"My Breast Pump Talks to Me" and Other New Mom Confessions

I'd like to start by formally apologizing to everyone that I told I was ambidextrous as a child. I tried to flip French toast with my left hand (while holding Callum in my right) the other day, and it was NOT pretty.

My left hand is basically useless to me. But, in all fairness. I really did believe in my heart that I was "both handed." ;)


So, I know little man is over 3 months old now, but I'm still running around like a chicken with my head cut off--A little lost, a little LOT messy.

Babies are so sweet and wonderful, but MAN. They are hard work too. And the first few months are just rough, and I think we don't talk about it enough because we don't want people to think we can't handle it or that we aren't grateful for our kids. And also, we tend to forget a lot of it once it is over (thank goodness), and all we are left with are those sweet memories of holding our little angels while they sleep so sweetly.

I can actually remember being pregnant with Callum and thinking, oh, those first few months are nice because they can just sleep anywhere, so it won't be hard to go places for a while. Yeah... I just really didn't remember those newborn months very well. Here's some of my experiences, recorded, in part, so I can remember for next time and also because some are just funny.


My breast pump may not be sentient, but it does say words. It's kind of like an inspirational chant... Except not really because pumping just makes me feel like a cow. I actually have 2 different brands, and they say different things. My Ameda says, "Breast. (pause) PUMP. Breast. (pause) PUMP. ..."  My Medela says, "Lenard, Lenard, Lenard ... Then Racoon Racoon Racoon..."

If Audrey sees me grab my pump, she says, "Ah foo, ah foo, ah foo." She knows what it's all about.

Logan thought I was a little crazy when I first told him this, until one night I heard him chanting along with it. And I knew he had finally arrived at my crazy tired place. I know I'm not the only one out there who knows about this. If you haven't realized it before, you will now.

You're welcome. ;)


We're still riding the rollercoaster of nursing. And I haven't even thrown up the oatmeal I need to gag down every morning yet, so we're calling it a win. ;)

A few weeks ago, I started to make this board on Pinterest called, "Things I wish I could eat right now." Yeah... Callum is a little sensitive. I can't have tomato or anything with much flavor ... I mean, spices.

Let's just say, when I am allowed to eat pizza again, I think we'll eat it for a straight week. (Kudos to those mamas who have to cut dairy and more. That would be way worse.)

But don't worry. I came to my senses and didn't actually make that board. I like to spend my time pinning much more realistic things, like pictures of people's spotless, gleaming houses that look exactly like mine right now...


I'm actually a neat freak. But you'd never know it by walking into my house these days. (A perfect example of why we shouldn't judge others.) When I was little, I would spend hours organizing and cleaning my room. There was a defined line of neatness and order where my side of the room started and my sister's ended. ;) Now, I live in somewhat, but mostly not, organized chaos.

Audrey is a great helper, even if sometimes the only thing she is helping me do is gain more patience.  She wants to be doing whatever I am doing and is always cleaning with me. She even went through a phase of nursing her puppy or baby dolls. She nurses them, burps them, then throws them on the ground.

I promise she did not learn that last part from me.


She is growing up at the speed of light. We have her in a big girl bed. She is having a lot more 2 sided conversations now. Her imagination makes us laugh daily. She loves her brother most of the time, unless he's getting too much of "her" attention. She also likes to say, "Brother Awake!!" at the top of her lungs right when I get him to sleep or if he's starting to stir. ... He really likes that... She spends the fussy car rides saying, "It's ok, Brother." over and over.

We love our sweet girl.

We even love her when she gets out of her room in the middle of the night and scares the pants off of us by slamming our bedroom door.


Callum is a fussy guy. I really didn't know how stressful it is to have a fussy/colicky baby until him. When Audrey was a baby, I can remember feeling stressed out about going to the store or being in church because I knew she would probably cry at some point and I would want to be able to make a quick getaway. She was an average baby. And that stress was real.

Callum on the other hand.... I didn't want to go anywhere at anytime because his default setting for the first 3 months of his life was screaming. And when you have a fussy baby, I think a lot of people just kind of assume that you aren't feeding them enough or that you're doing something wrong, and they just want to talk to you about it at the store and give you a bunch of advice when all you're trying to do is get through the dang store as fast as you can. ... You know, not that I know from any kind of experience...

Do you think if I called WalMart everyday and asked them to bring Grocery Pickup to our store, that it would work?

But this awesome thing happened when he turned 3 months old. He started having like 5 whole minutes of content alone time where I wasn't holding him or feeding him or crying because I had been running on borrowed patience since 9AM and it was only 3 O'clock in the afternoon.

And then the 5 minutes became 10 and so on. He is still fussy a lot of the time, but boy, it is not nearly as bad as it was. I have finally started coming out of this horrible fog, right in time for the postpartum balding to set in. ;)

Anyways, if you have a really fussy baby, know that they DO grow out of it and also that if you can hold your temper long enough to not scream at someone to leave you alone at the store, it's totally ok to cry in the car. ;)


Now that Callum is older, he laughs a lot and plays and is such a sweetheart. He looks more and more like Logan everyday. He is a major momma's boy though. He loves to nurse, and will also take a bottle. We like to give him one right before bed. This has a made a big difference in everyone's sanity and has helped the nighttime fussy phase be less prolonged.


My most important confession is that I could not possibly do any of this without the best support team a girl could ask for. We like to tout the virtues and superpowers of moms, but it truly takes a village.

I have awesome resources to research and learn how to be a better parent. (I've recently been a huge fan of Parent's Magazine.) I have wonderful friends and family members. And I have the greatest husband who is always patient and kind to me. (Can't say enough about him.) Mostly, I am grateful that motherhood is a partnership with the Lord. Because I just don't possess the kind of patience that 2 kids under 2 require.


Remember that we're all a little crazy sometimes, and that's ok, baby giggles cure anything that ails you (for a short time anyways), and "corned beef and quesadillas" is totally an acceptable Irish dinner when you have screaming children and can't get around to making the potatoes.

Birth Story Vol II: A Condensed Version of How the Heck Callum Got Here

Welcome to my 3 part blog that I have no clever intro for because I no longer possess a brain or any free time. ;)


The Overdue Baby Saga:

Seeing your due date come and go is a depressing thing. I personally believe that people who study physchologically damaging situations would have found my brain a very interesting palce to be for those 4 days after my due date. I just kept thinking about the studies I've heard about with people on death row and how it affects them mentally...

Anyways, the way it affected me was... I donned a horrible purple grandma nightgown and wallowed in self pity, while eating spicy foods, pineapple, and eggplant parmesan. All while balancing on my yoga ball... You know, because you can totally bounce the baby out.

I had plenty of contractions. But I was showing little progress. I was particularly stressed out because Audrey was a csection, so they really hesistate to do any kind of inducing because there is a higher risk of uterine rupture. My doctors said they wouldn't let me go over 41 weeks, which was comforting because I wanted it to end already, and not comforting because I really didn't want to do a csection again.


Labor:

I like to tell people that the ward (church) Christmas party put me into labor. ... But the truth is that I was already in the early stages by the time we got there. By the time we finished eating our dinner, we knew it was real and we needed to get to the hospital, which is about an hour drive.

I had been up since 4:30 AM with contractions that had been off and on all day on the 6th. We got to the hospital about 10:30 PM. My water broke at 11:15 PM. We had him by csection on the 7th at 10:37 PM. We actually got to go to sleep at 3:30 AM on the 8th. I got to eat food sometime the next morning. It was a long road.

That's the cliff notes version. I'll give a little more detail for those who want it.

Logan was in super pumped mode as we drove in. He was really excited. I was in super-uncomfortable-stop-being-so-cheerful-this-hurts mode. They hooked me up and found that my contractions were fairly strong and pretty consistent (uh, yeah. I could have told you that...), but I was only dilated to 1cm. They decided they'd send me walking for an hour. If I had progressed, they'd officially admit me. If I hadn't, they were going to send me home.

Right when they were about to unhook me from the monitors, a strong contraction ended and I felt this POP. It felt kind of like the little guy had just kicked me really hard. Along with the pop came the telltale rush of fluid. "Uhh, I think my water just broke." The nurse didn't believe me. She turned to get a little strip to test for amniotic fluid. By the time she turned back around, Niagra Falls had filled the bed, and the little test strip was not necessary. So, they admitted me.

At first, they let me walk the halls. It's definitely awkward, walking around with fluid randomly deciding to leave the nest... But, it was nice to get a change of scene and to have something other than the pain to think about . We went back into the room and they told us that I actually wasn't allowed to walk around because I was more high risk, and needed to stay hooked up to the monitors. :/

I wouldn't say that I was super awesome at managing pain while I could walk, but this was a step in the wrong direction. I could only walk in a 3 foot radius while monitors kept beeping at me. And boy, those contractions just kept getting stronger. And the lovely water just kept flowing. It was rather unpleasant.

They wanted me to wait until I was dilated to 4cm to get an epidural. The hours kept passing... And I stayed at a 1. And I stayed at a 1. And I stayed at a 1. More than anything, I was just SO so exhausted. I'd been up since 4:30, and it's not like having regular, strong contractions allows for much rest. So I decided to ask for an epidural anyways and discovered that the nurse was misinformed. I could have an epidural after all! Halleluia! (Don't ask me about time frame on this, by the way. I have no idea.)

They also put me on pitocin about this same time. This is kind of a big deal because a lot of doctors won't let VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) patients have any pitocin--especially ones that had their csection such a short time ago.

Getting an epidural was amazing! Ah-mazing. So great. Best decision ever. I could finally get a little bit of rest. Not much, of course, with people coming in constantly, but still. It was great. So great. I can't even say enough about how great. So great.

And boring. Most of the morning was really boring. We wished we had brought some cards or something. After 12 hours of my water being broken, I finally had progressed past 1cm.

Yes. It seriously took that long. I continued to slowly progress through the rest of the day. I was on a time limit because they only let you have your water broken for 24 hours because of risk of infection spreading to the baby.

Sometime in the afternoon, my epidural slowly stopped working on this spot near my hip on one side. And the not-working area slowly spread until there was a whole lot of pain going on.

So much of this is just a blur... But I'll tell you what I remember. I was stuck at 7cm for 4 hours with really strong pitocin contractions and an epidural that just wasn't working. (Apparently, the little guy was sunnyside up (facing the wrong direction), but we didn't know that until the csection.)

I hope I never see the nurse that was helping me through those hours again because I was just ugly. Inside and outside. I was so completely discouraged because baby wouldn't engage so I wasn't progressing anymore, and I was in SO much pain that felt like it wasn't even doing anything to get the baby here, and I had just started to run a fever. :/

So we made the hard decision (that would have been made for us in the next hour or so anyways) to proceed to a csection. It was extremely emotional. But honestly, at that point, I hardly cared anymore because I was so tired and so done.

Almost 24 hours after my water broke, little man (who was still nameless at this point) was born via csection. And it was so awesome. We are seriously grateful for medical advances that allow us to have healthy babies when difficulties arise.

Logan watched the whole thing again. The nurses made a point of bringing him up to me so I could see him when he was born because I told them about the traumatic experience of not getting to see Audrey for 6 hours after she was born.

7 lbs 13 oz, 20.25 inches of pure perfection.

My doctor was amazing. I had a really bad scar from Audrey's section. I was allergic to the dissolvable staples they used, and it developed a really painful keloid scar. It basically looked like an earthworm was stuck to my skin. It was that raised. And it hurt me up until the time he cut it out. (He said it looked like I had had 3 csections with all the scar tissue I'd built up.) He took extra time to use special stitching and stitch extra layers so that I could heal better this time.

And it really worked. I felt better after 2 weeks than I had after months of Audrey's.

This extra stitching took a really long time. When they wheeled me out, I was so out of it, and barely staying awake. This nurse came up to me and said, "Let me tell you about your son." And boy. That really scared me. But Logan was there, and he didn't look worried. So I tried really hard to stay awake through the fog and listen to this lady. (I'll explain all about him in the next part.)

I had to stay in the recovery room for 2 hours. I threw up once. And slept the rest of the time. Then, they woke me up and wheeled me into the NICU so I could hold my little guy. Oh man, it was such a tender mercy. I really was scarred by the way things were handled with Audrey, and this was just so much better.

When we got into our postpartum room, I was SO groggy and super grouchy. The nurses kept asking me questions and really being so sweet. But I just couldn't handle it. I told them that I just couldn't talk to them, and they needed to go away so I could sleep. And I pumped for 15 minutes and went to sleep without eating because I was just that tired.

The next morning I had breakfast, pumped, and got to go see little guy.


Callum in the NICU:

Little guy (still nameless at this point) would have to stay in the NICU for at least 48 hours because he had a pneumothorax. Basically, when he screamed after being born, a little hole developed in his lung, causing it to collapse. This created an air pocket between his lung and his ribcage. They had quickly stabilized him with a high flow of oxygen, so it wasn't like we were ever scared or worried about him, but they needed to monitor it until it healed.

He also was put on an IV of antibiotics that he would need for 48 hours because my water had been broken for so long.

He also had IV fluids of sugar water because the high flow of oxygen made eating impossible for a little while. They said it would be like trying to eat while your head was stuck out the window of a car driving 60 miles an hour.

Before too long, they were able to lower his oxygen so he could eat. I was keeping up with pumping, and would nurse him, then give him a bottle of formula. They had us supplement him from the start because they needed to keep his blood sugar up high enough to slowly wean him off the IV sugar.

His oxygen came off completely sometime in the first day. His antibiotics came off right on time too after 48 hours. They also took chest Xrays everyday to check on the progress of the pneumothorax. It shrunk quickly, and he has had no lasting effects from it. The long (5 day) stay was mostly for weaning him off of the sugar.

It took FOREVER. After every feeding, they would prick his little heel and check his sugar. If it was high enough, they could lower the IV one notch.

We went and fed him every 3 hours. We could help change his diaper and could spend as much time as we wanted there, except that I was still a patient recovering from a csection. So we mostly went just for the feedings, then had to rush back to my room to take meds/ eat meals/ have the nurses do their latest torture on me ;) before rushing back to feed him again.

Also. Quick shoutout to THE best guy ever. I won't even bother trying to put my feelings into words. Thanks, Logan. Love you.

Audrey stayed at home with my mom. (Thanks again, Mom. You da very best.) She came to see us once, but wasn't allowed into the NICU to meet her brother because of flu season.

I had a MUCH better time of healing this time. If we didn't need to stay for Callum, I would have wanted to go home much earlier this time. We had 2 names in mind, and had a REALLY hard time deciding which to name our little man. We would "decide" on one and try it out for a few hours without telling anyone else. But once we tried Callum, we just knew it was for him. He's definitely a Callum. (A fact I knew since he was in the womb.)

Eventually, I was discharged because I was past ready to be, and couldn't stay admitted any longer. They have a couple of family stay rooms in the NICU, and we were able to stay in one. He was even off of his IV, and able to stay in there with us. It was great! Then, we finally got to go home the next day! We really missed Audrey (and she was missing us) and we were SO ready to get away from the horrible and constant beeping of monitors.


Yeah. There's too much to write about new mom life Vol 2. Life is way busy. Someone is usually crying and sometimes miracles happen, and my kitchen gets clean. ;) That about sums it up...


Audrey LOVES little Callum. She got to feed him a bottle of pumped milk the first night he was home, and she was in heaven. She does get frustrated with how often I've got to be sitting on the couch feeding him instead of playing with her and attending to her every desire.

Nursing has been much better with Callum (most of the time). It is still hard, and I have to eat oatmeal everyday for breakfast and a whole bunch of other milk boosting things, but so far, we're still going with it.


Remember that Oatmeal is disgusting, but helpful, and babies are always miracles, no matter how difficult the delivery. ;)