8 months

Last night I had a dream that I had the baby (it was a girl in the dream and first we named her Erika and then changed her name to the one we actually have picked out in real life) and in the dream one of my thoughts was "gee, I haven't even written my 8 month pregnancy update yet, how can I have already had the baby?!"  Ha!  So, here's the scoop at 8 months.  Also, I am too lazy to take new photos for this post so I am stealing a few beach pictures from my last post for this update...

Belly is 33 + 2 in these photos, and today I am a little over 34 weeks.  Technically the baby will be full term and could safely be delivered at the birthing center in less than three weeks and that sounds incredibly soon to me! The past two months or so I have been thinking I would be totally happy with an early arrival but I still feel like there are so many things I want to get done before baby arrives that I now would be okay with a couple extra weeks to cross off everything on the ever-growing to-do list.  We are actually pretty close to ready in the baby department - the clothes and diapers are washed and folded, the nursery is painted and organized, and we generally have all the things we need for the first several months whether this baby comes out boy or girl.  We still need to set up the co-sleeper and install the car seat but those are on the list for the next couple of weekends.  Believe it or not, I have also already bought and started a baby book for this little peanut, and have several pages completed (pictures and all) that pertain to pregnancy and the family tree - go me!  I remember feeling such a lack of time for myself after Arlo was born and I know it's only going to be twice as hard with two littles, so I am trying to do as much as I can beforehand while I still have the time.  This past week I even had some of our wedding photos printed and framed, and it's about time - we are coming up on our 5th wedding anniversary in just a couple of months.  Nothing like the impending arrival of baby #2 combined with a strong nesting urge to get all those things done you have been procrastinating for years, ha!

Symptom-wise I am actually feeling better than I was at the time of writing my last post and can say that right now I am feeling pretty good!  My most troublesome symptom is the left rib pain that hasn't really improved.  I think baby's position is such that there is always a foot or knee up under my rib and it's constantly being pushed on.  Sitting and laying on my left side makes it worse but I have found a pillow under my belly at night helps a lot.  I am terrified to write this because I don't want to jinx myself - but somehow I have been sleeping really well lately.  I haven't had to take any sleep aids in a while and feel well-rested throughout the day, which I certainly didn't expect as I progressed through the third trimester!  I haven't had any heartburn lately to speak of and while I am taking it easy in the exercise department (daily walks have been reduced to about 20 minutes instead of the usual 45) my energy level is going strong for as pregnant as I am now.

My most recent appointment with the midwives was a little over two weeks ago.  Belly still measuring on track (32 weeks at the time), and I only gained about a pound since my previous visit, putting me up to a total of 17 lbs gained.  At that appointment I finally got an explanation for why I feel such strong movement from this baby.  The midwife who I saw was one I hadn't seen before, and is actually the director of the birthing center and has a lot of experience delivering babies!  She pushed around (pretty hard!) on my belly and was pretty certain baby is hanging out OP, or sunny side up, but also head down.  So all of his/her arms and legs are right in front, and that combined with my posterior placenta makes it easy for me to feel every little movement.  I asked her if I should be concerned about the OP position but the midwife said she wasn't worried at all and that it was very likely towards the end of pregnancy that he/she would turn the correct way.  And if not - I read on the Spinning Babies website that 87% of posterior babies turn during delivery so I am holding tight to those statistics!

When people have asked my due date throughout this pregnancy, and I tell them late August, they all sigh and say the same thing - "ugh, you have to be pregnant during the hot summer months."  And while I was never really worried about that, I did start to think after all the commentary "is it really going to be that bad?!"  Turns out, I have actually really enjoyed the summer pregnancy and besides the one afternoon I spent outside at the beach during a heat advisory, I haven't been bothered at all by our hot southern summer.  We generally stay inside in the A/C during the hottest part of the day (and would pregnant or not) and have had lots of pool playdates with friends which have been awesome.  Swimming while pregnant is the best thing ever, I feel completely weightless and oh so comfortable!  Also, a summer pregnancy wardrobe is way easier than being super-pregnant in the middle of winter - no jeans, coats, or sweaters to worry about.  Most of my non-maternity summer dresses still fit with room to grow, and my non-maternity lounge shorts and leggings fit comfortably below the bump.  So I only really had to buy a few short-sleeve maternity tops this time around, making putting together my current wardrobe really easy.  

I was planning to write a separate post about this topic, but I honestly don't want to dwell on it too much and realized I already covered so much of it in blog posts as it happened, that I am just going to briefly write about it here.  If  you are interested in reading the details about our breastfeeding journey last time around, you can do so here and here and here and here.  The long and the short of it is, we had a very traumatic experience last time around and those feelings are still with me to a degree.  When I tell people this, I am always met with "oh I know exactly how you feel - breastfeeding was so painful for a couple of weeks and I had to see a LC and everything!"  And not to minimize those hard times for others, but that's not at all what I went though.  I tried literally everything to make the pain that came about when Arlo was two weeks ago resolve, and it never did.  It was a six month journey for us and I was still in pain for several months after that.  We put Arlo through a procedure to correct his tongue and lip ties at three weeks old.  Between the LC's, midwifes, and eventually a breast pain specialist OB/GYN at the hospital, I ended up seeing over a total of eight medical professionals to help me.  I was on over ten different medications to help the pain, and probably another five or so to help with milk production.  I tried nipple shields and four different breast pumps trying to pump milk in the least amount of pain possible.  I pumped every three hours in the early months to try and keep up my supply, and even when Arlo started sleeping through the night I set an alarm to wake me up to pump on that schedule, and in intense pain every single time.  When my supply started to drop we used donor milk, and eventually had to supplement with formula.  When I wasn't caring for Arlo and he was sleeping, I was online googling every possibly thing that might help me feel better.  We literally spent thousands of dollars trying to figure out what was wrong and at the time I was so obsessed with breastfeeding Arlo that I would have paid every penny we had to make it work.  In the end it was thought that my nerve receptors became irritated and inflamed and just couldn't heal between the nonstop cycle of feeding and pumping.  But for those six months I was caught in this really unhealthy obsessive compulsive cycle of how I was feeding Arlo, and you know what?  I am not doing it again.  I don't like the word crazy, but for lack of a better one that's how I felt for the first six months of his life.  And I won't put myself through it again.  Yes, I still agree that breast milk is the very best nutrition for a baby.  And I will make efforts to make it work this time, but the fact of the matter is that there is a high probability that I will experience the same intense pain I did last time around.  If so, I will likely start pumping at the first sign of symptoms, and while this is probably a pretty low goal for many moms - I am hoping to be able to give breast milk for the first month.  If things go better than I think they will and we go longer than that, great!  If we don't even make it to a month, that's okay too.  I don't even think we will make the efforts to seek out donor milk like we did last time and I have made my peace with using formula.  A close friend of mine made her own and has a recipe developed by a pediatrician and approved by ours (her and I go to the same one) and her daughter did amazing on it.  So, I already have the ingredients on hand should we need it.  Some friends of ours who have four kids once told us the secret to having multiple little ones and remaining sane and happy is to set your expectations low, and you will rarely be disappointed, and pleasantly surprised if things go better than planned.  So, while some may say I have a negative attitude about breastfeeding this time around, I would have to disagree.  I feel like I am setting myself up to do the best that I can, and have a solid back-up plan that I am equally okay with.  Next week I am meeting with a LC at the birthing center to discuss breastfeeding this time around, and it's in the birth plan to access for a tongue tie immediately after birth (something we think caused the initial trauma the first time around.)  I have a new hospital grade pump and bottles galore.  So, I think I have done everything that I can at this point to be prepared for whatever comes our way this time around, and the rest is in the hands of nature...

I am hoping in the next couple of weeks to share some photos of the recently updated nursery, as well as Arlo's big boy room that I meant to share a while ago - oops!  And I am going to try really hard to write a final pregnancy update around 37 or 38 weeks, otherwise it will probably never get done!  For now, back to that to-do list...

the end.

I have come to the end of what I feel like has been one of the longest and most challenging roads I have traveled so far in my life.  This morning, I pumped milk for Arlo for the very last time.  I had planned to make it until Arlo turned six months and started solid foods, then taper off to maybe once a day and then stop when it felt right.  Unfortunately, my plan was changed when I ran out of the medication, domperidone, I had been taking to help with my milk supply.  I ordered it online months ago when a prescription was not required to purchase it, and when I went to reorder a couple of weeks ago suddenly a prescription was necessary.  I was unable to find a provider to write one for me (and not surprisingly - domperidone, while used as a lactation medication in many other parts of the world, is not approved in the US by the FDA so many physicians are hesitant to help you obtain it to begin with) and when I ran out over the weekend, my supply dropped sharply.  I went from pumping around 13 oz a day to barely 4 oz in a matter of just a couple of days.  This morning while I was pumping, Arlo started to cry and needed me.  I looked down at the measly 1.5 ounces I had in the bottles and saw that there was nothing else coming out.  I asked myself if it was even worth it to try and get more.  I tearfully turned off the pump and knew right then that it would be my last time.

To say that I am disappointed with how breastfeeding went for me would be an understatement; I actually feel completely devastated and traumatized by the whole situation.  I went through a quite depressed time months ago when feeding Arlo at the breast was not working out, and I started to pump exclusively.  I then spent several months trying everything I could to resolve that pain that I was having, trying countless medications and treatments, still hoping that eventually we would reestablish a "normal" breast feeding relationship.  This whole time, I was pumping just barely enough, constantly worried about having enough for him to eat, and then when my supply dropped eventually, I started relying on donor milk to keep him exclusively on breast milk.  I am eternally grateful to these mamas who helped us out!!  At just over four months old, we ran out of donor milk and I decided to introduce formula instead of trying to pursue yet another donor mama.  Again, feelings of sadness returned and I spent a lot of time convincing myself that it was okay, and that formula is not poison.  I continued to pump, and from four months until now he has been drinking 1/2 formula, 1/2 breast milk.  Now, I am mourning the loss of what I had always hoped would be a very long and enjoyable breastfeeding relationship with Arlo, as well as come to terms with the fact that he is no longer receiving any of my milk - the one little reassurance I had always tucked away in the back of my mind to make myself okay with all the disappointments of the previous six months.

In the end, I feel like I put 110% into trying to make breastfeeding work for us.  I was on over ten different medications to try and resolve my nipple pain.  I saw five lactation consultants, a midwife, a NP, and finally an OB who all tried to help, but no one could.  We put Arlo through a procedure at just three weeks old to correct a posterior tongue and lip tie hoping that would fix the problem, but it didn't.  I was treated extensively for thrush, Raynauds, and put on antidepressants for pain which made me feel like a zombie, and gave no relief.  In the beginning, I was pumping around 7 or 8 times per day.  There were weeks when I didn't leave the house even for an hour because it would have thrown off my pumping schedule and my supply would have suffered.  Every single time I pumped (and in the beginning often when I wasn't even pumping) I was dealing with severe nipple pain.  I often described the feeling as if my nipples were severely sunburned, then the top layer of skin was removed, then it was licked by kittens.  As well, my schedule revolved completely around my pumping routine.  When Arlo started to sleep through the night, I continued to wake up at 3am to pump.  It was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night.  I had to say no to many social gatherings, as they just didn't allow me to be home to pump (I couldn't use a portable pump due to the pain it caused - I had to use a clunky hospital grade rented machine with a much gentler suction.)  If you want to know what it is like to pump around the clock - set a kitchen timer to go off every four hours or so.  When it goes off - no matter where you are or what you are doing, you have to stop and go hook yourself up to a machine for 20-30 minutes.  Add in the whole sunburned, kitten-licked nipple pain and you can see why I probably had such a hard time with it.  I am not complaining, nor am I asking you to throw me a pity party.  All of the above, was done by my choice - no one on this planet made me do it except for myself.  I made my decisions based on what felt right in my heart at the time, not on what my mind or body wanted me to do. 

If I had to go back and do it all over again, would I?  I think that I would.  Will I do it again for the next baby if the same situation presented itself?  Honestly, I don't know how that would be possible.  There were some awful times when I felt like Arlo suffered because of our situation - I can't count the number of times I was home alone with him and I would be halfway through a pumping session and he would start crying, and I was town between stopping to pick him up or continuing to pump so he would have enough to eat.  I would often sit there and cry right with him, not knowing what to do.  I eventually learned to put him on the boppy pillow next to me while I pumped (hey, at least it was being used for something!) which helped, but not always.  I can't imagine having Arlo, and another baby, and having to repeat this process.  Unless I had someone here to help me, it would be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, mission.

So, if you are still here with me, I would like to thank you for reading what I consider to be one of my posts that I would file under the category "therapeutic writings."  And as well, if you have walked beside me on this journey over the last six months, I thank you very much for your support.  I couldn't have made it this far without Erik, who was my support beam on this entire journey, and friends and family who stepped in to help, let me cry on their shoulders, and never told me to give up because they knew how important this was to me.

As I poured the last of my milk into Arlo's bottle just minutes before I sat down to write the post, I couldn't help welling up with tears.  But on the other side of the coin, I know that I will now have, really, my life back.  No longer will my schedule revolve around a machine and if Arlo and I want to go out for an entire afternoon, we can!  I will no longer have the pain I have been feeling for so long, and I am hopeful I can replace the time I spent pumping with some things that I previously enjoyed doing, perhaps running or yoga.  So, while it will surely take some time to work through these feelings of sadness and loss, it will get easier as time goes on.  Arlo is just five days shy of his six month birthday and this weekend we will give him his first solids.  And tonight before bed, instead of pouring breast milk into bottles, I just may pour myself my first guilt-free glass of wine in a very long time...

goodbye, mrs. symphony.  here's hoping we never meet this way again!