Well, I figured out how to transfer over my pregnancy blog, so here I go again, returning to the world of my blogging. Sorry if some sentences don't make sense - sleep is very minimal nowadays...
Where we left off, I have given birth to the beautiful Ottilia. I'm finished and I am exhausted like I have never been before. In the blur of exhaustion, off they wheel me to the Mommy Baby ward - of course, by now, not only am I famished, but so is a certain tiny human. Well, I think, time for an adulthood full of lower back pains and super strength bras to pay off. I mean, these gazoongas look like I could feed quadruplets off them!
Nurse comes over and pulls down my gown to pull out a boob (and I don't even care anymore). She looks at Lefty with a critical eye. Uh, your nipple's inverted. No kidding - been like that since I was a teenager, but Lefty is a big girl, so this should be fine, right? Hmm... Nurse pulls out Righty McGee... this nipple's not as bad, let's stick her on here. After some fighting with a very sleepy brand new Tilly, she's on sucking away. Whoa. This feels friggin' weird. She comes off, smacks her lips and on to try Lefty again. No Dice. Well, this is not the easy "throw baby on the boob"ness I was expecting.
Nurse tells me not to worry, she'll send the lactation consultant aka "Boob Nazis" (I made up that title, not the nurses - it's a more accurate description). Just about asleep... VISITORS! Who doesn't wanna see Tillster? Oh, now in comes lactation consultant. She is manhandling my boobs like they're gonna pay out a jackpot in Vegas, trying everything with Tilly and football holds and making my nipples into a "hamburger" (For those of you who've seen Puppetry of the Penis, same idea kinda but with boob-age). Tilly doesn't seem to be buying what we're selling, although this is her very first day outside of Mommy and she's one tired little girl. This goes on with every time I have to feed her, I have to buzz a nurse and hear how what the last nurse said was wrong and what they think I should do.
Day two in the hospital. I only know it's day two because it's light outside again, not because I've slept. Just when I thought I got the hang of popping Tilly on the feed bags, she's rebelling. Meet with new lactation consultant who I've been warned by a few people (including the woman who comes into clean my room!) that she makes the other lactation consultant look easy going. She comes in and in a word, she is OVERWHELMING. She is very loud and in my face about the breast feeding (people who know me that someone has to be pretty hard core if I find them loud). She's breaking out all the stops, walking in with her binder and flipping through stuff and pointing out how much better boobie juice is than formula and on and on. I felt like saying, hey lady, couldn't you just leave me a brochure about "So your fun bags are letting you down" with a frowning boob on the front? I have had almost no sleep and you think I am even processing this? Lactation consultant is in and out all day and she says she thinks I should stay another night so we can work on this again in the morning because nipples are still playing hide and go seek and the milk just ain't kicking in. I am too weak and my stitches still are killing me, so I figure, why the hell not.
New night nurse. I don't like her. I buzz her about coming into help me with the baby and she is downright offended by what I tell her the lactation consultant has told me and when baby girl is crying because she's hungry and she's screaming with her mouth open, night nurse is literally shoving her little face into my boob. I'm like, I think if she's so worked up, she won't latch and get the withering "you don't know what you're talking about you silly new mom in that ridiculous hospital nightgown" look and get told just to do it. Hmm. Well this is fun - if today is opposite day. Another night with not so much sleep.
Next day in comes my OB. She sits on my bed and tells me not to worry about the BF (that's breast feeding if you're one of the cool La Leche people on the baby websites). Says it didn't work out for her and she even got in a yelling match with one of the lactation consultants over it. That makes me giggle a little and wish I had been a fly on the wall for that one! She leaves about the same time as the leader of the BF Cult comes in. Here we are again, with her whipping out the boobers and squeezing and manipulating and shoving baby girl into the nipple. Honestly, if I was Tilly, I would be getting mighty bitter by now - even if it was cheesecake or my beloved ice cream, if someone kept shoving my face in it while I was upset, even I would eventually want nothing to do with it. Okay, maybe not permanently, but at least for a good few hours. Actually, it kinda depends on the flavour. Well, maybe I would still eat it, but I wouldn't really enjoy it fully.
Lactation Nazi decides that we're gonna try the electric pump and maybe then the nipples will come out a little, the milk will start coming and Tilly won't get so frustrated. What the hell - in for a penny, in for a pound. She brings it in and in my delirious over-tired state, I just want to laugh. The thing reminds me of the milking machines the put on cows and then I realize - that is EXACTLY what I am trying to become. We put the suction cones on the "girls" and get a pumping. I sit there for 15 minutes and get a grand total of... about 10 ml. That's 2 teaspoons. WTF?! Try to put Tilly on the boob again - she half-heartedly latches and then, like she senses the boob guru has left, wiggles and snuggles herself under her boobie blanket and promptly... falls asleep.
So day 3 in the hospital involves me pumping and trying to get baby onto the boob with no success and the decision is made that I should spend just one more night... Well, the baby decides it's time to pull out all the stops - she is a constant source of wailing and crying, with me pumping my measly amount of milk and the nurse "finger feeding" it to her - I notice them topping up my breast milk and ask what it is - sterile water, they say... to fill her tummy. Me too tired to fight or even fully register what they are saying... whole night is pump, eat snack, pee, try to sleep, bath to clean stitches, and back to pumping...
Next morning, I put my foot down. Me and my girl are going home TODAY. Nurse comes into weigh her and informs me with a smug look - we'll see, because she's lost 10% of her body weight - and then she prances out of my room. Takes a moment for it to fully register and very lucky for that nurse that it did or she would've got my newly discovered mama bear-ness all over her ass.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S LOST 10%!? So last night, instead of, God forbid, giving me what you people seem to think is devil's cocktail aka formula, you gave her WATER and now she's lost this much weight? My poor dad has been up all night with me and I am fuming. Call Mom and Tyler - we're coming home today and you need to go get the breast pump and dammit, pick up some formula!
Doctor comes in and says me and Tilly are free to fly the coop - good thing too because I'm already out of bed, packed, and have Tilly's going home outfit ready to put on her (and, as an aside, my stash of "liberated" diapers - keep me in here for 4 days and I was bound to discover your hiding place).
Home we go and I try pumping and feeding Tilly, with a little formula to top her off and she gloriously goes into a baby sleeping coma. I stumble up the stairs to bed. I collapse on the bed in the attractive starfish position. A few hours later, Mom comes to wake me up because Tilly needs to be fed again. I croak out the word of my saviour... Formula... and back to sleep I go.
And that was that... As the epilogue (like I'm writing some fancy novel), I kept pumping but never ever could I get enough milk for baby girl. Then I got a UTI and the medi-clinic I went to gave me an antibiotic that could be transmitted through the milk, giving her thrush. That is when I figured this was a flashing neon sign from the universe to say F*K THIS and Tillster's been a formula baby ever since. And she's perfect.
