A non-blogger starts blogging

Blog blog blog -- how I used to loathe that word. But now, sitting with my nursing baby for hours on end, endless thoughts on motherhood unfolding in my mind as my heart wraps itself around this new person and new way of life, I realize I need to get it all out on virtual paper. I need to sort it all out for myself. Why not just keep a journal, you ask? Well, I need incentive to keep doing it. I'm no lover of attention, and don't have a knack for the public eye. And this is not necessarily a family-and-friends keep-in-touch new-baby blog (though I love sharing pictures of the Baby and I love all my peeps all the more for their loving her). In fact I'm thinking of this as a pretty anonymous blog. But, there may be a few like-minded folks out there who find this blog compelling and that may be incentive enough to keep me posting.

So who are we: me, my husband, and our 6-week-old baby girl (I'll call her vv on the blog) live in Queens, NYC. We had an awesome, non-medicated birth at the Brooklyn Birthing Center. I'm breastfeeding the baby, and am blessed to be able to stay home from work until at least September. We just started cloth-diapering, and have a loose family-bed set-up: usually we put vv to sleep, swaddled, in her co-sleeper bassinet right next to our bed, but after a night-time feeding, she usually winds up in bed with us.

Basically, we try to parent in as loving, conscientious, low-impact way as possible. I won't use the label "attachment parenting" because, well, I find labeling at best a necessary evil; plus, I can't say that we will follow an AP "orthodoxy" throughout vv's baby- and childhood. We just try to do things that are simple, loving, and make sense. We are definitely learning on the job.

So my first post is really about the main thing we've been dealing with:

the Pain.

I have been breastfeeding my daughter almost exclusively since her first week (which was rocky). And 95% of the time she latches on to nurse, my nipples experience pain ranging from moderate to excruciating. I've seen 4 lactation consultants, had 4 appointments (so far) for craniosacral therapy/osteopathic manipulation for the baby; had her tongue- and lip-frenulums clipped; ruled out infection of the nipple (I think); done copious reading and research online; and collected stories from all my friends and friends-of-friends who have nursed. Tried different nursing positions; latched and re-latched trying to get something that works. The pain has changed, varied, gotten better then worse again; sometimes worse at the beginning of the feeding, sometimes crescendoing to the end of the feeding. Sharp and intense versus throbbing and bruise-y. When she's not actually nursing, the nipples sting. The pain comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors -- it's the united nations of pain. I'm getting a PhD in pain.

The fact that it changes always makes me feel like we're making progress. And, MOST IMPORTANTLY, my daughter seems to be getting enough to eat. Times that I really cannot nurse because the pain is too much, I give her a bottle. And if I don't have enough pumped breastmilk, I give her formula. So I'm not CRAZY, sticking with it. It's just that I want this to work.

I want the closeness; I want the simplicity and ease; I want the efficiency, economy, and environmental sustainability of it; I want the health for her and me; and, I hate the idea of being dependent on a multi-national formula company to feed my child.

So not counting the first week where I couldn't get her latched really at all, and I was using a dropper to feed her, it's been 5.5 weeks of pain.

***I should say, since this *is* a blog, I don't want to discourage mothers from nursing. I do think it's almost a "secret" that establishing breastfeeding is very often very, very difficult. But from what I can tell, with persistence and lots of support, there is almost always a positive outcome. I'm just not there yet. ***

But one of the big hurdles we've gotten over is that we've ALMOST achieved truly on-demand nursing. I want to be able to effortlessly offer my baby the breast whenever she is hungry or needs comfort. In the first weeks I just couldn't do it: each time she latched I would be crying in pain, and needed my husband by me, coaching me through. Seriously, it was like labor. The whole thing was a big production, and totally non-spontaneous. Worst of all, I would actually procrastinate and put it off because I couldn't stand the pain again. Seriously: I was like, I've GOTTA check my email right now, even though I know my helpless infant daughter is hungry. Then, when she'd lunge for my nipple, I'd spontaneously jerk it away to avoid the pain. Then I'd just die inside. I felt a lot of guilt, and had as my goal to be able to nurse her whenever she was hungry or fussy, on her terms.

I would say we are 75% toward that goal. I think we'll be able to get all the way there when the pain is less so that: 1) I don't need my whole big set-up with the nursing pillow and the regular pillow and the rolled up receiving blanket under her head, etc., just to get in position to attempt to get a good latch; 2) I can wear her in a sling so that the transition from being up doing things and nursing her is not so great (right now my nipples are sore that I can't wear her on the front of my body; I wind up just sitting on the couch with her for hours, and that can't go on forever) and 3) I can nurse her better when we're out of the house (i.e. without the whole pillow set-up described above; right now I do nurse her when we're out but the latches are always bad and irritate my nipples even more).

But doing on-demand nursing is not just about getting past the pain. It's a fundamentally different way of organizing your life, and I had no idea just how much of a change it would be. I'll try to address that in my next post . . .