Bittersweet…till he brings me back to reality

In six days, Michael will be six months old. You know what that means: it’s time for the first meal.

I was determined to make it all the way to six months on breast alone this time, but like his brothers, he had other ideas. Ideas that involve wailing if left on the floor during a meal, lunging for wine goblets, pulling Mommy’s plate toward him, and grabbing my hand and when he saw a cookie in it and trying to get it in his mouth. (Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, he was much more insistent about that one than the others.) It’s bittersweet, passing this milestone this time. And I am really not looking forward to the pain in the neck that is having to prepare and feed and carry food with us wherever we go. Sigh.

But his godparents were in town this weekend, so we let them do the honors. I think I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves today.

Mmmm, sweet potato. Doesn’t that just look so appetizing?

So sweet, my soon-to-be-sweet-potato boy.

Are you ready for this, baby boy?

I do it myself! Or, um. Something like that.

And perhaps that last picture gives you the idea that all is not bliss in the era of new solid-food-eater. All the other kids have done quite nicely learning to, I don’t know, SWALLOW. Not this one. He pretty much lets it all come sliding back out the front, nicely juiced up with saliva. For the first three days I’m not at all sure he actually ate anything. On day four, I saw him eat the last three bites. On day five, I learned that I have to put a finger on his chin and close his mouth on the food, and then he’ll actually swallow. Sometimes.

Good thing I’m wanting to take it slow anyway.

Published in: on May 24, 2012 at 6:23 am  Leave a Comment  
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Moonglow

Photo by prawnpie, via Flickr

The world is black and white and silver beneath the full moon as I stumble down the hallway and retrieve a hungry boy from his crib. It’s been weeks now since we’ve needed to turn on the light to help us latch, so as we enter the room, the nursing chair waits in a mural of interrupted white from beyond the window. As we step into range, zebra stripes rush up our bodies, disorienting, so strong they almost seem a tangible creature.

The baby settles in to his job with deep concentration, his free hand grasping, releasing, and grasping my finger. The strength of his grip measures his progress from wakeful hunger back to peaceful sleep. Strips of brilliance curve around the shape of his head. It’s so bright, as if something punched a hole in the universe, and all the light of Heaven now pours through a disc the size of a quarter hung in the center of the sky.

We switch sides, and the stripes curve the opposite direction. His hand still wraps my finger, but hesitantly, pausing longer between grips. Silver skitters over my face, making me aware of my own nose, my eyelashes–things I can always see, but never notice. I wake my brain, willing it to commit this moment to memory. So many beautiful moments have disappeared. I hope that once the clutter of early childhood’s constant need fades, my mind will be able to retrieve some of them, but I’m not confident. Christian remembers things I’ve already forgotten. This moment–this one, at least–I want seared into brain and body until it is a visceral thing, the pattern of light and dark disrupting normalcy with magic. Reminding me how close by the side of transcendence lies every moment.

*

(Note: no, we do not have a full moon right now. I’ve been sitting on this moment for a couple of weeks.)

Published in: on May 17, 2012 at 5:49 am  Leave a Comment  
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Have Breast, Will Travel

For the past seven years, my days have been defined by the routine care of children. Lacking day care, I haul them with me on errands or I don’t go at all. (Christian does a lot more lunchtime errand running now than he did in days past.) I have a semi-regular babysitter now to give me time to write, but basically, the baby stays with me, because one thing we don’t have in this house is bottles. We don’t even own any.

Sometimes it’s frustrating to feel tied down, but in general I am at peace with our choice to exclusively breastfeed. People who haven’t breastfed their kids don’t get it; they look at me blankly and say, “Can’t you just leave him with a sitter? I mean, you could pump so they could give him a bottle, couldn’t you?” I have to explain that even if the sitter gives him a bottle, all the milk he was supposed to drink at that time still has to come out of my body. And I loathe pumping. I am in awe of the self-sacrifice routinely practiced by mothers who pump at work every day. Oh. My. Goodness. You deserve a medal. (You know who you are. You rock, ladies.)

So I choose to stay attached to my babies. I’ve become pretty adept at typing one-handed, and I save certain projects (blog reading, for instance) for nursing times. When Michael’s in a mood to concentrate on his job, I can read books to the other kids. He stays with me while I write, he stays with me while I teach lessons, he stays with me while we play for weddings. This is my life; it has been my life for the last seven years and four babies.

But there are days. Like this weekend, when Christian and I played a wedding.

On the wedding front, we’ve gone back and forth, trying out different solutions to the professional-musician, fully-nursing-mom dynamic. We choose different solutions depending on the age and the mood of the baby on a given day. This weekend we did the “bring baby along” thing, because he was cranky and we had a young sitter.

Michael amused himself in his car seat through the prelude and processional, but during the psalm, I heard Unhappy Baby Noises. By the time I got back to the music area, someone had come over to pick him up, offering to hold him. I hated to have a wedding guest drooled upon and distracted during the exchange of vows, so I said we’d be fine; at this point I was basically just singing a Mass, and I could do that holding a baby.

The only trouble? What he really wanted was three minutes on the breast to fall asleep. And I couldn’t leave. So I held him carefully down-wind of the microphone and kept my finger in his mouth as he alternately sucked and chomped on it. I thought he might actually bite through it at one point. My pointer finger was positively numb by the time Communion was over, and he was at the end of his rope, proceeding from noisy slurping and occasional whimpers to out-and-out cries of “Feed me NOW, Woman!” I bolted for the sacristy even before Christian stopped playing.

Michael was so tired, he went down in ten seconds, but knowing him as I do, I didn’t dare move. Christian ended up playing the recessional solo. It works fine, and by that point in a wedding I question whether anyone even noticed my absence, but still, I wince. Because I need to be professional, too, and wrestling a baby while playing a wedding felt anything but.

Oh, well. Michael’s baby days are passing; this is a fleeting time in my life, after all. Soon enough my body will be my own again, and we’ll be on to a whole different, far more complicated set of problems to solve. Might as well enjoy this bunch while it lasts.

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Published in: on April 16, 2012 at 7:38 am  Comments (4)  
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In The Moment

When your voice rouses me from deep sleep, a hair shy of 4:30 in the morning, I can tell from the intensity of your anger that you’ve been trying to get my attention for several minutes. I went to bed worried about your cough and your lack of appetite, so your energy in protesting my absence is reassuring.

I stretch you out on the table and whisper soothing words while we do the necessary work, and we retreat to the chair in the corner. For all your outrage over being made to wait, you settle into an unhurried pattern of suck-swallow-breathe, your fingers playing with the satin ribbons on my pajamas, their smoothness the first toy you’ve shown interest in.

You fall asleep quickly, and no amount of persuading can convince you to eat on the second side. I pad softly back to your room and swaddle you, but I can tell from the outset that it’s a hopeless cause. You’re already ramping back up into red-faced outrage at the idea. We return to the nursing chair, but you fall asleep without even latching. You just want to be held.

I settle in bed with you against my chest. The ghostly roar of the interstate is muted by the walls. Your father breathes deep of sleep beside us; your siblings’ sighs and low groans punctuate the velvet darkness. But this five a.m. is for us, for you with me. The weight of your tiny body spreads outward and inward and fuses with me, filling up spaces in my soul I didn’t even know were there. It turns out there’s always more room for love.

I pull the blankets up around us in a U, conscious always of your need to breathe. I pat the warm curve of your back until your body stops resisting, and you sleep at last. I drift sleepily on the wave of Spirit that comes when I am living fully in the moment. My baby boy, how I love you.

For a visit home…overnight
the soul-filling silence of a winter afternoon in the country
and a glorious night of stargazing with my oldest
two brief shooting stars
deep darkness outside the windows
and a gentle sunrise that wraps the world around, uninterrupted by other houses

For the smell of my home church wafting out to greet me upon entering the familiar space
and the chance to worship with four generations of my family

For unnamed reconciliations

For morning snuggles with a preschooler in the crook of each arm

For conversations that illuminate yet again how blessed I am in my life
and the conversations that remind me that I can never stop wrestling with the hard questions

Counting to a thousand with Ann, for the first time in quite a while

On In Around button

Published in: on February 27, 2012 at 7:47 am  Comments (10)  
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The Milk Maid’s Postpartum Journey (a 7QT post)

(Men: I’m being pretty woman-frank today. Consider yourself warned.)

___1___

When I was pregnant with Alex, I was all about natural childbirth. I was one of those people that annoys the doctor by clarifying again and again and again that I DON’T want an epidural, I DON’T want forceps and episiotomy, and so on. Of course, all that assumes that the body is capable of laboring, which mine apparently isn’t. And after I became the classic case of spiraling interventions leading to C-section, I sighed and shrugged and said, “Oh, well, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. People should stop freaking out about C sections.”

___2__

I held that opinion until the third trimester of my pregnancy with Nicholas, when I realized that the damage and weakness done to my abdomen was the cause of all the pain that made walking excruciating–I could barely support my own weight. And realized that I had to restrengthen before I could have another baby. From the 6-week mark in 2009, I did Pilates 2-3 times a week and added exercises from my massage therapist, and we got by this time.

___3___

What I wasn’t counting on was that the fourth C section recovery would be as difficult as it has been. The pain has been stubborn, the bleeding has hung on, and then of course, we had latch issues that made nursing excruciating for several weeks. I can feel the difference in my body. The six and a half years since Alex’s birth, with three more C’s, have really taken their toll. I’m more aware of the incisions, the weakness in my own body. And the end of the incision rubbed raw and opened up in the last couple of weeks, defying all my attempts to heal it.

___4___

So yesterday I had my postpartum visit. The day dawned with snow that canceled school. Suddenly I was looking at a two-hour drive with ALL FOUR CHILDREN, with nothing but a doctor’s office at the end. I panicked and called my mom. She stepped up to the plate and kept the older three at home so I only had to take the baby with me. And the doctor found that there was a stitch hanging out there, refusing to fall off (because of the distance, he actually sews me up with dissolvable stitches instead of using staples). That was actually a relief to know; I thought I’d done something wrong.

___5___

However, yesterday was a rough day on the nursing front. Two hours, a quick doctor visit, and two hours back home = lots of sleeping baby interspersed with cranky baby. We nursed int he car at a rest area, and we nursed in the car in the doctor’s office lot before starting home. And what I thought was simple engorgement on one side (because he hates nursing that side) turned out to be my very first really nasty plugged duct.

___6___

Now, I have a history of plugged ducts. It comes with the territory when you have abundant supply and, ahem, abundant space. Usually these would be considered a blessing–certainly every mother in the NICU looked slightly green when I walked in having pumped four ounces in ten minutes. I have twenty-nine vials of milk residing in the deep freeze at present that I have no idea what to do with. In the NICU they called me the “Milk Maid.” I have been holding my breath these first six weeks, chowing on lecithin, massaging tissue, not multitasking much while nursing, to try to avoid plugs, because they’re such a horrid experience. I’ve had five or six already, but they were partial plugs, ones that, while achy, never caused me that panicky sense of lack of control. This one is one of those. I haven’t started panicking yet, but having three quarters of one breast blocked off, producing ridiculous amounts of milk that can’t get out…I’m getting there. Warm water, massage, and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to go pump. I just keep praying that the blockage will break quickly this time, and not hang around for three days like they’re wont to do.

___7___

Breastfeeding moms…if you’ve never had a plugged milk duct…fall on your knees and thank God.

Now. Off to the mechanical pump. (Envision me gagging.)

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 160)

Published in: on January 13, 2012 at 7:54 am  Comments (13)  
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The Scent of Heaven

“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.“

Luke 2:19, NAB

When I went into the hospital on November 30th, I gave myself permission to take it easy for a while. I was supposed to have a whole lot more done before that happened–a proposed table of contents for a new book, a couple of columns, some music. The early delivery rearranged my plans; the NICU stay gave me time to get done more than I thought. But when I came home, I gave myself until the first of the year to rest, to recover, to adjust…in short, simply to be.

Some of it has been stressful, some of it sublime. I’ve handled it with grace, and without. But at all times, I’ve tried to stop and really be present to the moment–to feel it in my body, not just in some compartmentalized corner of my brain, or with my eyes through the screen of a digital camera. In the past month, I have sat in my nursing corner in the darkness and watched Orion trek across the night sky. I have sat there on bright mornings, with the newborn sun aglow on the walls while my other children play on my bed, reducing each other to helpless, jelly-kneed giggles while they wait their turn to hold Baby Brother. I have gotten back under the covers with my family, three, four, five people lined up across two pillows, and run my hands over each one, glorying in the distinct progression against my palms as I touch arms and faces: adulthood, age six, almost- five, almost-three, and infancy.

I have watched yet another baby work his magic on everyone around him.  I have tiptoed around an umbilical cord stump that refused to fall off, tried to soothe him through very cold baths on a towel on the bathroom floor. Changed diapers that smell cheesy and yeasty, and didn’t hold my nose, admitting softly to myself that I actually kind of like that breastmilk-diaper smell.

I have slept in, napped in the sunny (and not-so-sunny) afternoons, watched movies, done very little housework, occasionally overdone it and paid the price in my incisions. I have gone to way too many medical appointments and never bothered to take work with me, choosing instead to hold a baby and be still instead of productive while I waited in overheated waiting rooms. The last two days, I have lounged back to enjoy the solid, warm soft weight of a child against my chest, pressing my nose to his head to breathe in that scent of Heaven, the smell of chrism, while my lips press against silky eyebrows and satin skin.

And now it is January third, and time is up. The baptism and extended holiday visits from family members have gifted me with some extra days, but now reality begins to settle back in, bit by bit: cooking, cleaning, laundry, lessons, deadlines. But the experience has taught me that I need a new balance for a new year–one that achieves fewer words or notes on a page and more moments. One that involves being present when my children are filling my soul instead of keeping my brain busy in the background working on some problem to be solved at naptime.

Today is bath day, and I think when I put Michael in the tub for the first time (his recalcitrant cord finally gave up the ghost on the last night of the old year), I won’t wash his hair. Maybe not the next time, either. The smell of chrism won’t last forever–the scent of Heaven will fade along with the inner hum of stillness found this past month, as normal life settles in once more. But while it lasts, I can use it to anchor myself in the resolve for this new year.

Just Write

Published in: on January 3, 2012 at 7:45 am  Comments (14)  
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I Guess It’s Postpartum Blues

Breastfeeding symbolThe thing I’ve always valued about breastfeeding is that it is a symbiotic relationship. The well-being of baby depends upon mother, and the well-being of mother depends upon baby. We’re a partnership, and my motivation is high to keep us mutually healthy.

I’ve been through difficult nursing times, but I have never faltered in my commitment.

Until now.

I feel terrible. As if everything that could plague a new mother postpartum is hitting me all at the same time. My neck, my shoulders, my back, the headache; the incision; the nether regions; worst of all, nursing is excruciating. I mean excruciating. All.The.Time. This week I’ve had diagnostic work, a chiropractic adjustment, conversations with the doctor’s office, conversation with the lactation consultant, and tomorrow I’ll have an appointment with her. I think it’s a ductal yeast infection. I’ve gotten through that before, I can handle it for another 36 hours, right?

Except I was in tears at 3:45 this morning. Michael has a habit of chewing on me without drawing any milk out. I keep thinking there’s something wrong with the latch…or maybe he’s just not awake enough…or the position’s wrong. I mean, this is my fourth child. I’m an expert breastfeeding mom now. I ought to be able to problem solve my way through most things. And I did…he got his feeding, it just took almost an hour. An hour of experimenting with latches and positions, and a lot of chewing on skin that was already raw. I thought about the several dozen vials of breastmilk pumped out during the NICU stay. How long will that last? Can I just quit?

Sore, stiff neck and headache greeted me this morning, heaping insult upon misery. It was getting better for several days, then suddenly took a turn for the worse. Every single time I sit down to nurse, I do neck stretches. I really thought it would be improving by now. I knelt in the hallway folding clothes and crying. Julianna came over and gave me hug after hug, shaking her head and signing “cry,” to say: Don’t cry. Don’t cry. What I really wanted was a long, comforting cuddle with my husband but he was trying to get out of the house with Alex.

Three ibuprofen later I feel marginally human, but life seems pretty overwhelming. I can recite verbatim everything everybody’s thinking, about taking care of yourself, taking a nap, asking for help, etc. etc. I am taking naps, and how much more help can I ask? I’ve already hit up two people for chauffering services this week, and a dozen more have either brought or been loosely scheduled to bring food. We could stock our deep freeze and not cook for the next three months—and it’s wonderful, it will be so helpful to only cook half as much for the foreseeable future. But how can I ask more? I’m not the only person in the world with difficulties, and I’m sure mine are less severe than most.

More than likely this freak-out is post-NICU-stress related. Life keeps marching on, I keep trying to take care of kids and take back all the overwhelming burden that Christian had to carry by himself for ten days, and it’s almost Christmas and I’m having to say no to the kids’ school parties because I just don’t think I can do any more, which makes me feel horribly guilty. I’m not writing, I’m barely cleaning, just trying to keep up with the dishes and the laundry, and when I look around me I see people carrying burdens truly crushing. I don’t have any justification for flipping out over perfectly normal postpartum blues and ordinary health concerns. It just seems like there’s no end in sight, no time to just sit down on the couch and simply be. Be with my husband, mostly, just be, not crisis-hopping, not problem-solving how to get child care so he can work, not working out grocery lists long distance, not trying to communicate the latest unjustified bilirubin flip-out the doctor had today, not trying to figure out why they want to do yet another PKU test, not trying to work in another doctor appointment or diagnostic test, not tearing our hair out because Alex can’t seem to get himself together and we can’t juggle one more thing for him, not gnashing our teeth because Julianna’s lost some of her verbal skills and maybe it’s because we ran out of green tea three weeks ago and can’t seem to get any more made.

Life right now just feels like too much. It’s not just the last two weeks; the crisis of early delivery and NICU blindsided us on the back end of a long period of stress. I just want a few days to breathe, without crisis, without chaos, without the phone ringing twenty times a day from Sirius XM radio and the pediatrician’s office. I just want to be for a while. Is that so much to ask, God?

Published in: on December 15, 2011 at 9:03 am  Comments (16)  
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Transition #4

I think I’ve been pretty clear that I am not a great housekeeper. Christian’s actually much better at it than I am. For the last ten days while I have languished in the land of pulsox, heart monitors and fluorescent lighting, he was home with the kids, along with people who came to help during the day: my mom, my sister, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends coming in and cleaning like crazy people. I felt a bit guilty, but also a bit smug, knowing that my house was going to be clean when I got home, without any input from me to make it so.

Christian & the kids were at a concert on Saturday night when I walked into my kitchen and stopped dead, staring at the piles of papers waiting to be filed, gifts and school projects no one had had time to sort and put away, and toys—the toys that are supposed to stay in the basement—on every level of the house.
“Oh…my…gosh,” I said.

My mother went upstairs to start folding more laundry. My dad pulled Michael out of his car seat and started goo-goo-eyeing him. I hung up my coat and tore into the mess. It didn’t really look any better when I had to cease and desist for the night, in part because of the extra clutter my homecoming had brought into the house, but I did as much as I could.

What a difference six days can make. Every previous baby homecoming has involved a two-hour drive on a very sore abdomen, every bump causing me to wince and hold my incision. It’s involved the panicky not-feeling-good of engorgement. This time? This time I lit into the household tasks with an energy that amazed even me. All I could think was I had to do as much as I could before the kids came home and I needed to minister to the people in my household instead of the household itself.

I am way more interested in nesting now than I was in the last two weeks of my pregnancy.

Transition is tough every time. Thirty-six hours in, I’m already almost wild; Nicholas looks hurt when I shush him—because he never, ever, EVER shuts up. He just keeps repeating the same things over and over, right in my face while I’m trying to concentrate on making sure Michael is actually nursing and not simply tearing my breasts to shreds without getting anything out of them. Why is it that every baby is a stellar nurser in the hospital and then decides to be a fit-and-start-er upon arrival home? Julianna wants to breathe her runny nose and phlegmy cough on him, and everybody wants to hold him all the time. And ten days of hospital stress and nursing in a cramped corner beneath a vitals monitor that was beeping every minute and a half finally took their toll; I woke yesterday with the crick in my neck to end all cricks. Splitting headache, agonizing pain in my back.

Let’s just say it’s not conducive to house cleaning.

Transition, I whisper to myself. Just keep your cool. This, too, shall pass.

Besides, there’s this to counterbalance it. I just have to discipline my attitude.

Published in: on December 12, 2011 at 10:05 am  Comments (9)  
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A Nursing Story

A baby breastfeeding.

Image via Wikipedia

Two hours after Julianna was born, I was chomping at the bit, feeling irritable that they hadn’t brought her in for her first nursing, and trying to be patient. Then, of course, the doctor came in with the news of her chromosomal giftedness, and I don’t remember a whole lot after that.

I think we were already in our postpartum room before she came, and I had already received a visit from the stellar lactation consultant, who was guarded in her words. Kids with Down syndrome, she said, could probably nurse, eventually. But not to be discouraged if it didn’t work up front.

I was a trembling nervous wreck when my daughter came into the room at last, with backup in the form of nursery nurse, there to help with latch. Not at all what I had expected as a second-time nursing mother. But I drew my fragile baby into position, and Julianna latched on as if she was born to nurse. (Which, of course, she was.) The nurse’s jaw dropped, and she turned and dashed out of the room, returning two minutes later with the lactation consultant to crow and cheer. I felt a hard gleam of pride in myself and my daughter. Take that, Conventional Wisdom. Score One for my child. Teach you people to tell me what my child can and can’t do.

And then we went home, and it got a lot harder. My milk came in, and there was plenty of it, but she couldn’t stay latched, because she couldn’t breathe, thanks to the holes in her heart. She fell asleep almost as soon as she hit the breast. The girl slept all the time. Being well-experienced in plugged milk ducts, I was kind of a freak about the whole thing. It feels counterintuitive to work as hard as I did to keep her awake, to wake her over and over again. Dr. Sears says to aim for ten minutes of nursing—actual nursing—with kids with DS, and so I became a clock watcher. Often, I spent more time waking her up than I did nursing her.

Through sheer stubborn determination, I managed to do it–through a week of around-the-clock pumping when she was 5 1/2 weeks old and on a ventilator with RSV, through the weak oral muscles that meant that nursing = latching…over and over. I once told my mom that we latched a couple dozen times in a “10-minute” nursing session. “Ouch,” she said. I thought about what I was claiming and realized it sounded patently ridiculous. So I counted. I reached 18 latches in the first three minutes, and decided it was time to stop counting.

I share this because, despite the difficulties, we did it. She nursed exclusively until solid foods, and then she continued nursing until, at 16 months, she weaned completely.

It was really hard, but I don’t regret the experience one bit. For one thing, it gave me an intense confidence as a parent—more even than nursing Alex had given me. But more importantly, she needed all the health and developmental boost she could possibly get. That alone made it worthwhile. Nursing was a gift I could give her, one that she needed more than most.

I’d like to ask you all to share your stories now. I know there are those who have had beautiful experiences, as well as those who struggled more than we did, even some who have decided that the gift wasn’t worth the struggle. Please share your stories with us today.

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Published in: on September 2, 2010 at 7:13 am  Comments (2)  
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WFMW: Weight Loss (Real and perceived)

Ah, it’s that time of year again. Carbo heaven in November, cookie kingdom all through December; cream cheese-laden appetizers and desserts, multiple family feasts…and even as we gorge our way through the holidays, we cringe inwardly, knowing that there is a price to pay for all that richness.

It’s January when everybody gets “serious” about weight loss, but I have a better idea: keep it under control as you go.

Now, there are the really obvious things—portion control, diet, exercise, and all that—but here are three evening techniques that I find helpful:

  1. Eat early, & go to bed hungry. It seems like the dinner hour is 7, 8, 9:00 for a lot of people. I grew up having supper promptly at 6, but now, with three nights a week taken up by lessons and choir, dinner is at 5:30 (or as close as I can make it). This means that I’m finished eating for the night by 6:15 p.m., which lets me run off some of the meal before bedtime. For people who work, I have three words: CROCK POT—LEFTOVERS. You may roll your eyes at the stay-at-home mom, but I teach three afternoons a week, and I can’t cook on those days. So I cook on the days I can, and when I can’t, it’s CROCK POT or LEFTOVERS.
  2. Go to bed a little bit hungry. Whenever I do that, I find that my weight inches downward the next morning.
  3. Brush your teeth. In college I had a roommate & best friend who brushed her teeth every time she got ready to practice. If you are like her and don’t mind brushing your teeth often, I can’t help you. But I hate brushing my teeth. I do it in the morning and at night, and I will pass up food and drink if I’ve already brushed my teeth. So if I know I’m baking bread or working in the kitchen at night, where there are cookies lying around, brushing my teeth saves me a lot of calories.

Now, let me share one other nugget: it’s not all about real weight loss. Sometimes it’s about perceived weight loss.

I am 8 ½ months postpartum, and flirting with my pre-pregnancy weight. I haven’t made any significant progress in about two months…and yet all of a sudden, in the last week, everybody keeps saying, “Kate, you look great!” How to explain this?

(Disclaimer: In real life, I am a very down-to-earth person who has no problem talking about earthy subjects. After all, I teach Natural Family Planning. We use words like “mucus” all the time—without blushing. However, in “print” I usually try to be a little more circumspect. So I apologize for this, but…)

It’s the bra.

Out of the last 5 ½ years, I’ve been pregnant for 2 ¼ and nursing for well over 3. And I have three nursing bras. One for exercise, one for wearing in the early days of engorgement (meaning minimal support); and one that I wear every day. I mean every day.

I needed a new bra even before Julianna weaned, but I didn’t want to waste the money just in case we never managed to get pregnant again. Plus, I wanted to wait to replace it until I had another baby, and the milk came in, because that’s when the breast size is the biggest. I know from unhappy experience that tight bras cause plugged milk ducts. So I waited till Nicholas was born, and I could drive again…and then, Julianna was in the hospital, and then I didn’t have the money in my budget, and…well, you get the idea. Here I am, 8 months in, wearing the worn-out Medela nursing bra with holes in the band.

And then, last week, I cleaned out my drawer and discovered a nursing bra buried in the bottom. I bought it while I was still pregnant with Alex, and it turned out to be WAY too small for the early days of nursing. But at this stage, it fits great. I put it on, and suddenly…well, rather than get too explicit, let’s just say my body shape has improved dramatically.

And that is what Works For Me.

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, visit http://www.wearethatfamily.com/.

Published in: on December 2, 2009 at 10:06 am  Comments (5)  
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