Bad dreams, day care, and more than you wanted to know about my right nipple.

I dreamed I was going to do some sort of reading of my poems. I arrived with a stack of poems in a big box that looked like our dining room table turned upside down, and everyone at the reading treated me like some kind of crazed pariah. "That is the filthiest dining room table I've ever seen," I heard people gossiping to one another. "And are we really supposed to listen to those poems after she has let them touch her dirty, dirty clothes? Doesn't she ever do laundry?"

Sheesh. You'd think my subconscious could give me a break once in a while.

~~~

I mentioned that Ingrid's fantastic and long searched for day care is most likely closing at the end of the summer. We have two options in front of us:

1. Cooperatively run day care center nearby but slightly off my path to work. Fourteen kids in her classroom, two teachers. Rave reviews from many, many families. Four hours of "work" required per month. Advantages: Pretty close to guaranteed reliability and stability (it's been there 30 years). Worries: Is it going to freak Ingrid out to be in a classroom with 14 kids?

2. Small (5 kids, max) in-home day care run by a woman I sort of know through our early childhood classes. She has an early childhood ed. background and taught preschool for eight years. I know some of the kids who go there, and they are on the quieter, more mellow side. She has a long list of stellar references. It's two blocks from where I work. Advantages: Many. I am much more confident that Ingrid will be comfortable in this setting. Worries: She plans to be doing this for the next five years, but with a one-woman show like this I know anything could come up and then we'd have to put Ingrid through another transition. Also, if she or either of her two kids is sick, there's no backup and we're out of luck for that day (though she doesn't charge for sick days she takes).

Thoughts?

~~~

Iris is cutting her top front teeth and as a result she has been nursing funny for the past week or so. By "funny" I mean "clench, clench, clench, chomp, chomp chomp." For a while this was only moderately painful, but during one of last night's nursing sessions it started to be really, really painful, and then this morning I noticed there is an actual open sore on my nipple. Which I guess would explain why it has been feeling like she's chewing my nipple off: She is.

I am so taken with the pain and grossness of this that it's all I can do to keep from telling everyone about it: "I have an open sore! On my nipple! My baby has been chewing my nipple off! Feel sorry for me and be impressed with my motherly dedication!"

More worrisome is that right now it genuinely hurts too much to nurse. And this, of course, is the boob that makes literally 90% of the milk. So poor Iris is cranky, and I'm worried my whole supply is going to dry up. I am pumping on the wounded side (which hurts a lot, but much less than nursing), but not getting much milk, and nursing her only on the uninjured but wimpy side. Other than Lansinoh and Ibuprofen, what else should I be doing? At this point I wish someone would just give me a hit of (insert name of nursing-safe extreme pain reliever here) so I could let her nurse on the milky side again.

Sweetness

Ingrid hadn't nursed since December, but this morning while I was feeding Iris she asked to, and I let her. She couldn't remember exactly how to latch on. She got a little, and laughed and said There's not enough milk in there! Iris noticed what Ingrid was doing and started to laugh, and for a full minute they both nursed and laughed, nursed and laughed.

*

I'm reading about music and all the ways our brains can turn it around. One person in ten thousand can recognize and name each tone just as easily as I can call the sky blue. It's possible to hallucinate music, hear it ceaselessly, as though a radio is on and can't be turned off. It's possible to lack—or lose—the ability to "hear" music at all; it can sound like nothing but noise. And a stroke of lightning can uncoil, in a regular guy, a passion so great that he teaches himself to play the piano and stays up all night composing.

*

A's dad taps his maple trees every spring and cooks down the sap in a vat over a fire. We drove up today to help carry buckets, chop wood, and stand around in the sun breathing wood smoke and maple steam while the dog and cats squashed around in the mud.

Iris was enchanted with the dog, and I repeated several times That's the dog. The dog says woof. Woof woof. Woof. The dog did a lap around the house, and when he reappeared, Iris was right on him. 'oof, she said. And again, looking right at the dog, 'oof.

The sap runs just during the time of spring when the days are above freezing and the nights are below. The warmer days make the roots start pulling water up from the soil. The sap runs until the buds pop open, until you see a haze of green across the woods; then it's done. Forty gallons of sap boil down to a gallon of syrup.

A's brother showed up, and his grandma, and we all ate lunch outside. Iris rode in the sling for hours. Ingrid zipped around the yard, peering at the roiling liquid, tossing sticks on the fire, letting A lift her up to sip drips of sap right from the tap. She careened back to me and locked Iris and me in an almost illegally tight hug. My baby sister, she said. My baby sister. I'm going to keep her forever.

We wrestled both girls down for naps, and by the time they woke up it was late afternoon and the sap was almost syrup, murky and foamy. We took turns tasting it from a metal ladle, all four generations of us. This is the kind of sweetness I want for my girls: the kind that can sleep underground all winter. The kind that takes all day to boil from barely sweet water to thick sticky syrup. The kind that tells the leaves it's time to open up and see the sun.

Breakthroughs, Parenthetical Questions

Sleep was going downhill. With the baby, I mean. There were 15-minute naps at non-nap times and no naps at naptimes, and at bedtime there was nurse nurse nurse nurse nurse, fiiiiinally drift off to sleep, geeeently attempt to put down, startle, wake up and cry, nurse nurse nurse nurse nurse til I thought I would lose my mind.

There is no accounting for what happened next. Saturday night after the third nurse nurse nurse nurse, I thought to myself, I bet she doesn't even really want to nurse. I bet she just wants to lie in that crib and go to sleep. So I gave her a little head snuggle (soft baby heads! They are why I do this at all!) and put her in the crib. Lay on the bed next to the crib where she could see me. Watched the clock and tried to relax.

She cried for two minutes, but (speaking of what you hear when your kids cry) it wasn't even like Mama, you are abandoning me! Pick me up! I'm dying! at all. It was more like I'm tired! Tired! AAAAA! Tired, tired! Ti...

And then she turned her head to one side, said ummm and went to sleep. For three hours, which is the longest she's slept in days. Textbook! I should have taken advantage of it to sleep, but I stayed up until midnight playing euchre (isn't euchre quaint?) and eating chocolate chip cookies.

And then naps today were like that, too. Well, they were still pitifully short, but instead of nursing her until I felt like my brains were being pulled out through my nipples, I lay her in her crib and cooed at her while she cried for between thirty seconds and three minutes and then zonked out on her own.

Also, today Ingrid peed on the potty three times and only wore a diaper at naptime and when out for a walk. I won't go into it but this was totally unheard of before today.

And at dinner I gave Iris some bits of banana to occupy her. (Should I not be doing that? Should I be reading up on the Heimlich?) She didn't get many of them to her mouth anyway, but she pulverized some of them and scraped the rest off into her lap, and then I swear to God she very deliberately tapped her little mitten-y hands together in the sign for more. She did it three times, and then after I gave her another pile of banana chunks she didn't do it again. A saw it too. Is that totally unheard of, that a six-month-old could do a sign? She's seen me do it a few dozen times in the past week but...is that even possible?

Also, she can now scooch forward. Not crawling, exactly, but for a non-crawler she is all of a sudden damn mobile. As of Saturday.

And after months of resisting my doing anything with her hair, Ingrid is all of a sudden into wearing pigtails and it is ADORABLE.

And this week Ingrid and I discovered the kids' non-fiction section at the library. Why had we only been looking at the fiction before? She chose a book about butter, two about bees, one about lacrosse, and one called The Biography of Wheat.

The bees were what started it. I bought some honey in a honeycomb at the co-op as a treat and I felt I needed some backup for my assertion that the honey was in that thing because the bees put it there. Who put it there, Mama?

I wish I had something more coherent to say. I've been eating a lot of toast with honey. I have a lot of work-y stuff going on that I can't exactly write about. I've knitted four inches of that bag (and by the way, I forgot to mention: All that yarn? Cost four dollars!) And I'm wondering, is there sometimes something wrong with bloglines where nothing comes up for, like, twelve hours, or has the entire blogging community just taken up the practice of observing the Sabbath?

Our Friend The Virus, Our Friend The Milk

One of the strangest things about this childful life is how very happy I find myself to get a break—any break—from the action. Maybe you have also had the experience of feeling not so well, stomach-wise, and, while leaning over the toilet, having your main thought be not Eeeww—it's coming up my nose but Thank God I am actually, certifiably sick and not just slightly nauseated. Now I can spend the day in bed.

It's sick, I tell you, this life. But I got my day of rest. A stayed home; I stayed in bed (eerrr, and in the bathroom). He brought me Iris to nurse and Ingrid for quiet visits but mostly I spent the day under the covers staring at the snow falling outside. I don't seem to be too much worse for the wear, here in the middle of the night, except that Iris, having had less milk than usual during the day, what with my inability to keep down even any liquids for several hours, seems to want to nurse every hour, and, having pretty much slept all day, I'm having a little trouble falling back asleep each time. Also, I am swilling Gatorade and keep needing refills, so I am up.

The milk thing is a tiny bit worrying. At Iris's day care, they want me to bring 18 ounces of milk for her every day. Doesn't that seem like ... a lot? I've done some minor googling on the topic and I guess I've got to try, but a) I'm only pumping, at most, 10 ounces in a work day, in two pumping sessions, and it's hard to imagine cramming another pumping session into the day, so I'm trying to also pump every evening, except when I'm, um, perched on the edge of dehydration already. And b) Really? 18 ounces in 8 hours? When she nurses, like, at least three other times in a 24-hour period as well? No wonder I'm thirsty.

Also, I feel I should document my gratitude to our friend the gastrointestinal virus. It has been responsible, this winter, for not only Ingrid's weaning, but also my first (probably fleeting, but still) brush with my pre-pregnancy weight since October 2006. Let the clothes-buying begin!*

It's kind of nice to be the first in the family to get a stomach bug. Now I will be all rested and able to deal if when A and the girls get it.

*Actually I already, this weekend, bought two new sweaters, Compact be damned. I think they were the first new non-maternity clothes I've bought in a good year and a half. It was a mental health thing, mostly, sick and wrong though that is. Are you aware that shirts are now long again? Long meaning they cover up my whole stomach? How was I not clued in about this important fashion development?

How Weaning Happens?

I"m pretty sure this one's not in the book:

Last Thursday
I'm nursing Iris on the floor and Ingrid asks if she can nurse from the other side. This hasn't happened in a while—mostly we're down to just nursing before naps and bed—but I let her do it.

She nurses for about five seconds. Then she throws up.

Then she cries and says, I didn't like the milk. I explain to her that the milk wasn't what made her throw up, she is probably just sick right now and the milk will taste good again later when she's well. When A arrives home, she runs to the door to greet him (in a brief between-pukes episode of feeling fine): I frew up on the carpet! I didn't like the milk!

Friday
She's exhausted from being up all night puking, and doesn't eat or drink much of anything, and all of her napping takes place out of the blue on the couch, so we don't even get close to our usual bedtime nursing ritual. No nursing.

Saturday
At naptime, we finish reading stories and she says, I don't want to nurse. I don't want to frow up. I explain again that it was just because she was sick, that if she wants to nurse now the milk will probably taste good again, and it won't make her throw up. She nurses for about three seconds, then stops, cries, and says I don't want to frow up. As I'm in the middle of reassuring her again, she coughs and I flinch, thinking she's about to puke all over me. When I get her calmed down, she wants to go on to the "hugs and snuggles" part of the bedtime routine.

At bedtime that evening, she's hesitant about nursing but still wants to do it. When A comes up to kiss her goodnight, she tells him I liked the milk!

Sunday
At naptime she nurses a little, but seems all urpy afterwards, and keeps saying I don't want to frow up! through all my reassurances that if she still wants to nurse, she still can.

At bedtime she blows right over that part of the bedtime routine, going straight from books to hugs and snuggles.

And that's what's happened for all of the past six going-to-bed routines. No more nursing. I might be premature in saying this, but she seems pretty darn weaned.

I feel what I expect is the usual mix of emotions about the end of nursing her: lots of glad-that's-finally-over, with strong sentimental twinges. She was ready: the nursing we were doing had started to seem sort of silly and cursory and extra. But it was a long and mostly sweet thing, that nursing connection, and I can't help but be a little sad (and still in disbelief) that it's gone.

And also: I nursed my daughter for almost 31 months, and she stops because she threw up my milk? It's anticlimactic and sort of absurd. If this holds, I'll be able to say that Ingrid doesn't nurse for the same reason that A doesn't eat turkey stuffing and I don't drink tomato juice. I can't wait to add this to the book of lovely "weaning stories" at the next La Leche League meeting.

Unforeseen benefits of nursing a toddler through and beyond pregnancy:

Instant milk. My milk came in within 18 hours after Iris was born. And I bet this contributed to keeping jaundice at bay. I'm not positive that the extended nursing caused this, but it sure came in more quickly than it did with Ingrid.

No sore nipples. Maybe I should have guessed that compared with a fully-toothed two year old, even a vigorous newborn's suckle would feel dainty and painless.

Convenient breast pump. Ok, that's crass. But in those first days when I was so engorged Iris could barely latch on? Ingrid could have a little "snack" and take care of the problem, even in a power outage.

See friends' jaws drop. My friend Kelly came for a visit about a week ago. A had told her something on the phone about Ingrid being jealous about the nursing. Kelly said something like, You haven't been nursing her all the way through pregnancy, have you? Like she must have heard wrong. Hee hee.

Connection. Ingrid's and my relationship feels interrupted in a major way. I've been away from her, distracted from her, more than ever. It's great to have this point of connection in our day. Naptime and bedtime, she knows, always include "special nursing time." I know that if she were already weaned, we'd have found some other way to connect, but it's really, really nice to have this concrete, physical part of our routine still in place.

Sense of kinship with our barnyard friends. Where you live, is there a fair in the fall? Is there usually a big mama pig there, with, like ten piglets piling on each other and rooting and sucking and tugging all at once? Yeah. It can be kind of entertaining.

Wait. Nursing both at once? Remember when I said I was going to be all tough about restricting Ingrid's nursing to before bed? Well. I've mostly done that. But I decided that denying her a little taste of milk when she asks for it would just add to her sense of displacement and upheaval. Once or twice a day, she asks to nurse while Iris is nursing. I always say yes, and about half the time she loses interest before I've even got my bra open. The rest of the time we have a festive little piglet pile style nursing fest for about half a minute before Ingrid loses interest and moves on to something more fun, like unrolling all the toilet paper in the bathroom.

The milk's in me.

A month or so before Ingrid was born, I attended my first La Leche League meeting. A couple of women there were pregnant and also nursing toddlers. I’d been comfortable for a long time with the idea of nursing kids well into toddlerhood, but this was the first time I’d known of people nursing while pregnant or nursing two kids at once. What kind of insane martyr types are they? I thought. Why don’t they just stop? I felt like being pregnant took up every cell of my body and every calorie I could consume. What kind of nut would add to that the nutritional and emotional burden of nursing?

Well. Heh. You can probably guess where this is going. Here I am, almost 39 weeks pregnant, and here Ingrid is, still nursing anywhere between zero and three times per day.

It’s not a secret, exactly, but it’s also not something I talk about a lot. We haven’t nursed in public in at least six months, and, conveniently, nursing a kid over two, even without being pregnant, is so far off the map that most people don’t even think to ask about it. And, even though each step that’s gotten us here has felt completely right, I’m aware enough of how it probably looks (weird, perhaps unhealthy, possibly overzealous, and definitely a little nuts), even to reasonably well-informed other people, that I usually don’t bring it up. So, how did we get here, and how can I convince you that I’m neither a fanatic nor a doormat?

Last November, holding that unexpected positive pregnancy test in my hand, a whole marching band of worries trampled over me, and I believe the tuba player was wearing a jersey that said, on the front You’ll have to wean Ingrid and, on the back, or your bones will crumble.

Ingrid was 18 months old and still nursing a minimum of six times per day. She was going through a period, which I’ve since learned is common around that age, of “nursing like a newborn”—suddenly wanting to nurse more than she had been, and being more demanding about it and less willing to accept other forms of comfort. I felt overextended by her increased nursing already, and the thought of adding the exhaustion of pregnancy was overwhelming to the point of, at that moment, seeming impossible.

At the same time, it was clear that Ingrid was less ready for weaning than ever. Any effort I made to cut back on nursing, or even to limit it to certain times and places, just seemed to make her more clingy and unhappy. Maybe, A suggested, with more seriousness than you might guess, we can just give this baby formula from the get-go, and Ingrid can keep on nursing 'til she's four.

Looking for a more realistic solution, I naturally turned straight to the internet. Kellymom has some really comprehensive and reassuring info on this and makes it clear that, for well-nourished moms who aren’t otherwise at risk for pre-term labor, there’s no demonstrated health risk—for mom, baby, or toddler—associated with nursing through pregnancy.

I talked to a La Leche League leader about it, too. Actually, I called her on the phone, choked out my story, then sobbed while she told me that I was doing great, that I could choose what to do, and that Ingrid and the baby would be fine whatever I decided. She also told me how she herself had nursed kids born less than a year apart. (I have called LLL leaders on the phone two times and both times I have ended up sobbing. Something about calling a relative stranger out of the blue and having them tell me I am doing just fine...it undoes me every time.)

And I decided, for the moment, to take it one day at a time. To look for and respond to any signs from Ingrid that she was ready to cut back, and to stop offering nursing to her, but not to do anything right away to rush the weaning process. She had recently night weaned (a fact that had precipitated—in (ahem) more ways than one—my getting pregnant again in the first place), and that in itself had been a huge step. I was terrified of finding myself, this summer, nursing her in public with my giant belly hanging out, but I went with the thought that nine months is a really long time (it is!) and that a lot would change just on its own. And it did.

The first couple of months of pregnancy were hard; I was exhausted and very nauseated, and we all three got flattened by the Norwalk virus for a week in mid-December. It’s hard to say whether nursing made that time easier or harder. Sometimes I felt like nursing was wearing me out. Other times I was grateful to have that option as a way to comfort Ingrid when I had little energy to offer her. And while she was so sick with the stomach virus she took in nothing but breast milk; I have a hunch that nursing saved us from a hospital stay or a much sicker little girl.

Over the next couple of months, the “nursing like a newborn” phase passed, and Ingrid’s nursing settled into a pattern. We only nursed at home, and only at certain times, mostly associated with sleep and with separation.

And then, gradually, most of those nursing sessions just fell away. One day I’d come home from work and, rather than immediately attacking my boob demanding moke, she’d want to tell me something about her day first, and some days she’d forget about that nursing session entirely.

Now we are down to three nursing times: right after waking up in the morning, before going down for nap, and before bedtime. She’s starting to lose the morning one, and we’re trying to encourage that by not letting her see me lying down with my bra off. The naptime and bedtime nursing sessions are getting shorter, but she still gets pretty pissed off when I gently suggest we skip that step of the bedtime routine. But all of these nursing sessions are now optional. When I’m not around at naptime or at bedtime, she goes to sleep and gets up just fine without nursing.

But we’ve kept on doing it. Through the winter months when my milk began to taste different and caused Ingrid some crankiness and clinginess. Through the spring when the milk dried up entirely. Through last week when I started to notice Ingrid swallowing again as she nursed, and those weird yellow drops of colostrum oozing out.

Which I guess gets us to the question I asked two and a half years ago about those crazy La Leche League women: Why don’t they just stop? And my best answer is, Why would we stop? Things are fine how they are. The baby and I, by all measures, are totally big and healthy. Ingrid will not nurse forever; she’s on the road to weaning on her own. She’ll be fine being put to bed by someone else when I’m busy with the baby. And the nursing we have left is a sweet little part of our routine.

It’s also my ace in the hole, one I’ve used two times I can think of in the past six months, when she somehow gets worked into a serious tantrum and all other calming methods have failed for longer than I can stand. A little moke can really help.

My one worry is that after the baby comes and my milk returns to being sweet and plentiful, Ingrid will want to nurse more again. I know that's common, and I know I don’t want to let it happen, no matter how hard it is for both of us when I have to say no.

For the most part, I like nursing. I find it super convenient and easy, it feels healthy, I am fascinated and proud that my body can produce great baby food, and Ingrid and I have been very lucky to have had no significant problems nursing, pretty much from day 1 to day (gulp) 800. The only thing about it that gets me down is that only I can do it. There’s no delegating this task, and, with two kids, there’s no way I want to add anything more than necessary to the list of things caro must do.

So we'll keep going, keep taking it one day at a time. And if all goes well Ingrid will have to get used to the fact that she's not the only one in the family who loves the moke.

Night Weaning

We're doing it. Starting tonight.

M is 16 months old and still nurses down for naps (except the two naps per week she's with a babysitter), nurses to sleep at night, and nurses back to sleep after at least two, and often three or four, wake-ups at night. I'm ready to be done with the midnight nursing, and I really believe (remind me of this tomorrow when I'm slogging through on too little sleep after a night of screaming baby) that, though she'll need to get over her inital pissed off reaction to the change, she's ready for it too.

For the past few days I've been talking to her about how the milk needs to go night night when mama does. And I've been trying to shorten her night time nursing sessions for the past week or so. But I think from here we just need to go cold turkey. Wish us luck.

Letdown

I found the bottle of milk. (Here, if I knew how, I would link to the post called "Worse than an Easter egg?")

It was in the basement in a bag of old doll clothes I keep meaning to iron. And it wasn't the slightest bit moldy inside. It didn't even smell that bad. Kind of yeasty, kind of sweet. I'm not saying I'd drink the stuff, but it could have been a lot worse.

I might even be able to salvage the bottle. We'll see how it tastes after a run through the (two months old and still a thrill!) dishwasher.

We are home from a blissful long weekend visit with two dear friends, their two kids, and one wonderful grandma. We are well rested, we've had great talks with people we love, and we have a kid who requests the book she's currently obsessed with by saying siipssh. And we are godparents. Pretty heathen, still, but godparents. More on this later. For now I must sort mail and feed the cat and eat ice cream and go to bed.

Extended Breastfeeding on the Prairie

Since the Monkey turned a year old, no fewer than four people in my office (with a total staff of ten people) have asked how much longer I’m going to breastfeed her.

By and large, people ask this in an even and pleasant tone, as if they are simply curious about the content of my daughter’s nutritional intake and how it might be changing over the next few months. Some are even skillful enough to phrase the question as if it were purely theoretical rather than an inquiry into an area of my life that, while not exactly intimate or secret, they otherwise aren’t really a part of. “How long does breastfeeding take?” they say. “I mean, how long do most people do it?”

The zinnias are blooming, the humidity is low, and I am feeling optimistic and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. So I’m refraining from assuming that my coworkers are horrified at my decision to keep nursing this long, or that when—having answered their (in almost all cases, nosy) question with, “I don’t know. I don’t really have a schedule for when I want to wean her,”—I leave the vicinity, they are giggling together behind my back. I’m assuming they’re really just curious.

But how funny that everyone’s curiosity about this topic should rise all at once like this. I don’t recall a single person asking me this before a month or so ago, and now suddenly the duration of our breastfeeding is sufficiently fascinating to cause half of my coworkers to find ways to work the question into conversation. You’d almost think there were some kind of cultural norm that kids shouldn’t nurse beyond one year of age.

Something tells me that if I lived several hundred miles closer to one ocean or the other, I’d be having very different sorts of conversations with my coworkers, indeed.