neighbour lined up to be on call just in case anything should happen, and I spent the weekend alternately being efficient and taking it easy. On Saturday I treated myself to my long-awaited end-of-pregnancy pedicure. My little fat feet were so swollen that all the girls in the salon exclaimed over them. The colour I picked for my toenails looked funny on, and the lovely lady did them all over again with a nicer, deeper pink, and said she’d pray for me and my baby. Everyone marvelled at our self-restraint in not finding out the sex of our baby beforehand. Like most of Brownsville, they assessed my all-out-in-front shape and decided it was a boy anyway.

On Sunday morning I hung out on the sofa and re-read a Dick Francis. I admired the pink toenails on my little fat feet and got all domesticated making banana bread. Later I took a quick trip to the supermarket to get the last of the things on the baby list – using various coupons to buy a selection of newborn-size nappies, and some baby bath wash - and bought eggs so I could make that chocolate-chip cookie recipe again. There was a brief moment when I thought perhaps I really was nesting, as I got out the swiffer to do the kitchen and bathroom floors and then took an old toothbrush to the grout at the base of the bath, but really, it was quite gross. I don’t know why it hadn’t bothered me before. Then I decided that, having done so little all day, I should take some exercise in order to sleep well that night, so I went to the pool and did twenty lengths. (They’re very short lengths. Really.) There was a family in the pool – mother, father and a baby who was about a year old, having a great time with a beach ball. As I emerged the mother said in surprise, “Oh, you’re pregnant”, and I basked in the glow of my nice maternity swimming togs. At least I got two swims out of them. And so, some hours later and after a spousal phonecall assuring B that yes, I was still perfectly pregnant, to bed. It’s funny how you never know things are last times until afterwards. In retrospect, it all looks so obvious.
At 2.00 am a “flub” of liquid in my nether regions woke me. I knew what it was straight away – this was no ambiguous trickle – and cursed the gods of irony, or hubris, or whatever it was that had led me to think I’d get away with sending my husband to a conference at T minus two weeks. (T? What does T stand for? B, let’s say.) I jumped up to try to save the mattress, ran to the bathroom and ministered to myself as much as I could, given that it just kept coming. I had already stocked up on jumbo-size pads for after the birth, and while woefully inadequate, it was the best I could do. All hyped up and wishing I hadn’t gone for that swim because I might be needing the wantonly expended energy, I draped a towel over the chair beside the phone, sat down, and rang my midwife, Vivienne.

Vivienne’s phone went to voicemail. I left a message and then had to ring back with another to leave my mobile phone number, which I can never remember. I thought it was a fairly calm and collected message, all things considered. I knew she’d been away for the weekend too, in San Antonio, but was pretty sure she had come back the previous evening. Small mercies. Next to call was the clinic – I was certain they’d tell me to go straight to the hospital, but I had to ring and find out. The person on call said they’d get Dr T to ring me back. Okay. I knew I had plenty of time, really, except for all the messiness emanating from me, so I left the calls at that for the time being.

(This next bit might sound ridiculous, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit to it. I had washed my hair after my swim but not done anything to it, so it was all fluffy and curly and annoying. I looked in the mirror and thought “I’m not having a baby with bad hair; it’ll drive me nuts”, so I plugged in the straightening tongs and straightened my hair while I waited for Dr T to be woken up. I didn’t do a very good job, but on the whole I think it was the right decision. It made me that much more comfortable in the hospital later on, to know that my hair wasn’t as bad as it might have been.)
I hopped around the apartment putting the rest of the things I needed to take into my bag. I showed remarkable presence of mind by sticking the chicken I’d bought for Monday night’s dinner into the freezer so we wouldn’t be under pressure to use it up. The clinic rang back:
“Has Dr T spoken to you?”
“No.”
“Okay, we’ll call him again.”

About five minutes later I heard from the man himself, who said yes, I should go to the hospital. That was that, and Maria - friend, neighbour, husband’s co-worker extraordinaire - was summoned. On the first ring her phone disconnected, and as I re-dialled my mind played over a brief scenario where I called a taxi, or even an ambulance, because (a) I wasn’t sure which apartment number was hers, even though it was a thirty-second walk away, and (b) she wouldn’t hear my knocking from her bedroom anyway – none of the apartments have doorbells. The second time she answered, sounding alert and prepared for anything – especially exactly what I said: “Maria, I’m really sorry to wake you but my waters have broken and I have to go to the hospital.” She was on the doorstep in about a minute.
In the meantime I made my final call. I’d let B sleep as long as I could and it was time to wake him up. I knew that once I did he’d never go back to sleep, out there in an anonymous hotel room in the far-off metropolis of Dallas, but on the other hand, I couldn’t exactly not tell him. He answered his phone sleepily.

“Hello?”
“Guess what? My waters have broken.”

He was incredulous, and I was giddy. He said he’d get straight on to finding new flights as early as possible, we exchanged mutual “Oh wow”s, and then Maria was at the door, picking up my bag full of new pyjamas I didn’t get to use, ridiculously tiny white (gender-neutral, of course) baby clothes, sundry massage implements, and a big blue bottle of Gatorade; the “birthing” ball (otherwise known as a plain old rubber exercise ball); and my waterproof-pillow-cased extra pillow.

Later I found out that, as I suspected, Vivienne would probably have told me to stay put and not go to the hospital till morning. She apologised profusely for having switched off her phone, the quicker to charge it when she got back from her weekend away, and said she’d have asked me about the colour of the fluid – to make sure there was no meconium in it – and whether I felt anything in my vagina which could have been a prolapsed umbilical cord, and assuming that was all okay – which it would have been, she would have said to stay at home, try to sleep, have a nice digestible breakfast of oatmeal or cereal, and come in when the daytime nurses had started their shift. However, on the whole and given the absence of spouse, I was happy enough to go in straight away and mess up someone else’s sheets instead of my own.

As we bowled down the empty highway at 2.45 or so, Maria apologised for having cut me off the first time I rang. She’d set the alarm on her phone to wake her at 7.30. When it rang the first time, she sleepily looked at the time, thought “Stupid phone,” and turned it off. Then, deep in the recesses of her mind, something registered that it had been the phone ring not the alarm sound, and that there was, just possibly, one person who might be calling her at this time of the morning. Luckily for me. She regaled me with tales of her daughter’s birth in Ecuador 14 years ago, when she started having labour pains during a bullfight. We were both giggly with excitement and missed sleep, I think, and I was only having the mildest of cramps, every now and then - nothing I would have thought twice about without the incontrovertible sign of the wetness that was even now seeping through my tracksuit bottoms, into the towel I was sitting on, and hopefully not onto Maria’s passenger seat.

We drew up to the Emergency entrance, where I knew I had to go to get into Labour & Delivery after hours, and trailed in, bag, ball, pillow, pregnant tummy, wet trousers, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. I think it was fairly obvious what I was there for, and I looked with pity at the people in the waiting room, who presumably had much less happy reasons for being in hospital in the middle of the night. A nice security guard took us to the L&D admittance window, and phoned the woman who should have been sitting behind the glass. After an age, she showed up and made me fill in yet more forms, despite the fact that I’d already pre-registered and had my little pink card with me to prove it. Eventually she said “Follow me through the doors”, and I hugged Maria and thanked her profusely and told her to go home and get some sleep. There was no point her waiting, as they were obviously going to keep me in now I was in their clutches.

It’s remarkably easy to talk nonsense to a baby, or even to sing nonsense to a baby, even if you were never much of a nonsense-talker before. I just thought I’d mention that. He’s on my lap now, trying to wake up for one of our regular nipple-torture sessions. I changed him and he immediately produced a lovely stream of bubbling dottle (as I like to call it) in the new nappy. I think I’ll take my chances and wait for Daddy to come back and change this one. In the meantime I’ve just put his blanket over the cushion, the easier to be washed if the elasticated sides of the Huggies don’t hold up. We’re undecided as yet in our nappy try-outs, and we still have the packet of Luvs to open. The rest of the story will have to wait for another chapter.

(Names have been changed for Google-proofing purposes.)

The news

So hey, since the last time I was here I had a baby. The next three entries are the birth story, in installments for easier consumption. If you're squeamish or related to me, you may want to skip the more graphic passages.