Newborn Care

There are some things about having a baby that seem so obvious that you prepare for in advance of the child's arrival. And then there are other things that you might not have been expecting.

I was not at all nervous about nursing when the time came, so Jackson and I were able to immediately establish a good relationship via my engorged chest. Most infants lose about 10% of their birthweight within the couple of days postpartum. Jackson only lost two ounces out of his nearly 10lbs of babyness (about 1%). On his fourth day in the external world, my MIL and I took him to the pediatrician's office where I got my first lecture on childhood obesity. In the two days since leaving the hospital, he had gained back the lost ounces and another three more ounces to boot. This is not typical. I was then told that he didn't need a breast in his mouth every time he cried.

Way to make me feel like some kind of pervert, right? I was proud of myself before that visit because I had realized that I had initially been holding him to a timed feeding schedule rather than letting him indicate when he was full--which was when the hour-long nursing sessions began. Twelve hours out of the day he was hungry and nursing. About midway through each meal he would blast his diaper with a previous meal that had been processed. Over time he got gradually faster at nursing. By 4 months he was down to about 40minutes per nursing, and by 8 months or so, he was down to about 10 minutes a feeding.

After the first visit, I have always tried to schedule Jackson's pediatric visits with the doctor who was there at his birth, since she wasn't quite so excitable about infant weight. Besides, Jackson was a 95th percentile baby. He has stayed consistently in the 90th and 95th percentile range for both weight and height, and he is a healthy, proportionate child. I figure I did the right thing to ignore the other doctor's kneejerk reaction to Jackson's scale measurement, and I feel good for trusting my own judgment on that call.

At any rate, I didn't have much choice about nursing him. All he had to do was cry and I was a milk geyser. Hot showers turned me into a fountain. Intercourse practically necessitated a shirt for the protection of Andrew's eyes--on the rare occasions that we were energized enough and willing to try some physical intimacy. If it had been 2 hours since the start of Jackson's last nursing session, I would get let down so hard that I would practically be begging to let him nurse to ease the pressure. Sometimes this was even strong enough to wake me from my occasional bouts of slumber.

I was getting about 3 or 4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period for the first 2 months. By 4 months I was up to about 5 hours a night, and that continued and slowly grew to about 6 hours by Jackson's first birthday. I was a walking zombie. I had intended to work from home, but it became clear that I was not able to perform more than 2 hours a week and not at the level of quality my employer had come to expect of me. After a few months of valiant efforts, we agreed to call it quits, and they were nice enough to wait for me to be the one to say it first.

Changing 8 to 12 poopy diapers a day was fairly time consuming in its own right, but not because of any particular issue with smell. Sometimes it was because Jackson liked to spend half an hour talking to the painting I had hung above his changing table. But quite often it was due to an unfortunate consequence of an all-liquid diet--the diaper blowout.

Diapers are designed about as well as they can be to contain the things that babies excrete. The problem is that it's ethically irresponsible to duct tape the dang things to the child at the edges. Jackson was a pro at blasting his breastmilk poop, in that fantastic mustard yellow shade, all the way up to his shoulder blades.

Occasionally we were unlucky enough for this to occur while we were out at a restaurant or in the car.

He seemed especially prone to a blowout if allowed to lounge on my Boppy maternity pillow, presumably because he knew what a joy it was to try and clean it. But the worst part of diaper blowouts is the part no one talks about.

Let me say right now that your own hygiene is NOT something you should allow to slide. Andrew was unfortunate enough to come home for lunch one day just as Jackson massacred a diaper, an outfit, and some pieces of nearby furniture. We removed the material he had offended and cleansed it. We bathed the baby. Apparently somehow we were not careful enough with making sure our hands were sufficiently clean, and soon after we spent a rather unpleasant night missing sleep together. As we took turns vomiting and having diarrhea over a span of 6 hours during the night, Andrew and I recognized the source of the problem and vowed never to allow it to happen again. (n.b. Pros and cons here: one bathroom meant having to try to "hold it" when sick, but at least we weren't alone....)

Still, I much preferred the "dates" we went on during the early days to worshipping the porcelain god. I didn't leave the apartment for 2 months other than to go on a walk with Jackson from time to time, so Andrew and I used to take the trash to the Dumpster together and hold hands on the way back when the rugrat was napping. Romance had taken a backseat to life--as opposed to occurring in the backseat.

Post Partem, Part II

Jackson and I finally met all of our requirements and were given notice to head home from the hospital.  We had had to stay an extra night because one of the doctors who examined Jackson was not going to be happy until my newborn son had pooped.  Apparently what he had done at birth was not enough; it had to be the real deal.  Our pediatrician came the next day and said that was ridiculous and that we could always just come back if he didn't have a bowel movement, and anyway, at that point there were only 2 days until his first office visit with her.

He appeased us all by defecating massively while we were still preparing to leave.  We had the nurse on duty "teach" Andrew how to change poopy diapers by example.

We soon learned that his BMs would nearly all be highly audible (often from 15 feet away, even) for the next several months--and very frequent.  Your own results may vary, of course, as every child is different.

They also will not allow a baby to leave the hospital unless it is within a carseat.  So, we buckled him into it for the first time, and the little dear fell asleep.  Awwww, how cute!  (And yes, he was fully buckled before being placed in the car, despite the status at picture time.)

I was sufficiently ambulatory though not precisely enjoying the experience of motion.  We loaded ourselves into the van and drove toward home.  As we passed the Women's Center building where I had birthed Jackson, a sudden pain struck me.  In time I became familiar with this new form of pain:  my milk had come in.

For my whole life, I'd never really been particularly well endowed.  I was not flat but "athletic" and had been reasonably content with knowing that I would never have to experience being whapped in the head with my own breasts.  I enjoyed that there were many things I could wear that allowed me to forego wearing a bra.  No more.

Somewhere in the process of leaving the hospital, my own body was swapped with Dolly Parton's.  In the middle of worrying about all the extra skin I had and how I could not pull on pants designed for someone much heavier than I was postpartum, I was strutting around the apartment checking out my new voluptuous profile.

[n.b. In time all good things (and bad things) must come to an end.  Stretch marks faded mostly.  My hips rejoined one another and allowed me to wear my pre-pregnancy jeans.  And my boobs deflated.  Two out of three ain't bad, right?]

I imagine that part of the reason my first let down was so soon and so intense was because Jackson had been nursing very well since shortly after birth.  The first few days, newborns feed on what amounts to a milkshake.  Colostrum is often described as being thick and hard to coerce out of the nipple.  Jackson was a champ.  He nursed a great deal, and at first, I was feeding him on a timing schedule.  After several days I recognized that this was wrong, that he should eat until he tells me he is done.  Nursing began to take longer, and for the next few MONTHS, I was nursing him for an hour straight EVERY OTHER HOUR.

So, how does one get anything accomplished when being enslaved as a dairy cow 12 hours a day?  Having a larger than average child was a bigger challenge than I might have thought.  Still, I had made attempts to mitigate the difficulties.  One way was having my mother-in-law stay for as long as begging would convince her.

During the first 10 days, Jackson's Nana spent most of her waking hours helping cook, wash dishes, and do the laundry.  She left the rest up to myself and Andrew, who was back to work as soon as we were home from the hospital.  Now, I love my MIL, but should I be in that situation again, I think I would try to be more explicit about my needs.

It was GREAT that Nana did the cooking.  It was NOT great that she kept cooking foods I do not eat.  Sure, I'm a picky eater, but there are foods that I do it, and many of them had been purchased well in advanced just for the postpartum period.  She spilled and charred foods all over the inside of my oven, which had been kept scrupulously clean, and removed some clean-keeping measures that I had had in place inside the oven, so that afterward it was more prone to messes.  She went out and bought new foods, cluttering my kitchen with extra containers of things we already had and various other items that would never get used--practically a crime for control freaks like Andrew and myself who have our own food buying system.  I ate fairly little food for the time that she was there.

She washed the dishes, bless her!  She cooked and cleaned up after herself; wonderful woman!  But...she only washed dishes while I was trying to nap.  The head of my bed was only about 10 feet from where she stood, clanging metal pans around a stainless steel sink.  I didn't sleep much while she was there.  She also would either leave a gigantic and precariously balanced pile of dishes in the drying rack or would put the dishes away in the wrong places, rather than asking for clarification.  It took me more than a month to get everything back in order afterward.

She did the laundry!  She folded it, too, and she refused to let me help even if I wanted to.  But she left the piles stacked all around our small living room and did not put anything away.

Having someone else run my household was making me very tense, particularly as it was not being run to my standards.  And her payment?  My dear MIL got plenty of eyefuls of about as much of her daughter in law as her own son had seen.  She bought me some postpartum clothing to help me cut down on my maternity-wear.  (GlamourMom nursing bra tanks are the best invention in clothing since underwear!)  She endured my complaints about stretch marks and concerns that I might remain hippo-sized in the hip region for all eternity.  Andrew and I were tough to please, and Nana bore it well, but eventually she left and I think we all felt some relief.  The lesson here is that postpartum doulas are wonderful; just be clear as to your expectations, and if you want things done your way without feeling guilt (self-imposed or otherwise) about being demanding, a paid doula may be a better bet than family.

Another week or so later I had finally allowed myself enough rest that the bleeding was slowed down and had turned the banana yellow color I was told to expect.  I finally braved some of the other measures provided to me by the hospital staff, such as a Sitz bath and the "epi" bottle.

The Sitz bath fit into the toilet and used gravity to spray warm water on my nethers.  It was a highly overrated experience that was overly complicated to implement and minimally beneficial.  Far better was the "epi" (episiotomy) bottle.  This little thing is still used in our home on a daily basis.  During my postpartum period, the little squeezable spray bottle helped keep me clean where my tearing had occurred and helped to flush out the area some.  Afterward, rather than tossing it in the trash, we repurposed it.  Turns out those bottles make great tools for helping bathe babies, especially for wetting and rinsing hair.  They also make entertaining noises when squeezed empty against baby bellies and are wonderful fountains for toddlers at tub time.