How I became one of THOSE women

Not long before Elle was born my brother mentioned that he and his then-fiance were wondering if I would be the type of woman to just nurse right out in the open. (Translation: His horrid wench of a fiance ran out of things to bitch about so she decided to try and bash me via speculation about how I would feed my future child. Sound like I'm reaching? I'm not. Trust me, you didn't know this chick.) For some reason the question really offended me. I mean, of course I wouldn't be one of THOSE women! I would nurse my baby but I would do it discreetly and out of everyone's sight. I would offend no one with the sight of my breasts.

For a while after Elle was born I really stuck to that. I didn't want to leave the house when I knew that she would have to nurse soon. And since she had to nurse every one or two hours I didn't leave the house much at all. When I did leave the house and had to nurse I would go to extreme lengths to nurse in private. I would find nursing rooms, changing rooms, darkened corners, whatever it took. (To this day I am so thankful that I never debased Elle and myself by nursing in a restroom. I think it's the most disgusting thing that you can ask a nursing mother to do. I can't stand to be in a public restroom for more than 30 seconds anyway but the thought of sitting in a crap smeared stall for 30 minutes while my baby had her lunch just makes me sick to my stomach.) If I couldn't find a way to be alone I would try to cover up. Elle hated that and even at a very early age she was able to grab the blanket and rip it off of herself.

Needless to say, nursing outside of my home was not a comfortable experience for either Elle or I. I would get tense and Elle would pick up on that and get fussy and angry. She already had a tough time nursing under the best circumstances and the poor little thing could hardly do it at all with me all stiff and hunched over her, afraid to expose even a sliver of bare flesh.

Then something happened. We went to Disney World. For the first day I went through the whole regular routine of trying to hide myself while nursing. I was pretty miserable and Elle was too. I didn't know how we were going to make it through the vacation and I very seriously considered breaking out the bottles and formula that I had packed "just in case".

Our second day of the trip was when the miracle happened. I went into the "baby care center" in the Magic Kingdom. In the nursing area I saw the most amazing sight. There were four women sitting in rocking chairs laughing and talking and nursing their babies. I figured they all must know each other because how else could they all be that comfortable just sitting there nursing in the open like that? I nervously sat down and got out a blanket to try to hide Elle under. The woman across from me laughed and said "Oh honey, you don't need to cover up, we've all seen it before!"

I felt silly but it was also somehow very freeing to hear that. I laughed too and put the blanket back away. And Elle and I, for the very first time ever, nursed in front of other people without feeling any tension or shame. I just sat there marveling at this seemingly simple event. I listened to the other women talk about what rides were the best to nurse on and it occured to me that none of them seemed at all uptight about the whole thing. I wondered if I would ever get to that point.

I did. Quickly. For the rest of the trip I nursed wherever and whenever Elle needed me to. I did it during shows, on rides, on benches crowded with other people, in restaurants, everywhere. I gave up battling Elle to keep the blanket over her while she ate. I stopped caring if someone would see a flash of a nipple when she would break off to give me one of her world famous "I love this boobie" grins.

So that was it. I was now one of THOSE women. I left it all behind in that baby care room in Disney World. The shame, the fear, the inability to just relax and enjoy the lovely bonding experience that I was sharing with Elle. I'm proud to say that I nursed Elle for nearly 15 months and never once after Disney World did I ever feel bad or ashamed about it.

When I hear people make comments about how women shouldn't nurse in public, or they should cover up I just have to laugh. I can't even get offended. I feel sorry for them because they don't understand how natural and beautiful nursing is. I feel sad that they can only see breasts as sexual objects and somehow see nursing as a sexual act. How very, very small their worlds must be that they can only see in one particular way. (Breasts are sexual and should therfor only been seen in the bedroom, strip club, HBO shows and car ads.) How sad that I used to let the fear of that kind of one-dimensional thinking mar my feelings on nursing my baby. And how very, very glad I am that four strangers taught me to rise above it.

To those women, whoever you are and wherever you are now: Thank you.

Edited to add: I just wanted to point out that while my early hang-ups about breastfeeding were all about my breasts, nursing never was. I nursed in public not because I wanted to flaunt my breasts, but because Elle was hungry and I felt she deserved the very best food that I could give her.

I feel so strongly about the benefits of breastmilk that I've already made the commitment to B and J that I will pump milk for their baby for two months. I've never had much luck with pumping so we'll have to see how it goes. If I'm successful I may go even longer so wish me luck!

Taking Zicam while breastfeeding

OK, I get like 3 or 4 hits a day from people looking to find out if it's ok to take Zcam while you are nursing. And the answer is:

Don't. In fact, don't take any medication while you are nursing unless you have talked to your doctor about it first. Pretty much every medication you can take will make it's way into your breastmilk find out from your doctor if it's ok or not.

And please, please, please talk to a medical proffesional about this type of thing. Don't rely on stangers on the internet to give you important information about stuff like this because most of the time they won't know what they're talking about. Thank you.

Proof

You will never be able to prove to me that it doesn't matter to babies if they are bottle fed or breastfed. Not after what happened to me this morning.

Elle was sitting on the bed with me as I was getting dressed. Before I had a chance to put my top on Elle came flying over to me with her eyes as big as dinner plates. She pointed at my chest and said "Na na!". Then she rested her head on my chest and softly, softly patted me as she made little yummy noises like she did when she used to nurse. When she finally pulled back she had a HUGE smile on her face and she kept saying "na na" over and over. For the next 5 minutes or so she kept resting her head on me and then burying her head in my chest and sniffing me.

I was really suprised that she reacted like that. She's been weaned for a little while so I didn't expect her to remember the word "na na" at all. I certainly didn't expect her to have a reaction like that to seeing me topless. I guess she has good memories of nursing. I have to admit that this makes me very happy. I hope that even though she's not nursing any more she'll still see me as who she can go to for comfort and protection and love.

So now I'll never believe that bottle feeding is as good as nursing. Not after that.

One down, one to go

Elle and I are down to one nursing a day. I decided that from here on out I would only nurse her off the right side. That's the side that she prefers so we used to use that side more anyway. My left side? It's killing me. To be totally crass, I feel like my left boob weighs about 40 pounds. I suppose I better get used to it because I'm going to be feeling that way on my right side soon too. I figure Friday or Saturday will be the last night I nurse Elle. Wahhhh!!

What if I don't have any more kids and this is the last time I ever get to nurse a baby? Did I say I didn't want more kids? I take it back! I take it all back!

Weaning Elle

Elle and I are coming to the end of our nursing road. She's down to just twice a day now. She's not totally happy about it but she's doing ok. Probably better than I am. It makes me so sad when we're cuddling up and she pulls my shirt up and tries to suck on my stomach. It actually makes it a little sad just to think about it.

I have to stop nursing her before I go forward with the surrogacy because I have to be on some medication for a while that you can't take while nursing. I'm also finding that I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to. When we do nurse Elle is squirming around, biting, pulling on my clothes and "talking". None of it makes for a very comfortable nursing session for me.

The good news is that I succeeded in my goal to nurse for a year. (Formula is fine what it's the only option available but I really, really think that babies should be nursed whenever possible.) Now Elle can go right to milk without ever having to go on formula. I'm really proud of both of us for sticking with it even when it was so hard in the beginning. For the first 2-3 months I hated nursing. Now though I think that it has given Elle and I a bond that nothing else could. Once we got it worked out it became something that we both really enjoyed. I'm a little sad to give that up.

I'll miss the way she'll suddenly stop sucking and smile up at me. I'll miss how warm and cozy she feels when she falls asleep on my lap, her tummy all full of milk. I'll miss the funny face she makes when she wants to nurse and I'm just not getting things ready fast enough. I'll miss her soft, contented sighs and the way she gently pats when chest when she's really happy to get to nurse.

On the other hand, I'll be really glad to have my boobs shrink back to normal size again.

Nursing has been wonderful for us and if Elle didn't like table food so much I would probably put off the surrogacy and continue to nurse for a while. But I feel like now is the right time for both of us to stop.

So if you happen to see me in the next couple of weeks and I'm sobbing as I stuff cabbage leaves into my bra, just keep in mind that I'm trying to wean.

Elle stuff

Elle rolled over today! I only had to help her a tiny bit. I helped position her arm so that she could get all the way over onto her back but she did all the rolling part on her own. She looked really suprised but that might have been just from the loud cheering Joseph and I did for her.

She's such a little beast. Since that first tooth came in nursing has been ..... a challenge. She likes to bite down. Hard. Very hard. I've read that if a baby does that you are supposed to pull away and fimrly say "No biting!". Yeah. That doesn't work for me. You know what she does when I do that? She laughs. It's true, my mom has heard it. Plus, sometimes I can't even pull away because she's got such a vise grip on me. Ok, it's not pleasant to say but she's drawn blood. What am I going to do with my little monster baby?

Disney with a baby

I have my day by day run down of the trip started but it's on Jesse's laptop and I can't get to it right now so I'm just going to talk a little bit about doing DisneyWorld with a baby. Before this trip, when I would go to DW and see babies I would think "I am never taking a baby to DW!". How quickly things change.

You know what? It worked out pretty well. We had to take a few more breaks during the day so that Elle could nurse but that wasn't such a big deal. Most of the time there was a ride or shop nearby that Joseph wanted to visit so Jesse would take him to do that and Elle would have a snack.

I used all the baby care centers in each park. Magic Kingdom and EPCOT have the best baby care centers. They're large and roomy and have pretty much every baby-related thing you could think of. The nursing rooms in both of them were really nice too. They each had 4 rocking chairs arranged facing each other so that you could sit and nurse and talk with the other mothers in the room. MGM and Animal Kingdom had smaller facilities with tiny seperate rooms for mothers to nurse in. Each place only had 2 rooms! I wonder what it's like when the parks are crowded!

Each time I used the nursing rooms the same thing would happen. I would start talking to the other women in the room and the coversation always went the same. We would discuss how old our babies were and how much they weighed. Then, without fail we would start talking about how awesome it was that we were all nursing instead of formula feeding. It may sound obnoxious but in this day and age when so few women nurse their babies we all seemed to think that we deserved a little pat on the back. I bet I could have used those rooms 100 times and had the same conversations. It was nice.

My only complaint about the baby care centers is that there is only one in each park. If you're not right by it when your little one wants to eat then you're kind of out of luck. Most babies are not going to happily wait while you trudge a half mile across the park so that you can feed them.

So I quickly became an expert at public nursing. (Yes Ben and Gwen, I've become one of those women!) My senses became fine tuned. My eyes could scout out a good, private spot from miles away. My body could twist and bend into shapes that I never knew possible so that Elle could latch on comfortably. I could quickly fashion a blanket (or a burb rag or her sling or even a napkin) into a little tent so that Elle could eat in private.

I only had one negative experience with public nursing. Once, as I was waiting for Jesse and Joseph to get off a ride this fat woman and her four fat kids stood there and openly stared at me. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I was totally covered up! It was obvious what I was doing but it's not like I was standing on a table and spraying milk around. I was being discreet. I didn't understand what the problem was. Maybe they were just hungry.

When we were at Downtown Disney I asked a castmember if there was a place I could nurse and she suggested that I use the bathroom. Yeah, not so much but thanks. How is that a good idea at all?

But otherwise things went very smoothly with Elle. She's a fantastic little traveler. She was happy to sit in her stoller and smile at us and people watch. If you ignore the time we had to spend at the World's Worst Emergency Room Ever with her (more on that later) she was no trouble at all. She ended up being a lot easier to do Disney with than Joseph was (more on that later too!) For now, Elle is napping and I'm going to get myself some lunch. I think I'll eat it in the bathroom.

What's this "we" crap?

Last night was rough. Elle wanted to nurse all day long yesterday and it continued on into the night. At one point I actually nursed her for 2 hours. I'm not joking of exaggerating. I feel like I got no sleep at all but I'm actually probably sitting at around 2 and a half hours. At one point when she wanted to eat I put the covers over my head and said "I can't feed her anymore! I just can't!" Jesse responded with "Yes we can, we have to." My answer? "What's with this "we" stuff? I think I'm the one who's feeding her. Once you have liquid coming out of your nipples too then we'll start using "we"."

I can't blame him though, he was tired too. Joseph kept getting up and coming into our room. At one point I was nursing Elle (of course) and Joseph came in crying that he needed us. I woke Jesse up and asked him to take Joseph back to bed. Jesse sat up, hugged Joseph, said "Come here Elle, I'll put you over my shoulder" and started trying to burb him. It's funny now but at the time I was annoyed. Never wake Jesse up and ask him to do anything. It's hopeless.

One night Joseph came into our room crying for a glass of water and I couldn't help him because I was ...... take a wild guess what I was doing! Anyway, I woke Jesse up (that in itself took a good two minutes) and asked him to get Joseph some water. Jesse opened up a bottle of water that he had sitting by the bed, took a big drink and then laid back down. Oy vey. Meanwhile Joseph is standing by the bed crying so I had to wake Jesse back up (yes, he fell asleep that fast) to tell him that I didn't wake him up in the middle of the night so that he could have a drink of water. He didn't remember any of it. Sigh.

Big and little gains

Joseph has learned a new skill. Today he was using the computer and Elle was in her swing and all was right with the world so I thought I would run upstairs and go to the bathroom. No sooner do I sit down than the phone rings. I figured I would let the answering machine get it but I heard Joseph pick up the phone and say hello. He then informed the caller that I couldn't come to the phone because I was "going potty". The good news is that it was Jesse's aunt Pam and not someone who would think it was weird that I would let my 5 year old answer the phone and talk about my bathroom business. The better news is that Joseph has learned how to answer the phone. He's so smart.

Elle is continuing to gain weight like a champ. Today she weighed in at 11 pounds, 9 ounces. I can't believe how big she's getting! The good news is she's growing like a weed and the better news is that nursing has been going really well lately. Most of the time she latches right on without any problem. Sometimes she'll nurse for half an hour of more but most of the time it's just 15 minutes or so. It seems like she's getting on a schedule of nursing every 3 hours or so. She's so smart too.

The kids

On Saturday we went to the mall and Joseph got something that every 5 year old boy dreams about - a scented candle. I had told him that when he was a baby I would take him into Yankee Candle Company and he liked to sniff the candles. He thought that was so funny that he decided to re-enact it when we went into YCC on Saturday. He found a candle that smelled like cookies and he just had to have it. After it was paid for the cashier gave him his own little bag and he carried the candle around the mall, taking it out and sniffing it every few minutes. He's made me promise not to burn it because it's his candle and his alone. He asked me if he could burn it in his room if he promised not to burn the house down. I think I might have to pass on that one.

This morning I was nursing Elle and she was wide awake and looking at me the whole time. I guess she was in a good mood or something because she kept letting go of me to give me these big crazy grins. Then she would realize she wasn't eating anymore and would start to fuss. After I got her latched on again she would look at me and then break away to smile again. She kept doing it over and over again and it was making me laugh so hard. Funny baby.

My little piggy

A few hours ago I was ready to throw in the towel on nursing. It's often frustrating for me (and sometimes Elle too). Today was rough because Elle has been refusing to latch on for more than a few sucks at a time. She's been doing that since about midnight last night and then all day today. She acts hungry but she just won't nurse and I was getting more and more frustrated. Not with her of course, just with the whole thing. I was worrying that she wasn't getting enough to eat.

So this afternoon I went to see a nurse practitioner/lactation consultant and had her give me some advice. She said this is something that babies do sometimes. She suggested that I try feeding her in the bathtub of all places. How weird is that? She said overall Elle looks very good and is clearly getting enough to eat since she now weighs in at 10 pounds 14 ounces. Heh. I guess she is getting enough to eat after all.

So I'll stick with nursing. I really don't want to stop, I just want it to go easier. I think a lot of my problems with it come from second guessing myself. Maybe I just need to give it more time so that it all seems more natural. We must be doing something right though since she's gained so much weight. What a little piggy.

Elle's Law

Elle's Law: If Mommy puts you in the carseat to take you somewhere that means it's time to wake up and demand to be fed RIGHT NOW. Do this even if Mommy is running very late and just tried to feed you 20 minutes earlier to prevent this from happening.

Ok, it might sound like a joke but it's not. I think Elle is trying to set a record for how many public places she can be nursed in. I had to nurse her while Joseph was in therapy today. The good news was that she did beautifully. She latched on right away and sucked really well for about 10 minutes. After I burped her she nursed for about 5 more minutes without any problems. I was so pleased. I know it's a silly thing to be happy about but it really was nice to have a smooth and easy feeding. Now she just needs to figure out how to do that at 3:00 in the morning too.

Zzzzzzzz

Elle, bless her little heart, is turning me into a zombie. She wants to do nothing but nurse all night long. She wakes up, nurses for 20 minutes or so and then sleeps for about half an hour. Then she wakes up and we do it all again, all night long. Throw in a few diaper changes and few gas bubbles and Jesse and I aren't getting a whole lot of sleep right now. During the day Elle sleeps like a baby and goes about 3 hours in between feedings. The little stinker has her days and nights mixed up but I'm not real sure how to fix it.

Joseph has been a challenge in the past few days too. He occasionaly is helpful and good but for most of the time he's taken to totally ignoring everything we tell him. I've found that I can only repeat something calmly about 10 times before my voice starts to get loud and shrill. I hate hearing myself talk to him like that and that leads to me feeling bad because I'm worried I'm not being nice enough to him. I just keep reminding myself that this is hard for him too and he just needs a little time to adjust.

Really though, both my kids are sweet. I just need about 5 more hours of sleep a night to be able to appreciate them fully.

Little Miss Elle

Ok, we're home, we've been home for a few days now. Our little girl is here and she is perfect. She weighed 8 pounds and 8 ounces when she was born (thank goodness she came a week early!) and she was 20 inches long. She was born at exactly 11:30 PM. Her eyes are dark blue and her hair is brown. She had to spend her first night and day in the NICU because she was having some problems breathing but that's all ok now.

After Elle got out of the NICU we spent the next night and day just snuggling and working on getting her to nurse. She had some problems with that, she didn't want to latch on. We tried feeding her from a syringe and even from this special little cup. After about 5 days of that I figured I was going to spend the next year pumping and then syringe feeding her all her meals. Then, out of no where she just started doing it. Now she's a pro! She really is perfect after all.

Joseph has been doing pretty well adjusting to having Elle here. He acts up sometimes and earlier today I had to scold him for trying to use her as a foot rest but mostly he seems to be doing ok. He wants to kiss her and hold her all the time. That can be a bit much when I'm trying to change her or feed her but how can I get upset with him for being a good big brother?

All in all we're all doing pretty well. I'm tired and in need of a shower but I'm also very happy to have my little girl (I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!) home with me.