A little humor. We can use a laugh right now...
So, I've never been a big advocate for breastfeeding. Yes, you are about to become more familiar with my boobs than you are your own. After all, God created Similac for tired mothers with colicky kids who eat as much as mine. With #1, I didn't even consider it. With the twins, ahh hell no. What was I? A friggin' cat? #4 made me think about it, for about two minutes. And with the fifth, I must have been delirious with hormones because I actually bought a pump. But I never used it, and it sat in a box for the last three and a half years. Until along came Little Bird. Odds are, Michelle Duggar is full of shit. I'll bet she didn't start nursing until like, her thirty seventh kid or something.
I wasn't even admitted yet when the nurses started their diatribe of the benefits of human milk versus that of the easy way. And trust me, I was all for the easy way this time 'round. My body couldn't take much more at that point. Considering that my feet were still in stirrups and I'd just undergone a non medicated surgical procedure to remove the placenta? Yeah....NO. Definitely not something at the top of my 'to do' list. But then MFH came back from Little Bird's bedside and gave me her weight, in grams. It always sounds worse that way, for some reason. And the nurses weren't letting up on the subject. When I got into the NICU that evening, they cornered me. They sent the sweetest, most innocent looking RN over to guilt trip me into a corner. Fucking peer pressure.
I left that visit with my tail between my legs and a shit ton of disposable collection bottles in hand. It wouldn't be so bad, right? Women have been doing this shit for thousands of years. Immunity protection, no rejection, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. One time. I'll try it once. I'll try anything, once. If it doesn't work out, at least I can say I tried. We'll always have manufactured nutrition in a can to fall back on. Surely, that was the way to go. Surely, this wasn't going to end well.
But, son of a bitch. I got home, dropped my bags at the door, and became half cyborg for an hour. Just one hour. If I came up dry, so be it. I think the nurses put the juju on the boobs. I had no clue what the hell I was doing, I still don't. But I managed to get more than I expected. More than I could go back and report that it wasn't gonna happen. I couldn't deny it, I was off to a really good start. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of easy. Nothin' to it, really. And hey, Little Bird would reap some really sweet rewards from it. So I kept at it. Until the next morning, when I got bupkis. Fuck my life.
Nursing in and of itself can be tricky. Exclusively pumping is a fucking chore. Apparently, you have to trick your chesticles into believing that a piece of machinery that runs on twelve volts of electricity is a baby. And just how does one accomplish this? They tell me to look at her picture. Breathing techniques. Listen to music. Relax. I know, right? Relax? Yeah, lol. No pressure. And nothing says pressure like a team of medical personnel prepping your preemie for her first feedings, and constantly asking for an update on your end. Got milk? How's it going? Anything yet? How many cc's? Shut the fuck up! The boobies are shy and you're scaring them!
The really ironic thing, and this is the best part, is that even though Little Bird isn't here, I still have to wake every two to three hours throughout the night and coddle Medela. Medela is my adopted child, my black market baby. My infant by proxy. If they really want to bottom out the teen pregnancy rate in this country, they'd send young girls home with a breast pump instead of a robotic doll.
The lactation consultant said it's not an exact science. And I get that. Trial and error. Drink lots of fluids. Okay. Try eating chocolate. Sure. Avoid stress. L.O.L. As if. So there I am, at 3am, sitting at the edge of the bed, pumping my nipples off, and crying. Because nothing was coming out. And all of this as I'm concentrating on #6's pics, listening to Nickleback and bawling like a weenie. When MFH rolled over and looked at me, I swear I saw a little cloud bubble with the image of a bottle of Valium pop up above his head. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for this shit. I called the Guilt nurse the next morning to hand in my resignation. But it backfired on me. "She's doing really well today! We started her trophic feedings and already increased her amount! She's tolerating them really well! Babies thrive on breast milk! When you come back down, bring more, because she's almost finished her supply!" Damn it! I hung up the phone and did the walk of shame back to the pump.
I'm not sure what I've done right between then and now. Maybe it's possible to indeed will the body into doing something that it isn't capable of doing. Because I've since been semi successful in managing to yield roughly a half ounce at a shot. Which was pretty good until a couple of days ago. Little Bird's feedings increased to fourteen cc's every three hours. FML! I am. So. Screwed.
And now comes the part where I go on my own little rant about the benefits. I'm not one for telling anyone how they should parent their kids. So I'm still not going to jump on that "breast feeding is superior" bandwagon. But I am going to tell you that I'm seeing....something. With my own eyes. It's common knowledge that all babies loose roughly ten percent of their birth weight within the first week of life. Micro preemies tend to loose more, up to fifteen or even twenty percent. The day after she arrived, Little Bird was already down an ounce and a half. Keep in mind the fact that they've been pumping all kinds of fluids into her, combined with the reality that she doesn't have the extra ounces to loose, and this was cause for concern. Today, she is fifteen days old, and she has since gained that ounce back. An actual, true ounce. Not from the meds, not from the IV's. It's all her. Her color has improved tremendously. Her head and lower half of her body were badly bruised from the trauma of her delivery. Her team was worried about her left foot, particularly. But the swelling is now gone. Healed. They credit the milk. And, she was extubated from her ventilator, at ten days old. We're talking about a baby born at twenty six weeks, four days. A baby who had no steroid intervention to help mature her lungs prior to her birth. Even I can't deny that it is benefiting her.
Aside from all of the positives she receives, I get some of my own. Like, that great excuse to eat an extra five hundred calories a day. But most importantly, breast milk is like kryptonite to teenaged boys. Got a fourteen year old that eats you out of house and home? Just stick a bottle of this shit front and center in your refrigerator, and I guarantee you'll see a difference in your weekly grocery bill. Got a fifteen year old who won't log off the internet? Toss a flange in his direction, he'll haul ass faster than he can gag.
So, if you're expecting a baby, it's just something to consider. I'm not even going to lie to you, it's hard. A lot harder than it seems. If Little Bird was full term, I probably wouldn't have attempted it myself. Just know what you're getting into in that regard. But it is worth it. Every drop. I'm starting to see why they call it liquid gold. I'm going to keep at it. As long as The Ladies cooperate and give me something, I'll keep trying. If not, no biggie. Similac does exist. And at least I won't have to walk around attached to the iron breast. Oh, one more thing. If you're out and about, and we happen to run into each other, just do me a favor? No hugs, mmk? A little high five will suffice for now.
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