Positive Birth + Postpartum Care + Food

I can always unframe it…

Daddy R and I were watching The Office the other day…the one where Pam is pregnant and crying while watching dog commercials…and I said something along the lines of at least I wasn’t like that when I was pregnant and Daddy R said yes you were just like that.  He said while I wasn’t super emotional and crying at work I was at times unreasonable.  I, of course, have no recollection of ever being unreasonable!

That got us talking about our different perspectives about the pregnancy and especially about the birth.  I have very tender, and I suppose sentimental, memories of giving birth to Baby C.  Perhaps this is because I did hypnobirthing and went into labor expecting to have a good experience…and came out of labor wanting to remember a good experience…but I honestly don’t recall it as being that bad.  I remember the contractions as being manageable and I have vague memories of being tired during the pushing part.  Daddy R’s recollection of the birth is completely different.  He remembers the contractions much the same way that I do but his memories of the pushing part are much more gruesome than mine.  I suppose I should lend some credence to Daddy R’s version of events as he actually saw everything and was actually very physically present during the labor.  I on the other hand didn’t see anything and went through the labor feeling as if I was sort of outside myself.  I imagine that feeling of being sort of physically detached during the labor combined with the immediate elation of finally having my baby and then the insane hormone changes and the exhaustion all combined to give me birthing amnesia.    

We didn’t discuss it but I bet that we have different views on how the first few months went too…I bet Daddy R’s version involves Baby C sleeping through the night from two weeks on!

For the record I was never unreasonable and Baby C didn’t start consistently sleeping through the night until around four months!

List-mania – Part 5 – Diapers

Since we just talked about diaper surprises I thought I would write about what you need to change your baby…diapers are really only the beginning!

1. Change Table
First up, a changing table.  You don’t actually need the whole table as you can really change your baby anywhere.  One of my friends, Mommy C, has a changing pad and a basket full of diapers and wipes and other goodies and she just changes her baby on the bed or on the table or on the floor.  We are talking about pee and poo here…you really don’t need anything fancy.  But I personally liked having an actual table because it provided storage for all the diaper changing accoutrements and because it contains the diaper mess…or contains it as much as diaper mess can be contained.  Also, your back is sore enough from having to carry a newborn around all day, from breastfeeding, from wrangling prams…you don’t need to add more strain by having to bend over each time you change your baby. 
As with cribs, as long as the changing table is sturdy, secure and safe, what it looks like and how much you spend on it is entirely up to you.
We ended up with the Valco Comfort Change Centre…mainly because it was offered on ebay at the right price.  This change table comes with a tub under the actual changing part but we never used the bath…we just used the tub for more storage.  All the storage was great…some of the things you will need to store are… 
2. Diapers
I found Huggies to be the best for Baby C…maybe because they come in male and female varieties…but you can’t beat Aldi for price. So we compromise and use Aldi during the day when I know I will be changing Baby C’s nappy every three hours or so and Huggies at night…Huggies can go the twelve hour distance.  One note about Huggies newborn diapers…don’t pay attention to that wetness indicator.  If your baby even thinks about peeing it turns color.  It is obviously intended to get you to change the nappy all the time…and use more Huggies.  But take it from me, these diapers can hold liters of pee.
3. Wipes
Any old kind will do…probably the fewer chemicals in them the better…look for alcohol free and fragrance free.  You will use thousands of these things so if you see wipes you like on special buy them up in bulk.
4. Nappy Rash Cream
I don’t think babies really get diaper rash anymore but Baby C with his thunder thighs did get a little inner leg chaffing and the Bepanthen cleared that right up.  To this day he hasn’t had any actually diaper rash but I would feel like a bad mom if I didn’t have some in my changing table just in case!
5. Other Items
We also stored most of our first aid stuff in the change table…saline nose drops, baby panadol, paw paw ointment, nail clippers.
And even though we didn’t use the bath function on our change table I also kept all of Baby C’s bathing equipment there…washers, towels.
Oh and very important…always keep at least one change of clothes in or near the change table…makes it easy in case…or rather when…there is a leak.
6. Changing Pad Cover
You will probably need two changing pad covers.  These protect the actual changing pad from the pee and poo onslaught.  I only got one changing pad cover and then covered that with disposable waterproof pads.  Sometimes both the waterproof pad and the changing pad cover got hit.  So in retrospect probably two changing pad covers would have been a better bet.
7. Diaper Disposal
There are Diaper Genies and nappy pails and all sorts of fun ways to dispose of nappies.  Bluntly, the goal here is to prevent your baby’s room from smelling like shit.  We went with the most basic.  We just use a clip to attach a nice smelling nappy disposal bag to the corner of the change table and just drop wipes and diapers in there.  Once the bag is full…or after a particularly fragrant diaper…we just tie the bag off and put it in the kitchen bin…or take it immediately out to the big bin, And so far our nursery doesn’t smell like shit.
8. Diaper Bag
You can get a messenger style diaper bag, a luxury leather diaper bag, you can even get a diaper clutch!  Of course you don’t really need a diaper bag…any old tote bag would do the trick…but the pockets and straps and key clips all do help you feel more organized.  Your diaper bag needs to hold basically everything your changing table holds…a change pad, diapers, wipes, nappy sacks, maybe some cream and DEFINITELY a change of clothes.  And it is nice if it also holds your keys, your phone, your wallet, your water bottle, your sunglasses and some small toys for the baby.  I love my bag because it can hold all of that without being too bulky but if I need to I can really load it up…when Baby C and I traveled back to the USA I got twenty four diapers in there!
And when shopping for your diaper bag, check the Internet.  I bought my bag on amazon.com for about forty dollars.  Similar bags in Australia were upwards of one hundred and fifty dollars.  These bags hold diapers people!  Sometimes dirty ones!  This is not an “it” bag…you do not need to spend a lot!

The Four Month Mark

I absolutely cannot believe that Baby C is almost five months old.  How did that happen?  In another five  months he will be ten months…that is almost a year old!  I will be the mother of a one year old!

Anyway, now that we are almost at the end of four months I can say that the fourth month is a huge month.  It seems like the baby we had at the beginning of the fourth month is completely different from the baby we have at the end of the fourth month.
At the beginning of the month I was feeling a bit discouraged.  Baby C was still eating every two hours, still not napping with any regularity, still not even close to sleeping through the night…and my tummy was still all flabby.
To illustrate my state of mind, here are some emails that I sent to Mommy B.  First…


How are you going with the solids? I guess I was hoping that Baby C would really take to them and gobble them up but I think he is still getting used to them. Actually truth be told I was wanting him to eat them and then sleep through the night! But that hasn’t happened. If anything he has been waking up more! He wakes up and feeds for about two minutes and then just uses me as a human pacifier. Some one of these nights I am just going to have to let him cry it out. Because he isn’t actually hungry and I can’t keep waking up every three hours just so he can suck on me! I know that is easier said then done…when he works himself up I just can’t help going and picking him up! I guess I just thought that by four months he would be better at sleeping! 
Oh, and are you doing just doing solids twice a day? How is it supposed to work? Do we just increase the amount and number of solid meals gradually? I am guessing it will take a month or so before he drops a breast milk meal? Or maybe longer? Baby C is still having milk every two hours!


And a few days later…


Is Baby T still feeding every two hours or so? When are they supposed to stretch out the time between feeding? The book I have says that by four months when they are starting solids they should only be feeding about every four hours. And I have checked on the internet and of course the chat boards say every baby is different and there is no normal blah blah blah. But feeding every two hours is exhausting me! Even every two hours during the day is tiring let alone every two hours at night too!
 And Baby C is now eating a fair amount of solids. Last night he had about a teaspoon of rice cereal (measured when it was dry) mixed with about a tablespoon of puree. Then he had two breastfeeds before bed and the last feed was both boobs. And he still woke up every two hours! And his feeds during the night were real feeds and not just sucking.
I think today I will try giving him both boobs at every feed and see if that helps. I think maybe he is constantly snacking instead of getting a real milk meal? I just can’t keep up with all this feeding!

My milk makers and I were exhausted!  So I set to work.  I decided the big issues were the constant feeding and not sleeping through the night…and of course the saggy tummy.

As you can see from the emails, Baby C started solids at four months.  I made the decision to start solids at four months because of two reasons.  First, Baby C weighed in at over 8kg at his four month check up…he is one big baby with one big appetite.  Which leads me to the second reason…he was still feeding every two hours!  We started with rice cereal mixed with breast milk, moved on to rice cereal mixed with water and finally rice cereal mixed with fruit and vegetable purees.  It took Baby C a few days to get interested in solids and then I didn’t see any change in his number of breastfeeds or his sleeping pattern for about two weeks after that.  But now he seems to really enjoy solids…he often tries to grab the spoon and shove it in his mouth…and I have noticed a definite change in his feeding routine.  His feeding schedule…yes he finally has something that could be loosely definite as a schedule…goes something like this:
6:30 breastfeed
9:00 solid breakfast with a breast milk chaser
11:00 breastfeed
2:00 breastfeed
5:00 solid dinner with a breast milk chaser
10:00 breastfeed
In addition to introducing solids I also started giving Baby C both boobs every time he breastfed.  Previously I would just offer him one…just because that is what we did at the hospital and so it is what we continued doing and until about three and a half months it seemed to satisfy him.  The combination of solids and offering both boobs seemed to solve the feeding every two hours problem and I am sure the full tummy helped to make a dent in the sleeping problem.

The rest of the sleeping problem was solved by tough love.  When Baby C was sleeping in a small cot in our bedroom I would wake at the slightest noise and just stick him on the boob because I wanted to go back to sleep, Daddy R wanted to go back to sleep, Puppy S wanted to go back to sleep and feeding him was the easiest thing to do.  About the same time he started solids we moved Baby C into his own room and then it became a lot easier to ignore him.  I suppose ignore is the wrong word but instead of hopping out of bed every time he made a peep I would wait to see if the peep developed into a real fuss.  And if it did develop into a real fuss then Daddy R would go into Baby C’s room first to see if he could be calmed with some shhing and only if that didn’t work did the boobs come out!  And the technique seemed to work because he has been sleeping through the night…fingers crossed it continues!

So we have conquered the night time sleeping but I am still working on getting Baby C to settle himself for naps.  He can settle himself in the pram or in the car and has on the rare occasion settled himself in his crib but most days he needs the boob to help him settle.  Usually his breastfeeding time coincides with his nap time so he doesn’t get much practice…although I do make sure that he doesn’t fall completely asleep on the boob.  If anyone has any tips or hints on how I can help him to settle himself for naps please leave them in the comments!

So at the end of the fourth month I am feeling so much better…and I imagine that Baby C is feeling better too!  And in addition to the better eating and sleeping routines Baby C is just a joy to be around.  He is rolling with the best of them, he is kind of sitting, he smiles and giggles, he has likes and dislikes…it is just wonderful to be around him.  I feel like I am on top of the mommy world!  Now I just have to do something about that flabby, saggy tummy!

Diaper Surprises

I was just talking to my sister…she doesn’t have any children yet…and she said that she was bored by the breastfeeding talk and wanted a post about something exciting…like poo! So Auntie D, this one is for you!

While Baby C’s poos amaze me on a daily basis…how can something that little produce so much poo…there have been two times that I have been truly shocked and awed.

The first time was when Baby C was just a few weeks old. I had him up on the changing table and was in the middle of changing his nappy when he started to pee…this unfortunately has become routine but this was one of the first times he had attempted this trick. So I let out a little scream and grabbed the washer that I kept on the change table exclusively for the purpose of catching errant urine. I was trying to contain the pee when he started to poo. So I had a dirty diaper on the change table, one hand on the washer, one hand trying to get the new diaper under him, pee everywhere and this is the moment he chooses to poo…you will find there are many times when you wish you had more hands.  Anyway, add a nice dose of baby poo to that equation and you get a huge mess. Of course at this point I was really yelping so my mother rushed into the room…and just started laughing. I think it was Baby C’s way of saying welcome to motherhood.

The second time was on our way back to Brisbane from a visit to the USA. We were about an hour and half away from landing in Brisbane and so I thought to myself that I would go and take care of Baby C’s nappy one last time before we landed. At this point we had logged about forty hours of airplane time so we were seasoned travelers. Anyway, I changed Baby C’s diaper and was letting him hang out in my seat when he did his poo smile…a very cute little half grin that usually indicates he has dirtied his diaper. I picked him up and gave him a sniff and sure enough it was a poo. So I gathered up another nappy and my wipes and went to wait in line for the bathroom. As it was a long haul flight and it was almost landing time people were using the bathrooms to brush their teeth, to change, to do who knows what, so the line was long. And as Baby C and I were waiting in the line I could see the poo start to escape from his diaper and creep up his back. By the time we were actually in the bathroom there was poo everywhere…from knees to shoulders.  I should mention that this occurred during a time when Baby C was pooing only once every three days and so when he went, he went big.  It was rough.  I used every wipe I had.  His outfit wasn’t salvageable…those sniffer dogs at the airport would have been traumatized.  I managed to get his new nappy on…although at this point it had some poo on it too.  I did the best that I could do.  Then I had to get my now nearly naked baby back to the seat so I could grab more wipes, another diaper and a fresh set of clothes and start again.  Welcome to the nappy changing mile high club!

List-mania – Part 4 – All Things Boobs

I found the first three or so weeks of breastfeeding to be bit challenging…and based on talking to other moms I think I was one of the lucky ones. You think to yourself, you have these boobs, you have a baby…surely they will just go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong. WRONG. Breastfeeding is a skill. And it is all about the latch. As you might have gathered I tend towards being uber prepared so before Baby C was born I spent hours reading about breastfeeding, looking at diagrams of breastfeeding and watching youtube videos of breastfeeding. So I knew going in to it that it is all about the latch. But knowing that it is all about the latch doesn’t actually make the latch any easier.

So here are my secrets of the latch.

Basically you do not want your baby sucking on just the nipple…they should be sucking on as much boob as you can get into their mouth. The goal is to get the nipple to the far back of your baby’s mouth…for those who appreciate anatomy this is where the hard palate meets the soft palate. Of course this is easier said than done.

Let’s say you are going to offer your baby your left boob. You hold the sides of your left boob with your left hand. At this point your baby has no head control so you have to hold your baby’s head with your right hand. Line up the baby’s nose so it is next to your nipple. Use your nipple to tickle the baby’s upper lip. And then wait, wait, wait until your baby’s mouth is open wide, wide, wide. When the mouth is open wide…and keep in mind their mouths are tiny so wide is a bit relative here…you scoop as much of your boob into their mouth as possible. This is the kind of exercise where it would be really nice to have four hands.

I found that even when Baby C was latched on correctly the first few seconds of breastfeeding stung…like little needles in my nipple. But if he wasn’t latched on correctly it really hurt. And the worst part is if the baby isn’t latched on correctly then you need to break the suction and start again…and this can really, really hurt. You have to stick your pinky finger in the corner of the baby’s mouth and kind of slide your nipple out…and your baby does not want to let go! Now your nipple will be sore, your baby will be crying…time to take a deep breath and start again.

Like all things for a first time mom with a newborn, when you are trying to master breastfeeding, your baby will be likely be crying, your hormones will be insane and it will all seem overwhelming. So get help. Have the midwives at the hospital watch you every time you feed. If you are still not feeling confident ask for a referral to a lactation consultant. If you find you develop problems once you are out of hospital try your local community child health centre (http://www.health.qld.gov.au/rch/professionals/cchs_0-12.asp). And I can’t say enough about having a partner who understands that breastfeeding is important to you and to your baby, who supports you and who is willing to help as much as someone without mammary glands can.

Choosing whether or not to breastfeed is personal decision and one that has become very political. I am not here to tell you what to do…just to share my experience. I found breastfeeding to be easy…at least eventually…and rewarding. If you can get through those first few difficult weeks there seems to be a point where it all just clicks. For me it was when I could nurse like the women in the videos. At the beginning when Baby C would latch correctly I would not want to move a muscle lest I somehow disrupt him so I would nurse in some contorted positions…hunched over with my hand still wrapped around my boob. But one day I found I could nurse him with just one hand…in the traditional craddle hold. Now I just hold him near the nipple and it is go time! Breastfeeding is definitely a learning process…you and your baby will learn!

Okay…now things you need to help you and your boobs out.

1. Boppy Pillow

I haven’t seen too many Boppy brand pillows here in Australia…I bought mine on amazon.com…but I have seen similar things in Target and Big W. Basically the Boppy is horseshoe shaped pillow that you put around your waist to lift the baby up closer to nipple level. But it has a zillion uses beyond breastfeeding…your baby can take a nap in the Boppy, they can practice tummy time in the Boppy, you can use the Boppy as a pillow for yourself when you get to take a ten minute nap on the couch. After about four months you won’t need a Boppy because your baby will be big enough to nurse without a pillow…you can retire it from it’s nursing duties and put it to use helping your baby practice sitting!
One word about nursing pillows…they are great but you don’t want to get too attached to them if you ever want to nurse outside the home. Unless you want to drag the Boppy with you to the cafe I would practice occasionally nursing without one.

2. Lansinoh Cream
The best for sore or cracked nipples. When Baby C and I were working to master breastfeeding my nipple wouldn’t always make it to the back of his mouth…I could feel it chaffing and when I took the nipple out I could see a little red sore on it…Lansinoh to the rescue. I would just smear a little cream on there and it would be better. I had tubes of Lansinoh everywhere. I am actually still finding tubes around the house…I even found one in the car the other day. It is also great for chapped lips…which you will likely get because breastfeeding can dehydrate you like ten days in the dessert.
A midwife did warn me not to coat my nipples too heavily with this stuff as it could lead to a clogged duct…a little goes a long way.

3. Nursing Bra

These are not sexy. These are the bras you promised your teenaged self you would never buy. But then you went and got knocked up and as a result have big knockers and you need one of these over the shoulder boulder holders. Before Baby C was born I went to Big W about bought two Bonds nursing bras. I just guessed on the size…I think I went up one cup size from my pregnant boob size…so probably up two sizes from my original boob size. After Baby C came I went back and bought two more nursing bras and two nursing tanks. The nursing singlets are especially fantastic…you can get your boob out easily without having to undo buttons or lift up your shirt so they are easy for being out in public…plus an added bonus is they kind of suck your stomach in. Anyway, you will live in these bras for months…at the beginning I was even sleeping in them because my boobs were so sore and having them contained made them feel better…so get something comfy and don’t worry about them being ugly. These are the work horses of lingerie.
I never used nursing pads because I found the cotton cups of these nursing bras and tanks to be absorbent enough for my day time leaking…nothing could stop my night time leaking but that is a story for another time. And I had enough nursing bras that if one got too damp or started smelling too much like milk I could just change.

4. Formula, Bottles, Pumps
Knowing that I wanted to breastfeed and being in a sort of denial that it may not work for me I didn’t buy any formula or bottles or a pump before Baby C came along. I figured I could buy them if and when I needed them. And that is exactly what I did…or rather my husband did when I ended up in hospital. Most of the moms I know who didn’t start off with feeding accoutrements did end up buying them for one reason or another. But there is so much to buy before the baby comes that if you plan on breastfeeding you could probably leave formula, bottles and a pump off your list.

Boobs are crazy and amazing things. Did you know that the milk you make in the morning is different from the milk you make in the evening? The evening milk has a secret ingredient in it that helps the baby to relax and start to feel drowsy. Did you know that milk from a full boob can literally squirt across a room? Despite all the potential difficulties and dramas associated with breastfeeding I think there is no better feeling than when Baby C is crying and I put him on the boob and he sucks his way to contentedness.

And speaking of sucking, have your husband put his finger in the baby’s mouth to get a feel for how powerful that suck is…if watching you give birth didn’t make him think of you as a wonder woman, feeling that suck will!