- NaNoWriMo – Ridiculously, I won. I told Karen – who deserves big congrats for finishing her novel days ahead of time, btw – that I had a great story for why I wasn’t going to finish, and then somehow, magically I did anyhow. The great story was the C-section a few days before the deadline with only 700 words to go or so (a disgustingly close finish!), and me finishing was a combination of not being able to sleep when we got home from the hospital and the cool little laptop which arrived while we were in the hospital (but which didn’t really get used until we got home – pictures will come sometime, probably). I spent about an hour hitting 50k an hour-and-a-half before the deadline with my son sleeping in my arms. The story, on the other hand, is nowhere near finished. But I totally win heroic finish points…
- Support – Thanks to Sarah (a.k.a. Mrs. Mustard) at Cheeze Whiz and Mustard, Andi at Poot and Cubby, and my cousin JoAnna (Hi JoAnna!!!!) who I haven’t talked to forever for the words of encouragement – I haven’t had the chance to respond to anyone of late, but the encouragement has helped.
- Torsten’s weight issues – he’s gaining, but too slowly. The pediatrician has me doing something ridiculous right now to ensure he gets enough to eat, and I don’t know how long it will last before my breasts explode and I lose my mind. That is to say, I have to pump instead of feeding him from the breast and we feed him that plus a supplement to ensure he gets 14 oz/day. Those of you who’ve read any lactation literature at all will see the flaw in this – that pump is in no way as efficient as my son and doesn’t empty my breasts – but this is about making sure he’s able to gain from what he gets, not making sure what he gets from me is necessarily enough. But it’s frustrating and will interfere with my production if I keep it up. I’m taking him in to the lactation clinic for a weigh-in tomorrow, and if he’s gained significantly, then I’m going to continue to supplement him at the levels we’ve been for the last couple of days but feed him from the breast instead of pumping the rest, because frankly, pumping sucks. Let’s face it – anything that involves wearing this sucks. Wearing it every two hours really sucks. I’m seriously about out of patience with this B.S., and I don’t want to cheat my son out of good nutrition in any event.
- The rest of Torsten: He’s lovely. And snuggly. And great. He’s doing fantastically in spite of the weight gain, and hey, on the plus side, the jaundice seems to be going away.
- Mama and Papa: Exhausted. Mama would like a full night of sleep just once. She’s thinking of giving Papa the breasts for the evening to ensure that. Mama is trying to take better care of herself because she doesn’t make milk when she doesn’t sleep, and Papa is doing everything. We loves Papa. Please send Papa gifts of chocolate and love, Internets. He deserves them.
- Updates, pictures, and the like: To the grandparents Grothoff – Opa und Oma, wir haben keine Zeit gehabt, mehr Fotos hier zu stellen, aber wir werden probieren, bald Zeit zu finden! To everyone else: updates will be sparse for a while. The only reason I’m able to type this today is that my husband is able to take the baby while I pump and sleep. When he goes back on the breast, that will probably change.
That’s all for now. Hope everyone is well, and I hope to be back with more soon…
Professional computer geek and linguist living in Germany, doing infosec stuff and being the freakiest mother ever.
Ugh. That pediatrician is crazy. Pumping is so inefficient, and I would not want to see you end up having to go the formula route because of all this.
How much weight is he actually gaining? Is it really a cause for all this concern?
Yeah, this pumping nonsense is going to last as long as it takes me to get to the lactation consultant tomorrow. Ridiculous.
As for how much he’s gained, he gained 2.5 ounces last week, and he was still about 5 ounces under his birthweight at 3 weeks (his “good” gains the previous week were supplemented). We’re sort of wondering how much weight gains are based upon the fact that 1) we Americans are overweight, and 2) most American babies are formula-fed, but we have absolutely no information, and it’s hard to know what any of it really means.
*mutter*
The only thing I can say is that when we asked if it had done any developmental harm for Torsten not to have gained much yet, he said no. But I get the impression that everyone’s guessing with everything, you know?
You’re very welcome for the support. I think every mother feels like they are going certifiably insane during the first little while. I hope things start to get better. Since I’m reading this way later than you posted, I hope the lactation consultant had some encouraging news. It sounds like you’re doing an amazing job. Take care.