Dry Nipples and Cream

I am very bad at doing all these girly things like putting lotion on after a shower -- or ever. When I'm pregnant I make a bigger effort with my cocoa butter lotion in order to prevent stretch marks. I know, I know, there's no guarantee-- but I didn't get stretch marks last time. Of course, last time I didn't get nearly as big as I am this time. To give you an idea of how little I use ceram, I've had the same bottle of Palmers since we got married and now we're on our second kid. Do the math yourself. I bought another bottle when I was pregnant last time but it's still sitting new in my cupboard. And I don't only use it during pregnancy. I used it on my face in the winter when the heaters and the breastfeeding were making me so dry that I felt like my face was cracking off.
Back to my nipples. The point is, they're dry and cracked. I don't think it's thrush but I don't want to take the chance. But I also don't feel like putting lotion on. Truth is, I just plain forget all about it. Who thinks about dry nipples until they take their shirt off. And if I'm taking my shirt off, I'm probably on my way to bed and I don't have the energy for nipple rubbing, or else it's morning and I have better things to do, like chase after my DS to get him dressed for kindergarten. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this clears itself up like it did last time. Actually, maybe I was a little more diligent about it last time. I recall using baby oil or something. Or was that on my itchy scalp?

Pump it Up: Frozen Breastmilk

I have three or four little baggies of frozen breastmilk sitting in my freezer. They've been there for... ho hum... maybe a year. Who knows why they didn't get used. At some point we switched to formula for those rare occasions that I wasn't around to breastfeed him on demand. In fact, I don't know if I ever pumped for the purposes of feeding after about 6 months when he started on solids. I know I pumped a couple of times out of paranoia after I popped a milk blister on my nipple and was afraid that the backlogged milk in the duct may have gotten infected or something (there may be no basis for thinking this, but we all have our neuroses-- I'm just choosing to share mine here).

A milk blister, by the way, is what happens when for some very strange reason, you get skin growing over a milk duct. The milk wants to escape but it cant, thereby forming a blister. Any CYA post you read about it on line will tell you to go to a doctor to get it popped but I just had DH do it for me the first time b/c I hate going to my doctor and I ended up just doing it myself whenever they popped up after that. Then you have to clear the duct of milk, which may or may not have semi-solidified and might come out like toothpaste. Gorgeous.

Later on I developed what may or may not have been thrush. I think not. Thrush is basically a yeast infection that the mother and baby keep passing back and forth to each other when breastfeeding. The mom shows signs of it on her nipple and baby shows signs of it in his mouth. But DS didn't have any signs of it as far as I could tell. I think it was just misdiagnosed dryness that I'm prone to.

Back to the freezer milk. So I don't know what to do with it. Obviously, I'm not going to feed it to my kid at this point. Most people would just tell me to throw it out but that seems so... wrong somehow. Maybe I can donate it to science. The local university might find use for it. They can do a study what happens to breast milk after you keep it in the freezer for a year. Or on something else. Like if my baggie leaches chemicals into the mik. Gosh, I hope not. Though once they start teething, you never know what you'll find them sucking on.

Before The Begining

One of the reasons I was a little hesitant to start this blog is that it requires talking about my breasts. I am a rather private person, though less so nowadays when it comes to my mammaries. Forgive me if I use slangy words like 'boobs' or 'hooters' or 'honkers' occasionally. It helps to liven things up.

There is a story of Winston Churchill-- I think-- who was hosting eh... someone British... eh... I have to look up the exact circumstances... for dinner. Chicken was on the menu and the guest was offered drumsticks or breast. "Breast!" She exclaimed "How vile to refer to it as such. The proper way to refer to this cut of chicken is 'white meat.'"
Thinking this hilarious, old Winston (again, I'll check the details) later sent her a brooch with an attached note reading "Thank you for the pleasure of your company. I hope that you will pin this brooch upon your white meat."

The quotes, of course, were made up by me, but you get the point of the story.

Anyway, I never had much white meat before the start of my pregnancy. Even during my pregnancy, my bra size went up by one back size, though the cup remained the same. My relative smallness never bothered me. Well, at least it never bothered me from about age 15 onwards when I discovered how blessed I was to be able to participate in athletic activities with only one wimpy bra instead of two sports bras as some of my bigger-chested friends had to do. I never even wore a bra regularly until age 14 or 15, as I remember it. I have always been able to buy cheap, cute, flimsy bras, though admittedly I leaned towards ones with a little bit of padding, not for their filling nature but to avoid the dreaded 'nippleitis'.

During my pregnancy, I would look down at my white meat in much the same way that I did in my early teenagerhood, waiting for something to sprout. Just like in my 'tweens, they never did. The only thing that happened was that my nipples started to dry up and crack. It wasn't painful, or at least not too much, as I remember it. And it might have had to do with the chlorine in the local pool. Still, the change had me worried, having heard horror stories of cracked and bleeding nipples while breastfeeding. I put mineral oil on them and it eventually went away. Looking back, I wonder if my dried nipples had anything to do with the incredibly, embarrassingly itchy scalp I had for a few months of my pregnancy. But that's not in the realm of this blog.

right now i am typing with my left hand only while my son feeds on my

Okay, that's over now. It's hard to type with one hand. Instead of trying to write out what was happening, I made myself a list of topics to make sure to visit in subsequent blog entries. They're at the bottom of this entry.

Now where was I? Oh yes, waiting.

My labour was induced in week 38 due to oligohydremanaise. This is most definitely the wrong spelling of the word. Until that point, there was no sign of milk, as far as I could tell, and my future as a breastfeeding mom seemed mysterious and distant. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea when to expect it. On top of it wall, I was convinced that the baby was not ready to come out. I still think it was too early, but I'm slowly letting go of the outrage. So after the delivery when they handed me the baby (each sentence here has a whole blog's worth of stories to go with it...) and told me to feed it, I said 'I can't. I have no milk. I was induced and I am early. I'm not ready.' And I wasn't-- at least mentally. I don't remember if it was the midwife or our cousin Malka-- a pediatrician-- who said 'sure you do' and reached over and gave my breast a squeeze. Pffft. Out came milk. There it was. Miracle of miracles. I think this amazed me more than the birth itself. I mean, I figured that a baby was going to come out of the whole process, but milk? Who knew?

Looking back, I think it was the midwife.

I put the baby up to my chest and suck suck suck... he hasn't stopped ever since. There was some talk in the beginning of latching and this and that but pretty much he got it right away and I got it right away and it was good. Then they snatched him away from me and took him to the nursery. Stories stories stories. For another time.

Incidentally, my nipples have never cracked, nor have they ever bled or even been dry since I've begun breastfeeding (pu pu pu). When I mentioned this at a female consortium on the horrors of X (ie anytime two or more moms get together and start exchanging stories), it turned out that the other two moms present had experienced some very painful episodes of said cracking. I guess I'm lucky that way.


List of topics I should come back to:

breASTFEEDING at the computer and other acrobatics thgen learning to relax/sleep
learrning to sleep
pacy anxiety
food anxiety
scratchinf
hickies
bruising
smiles
latching laughs story
tube socks
overnigh breasts
the pump
disintegr. liners
blocked duct
calories
drink or no?
feeding in public
nicknqames muncha
lactation nurse
feelings passed thru breastmilk