A la prochaine Chef Chuck

Sigh.  I just clicked the cancel button for my dinner reservation at Le Bremner Restaurant in Montreal.  Feel free to take it – 6pm Friday May 10.  It is supposed to be “ahhhhmaaazing”.  Here at home, we love Chef Chuck Hughes.  We watch his show.  We cook from his book.  We may even have a celebrity crush on him.  And by we, I am referring to my girls.  (And myself.) 

I’m fortunate in that my girls will pretty much try anything.  R is acting a bit more like a typical kid due to the influence of her peers (why, oh, why didn’t I homeschool?!) by having an exaggerated reaction to things she doesn’t like.  But R’s version of an exaggerated reaction is probably quite subdued compared to most.  And there is very little she doesn’t like in terms of food.  In fact, all three girls are growing quite adventurous in their tastes.  Add to that, the excitement of being in Chuck’s restaurant, being in Montreal, getting all-fancy…the evening holds the promise of fabulous memory-making!

The reality is, while our recent dinner at Chef Lynn Crawford’s Ruby WatchCo was a huge success in terms of a family dining experience – my girls dressed up, they were excited, they stayed put, they loved the food, they got to meet the chef!! – it was a long night for the littlest one.  Baby C, who will continue to be referred to as such until she actually stands up and starts walking which should be any day now, loves food but is really not a fan of being constrained in a highchair with only a spoon to play with.  I completely dropped the ball by not packing anything else for her to play with.  While this did save Mark from having to play a 90 minute game of  “Uh oh I dropped that.  Will you please pick it up Daddy?”.  It also resulted in her becoming bored.  Thankfully, she allowed Mark to distract her with people watching, And with a bedtime of 7pm but a dinner reservation of 6pm we were racing the clock as it was.  Except.  It’s kinda hard to race a clock in a busy restaurant serving three courses.  Three delicious, melt in your mouth, divine courses.  Three courses that they happily served up free to my children and as soon as they came off the line.  The last course being a scrumptious butterscotch pudding they put a candle in L’s birthday. 

I’m fairly certain, a multi-course meal at Le Bremner is going to take more than an hour.  Add to that, the fact that we will have been wandering around the old city all day, I doubt very much Baby C will take kindly to being strapped into a high chair after being strapped into a stroller (again – learn to walk!). I don’t want to race through a meal at Le Bremner.  I don’t want to watch Mark stalk off with Baby C under his arm, telling me “It’s fine.” When it really isn’t, as he has to abandon his meal and go back to our hotel in Montreal.  That would not be such a fabulous memory. 

So instead, we will lower our dining standards, not to accommodate their palate or but rather the temperament of our youngest because no one wants to drop serious coin on a meal they have to rush through.  Or, one I spill all over myself as not so little Baby C breastfeeds at the table.  On the other hand, Mark thinks maybe we'd get to meet the chef once word got around that I was flashing serious boob. 

A la prochaine Chef Chuck! 

Taking a moment

For a brief moment today I started to feel pressed for time. It was a bit of a surprise to me, this feeling that has been absent since I finished my last course in school back in December. During the school term I felt pressed for time constantly. Mark was on full time parent duty two or three days a week while he worked more then full time hours. And I had to do all the full time mama stuff while balancing two very intense courses and growing a baby. It would be an understatement to say that I felt like I was barely getting by. I don't think I spoke to a single non-school friend; and I struggled to find time to get everything I wanted to do done. And ended up learning to just get what I had to done!

So this afternoon as the long weekend started to draw to an end I was caught off guard at my feelings of frustration. I was trying to look for work online; I was checking my calendar for class registration info; I still needed to finish editing a paper and finally start an intimidating reading list for a certificate I am hoping to pursue. But Baby C had other ideas. Her next set of teeth are coming through and she is in a lot of pain. I can tell because her little mouth is pulled so tightly and she's biting everything! L and R wanted to tell me about everything they were doing or thinking and Mark was getting some much needed gardening done. I wanted my time!

But as I stroked my baby's hair,applied ointment to L's latest scraped knee and listened to R rave about how nice daddy had been to let her go swimming again making it the best holiday Monday ever!!- I knew that it wasn't resentment for not being able to find time that I was feeling. It was in fact, resentment for needing to do all of those things that were crowding out my enjoyment of my girls.

And so I give you three magical mama moments that I was truly blessed to have experienced this weekend:

I want to cherish forever that moment when Baby C startled in her sleep, eyes flying open and then a soft smile lit up her face when she saw I was still there and she settled into sleep again. All the while I listened to my big girls laugh and chase each other outside playing the most non-sensical games.

I want to never ever forget the pure bliss I experienced waking up from a rare Sunday afternoon nap with two girls still asleep wrapped around me, my biggest girl reading at my feet-her long legs resting in mine, and Mark squeezed into the last few spare inches in the bed also reading.

I want to remember splashing in the pool with Mark holding Baby C;R and L squealing with laughter as we chased each other in the water with squeaky spray toys. And their cheers of encouragement as I swam without a flotation device to the ladder in the deep end.

The long weekend is over and I have all week to try to get to my to-do list. But more importantly I am truly blessed to have all week to spend with my girls because Mark goes to work for us. I am a lucky lady!

My Breastfeeding Story aka My Battle With My Boobs

Off the top (ha!), I will say, that I’m not here to judge.  Every mama does what is best for her and her baby when it comes to filling that baby’s belly so he or she can grow strong and healthy.  And I empathize with that paralyzing feeling of guilt that you are possibly making the wrong decision, regardless of what that is.  And it’s a pretty awful way to start out mamahood, second guessing your choice of milk and worrying about it.  But I’m not writing about that (today).  Instead, I’m going to tell you about my battle with my boobs.

Stories about breastfeeding are much like birth stories.  You generally only hear the horrible ones along the lines of “my baby wouldn’t latch properly and screamed at me and I nursed until my nipples were cracked and bleeding”.  And when I was pregnant for the first time, I heard a lot of those stories, often accompanied by some small piece of ridiculous advice or presumption such as: you should vigorously rub your nipples with a washcloth to get them ready; you have darker pigmentation so it won’t bother you.  Well, the first is a bad idea simply because vigorous nipple stimulation releases oxytocin which can start labour.  And the second bit, is based on science but I am here to tell you did not ring true.

Throughout my pregnancy with R, I kept waiting for the giant pregnancy boobs.  I bought a soft bra in a bigger size to grow into; I wore tight t-shirts and asked my partner if my boobs looked bigger.  I did not.  They did not.  This was a true physiological sign that something was going to go amiss with breastfeeding.  No one caught it.

The fact that I was ripped off the gigantic pregnancy boobs was actually not the first sign that breastfeeding, or rather milk supply, was going to be a problem.  The first sign would have been that I have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome).  But neither my GP, who is awesome, nor my midwife, who is awesome, nor my naturopath recognized this potential barrier.  None of them caught the lack of big boobs as a sign, and certainly none of them mentioned that my bottoming out iron was going to be a problem for milk supply.  (Low iron had other concerns that were addressed).

Shortly after her birth, R latched with no problems.  She pretty much stayed there for the better part of six months.  I kid you not.  The first 48 hours, she nursed in my arms contentedly sucking up all the immune system building colostrum I could give her.  We nursed sitting up and lying down.  But her third night, she got hungry.  And then she got angry.  And Mark and I felt hopeless.  R latched and wouldn’t let go, she sucked away for about twelve hours straight until our midwife came for a home visit and squeezed my breast and re-positioned her and counted wet diapers.  I was reassured that my milk would come in soon and that my baby was getting what she needed.  I found that very hard to believe given the yells that would come forth when the milk did not.  I cried.  Mark held me.  He couldn’t hold R because she would just get angrier and then be harder to settle down.  My parents wanted to visit again and when they did my mother got angry with me for something and my father made me feel guilty about it.  So, yeah, not helpful.  Mark’s older kids were with us that night and feeling displaced so he had to spend time with them and all I could do was lie on our bed, tears streaming down my face as I desperately massaged my breasts and murmured to my baby girl. This would become an all too familiar routine.  That night, the fourth night, my milk came in.  I knew it came in, because I woke up to R gulping away.  I was flooded with relief and spent the night staring at my beautiful baby girl who drank with wide eyes looking up at me. 

But R and I would have a tougher than expected breastfeeding road.  She was a lazy nurser.  I say that with love, affection, and humour (now.  Not so funny then).  She would nurse for less than ten minutes and fall asleep. When she woke up, she’d do the same thing on the other side.  I tried rubbing her head and her feet.  At some point, more desperate measures were recommended in order to ensure she was taking in enough milk, and I had to rub her with a cool, wet washcloth.  She didn’t like that.  My nipples cracked.  My nipples bled.  My nipples healed.  I called La Leche League for advice, grateful that I had had the foresight to attend a meeting while pregnant so I at least knew the lovely woman I was speaking to.  I called my midwife who came to visit.  R was gaining weight slowly but steadily and she was a long baby so she looked like a scrawny monkey.  Gradually her cheeks got fuller and her body a little plumper. 

But at just over three months old, she hit the expected growth spurt and became angry baby again.  She was attached to my nipple all the time.  All.The.Time.  Mark and I were already used to the fact that she was in my arms all the time and that wasn’t really a problem for me.  I was on maternity leave and she was my only baby.  But at three months it was different, and when I went to pump milk to give Mark a chance to feed our baby, I ended up with plugged ducts and full blown mastitis. 

Mastitis is a breast infection.  It is horrifyingly painful to nurse through it and worse to not nurse through it.  Your skin burns and swells on your breasts.  Touch is excruciating.  Cold shivers and hot flashes set in as does a fever, the shakes, and fatigue.  This is not the medical textbook definition I’m providing you with, it is what I experienced.  All while my baby would struggle against my breasts, flailing in my arms, and not settle no matter what I did, forcing me to change position, walk around, and cry – a lot.  I spent several days completely topless with her in the baby wrap trying to nurse upright from a rocking chair.  I sought the attention of a very sensitive massage therapist  who managed to  help ease some of the pressure and start the fluids moving and draining. 

When I recovered from that I realized that I had very little milk coming in at one time.  After months of only nursing for five to ten minutes at a time, my body was only producing enough milk for five to ten minute spurts.  Except now R was starving and wanted to nurse much longer.  This was compounded by the low iron, the hormone imbalances from my PCOS;and the three month postpartum hormone (mal)adjustments and so I ended up on a prescription for Domperidone that I took for over a year because every time I tried to wean myself off of it, my milk supply would go down.  Now, I have no scientific proof, but I am pretty sure that my horrifying weight gain once I went on the ‘scrip can be mostly attributed to it.

Before I started the prescription, which was offered various suggestions on how to increase my supply.  Primarily, to lie down skin-to-skin with my little girl, increase my fluid intake, and decrease my non-mama duties.  I took this advice happily.  I tried breast massage before every nursing session and hand pumping as my daughter nursed. I was advised to drink fenugreek tea.  It started leaking out of my pores and I reeked.  I mean, I sincerely stunk.  I couldn’t cope with it.  It was bad enough to be going through massive hormone upheaval, to feel desperate to feed my child, but to smell awful too – and my partner could not disagree – was horrifying to me.  At the time, midwives in Ontario could not write a prescription for Domperidone, and the Jack Newman clinic was too far away for me to reasonably get there, so I consulted my GP who provided me with a prescription but not a ton of advice on consequences and how to build up and wean off the pills.

The time that passed between getting the Domperidone and my milk supply increasing seemed like months.  I couldn’t go anywhere or be near anyone. I felt like I was failing my child.  I felt that somehow because I wasn’t producing enough milk for her; I wasn’t being a good enough mama.  I missed my cousin’s wedding because I just couldn’t bear to be around people while my child cried and wanted to nurse.  People like my parents who would have wanted to hold her and “comfort” her resulting in a more irate and now frightened baby as evidenced by every single visit when they would take her out of my arms and walk away and she would scream.

R and I went on to have a very successful breastfeeding relationship.  One might venture to say, an overly successful one as when I wanted to wean her, I couldn’t.  And when we did, at 2.5years old it was because I was crying with pain from sensitive nipples as I was pregnant with L.  R wasn’t getting any milk anymore at that point, it was just comfort.  And I wanted to at least preserve some of the good memories of breastfeeding.  We did.  I have a lot of good memories and I have a strong, beautiful, smart six year old girl who still sleeps with the soft pillow I used to tuck under my head when lying down to nurse her.  It was a long trip, both ways, but well worth it.