Laundry, Morphine, Wanting To Poo & Other Exciting Adventures

Sorry I've been MIA lately. It seems like its been one thing after another & I'm finally able to come up for a gulp of air! But that's life with kids, right? ;-)

First I was sick with a nasty cold & then each of my chicks came down with it. Then back on Thursday night around midnight, I woke up with a horrible pain in my stomach & back. By 7 am & no sleep & unrelenting pain, I told my husband that we should probably go to the ER.

I figured it'd be an in & out trip. I was so embarrassed that they may send me home with a mere diagnosis of a bad case if gas. I've known several pregnant women who've gone to the ER thinking there was something wrong & turned out they just had a big ol' air bubble that needed turned loose.

Heck, I know at least one woman who went to Labor & Delivery when her water broke but it turned out that she had merely peed her pants.

I did not want to be one of these women.

I took 5 Gas-X tablets hoping to free some hidden beast within, but it was to no avail. We woke the kids & headed towards the hospital.

Along the way, stuck in rush hour/going to work & school traffic, wedged between a Lexus, a full school bus & a Suburban, I puked in a wonton soup take-out container.

Have I mentioned how glamorous my life is?

Now, for the sake of your boredom & my fear of losing half my followers, I will skip over the boring trivial parts.

Basically all's they found was a UTI (urinary tract infection). But they did a quick ultrasound to check on my little bean baby! I had no clue how small they can be! But there, in black & white, was my 6 wk 2 day old baby with a strong heartbeat! No sign of distress, thank God!

The Dr put me on an IV because I was slightly dehydrated, along with something for the nausea and MORPHINE for the pain!

I have never had morphine before but mainly worried about the safety of my Baby Bean and my little nursling. They reassured me that it was fine to have the morphine, so they added that to the IV.

All was fine. I thought. I was pain-free & relaxed. But I was totally unprepared for what happened next. The morphine high. I had fallen asleep & when I woke up, I was g-o-n-e. I could see everyone & hear everyone but they sounded a million miles away. I could barely move. I thought I was dying.

But my responsibilities as a breastfeeding momma did not cease just because I was high as a kite in a hospital bed. Austin was hungry. Bored. And pissed. Very pissed. I was slacking on the job & he let everyone know how unacceptable that was.

I drunkenly tried to roll to one side & push one side of my bra down, while Antonio tried to position Austin next to me. Austin latched right on. His eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy. I had to smile.

As the nurse came in to check my vitals for the last time & get me ready to leave, she discovered that my blood pressure had dropped. Low. Really low.

Luckily they were able to get it back up by hooking me up to another bag of fluids, but what I thought was going to be an in-and-out trip to the ER, ended up being an 11 hour ordeal!

But I'm home now & fine.

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Cloth diapers. We have transitioned to pretty much full time cloth diapering. And we are loving it! I've found that I mainly prefer prefolds (the unbleached Indian ones). They are much more absorbant than my flats & the poop seems to shake off easier in the toilet. We have not had any leaks yet! And we've had some messy diapers. I mean, loose, filled-to-the-brim full poopy diapers! LOL The worst that's happened was the poop got into the leg gussets of the cover, but the cover held it all in! It was amazing! I can definitely say that had he been wearing disposables at those times, we definitely would've been cleaning up some nasty blow-outs!

The only downside, really, is that we only have 4 covers, so that when the poop gets on the cover, we have to rinse the cover then toss it in the diaper pail. Because of those few messy diapers, I had to wash a couple of extra loads of diapers this week. But it really was no trouble at all. I just wash them once in hot & do an extra rinse. I hang the covers to dry but toss the diapers in the dryer for 90 minutes. Done!

For nighttime diapers, though, I have found that a tri-folded flannel receiving blanket with a washcloth folded inside of it works great. It's super soft, not bulky & very absorbant!

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Shampoo. I believe its been 3 wks since I last shampooed.

I admit: I miss it. I miss the sweet fragrance. I miss the bubbly feeling of sudsing up in the shower. I miss using styling products.

But I have made a commitment to do this for at least six weeks.

My hair isn't looking worse than usual, in terms of cleanliness. I have faith that this is the healthier option for my locks.

But I do think that I'm going to start using styling products, at least on weekends. I miss my curly hair.

Mission Impossible? Am I failing?

**Caution! This contains booby talk of a non-sexual nature! It may be considered TMI to some of you!**

Austin is 7 and a half months old & we are still breastfeeding. I have no clue when I want to stop. I don't see myself still nursing him when he's, say, 5, but as of right now, I have no plans of stopping anytime soon. Originally, I thought it'd be difficult to "stick with it" for a year, but his first birthday is rapidly approaching & I'm still as gung-ho about it as I was when we first started. Maybe more so now that my milk supply is established (for the most part, but I'll get to that in a minute), my breasts are no longer super engorged, my nipples are no longer constantly cracked & I don't have the problems with leaking that I used to.

Sure, I miss my sleep. I had completely forgotten how a breastfed baby doesn't really start sleeping through the night like a formula-fed baby. At least not consistently. I might have a reprieve every so often, but so far it hasn't been a regular occurance. It would also be nice to be able to just give him a bottle when we're driving down the road, instead of having to find a parking spot & get him out of his carseat so I can nurse him. (I have pretty much been a breastfeeding "purist" so far, and have never pumped a bottle for him)

On the other hand, I have never had to wake up to his cry in the middle of the night & have to stumble blindly down the hallway to the kitchen to fix him a bottle. For the most part, once I nurse him in the middle of the night, he goes right back to sleep without an issue. As for feedings on the go, I don't have to worry about giving him a cold bottle to drink, worry about warming up a bottle, worry about forgetting the formula at home. Nothing. No worries. Just perfectly warmed super healthy milk ready for him instantly! Woohoo! LOL

But I do have a problem. See, about 10 years ago I had to have a lumpectomy on one of my breasts. What that means, is I had a very large lump in my breast & given my family history of breast cancer, they wanted it (the lump) removed immediately. I quit breastfeeding my daughter at this time. She was 6 months old. When I was pregnant with my first son, that breast got an abcess on it, right on the scar from the surgery. The doctor said that what might have happened was that the scar tissue could be blocking some of my milk ducts. Anyone who has ever breastfed knows that milk doesn't come out of just one hole in your nipple, but rather from out of a multitude of tiny holes. Apparently some of my holes are out-of-service, so to speak. This angers my little guy. (I did not breastfeed my older son) So he has always favored my other breast. The land of milk & honey ;-). Who can blame him? I'm gonna always choose the shower head with the awesome strong water pressure, ya know? Who wants a piddly drizzle?

That's where my trouble begins. Because he hates the "slow flow" one, he fusses whenever I settle him down to nurse on that side. He won't do it. You can lead a baby to the nipple, but you can't make him drink! But now that breast has realized that it's....less desirable. (to the baby! My husband & I like it just fine!) But the milk supply in that side has dropped considerably. I need to boost the milk production in it, despite what I have been told that it will be a fruitless effort. I've been told that this is the beginning of the end (& that breast will soon just stop producing milk). Apparently, when a breast's milk supply starts to go down, the sodium level rises, making the milk taste saltier. And who wants to drink salty milk? So the baby really starts to hate that breast, which in turn leads to the milk drying up completely.

But I refuse to give up. Here is my plan: I have begun drinking Milkmaid tea (by Earth Mama Angel Baby), which has been proven to raise milk levels. After just a couple of days of drinking it, I have noticed that Austin has been nursing on that side longer! I am thinking that if I began also pumping on that side, in addition to drinking the tea, I could bring milk production in that breast back up to normal! Wouldn't that be great?!

What do you think? Does it sound like an impossible feat? What about your little breastfeeder? Does he or she prefer one breast over the other?

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The Diaper Dilemma

Everyone has tried to talk me out of it. They've tried reasoning, teasing & outright telling me that I wouldn't be able to deal with it. But if there's one thing my friends & family have yet to understand, its that the more someone tells me that I can't do something, the more determined I'm going to be to do it.

That's why I tried to go "natural" for my first labor. For 12 hrs. My mom was begging me to just get the epidural...however, she's the one who said that I wasn't strong enough to do it to begin with. And then the nurse walked in & caught me on my hands & knees on the linoleum, trying to birth my young National Geographic-style. She immediately took up my mom's "Say Yes To Drugs" chorus. Yeah. I buckled like a belt & was singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" with my legs in stirrups less than an hour later.

Breastfeeding? Another little gem that I was told I wouldn't be able to do. I am happy to announce that I exclusively breastfed my daughter for 6 months & am breastfeeding my second son right now. Well, not "right now" right now, but you know what I mean. He will be 6 months old in a few days & I have no plans of stopping anytime soon! (What about my first son, you ask? Due to a breast abcess that I got during my 2nd pregnancy & had to have operated on, I am sad to say that I opted not to breastfeed my first son.)

Oh! But back to topic! I have decided to switch to cloth diapers! Due to finances (or lack thereof), I am not starting out using the new fancy "cloth" diapers that bear no resemblance to cloth diapers of old, but instead I will be using prefolds. AKA: almost the twin of aforementioned "cloth diapers of old". I was even going to go really old school & use diaper pins, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. I do not wish to use my beautiful baby boy as a pin cushion while learning how to use them. Maybe they're not too hard to get the hang of during daylight hours, but all it'll take is one middle-of-the-night diaper change to require a trip to the ER for a punctured organ....

Now the tricky part is finding quality prefolds. I could order them online, but I am very impatient & want instant gratification. I have located a store an hour from my house that sells them, so I may be heading that way tomorrow. I also found an awesome deal for a bunch on Craigslist, but I have yet to hear back from the seller. Hopefully I hear back from her soon because I am so excited to get started.
Remember this excitement. I am sure it will be short-lived once I have to shake a few poos in the potty.