Category: Life

Isaac has decided that solids aren’t for him right now. I went to give him some stewed apple, only to have him look at me like ‘What do you think you’re doing WOMAN? I want BOOBS!’

He was content to wave the spoon around and poke himself in the eyes, but actually eating got me the ‘Bleuch, are you trying to KILL ME?!’ look before he gagged and spat everything out. All over my front.

So yeah, that’s that. We’ve stopped for a bit and I’m not stressed. Boobs are easy and simple and don’t require warming up. Although, it is Winter and it’s been a little chilly. Iced milk never hurt anybody.

All this feeding has my boobs loking like socks with oranges in them. Deflated oranges. I put a bra on this morning, only to realise 5 minutes later that part of my breast was tucked out of the band at the bottom. Really, is it normal to not realise things like that immediately?

Sleep has been in short supply too. Isaac is cluster feeding aaaaallllll night and Amy is having nightmares and waking screaming. I feel just a little bit wrecked. I’m also pretty sure that there is baby vomit somewhere in the vicinity of my left shoulder and I can feel a wet patch where he chewed on my side as I was cuddling him. I’m not even game to think about what he’s rubbed through my hair.

Also? I need to stop swearing. Amy swears like a trooper. In context. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Amy: [playing with the laundry baskets. drops basket on her foot] ‘Fucking hell! Fucking basket’

Me: [dies inside. doesn’t smile. ignores it and hopes like hell it just goes away]

Amy: [cat steals part of her sandwich] ‘Fucking CAT!’

Amy: [looking at the dog] ‘Fucking DOG! Mummy! Dog PISSED”

Yes. I might be the worst mother ever. Sigh.

Let’s talk about post partum hair loss.

At around 3 months post partum, my hair started to fall out. Very normal, it happened the same way with Amy. What I didn’t count on this time was ending up with two (2!) slightly bald patches near my temples. Luckily the rest of my hair covers them, but I can’t help but wonder what will happen if my hair continues to fall out.

So far, I’ve managed to create a lost hair mural on the shower wall – all in one shower, I’ve found hair in Isaac’s nappy (the jury is still out on whether he swallowed it, or whether it fell in there during a nappy change), there is hair tangled around my keyboard keys and gasp, I choked on one of my own hairs last time I was doing dirty things with Nathan. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t normally expect to choke on your own hair, do you?

All I’m saying really, is post partum hair loss is a lot more annoying than the pregnancy books would have you believe. Nobody wants to bite into a fresh baked biscuit to find one of their hairs tangled around their tonsils.

For now though, I’m going to stop running my hands through my hair and paying attention to how much is coming out. It’ll stop eventually, all by itself and me stressing about it is not going to help the matter. Although, maybe if I hope really hard, the hair on my head will stay put and all my other hair will fall out. I’d really like to not have to shave anything again anytime soon.

In other news, Isaac was 19 weeks old this Sunday just gone. NINETEEN WEEKS. Where on earth does the time go? He rolls over both ways now and when he’s on his stomach he tries to scoot forwards with his feet. I’m so not ready to have two mobile children in this house. Sure it’s childproof for Amy, but a crawling baby? With a toddler about? And all the toddler crap that gets littered everywhere?

‘Scuse me, I’ll just be in the corner rocking.

Also, Tanya had her baby on Sunday! Congratulations!

I started Isaac on solids today. A week ago I would have sworn black and blue he wasn’t ready. Today?  I was breaking out the rice cereal and celebrating.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t celebrating, but still.

He has been fussy for the last few days. Wanting to feed every hour, but getting bored after a few minutes and pulling at my nipple (Isaac says: ‘My Mummy is a stretchy chew toy!’). Then he’d fuss 10 minutes later because he was still hungry. Sigh. So today, I made up a tablespoon of rice cereal and gave it to him after a feed. He didn’t seem to hate it with a fiery passion (like Amy did) and after swirling it around in his mouth for a bit, swallowed it down. And again. And again. He ended up eating the entire amount.

I was almost shocked. Dude was ready for real food.

Although I think calling rice cereal real food is a bit of a stretch. More like, mushy-tastes-like-nothing-slop. Details.

However, our real food issues are coming from Amy.

She’ll have an apple in her hand and with her mouth full announce, ‘Still hungry!’

She is permanently ‘still hungry’.

It’s driving me mad. Mostly I ignore it. At least I will until the demands for food become so annoying I couldn’t ignore it from another country.

There’s only so much you can do with carrots, apples and slices of capsicum.

At dinner, she eats her meat of her own accord, then ignores her vegies. If I pick up her plate and feed her, she is more than willing to eat everything, but obviously having to feed herself is just too hard. We pick our battles and if she was starving hungry then of course she would eat everything, but she isn’t. Because she snacks all day. Constantly.

Somehow, I think she’s gotten herself confused with ‘hungry’ and ‘bored and wanting instant gratification’.

Sigh.

It’s gotten so bad with the ‘still hungry!’ that the other night? I went in before bed to make sure she was snuggled. She woke up a little, looked at me sleepily and announced ‘Mummy, Amy is still hungry.’ She wasn’t even awake properly!

It’s a phase and it will pass. The good news though? She will eat bowlfuls of porridge. She loves the stuff. (With real oats, not the instant kind)

Other Amy-isms lately:

Amy woke up at 6.30am. She’s been waking earlier and earlier lately.

‘Amy, it’s still dark. Go back to bed.’

‘But Mummy, Amy is already awake!’

Why so you are.

**

‘Amy, would you like to give Nanny a hug?’

‘No.’

Then she ran away. Obviously Nanny had had enough hugs.

**

‘Mummy!’

‘What?’

‘Isaac is scary!’

‘Isaac isn’t scary.’

‘Yes! Isaac is a scary monster. Arghhhhh! Amy hide.’

**

You might wake up with a sore breast. ‘Hmmmm, probably a blocked duct’ you’re likely to think. ‘Must express on that side today.’

You feed the baby on that side (or toddler) and carry on about your day.

A little while later (in my case it was about 60 minutes – not very long) you start to feel very tired. Your breast hurts and your back/shoulders ache a little and you’d really like a nap. Not too long after that, you find yourself curled up on the couch feeling progressively worse. Your head hurts, your skin hurts, everything is happening so fast and MAN do you feel sick.

Maybe by now your breast has been cleared of blockages and isn’t hurting so much.You still feel shocking though.

You probably have mastitis.

‘The books’ all say that mastitis is an infection in your breast (correct) and that you will generally feel a lumpy painful patch (not always correct. I had pain without the lumps) with a red area.

Just to clarify, a red area in your breast doesn’t look as if you have been slapped or spent too long with your breasts in front of the heater, which is what I was expecting the first time I got mastitis. A red area actually looks like a patch of skin where you can see that the tiny little blood vessels are more pronounced. It’s not terribly noticeable unless you’re looking for it.

My advice:

Get yourself to a Doctor, Urgent Care, the Emergency Room, whatever. Get yourself there as fast as you can. By the time you realise you have mastitis, you probably shouldn’t be driving. All you want to do is sleep and shake and probably cry. If you can, get someone else to drive you.

You need antibiotics as soon as possible.

Mastitis makes you really sick, really fast. Like, REALLY fast.

In general, I find the books telling you that it feels like ‘flu like symptoms’ to be a little misleading. Yes there are the muscle aches and the exhaustion and the temperature. But for me, all my flu’s have started with the mother of all head colds and then moved into my chest. Mastitis is like flu, but without the flu.

Today I woke up with a sore breast. I fed Isaac on it twice (crying the whole time, my infection was right behind my nipple and it was excruciating). When I started feeling too sick to sit up I thought I was just tired. Then it clicked in my head that I needed antibiotics. This is my 3rd (or 4th?) bout of mastitis ever, so I had antibiotics knocking around in the fridge ‘just in case’.

[I might be silly sometimes, but no one tell me I don’t know how to self medicate. I have EVERYTHING hanging around in the fridge, just in case.]

I took an antibiotic and 2 Panadeine and headed to the shower to express. I needed a shower anyway, seeing as how Isaac vomited on my face this morning. If you’ve got a breast pump (I don’t) a heat pack [or hot face washers] and pumping will work too. You need to keep that breast as empty as possible.

DO NOT STOP FEEDING THE BABY

Regardless of how bad it hurts, keep feeding the baby. Mastitis turns really nasty if you don’t keep the breast empty.

I am spending today curled up on the couch with a blanket. Isaac has been good and Amy is busily running in and out of the house with Nathan.

Incidentally, if you have EDS, because of poor body temperature control, a temperature will generally be seen by the doctor that is within normal range. My temperature during the last bout of mastitis was 37.3C and the doctor said ‘normal’. However, because my body temps are generally only 36.5C (ish) it was raised for me. After I had Isaac, the midwives kept checking that I was indeed, feeling okay because my blood pressure was only slightly above dead AND my temps were low. The joys, right?

So here ends my public service announcement of the day. I’m off to eat painkillers and curl up sick now. Thank god dinner is in the slow cooker already.