Breastfeeding the second time around
Just when you think you’re a breastfeeding expert? You, uh, might be totally freaking ABSOLUTELY wrong.
As you may or may not know, I breastfed our son, D, for 13 months. One year had been my goal, and when I reached it, I used the next month to gradually wind down — reducing feedings here and there — until we were officially done at the 13-month mark.
Our breastfeeding experience was a really positive one, but it had a rough start. D was a voracious eater from birth, and nursed constantly during our three-day hospital stay. And I do mean CONSTANTLY.
He had a great latch, but he was so … agressive! … that my poor nipples were scabbed and painful from his ravaging.
The nurses pitied me, but couldn’t do anything.
My baby was a baracuda.
After the first couple of weeks, my nips healed and breastfeeding got SO much better. It didn’t hurt, it was super-easy, yadda yadda. Oh, and did I mention how I adored my big, beautiful boobs? ADORED.
As I neared the end of my pregnancy with our little girl, C, I began to think about breastfeeding a lot. Would it be easier for me this time, since I knew what I was doing? Would she be a total shark like her big brother? Would my poor nips be torn apart again? Oh, please no. Not that.
I was very surprised that my experience nursing C has been COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than it was with my son, D. Different kids = different personalities and nursing styles, I guess, Um, should have seen that coming.
C was a little peanut compared to her brother — she was 7 lbs. 12 oz. at birth, and D was 8 lbs. 8 oz. Being a smaller baby, she also had a smaller mouth. Smaller mouths = OW for the breastfeeding mama. Seriously. OW.
C had a crappy latch, and had trouble getting her mouth open all the way. It was just this teeny tiny little mouth that barely seemed big enough to fit a finger inside.
But I was determined! I buzzed the nurses constantly and asked them to come help me latch. They tried their best, and some were able to help, and some weren’t. They all agreed she didn’t have a good latch, and tried different suggestions. I tried various positions. I took all of their advice until I figured out what worked.
Oh, and did I mention it was FRUSTRATING AS HELL?
Because it was.
I was exhausted, sore from my C-section, hormonal, emotional about missing my sweet boy (who was staying with my mom and sister while we were in the hospital). I just wanted breastfeeding to WORK, but it was SO HARD OMG *cry cry cry*
The only positive thing was that my milk started to come in within 48 hours (sort of a milk/colostrum mix situation). It took 72 hours with my first baby, so I was thrilled to have it earlier, since it made everything a bit easier. The nurses told me that because I’d nursed my son for 13 months, my body “remembered” and it came in earlier. Sweet!
But oh, the latching.
Latching continued to be a bitch.
I kept at it, and eventually it started to get better. The morning we left the hospital, I was feeling pretty good about it. I had to work HARD to get her on properly — careful positioning, squeezing, finger placements, angles, etc.
The first few days at home, I had horrible moments of frustration when it JUST. WOULD. NOT. WORK. But again, it continued to get better, very slowly.
Now baby C is 2 1/2 weeks old, and doing much, much better with the latching. It’s still a struggle to get her mouth open wide enough, but I’m getting more skilled at it. When her latch is bad, I break it and start over again. No bad habits for you, baby girl!
One of my friends had her second baby girl on Friday, and Best Friend is having her first baby girl in a couple of weeks — so exciting! — so I hope this post helps them. I told both of them already to just be prepared for it to be hard at first, but know that it gets SO MUCH BETTER after a week or so.
It’s actually the same thing I blogged about almost two years ago, after having my son. See?
If I had to sum up breastfeeding to a mommy-to-be, I’d say HOLY HELL, AT FIRST IT’S PAINFUL/DIFFICULT/NO SLEEP/AUGHHH but then WAIT, HANG IN THERE AND IT GETS SO MUCH BETTER! JUST SOLDIER IT OUT FOR THE FIRST FEW DAYS!
So hang in there, ladies! It does get better — I promise!
C-section smackdown: emergency versus scheduled
When I was waiting for my scheduled C-section, I spent a lot of time wondering if it would be similiar to my first C-section.
Knowing what’s ahead might have made it easier, or it might have made it harder, because I would be pscyhing myself up and getting nervous about going under the knife.
So this post is for everyone who might be having a scheduled C-section — or has the possibly of having an emergency C-section (which is anyone) — and wants to know the differences between them.
Here we go — everything you wanted to know about C-sections!
FREEZING/ANESTHESIA DURING A C-SECTION:
Epidural: With our son, I was in labour for 17 hours (and pushed for three hours) before getting my somewhat-emergency C-section. I’d had an epidural after about five or six hours of labour, but it unfortunately (damn you, stupid resident) only worked on ONE SIDE. Of course, they fixed that before starting the C-section, and then I felt fantastic. No pain, barely any feeling at all. Awesomesauce!
Spinal: For our daughter’s planned C-section, I was given a spinal instead of an epidural. It was the same kind of method — lean forward, hunch your back, needle goes in (doesn’t hurt). But unlike an epidural, a spinal starts to work right away. My butt felt numb as I was lying down, just minutes later. Unfortunately, in my case, the spinal wasn’t quite as effective as it should have been — I’m going to sue my stupid lower back, because apparently shit is messed up in there. I felt a lot more tugging and pulling than I had with my first C-section, but that could have just been because it didn’t take full effect.
THROWING UP AFTER A C-SECTION:
With the epidural for C-section #1, I threw up once during the actual operation, but not once afterwards. Woohoo!
With the spinal for C-section #2, I didn’t throw up at all in the operating room OR in the recovery room, and was very proud of myself. However, I did throw up for a few hours once I was in my room. Was it the spinal’s fault, or the fault of whatever other drugs? Not sure. But I do know that throwing up with a brand-new C-section incision is THE WORST.
POST C-SECTION PAIN & PAINKILLERS:
With C-section #1 (when I had an epidural), it took at least a full hour in the recovery room before I could even wiggle my toes — maybe longer! I just lay there feeling absolutely nothing below my chest, and trying to move my toes to no avail. They gave me Tylenol or something similar when I first got to the recovery room, and by the time the freezing had worn off, the Tylenol was doing its job. I continued to just take Tylenol and Ibuprofen during my hospital stay — every four hours or something like that — and for the first 4-5 days at home. That was it.
With C-section #2, I already mentioned that the spinal didn’t fully work on me. I could easily move my legs while I was still in the operating room, and so by the time I got to the recovery room, I felt EVERYTHING. The worst was when the nurses would push on my stomach — I think they do it to check your bleeding or your uterus or something. It was agonizing! That’s when people finally started believing me that the spinal hadn’t really worked that well, and the Tylenol was doing nothing. They gave me a shot or two of morphine, and that didn’t work either (I have an intolerance to it, as I discovered during an orthpedic surgery last year). So they ended up giving me oxycodone, and it did the job. I was nervous about becoming addicted to it, but I only had it sporadically over the first two days (along with Ibuprofen) and then switched over to just Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Just like the first time, I was done with it all by a week postpartum.
MOVING AROUND/WALKING AFTER A C-SECTION:
I didn’t really see much of a difference in my mobility, when I compare how I felt after each C-section. The first time you walk to the bathroom — about 12 hours after surgery (or at least it was for me) — you feel a little unsteady and dizzy, but it’s not bad. You get to sit on an actual toilet (with a, um, cathedar still stuck up your pee-business) and it feels great to brush your teeth and wash your face.
I did make more of a point of walking after my second (scheduled) C-section, though. I went on walks for fresh water from down the hall, and to just meander around, and it felt good. After my first C-section, I’d walked around our room during the hospital stay, but that was about it — and then it was REALLY tiring/dizzy-ing to walk through the hospital to come home. So this time I was much smarter about it, and it paid off.
GAS/POOPING AFTER A C-SECTION:
As gross as it is to talk about, I have to talk about it. My experience in this, um, category, was the same with both C-sections. My only advice is to take anything and everything they offer you — namely Colace (a stool softener) and Magnolox (a mild laxtive). Seriously — take it all! I spent the first few days after each C-section wondering if I was horribly broken inside, because nothing was happening. I felt crampy and uncomfortable, and couldn’t help but picture my intestines tangled together and knotted with a forgotten surgical glove or something.
So, in conclusion, take everything they offer! Eat bran muffins. Drink tepid (not ice!) water. Drink lots of hot tea (decaf if you’re breastfeeding, of course). One doctor even suggested chewing gum, as it’s supposed to stimulate everything down there. Eventually, you will poo, and it will be fine — it’s just the waiting/discomfort beforehand that is kind of the shits pits.
Our little girl’s birth story
You might think two C-sections would be very similar, but when we had our son, D, back in June of 2010, it was very different.
First of all, I went into labour on my own — one day before his due date — so I went through all the usual stages: early labour, active labour, transition, and pushing. But when three hours (THREE HOURS) of pushing didn’t bring the little guy any closer to the exit, I begged like a dog was given a C-section.
It wasn’t really much of an “emergency” C-section, but his heart-rate was dropping and it was clearly the only option. Something was wrong. The “something,” by the way, turned out to be a very stuck baby head in a very non-yielding pelvis, and he had a mark on his head from driving into the bone.
The whole ordeal was a grueling 17 hours of labour (including three hours of pushing), and it was awful, awful, awful. There were complications. The C-section itself was great, but the whole labour experience was so bad that I made the doctor swear I’d be able to get another one when we had more kids. They agreed I was likely to wind up in the same situation again, so I was definitely able to get one. HUGE sigh of relief from me. And Darling Husband.
So when we got pregnant with Baby #2 — our daughter, C — we knew all along she was going to be arriving via scheduled C-section. Although her due date was May 5, we had a booked C-section on April 25 (at 38 weeks and four days). It was a huge relief.
I wasn’t nervous about it, because I’d been through it before. I thought I might be anxious when I woke up that morning, but no. Super excited! Then I figured I might get nervous once we got to the hospital, but — nope! Still excited!
Once I was changed into my gown and hairnet-thingy, and Darling Husband was looking super-hot in a pair of green scrubs, we talked to two nurses for a few minutes (I think one nurse was training the other). They went over what to expect, and asked questions about my last C-section and this pregnancy.
Then they left, and we just basically got to hang out in a little room and wait to go to the O.R. Darling Husband played games on his phone, I tweeted and Facebooked on my phone. We took pictures of each other on our phones. Thank God you’re allowed to use your phones in hospitals, right? It was all very casual.
The C-section had been scheduled for 8:30, so when that time came and went, I was even more eager. I think it was 9:00 when the nurses returned and said we were all set. When they led me into the operating room, I was so excited I could barely stand it. I hopped onto the table and everyone introduced themselves, and we just chatted while they put in an IV and got everything organized.
I had mentioned earlier that morning about how when I’d had my C-section for my son, D, I had hemorrhaged and lost a lot of blood. So I kept hearing people mention that, and they even had blood brought up to the room, just in case it happened again and I needed a transfusion. Scary! They also kept talking about my low hemoglobin levels (89, I think it was) and how that might come into play. I tried not to think about that.
I hunched forward towards a nurse while the anesthesiologist wiped my back with solution and did my spinal. The nurse and I talked about how I’d made Little Sis paint my toenails the day before. I kept looking over at Darling Husband, but his face was covered with a mask, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I think he was nervous for me. Well, someone had to be!
The spinal started to work quickly, and it felt weird as I lay down on the bed. My butt had a weird pins-and-needles numbness feeling. But I could still wiggle my toes and move my legs around. They waited a few minutes and asked me to move my right leg, and I shot it up in the air. One of the nurses actually yelled in surprise. They all seemed sort of shocked, but said we’d just wait a little longer.
Every time they asked, I could move my legs less and less, but I could still move them — which was a bit unsettling. The anesthesiologist ran something cold down my face and neck, and along my body, and asked me to tell him when I couldn’t feel its coldness anymore. As the minutes ticked along, I felt it less and less, but I still felt it.
Uh, apparently that was “good enough,” though, and we were ready to begin. My doctor — the lovely and awesome Dr. L — breezed in and said hi. She had managed to still look glammed up, even in her surgery scrubs. She had another doctor assisting her, and they literally went to work just minutes after they walked in.
Someone asked me if I was all set, and I cheerfully said yes, and then they informed me we had already started. Oh, um, cool!
There was a sheet drawn in front of me, so I couldn’t see anything (luckily … ew). But I saw the tops of the doctors’ heads, and felt them going at my stomach — one on each side of me. Everyone kept telling me I’d feel a ton of pressure, and I did. It felt like they were having a tug-of-war with the baby, trying to yank her out of my belly button or something.
With my first C-section, I didn’t remember nearly that amount of “feeling” or pressure. Of course, I was so drugged and exhausted by that point that I probably wouldn’t have cared if they pulled him out my nose. I mentioned to the anesthesiologist that I felt a lot, but he just kind of brushed it off and said it was normal to feel pressure, etc. It was occasionally painful, but nothing compared to labour, so I just sort of gritted my teeth and waited.
“You’re doing great! She’s almost here!” the doctors kept announcing over the sheet.
It was cold in the room, and I was shivering. No one really seemed to notice, except Darling Husband. I had a few warm blankets on my arms, but my teeth were still chattering. It wasn’t the same sleepy, ultra-warm feeling of coziness that I’d experienced with the last C-section.
There were more huge tugs and yanks, and then I heard everyone move into high gear as our baby girl made her way into the world.
A cry! I heard her cry!
Our son, D, had sounded kind of sickly when he let out his first cry, but our daughter had a loud cry from the beginning. It sounded healthy and strong, and I was so relieved. Tears immediately started running down my cheeks. I heard someone announce that she was born at 9:37.
Darling Husband left my side right away, to go take pictures as she was weighed and cleaned off. For a few minutes, I couldn’t see anything but the sheet. No husband, no baby. I just lay there listening to the amazing sound of her crying, and waiting for someone to bring her around the sheet.
I heard someone say her weight was 7 lbs., 12 oz., and I marveled at how small she was. I had expected a giant nine-pounder, based on the trashing I’d felt inside of me. But maybe I’d felt so much because she was so small, and had more room to move around?
There was still a lot of yanking and tugging — it felt like being picked at with a bunch of pairs of tweezers, I remember thinking — as they started closing me back up again.
Darling Husband came back into view, and he was holding our little girl — all bundled up in those white flannel blankets with blue and pink stripes. Just like he had with our son, he held her over my face so I could kiss her soft little face. She looked so much like her brother! She had his sweet little nose (Darling Husband’s nose), and little thin-lipped grimace. But she also had her own features — squishy chubby cheeks, and puffy eyes that looked like they couldn’t even open.
We posed for a family photo — which I would later marvel that was very flattering, because I had a nice pointy chin and none of the double-chin-ness I experienced in the same photo with our son. Darling Husband continued to hold her by my face, and I whispered to her and kissed her.
It was just like when our son, D, arrived, 22 months earlier, only it was different. Only hours earlier, I had wondered how I was going to love someone as much as I love him. And as soon as I kissed her soft little cheeks, I knew I loved her equally.
Everything had changed in one unbelievable instant.
My baby girl was here.
Five things I’d forgotten about hospitals
- They are loud places not very conducive to sleeping. You get checked on a lot. The baby gets checked on a lot.
- IVs are not only gross to look at, but they make it super-hard to move around. And sleep. And breastfeed.
- They give you a helluva lot of needles. My right arm still has massive black and purple bruises the size of coffee table rings.
- You are living in a vacuum with no sense of time. Even though there is a clock on the wall opposite your bed, you can’t seem to remember (A) when you last fed the baby (B) when you last took your meds (C) when you last ate, or (D) when you last got up to pee
- It will annoy you that your husband will sleep SO WELL on a crappy cot, while you are struggling to get to sleep in your bed. You will wish desperately for his ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime.
Two kids, two names, two ways to mess up
Is it totally horrible that for the first few days, I kept calling our daughter by our son’s name?
No? It isn’t? OK, good.
My mother grew up in a family with eleven (11!) kids, so she says they were always getting called the wrong name. Her mother would be furiously running through the names, and by the time she got to the right one, the kid was laughing too hard to listen.
But I only have TWO kids, so I thought that I wouldn’t have that problem. Hell, they’re not even the same gender!
I always referred to our son as “Baby Boy” here on the blog, which was fine when it was just him. Then he just really wasn’t a baby anymore, so I started writing about him as “The Toddler of Terror” (or just “The Toddler.”)
But now, with two kids? I think I need to change things. Calling our daughter “Baby Girl” would work for now, but what about when she is a toddler, too? “Girl toddler” and “Boy toddler”? Or I could start calling our son “The Preschooler,” I suppose.
For now I’m going to start sticking with their initials — D for our son, and C for our daughter. I have never liked the idea of putting their full real names (or photos) on here, so initials it will be.
It’s not any huge mystery who I am anymore, but I still want to keep their anonymity somewhat. This is a blog about mama rants, raves, and wonderings, and while they are key players in that, it’s my opinion that gets typed up and published.
Darling Husband will remain “Darling Husband,” of course, because he really is. Especially right now, as I recover from this C-section, and he is taking care of D single-handedly and doing everything around the house. He’s Extra-Darling Husband right now.
Until he forgets my next dose of painkillers, that is …
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Heather's Handmade Life 