I can honestly say that I was TOTALLY UNPREPARED for life with a newborn – mostly because apparently my first child wasn’t a human baby at all but some sort of puking, crying, fussing, alien monster who refused to nurse, stressed us out like crazy with jaundice, and generally made life miserable for at least his first four months of life. Looking back now, E and I are both going “Wow, we REALLY should have complained more to the doctor about that puking thing because obviously we were clueless about normal human babies”.

(Although honestly, we mentioned it ALL THE TIME and all we got was “Meh, some babies throw up a lot“, even from my lactation consultant. Clearly it wasn’t normal but since he was gaining weight no one cared how miserable it made everything in regards to our home life. If I hadn’t spent so much time doing frickin’ laundry the first time around maybe I would have gotten more sleep and not been quite so…well, horrible to everyone. Especially E. It was really sucky y’all.)

THIS baby is an angel. I would take a dozen of these babies. She spends all her time sleeping, only waking herself up with hilariously loud poops to get a new diaper, nurse for a while and then cuddle with anyone who holds her. She falls asleep again without any complicated shushing/swaddling/burping/dancing/begging/crying rituals in her swing or the (broken so it doesn’t actually bounce) bouncy seat or the co-sleeper or lying on the floor. She only requires one outfit a day and 90% of the laundry is a result of my overactive milk ducts and their ability to soak through anything in .43 seconds and not projectile baby puke.  When the baby nurse came to visit last week Caroline had already gained back all but 4 oz of her birth weight and I’m going to go ahead an predict by her 2 week checkup she’s already closer to 10 lbs than 8.

In further attempts to be absolutely nothing like her brother, Caroline has perhaps the world’s strongest latch and no doubts about using it to suck on pretty much anything (I’m hoping this is a good omen when it comes time to introduce a bottle). I’ve had to drag out my old nipple shield to deal with the tenderness and bruising – nothing serious or horrifying, but when she cluster feeds for two hours straight the pinching gets to toe-curling levels of painful. It’s not anyone’s fault – I don’t need a link to “how-to-get-a-better-latch” videos or whatever – just a result of her mouth being small and my engorgement being massive and a few lazy nursing sessions that did a little damage. Fortunately, my body remembered it WASN’T feeding a whole litter of babies this time around and I’m already back to normal nursing sized boobs instead of GIANT PORN STAR WHO STAPLED THESE BASKETBALLS TO MY CHEST??? sized boobs.

ALSO: I have a tip for sore nipples that doesn’t involve buying those super expensive gel pads I loved so much last time. Tea bags. Seriously. The baby nurse suggested it (she’s also an LC) and it’s amazing. Just steep two tea bags in hot water, let them cool off and stick them on your nipples. The tannic acid in the tea combined with the coolness helps soothe the bruising and pinching. The internet backs me up on this with science but my nipples back me up even more with “OMG THANK YOU”.

MORE ALSO: In the debate between “No, breastfeeding should NEVER hurt” and “A little nipple soreness can be normal while you’re adjusting” I am officially in the later camp. I know the difference between a good latch and a bad latch and even when we have it PERFECT I get a little sore after 30+ minutes of constant nursing. It’s definitely improving though, and I bet in 2 weeks I don’t even remember what I was complaining about.

As for the rest of my I-just-had-a-baby recovery, I can barely tell I just had a baby. I hesitate to say that I am AWESOME at giving birth (because someone awesome at giving birth could probably do it naturally in a wheat field at sunset instead of with an epidural) but my BODY is certainly prepared for labor and delivery pushing out an 8+ lbs baby, even if my brain is not prepared for that kind of pain. Like I said in my birth story, even my above average baby didn’t do any damage. She did so LITTLE damage in fact that I don’t even pee my pants when I sneeze anymore, something I was doing at 9 months pregnant. I KNOW. IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. The worst part of my recovery was actually the stupid Tdap booster they gave me in the hospital that made my left arm practically useless for two full days and the rhogam shot I got in my left hip that hurt almost as much. That soreness combined with my milk coming in made me want to just hide under the covers and not let anyone touch me ever again – especially a toddler who thinks “jump on mommy” is the best game ever.

Oh but THEN I got another kidney infection, less than 24 hours after being discharged. I spiked a fever in the evening and another in the middle of the night but held off on calling the doctor until office hours and then talked them into letting me do outpatient lab work to confirm (although REALLY? I know what a kidney infection feels like by now. Swearies) and calling in antibiotics to my pharmacy rather than possibly readmitting me. I did NOT want to go back to the hospital, especially with a newborn nursling. I feel infinitely better after almost a week of antibiotics. But this probably means I should reschedule my March kidney stone removal appointment to some time sooner or the infections might keep happening and that doesn’t seem fun.

And now that I’ve told you how well everything is going, don’t be surprised when I take it ALL BACK next week. It’s the first law of blogging and I just broke it. I hope you’re happy internet.

So we’re pretty much done with the breastfeeding around these parts. Thanks to a combination of a sudden drop in supply due to pregnancy and Baby Evan’s obsession with peanut butter, we’ve gone from exclusive nursing to only once or twice a day in less than 3 months. (I can’t even begin to explain how much peanut butter that kid eats on a daily basis. I think if there was a sudden peanut shortage he would starve to death rather than eat something not slathered in sticky, nutty goodness.)

For a month or so I’ve been following the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” method of weaning, but in the past week I stepped it up to “distract and offer an alternative” even if Baby Evan specifically makes the sign for “milk” (to be fair, he uses that sign for milk, food, water, juice, and sometimes ATTENTION!!!!!). Today he skipped his remaining nursing session – first thing in the morning – and only latched for a few seconds as I rocked him down for his nap.

As ambivalent as I wasabout the end of our breastfeeding relationship, I can now say THANK GOD he’s done. Pregnancy has done weird stuff to my hormones. Weird, hurty, uncomfortable stuff. Rather than the warm-fuzzy-happy feeling I used to get when the baby nursed, now it just feels like someone’s gnawing on my boob. I have to grit my teeth to keep myself from clawing my own skin off and mutter “getoffgetoffgetoffgetofffffff” under my breath. It is…unpleasant. I don’t feel any differently about breastfeeding in general – and I can’t wait to nurse the next bebeh – but for NOW, I am dunzo.

ANYWAYS, because I am no longer nursing day and night, I no longer have to be here. I mean, YES, I do have to be here, because I am his mother and he needs me and loves me (despite the fact that he STILL doesn’t say Mama) and there isn’t anyone else to watch him while E is at work. But there is no longer an invisible tether attached to my nipples. Which means I’m having a teeny tiny crisis.

In August, I’m going to/hosting a bridal shower (and bachelorette party)(I’m DD)(because I can’t drink and because I drive a minivan)(at least being lame has it’s advantages for SOMEONE) for one of my oldest friends in Virginia. I had been trying to talk E into driving down with me, since 6+ hours in the car on 95 by myself with the baby sounds like the OPPOSITE OF FUN. Add pregnant to that mix and all I can think of is how much that sounds like the start of a particularly tragic Dateline story. Film at 11.

Today E suggested “Why don’t you just leave the baby here with me?”

OMG WHAT?

The idea of not bringing Baby Evan is both horrifying and incredibly appealing. NO BEBEH FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND? Where am I going to get my daily dose of adorables? How would he survive without me?? NO BEBEH FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND? I could sleep in as long as I wanted. I wouldn’t spend every second worried he was driving my mother crazy or falling down the non-baby-proofed stairs or pooping behind the dining room table. I might actually enjoy myself. Is that even ALLOWED?

For the record, I have NO DOUBT that E would do a great job with the baby by himself. I have zero concerns at all about that half of this equation. I’m worried about how I’M going to handle it.

Advice, please. Have you gone away without your kid(s) yet? Were you crushed with guilt and bad-mother abandonment issues? Are you dead?

Today you get a very, very special guest post from my sister, Carolyn, who is as we speak probably hauling buckets of water to her hut for a bath or saving children from illiteracy. She’s pretty cool.

p.s. If you want to ask her questions in the comments I’ll email them to her so she can answer and post her answers. Her internet access isn’t always reliable (SHOCKING) and I don’t think she has a fast enough connection to respond through the blog.

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Hii! This is Carolyn, Suzanne’s sister in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (West Africa) and regular reader of this blog. Suzanne asked me to write a guest post ages ago, and today I’m finally going to do just that. Honestly, the reason I was so reluctant to do this sooner (sorry Suz!) was because generally, I don’t think about babies. (This is probably a terrible thing to say on a baby blog, right?) Not really high on my radar. I am very far from being an expert; I feel like I don’t even know enough about them in the states to make legitimate comparisons between there and here. But here goes!

Babies here are extremely cute. Unfortunately, they are usually terrified of white people, so they tend to start screaming at my approach. And making faces to get them to smile only makes it worse, as I discovered VERY early on in my time here. Every once in a while, on a bush taxi in particular (where they have many, many hours to get used to me) I get a baby who makes the sort of shocked face that’s usually a precursor to crying, but on rare occasions leads to smiling and playing peek-a-boo over his mom’s shoulder and all the women making arranged marriages between me and him. That’s when I like babies best.

When women are pregnant here, it’s not usually talked about. Perhaps because of general silence on women’s issues, or maybe because of the risks of pregnancy here, I’m not sure. When a baby is born the customary gift to give the mother is soap. This is because in Burkina, there… aren’t diapers. Babies usually wear little western castoff outfits (very cute ones, actually) with shorts or pants or just fabric wrapped around them, so those layers get washed very frequently. Which uses a lot of soap. As soon as they’re walking, kids are essentially potty-trained because they can squat down wherever they want.

A pagne is essentially just a length of patterned fabric, and is what all women use to carry their babies on their backs. You constantly see women with babies asleep on their backs- working in the fields, at the market, riding motorbikes, everywhere. There’s a routine motion that you notice of women bending forward and hiking their babies up, then re-tying the pagnes. (ed: Carolyn sent me several and I tried to carry Baby Evan Africa-style ONCE. It did not go well. I never made it out of the family room.) In cold season you see bulges on women’s backs with a tiny knit hat on top, the type with the puff ball attached. I should also mention that it’s not only women who carry babies like this. No, I’m not saying that the men do too (they absolutely do NOT.) Often older siblings, or I should say, sisters, carry the babies too. It’s cute, but maybe kind of sad, that you see tiny girls carrying babies almost as big as they are.

I know Suzanne talks about breastfeeding a lot, which I think is great. I was perhaps a little uncomfortable with breastfeeding in practice before I came here, just because I was never exposed to it in the states. Burkina, however, is a different story. Women breastfeed. When babies get a little older there is a type of porridge that they eat, and I see women feeding babies the occasional bit of biscuit or rice or whatever else they happen to be eating, but the main source of nutrition comes from nursing. You see women breastfeeding everywhere: the secretary at my school does it in the office while she’s working, women do it while riding in donkeycarts, and I’ve had, on several occasions, a baby in a bush taxi half-lying in my lap while being nursed by the woman next to me. So I am now VERY accustomed to the idea, in theory and in practice. But here part of it is that breasts, in general, are much less shocking than they are in the states. I still see old women working in the fields or going to fetch water topless (honestly, that’s one of those things that make me remember I’m in a different country, no matter how accustomed I’ve become to other aspects of living here.)

Healthwise: If women go to the health center during pregnancy they can get prenatal care and can give birth with nurses, otherwise there are local midwives or just unassisted home births. Once they have the baby they can go to the health center for vaccinations or to have their babies weighed (and get supplemental formula if the baby is underweight.) Peace Corps has a health sector here and one of the main focuses is child and maternal health, but since I’m a teacher I don’t have much personal experience with it (and even if I did, I imagine I would just have lots of really sad stories to tell.) A lot of child care depends on the economic situation of the family. Poor, rural families often can’t afford the small fees incurred at the health center, so they don’t go.

So overall, babies here are very abundant, and their care is pretty simple. No formula, no diapers, not really any toys, no car seats, no strollers, no cribs (they just sleep on a mat with their mamas.) I actually think it’s quite a nice way to raise a baby, if only you could improve child safety and health care. But I very much like the ideas of breastfeeding, no diapers (or I guess cloth diapers?), wearing the baby wrapped on your back, and co-sleeping. If I ever have babies (yikes) I’m totally following the all-natural, Africa/hippie way of baby-raising (go Suzanne!)

I think Baby Evan reads my blog, because some time between when I wrote this post and yesterday he totally weaned himself. I am thrilled and horrified and brokenhearted and nervous and happy and relieved and so, so confused. Technically he’s not TOTALLY weaned – he still wants to nurse first thing in the morning and occasionally asks during the day – but if I want to I could get him to drop those feedings without a single tear.

I just don’t want to. Not yet. As much as I would love a break before the new baby comes, I can’t even remember what life is like as a non-breastfeeding mother. I don’t remember how to wear clothes that don’t offer easy access to my chestal area. I’m not sure I can make it through a whole day without flashing some unsuspecting mall shoppers. I have very few “oh no the baby is upset” coping skills besides boob. I’m afraid I’ll start offering to nurse anything that cries, including stray cats and random strangers. I think that’s the sort of thing that gets you banned from Stop & Shop. I know I’ve only been breastfeeding for 1/27th of my life but it’s been such a huge part of every single minute of the last 14 months it feels like much much longer.

I’m really not even sure how this happened. One day he screamed if you so much as showed him a sippy and the next he signs “milk milk milk milk” but points to the cup on the counter like I’m a crazy person if I unhook my bra. If you’re looking for advice on how exactly to go about weaning your child, here’s everything I got:
Step 1: Get pregnant with baby #2.
Step 2: Give baby #1 sippy cup of rice milk.
Step 3: There are no more steps.

Really, I can’t take credit for this at all. I did nothing besides stop making gallons of milk that let down strongly enough to squirt across a room. I didn’t stop offering, I didn’t try to distract him, I didn’t give him a lot more solids than I was previously. Which makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing, since I was very close to forcing him to wean whether he was ready or not. Now I spend a great deal of time asking “Do you want milk? Mama milk? Please come here and try some nursies! Baby Evan, stop running away from meeeeeee!!”

As conflicted as I am about not making it to the two year mark, I think I’m happy where we are now and won’t do anything to intentionally alter our nursing relationship for the next few months. I’m going to be away from him for at least 12 hours in August and probably even longer in September (for a friend’s bridal shower/bachelorette party and wedding, respectively) and I feel like those will probably be the stepping stones to total weaning. And then I can be a non-nursing mother for at least a few weeks before everything starts all over again.

OMG I’m going to have to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

I feel like I need to start with a disclaimer: This post is not part of the breastfeeding/formula debate. My choice on that matter was made a long time ago and I fell firmly on the breast side of the fence. I struggled, I cried, I fought and after almost FOUR MONTHS of problems, with a very supportive LC and a lot of luck I made breastfeeding work for us. I now attend a weekly breastfeeding support group, at which I am one of the “veteran” mothers who give advice to those just starting out. I have nursed Baby Evan successfully and exclusively for his entire life. I would even go so far as to say I am a lactivist, especially when I compare my opinions to many of the posts and articles I see online. My original goal of nursing for 1 year was extended to 2 years a long time ago.

All that being said, I NEED MY BOOBS BACK.

Did you know that when you’re pregnant, the volume of blood in your body doubles? All that extra blood flow can lead to a lot of changes – both good and bad. You can use you imagination on the good stuff. (If you need any more details shoot me an email, I’d be happy to explain.) But thanks to increased sensitivity my nipples now feel like they’re being pierced with dull yet burning hot needles by someone who sucks at piercing things every time Baby Evan nurses. Let me tell you, it’s not very fun. I’d rate it somewhere between root canal with no Novocaine and having a toenail ripped out with pliers.

As far as I know, there really isn’t any way to alter this pain level, unless I were to rely on heavy narcotics. Which I don’t think is a real option. It’s not a matter of a better latch or a new way to hold him or teaching him not to bite. We’ve got all that down. The only way to stop it from hurting would be to stop nursing.

And there’s my problem. Baby Evan still nurses like an infant – every 3 or 4 hours with a couple of 6 hour stretches a night. I don’t mind morning, bedtime or even naptime nursing – there are enough hours between those that my nipples get a chance to recover. But I both CAN’T and DON’T WANT to stop nursing Baby Evan completely. I CAN’T because despite his ever increasing acceptance of solid food, Baby Evan still doesn’t eat nearly enough to count as a meal – especially not a well balanced one. French fries, animal crackers and an occasional bean or bite of apple is not lunch. At least as long as he’s nursing I know he’s not going become malnourished or obese. He still wants his milk when he’s hungry and offering other options just gets food thrown in my face and an earful of angry screaming. He never got the hang of a bottle – he’s too old for one now – and cups are usually played with and then thrown on the floor. He also doesn’t get any other liquids (although we did convince him to drink half a sippy cup of juice* this weekend) so I’d be worried about dehydration if I suddenly stopped nursing. I don’t WANT to stop because I set a goal of at least 2 years per kid. I don’t want to end my nursing relationship with Baby Evan just because of this pregnancy. I don’t think that’s a good way to introduce a new sibling to our family – “Say hi to Baby Sandy! No more milk for you! Now don’t go resenting anybody!”

Clearly, weaning him entirely isn’t in our immediate future**, but what I need is advice on how to gently lead a baby towards solids and away from the boob. We’ve past the point where I would need to use formula – my doctor OK’d starting him on whole (preferably organic) milk – but is there an easier transition? Maybe soy milk? It’s closer in consistency and flavor to breastmilk. Do I try to shorten our nursing sessions? Do I force solids on him despite the screaming and throwing? Please help a mama out.

*OK, so it wasn’t juice. It was Crystal Light. But it was orange flavored and I did water it down quite a bit some. Go ahead and judge, things are pretty desperate around here.

**I am clinging to the stories I’ve heard of toddlers who suddenly lost interest in nursing around the 5 month mark of pregnancy due to a change in milk flavor. If I KNEW the end(ish) was within sight I think I grit my teeth through the next 3 months.