Of course that’s what I thought: How hard can it be? I mean really. The lactation consultant at the hospital murmured things about my “excellent anatomy” and told me I’d have no problems with nursing. Sure enough, the first couple weeks after my son was born were fine. My husband kept remarking, “Look at you! You’re a natural!” as I whipped a breast out at the dinner table or while watching TV. I got this, I thought. No problem.

What no one warned me about though was that when it comes to breastfeeding, it really does take two to tango. And as with any relationship, problems can go both ways. So while my anatomy may have been up to the task, unfortunately my son did not agree. After a strong start, he suddenly decided that he really did not like nursing. From about three weeks onward, breastfeeding became an all-out struggle, a dance of coercion and heartbreak. His weight gain dropped off precipitously, I became severely depressed, and no one could figure out what was going on. We put him on medication for acid reflux, which did nothing. I stopped taking birth control again, which helped both with his nursing and my mood, but his weight gain remained low.

Eventually I reconciled myself to the fact that my boy was just not a good nurser. He nursed quickly and only when hungry, never needing the breast for comfort or entertainment or any of the myriad other reasons that most babies nurse. I watched my friends’ babies latch on easily and then nurse without incident, while my encounters at the breast remained at best short and businesslike.

We started our son on solids at five months, figuring they’d help with his weight gain. To our surprise, at his six month appointment, he had actually fallen off the growth chart! So we upped his solids again, giving him foods with a much higher fat content: yogurt, eggs, olive oil, tofu. He continued to nurse regularly, and our pediatrician assured us that the additional solids would supplement rather than replace breastmilk in his diet.

Then around seven months, right around Christmas, the boy went on his first nursing strike. He wouldn’t touch my breast for love or money, and recoiled from it as if it were poison. Back to the good old days. Of course this threw me into a tailspin of depression similar to when he was three months old — there is no rejection quite like that of your child not wanting the food your body has produced for him! He started nursing again after a few days, but a couple weeks later, we went through the same thing all over again.

As I waited for this second strike to pass, it became clear to me that it wasn’t just a temporary thing. My boy, never fond of nursing at the best of times, was clearly indicating that he was ready to cut way back on nursing, if not stop altogether. Since then, he’s averaged about three times in a 24 hour period, four on a good day. This may be normal for a nearly eight month old, but considering that he had been nursing six and sometimes eight times a day only a few weeks before, this came as a dramatic change, one with a very clear message: I’m done. So with a heavy heart I have stopped pushing the issue, as the renewed struggle to get him to nurse was making both of us unhappy.

Just to be safe though, I asked the nurse to weigh him when I took him in for his flu booster. To my amazement, he had gained two pounds in under six weeks! He hasn’t gained weight that fast since his first month of life. Of course I was hugely relieved at this news, and once I put my own mess of feelings aside, I was able to see that my son is clearly much happier eating solids than he ever has been with nursing.

So as with any relationship, I found happiness when I put aside my own ego and listened to what my partner was trying to tell me. There is still a part of me — the straight-A overachiever in me — that feels like I “failed” at nursing. But then I look at my happy, healthy, and thankfully growing child, and I know that I did my absolute best. And besides, there’s always next time, right?

• Finally settle on a baby girl name.
• Have a natural birth with a healthy mom and baby.
• Spend at least the first year nursing without complaining about the time commitment.
• Read a lot, even if I’m tired from caring for a newborn.
• Run. And feel blessed to be able to do it again.
• Encourage a good sleep schedule for the baby, but don’t be beholden to it.
• Be more flexible. And I’m not talking about touching my toes (though that would be nice, too).

What about you? Did you set any resolutions or reminders?

Former PregTASTIC Panelist, Amy, recently gave birth to her first child, a beautiful baby girl. Did she make it past her due date? What other important person in her life gave birth on the same day? What does she think started her labor and what did the doctor say that completely shocked her? Plus breastfeeding woes and how she overcame them.

Featured Panelist: Sunny (host)
Guest Panelists: Amy, Mark and Baby Lily

Mark, Amy and Baby Lily

I know this sounds weird, but read on and it might help you, too when you need it!

My history with cabbage:

I had given birth to my first baby about 2 days ago, when I fell asleep on the bed. I woke up an hour later and something crazy had happened: somebody had pumped up my breasts to basketball size! They were hard, they were steaming hot and they were HURTING! Engorgement had arrived! I was in agony, just the bra or a T-shirt touching my breasts was uncomfortable and in an ironic twist I now bumped into things with my super-boobs rather than my belly. I thought they sure were going to burst. And while my husband was quite enticed by the X-rated size of them there was NO way he was going to get to touch them!

As the daughter-in-law of a La Leche league leader and an avid reader of breast feeding manuals, I knew I needed to start breast feeding to relieve some of the pressure. Nursing helped a little, as did taking a hot shower, but the hard, bursting feeling was still there. Every movement of my arms painfully brushed the milk ducts (which to my surprise were swollen all the way into my arm pits) and even sitting (never mind sleeping) was uncomfortable. When I moaned about this on the phone to a friend in Germany, she said “Have you tried cabbage leaves?” I was taken aback. What did she mean? And then I remembered a little blurb about cabbage leaves in my German midwife book. Apparently it’s a very common recommendation in Germany to put cabbage leaves on your breasts to help with engorgement…

As I was desperate and would have tried anything, I sent the husband to the store to buy some white cabbage. I washed big leaves, crushed the stem with a rolling-pin (for comfort and to release the juice), wrapped my basketballs and put the bra over them to keep the leaves in place. Only half an hour later the relief was noticeable – as was the smell of wilted cabbage come from the cleavage! Ahhhh and Urgh! But I could have cared less about the odor at that moment. I tossed the leaves, the juice had done its job – two more sessions over the next 24 hours and I had survived engorgement with ease!

The rest of the cabbage leaves were put in the fridge (and some in the freezer) and in the coming months whenever I felt that a milk duct was clogged, I took a hot shower, massaged it and then put a cabbage leave on the spot. Worked like a charm every time!

So when I was pregnant with my second child, I bought a cabbage in preparation at week 38! I needed only one round of it after birth, engorgement seemed less severe this time around. However, the trusted cabbage came into play two more times during nursing: at about 4 months old, I developed mastitis (I think I didn’t let the baby empty the breast completely since I had to run after a toddler). While the antibiotics helped with the infection and the fever, the cabbage once again supported the clearing up of the clogged ducts! If I had paid more attention to my breast then my first born, I think I could have maybe prevented the whole mastitis with a cabbage leave in time…

The second use of cabbage leaves for number 2 was a little more unexpected: at 9 months he decided he was done with nursing. Refused the breast from one day to the other while stealing other kids bottles at play dates (a bit embarrassing, to be honest!). He would not latch on, pushed away the breast and did not even drink pumped breast milk. At day two of these antics, my boobs were once again full and hurting. After a week of pumping and offering the breast repeatedly, it became clear that he would not go back to nursing. So he had weaned himself, and I, for the last time, bought a cabbage and eased the pain of engorgement with my trusted smelly secret!

More cabbage information:

When I looked into the history and science behind green cabbage leaves, I discovered that it had been used for engorgement and other swelling (in sprains and broken bones) since the early 1800s. Research shows the common green cabbage (Brassica capitata) contains sinigrin (allylisothiocyanate) rapine, mustard oil, magnesium, oxylate and sulphur heterosides and has both antibiotic and anti irritant properties. While nobody knows exactly how these components work together, the theory is that they help decrease tissue congestion by dilating (opening) local capillaries (small blood vessels), which improves the blood flow in and out of the area, allowing the body to reabsorb the fluid trapped in the breasts. Cabbage may also have a type of drawing, or wicking action, that helps move trapped fluid. (This means it can also be used for Edema in the face, hand or feet for diabetic mothers).

Obviously cabbage leaves should NOT be used if you are allergic to cabbage or sulfa and also not on broken skin (leave cracked/bleeding nipples free).

Some people warn that excessive use of cabbage leaves might dry up the milk supply, but there is no scientific evidence for this, and since it most likely works on trapped fluid between the cells rather than the milk in the ducts, I would not worry about that!

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To learn more about ways to ease engorgement (especially if weaning your baby), listen to PregTASTIC, Episode 246

Featured Panelists: Sunny (host) and Rachele
Guest Expert: Robin Kaplan, The San Diego Breastfeeding Center

Robin, Sunny and Rachele

Featured Panelists: Sunny (host), Rachele and Florinda
Guest Expert: Annette Rubin, Co-founder, Belli Skincare

Florinda, Annette, Sunny and Rachele

Featured Panelists: Sunny (host), Amy and Patrice
Special Guest: Vicki Wolfrum, Best Baby Ever

I read a passage in The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding the other day that said, “At some point you may find yourself giving in and letting go… and suddenly everything is easier. It’s like learning to swim, when you realize that struggling to keep your feet under you isn’t helping you move forward.” (154) Yes, I thought, that sounds about right.

But my real “Aha!” moment didn’t come until last night. We were at my sister-in-law’s house, which is about a 90 minute drive away from where we live. We hadn’t been up there since the boy was three weeks old, when I was still in the midst of that first sleepless, constantly nursing, shell-shocked phase. During that visit, I was overwhelmed by the amount of well-intended advice I got from my husband’s extended family: the aunties telling me not to eat onions or garlic, the cousins warning me to “sleep when he sleeps!”, etc. I appreciated their concern, but I knew that I couldn’t possibly remember all of their tips, much less apply them to this tiny helpless noisy person that had miraculously emerged from my battered body. In other words, I couldn’t filter the noise from the actual sound.

This time, I was hesitant to go up there at all, since neither I nor the boy had slept well the night before, and he was being extremely fussy. I didn’t think I could take any more well-meaning advice about how to deal with a fussy baby, as now I know a lot more about what makes him cry, when and why, and how to handle it. I also know that for the most part, he is not a fussy baby, so horror stories about other peoples’ colicky infants need not apply.

Then I thought, wait a second. This is my baby, not theirs. And by now I know better than anyone how to meet his needs, at least most of the time, so hey — I can just let all that advice roll off my back! And if there’s any actual helpful tips, well, so be it.

So we went, and I was glad, as we had a great time with my husband’s family. I baby-wrangled when he needed to be fed or changed, and let the rest of the family handle him when he simply needed to be cajoled out of his fussing. When it was time to leave, I actually managed to time it so that he had napped, nursed, and been changed right before we got in the car. It even occurred to me to change him into the spare set of pajamas I carry in our diaper bag, so that if he fell asleep on the drive, we could just put him straight into bed when we got home.

Somehow this moment of forethought was when I realized: I am becoming a Mother. Not just someone who gave birth to a child, but a real Mom, someone who knows her kid and uses that knowledge to try to anticipate his needs and make his young life a comfortable one. I know my kid better than the books do, better than my in-laws do, better even than his doctor. So I can take what they all say with a big, fat grain of salt — applied sparingly to taste.

Here’s just a few, first about giving birth:

•  I wish I hadn’t bothered taking a so-called birth preparation class. My husband and I spent four of our final Friday nights as non-parents in a stuffy classroom at the birthing center being lectured about how to give birth naturally. I had no qualms about using medication, and so most of the coping techniques were kind of lost on me. I wish we’d gone a movie those nights instead.
• Ditto for all the reading I did: pretty much all of it has flown out of my brain now that I’m a mom. I vaguely recall random facts, and then can’t remember where I got them from – at what weight do babies start sleeping through the night? Where did I see that? I can’t remember. Again, I wish I’d spent the time reading a novel or sleeping.For me, reading about giving birth or being a parent was about as useful as reading about what it’ll be like to jump out of an airplane. It was helpful to prepare me for the technical side of things, but it couldn’t come close to showing me what it actually is like.
• Along those lines, labor is not what you’ll expect it to be. As I said, I was fully expecting to have an epidural, but I ended up giving birth naturally. I was amazed at how much my body took over, and by the end, my conscious self had been relegated to a very small voice at the back of my mind. Afterward, my husband described me as “feral,” which was more or less how I felt.So as it turned out, no amount of preparation helped, other than simply knowing what stage of labor I was in so that I knew if I’d made it to transition without drugs, I could probably make it all the way. Which I could’ve found out by spending ten minutes on Wikipedia, instead of spending ten hours in said birth preparation class.Bottom line is: trust your body. It knows what to do, with or without your cooperation.
• However, be warned: it turns out transition is NOT always the hardest stage of labor. For some lucky few, pushing is actually harder. I was one of them. I never felt that much-vaunted “urge to push” that everyone talks about, and none of the relief that people say came when they finally got the go-ahead to push. My OB said afterward, “Yeah, it’s like that for some women.” Great. Go me.

As for being a mom, in my still limited experience, I have learned:

• Baby poop is bright yellow. Baby clothing is not. You do the math — and the laundry.
• Nursing every two hours does NOT mean two hours from the end of one session to the beginning of the next. It means two hours from start to start. Depending on how long your baby nurses, that leaves you about 45 to 90 minutes of free time in between. And that goes by really, really quickly, especially when you’re trying to sleep during that time.
• You will never love another human being this much. In fact I think there should be an entirely different category of words to describe how it feels to be a parent.

I could go on and on, and I’m sure there’s many points I’m forgetting because I didn’t write them down as soon as I thought of them. That’s the other thing — you will forget everything, so make sure to write it all down, even the silly stuff.

Now what was I saying again…?

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Listen to PregTASTIC, Episode 224 to hear former PregTASTIC panelists share all the things they wish they had known before their babies were born.

Now, I’ve never been super thin or a workout queen.  However, as an expectant mother of “advanced maternal age” (41), I’ve prided myself in my efforts to take care of myself:  regular work-outs, CSA subscriber (farm share), frequent salad eater, and when need be – occasional Jenny Craig drop-ins.   My clothes fit and for the most part, I feel good.  But as I enter my 28^th week of pregnancy, up 25 pounds, that nasty cellulite has reared its ugly head in spades across my thighs.  Mockingly, it shows up during times of stretching and exercise (while sitting, cross one leg over the other and bend torso over legs to stretch out hips, thighs, and back – wince as you see cellulite across thighs).

How do I fight back?  I say to myself, “I’ll sign up for that yoga class.  Go to family swim.  Walk, walk, walk.  Pick salad over the fried chicken craving.  Drink more water.” How do I execute against plan when I feel heart palpitations, suffer from  heartburn, insomnia, 3^rd trimester nausea, have a looming deadline for work, and it’s 90+ degrees outside?  Suffice it to say, my grandiose plans are still waiting to be kicked off (although I AM drinking water).

But really, as much as I hate this part of pregnancy, I have to step back and re-evaluate.  I actually recently read a blog post from another PregTASTIC blogger about her taking a break from running, and her perspective is a healthy one that I wholeheartedly adopt.  Having a baby is worth the superficial sacrifices we are asking of our body.  Not only do we have to listen to what our body is asking of us (mine may be saying:  “don’t push me too hard” while yours could still be saying:  “more spinning classes please!’), but we have to also know that this is only a brief 40 weeks in our long lives.  Our bodies and muscles remember and we can “snap back” into shape soon enough.  I continue to look for similar motivating pieces that help readjust my mindset about body image during pregnancy (this includes checking two Ipod apps daily: What to Expect and BabyBump) and I continue to follow other healthy living and exercise blogs to live vicariously through them during these 40 weeks.

So, while I hate my rippled thighs and the way they rub together in the heat of the summer, I truly am not worried about it.  First, I’m doing what feels best for me – perhaps exercise some days but more likely not.  Second, having done this once before, I can truly attest that breastfeeding 100% helped me lose the baby weight so that also helps me not sweat this temporary weight gain too much.  Third, now that I know that I’m having a girl, I also want to make sure that I do not unconsciously overemphasize the importance of body image over general confidence and well-being (see this Huffington Post article.) It’s never too early to start training yourself to think in a different way.

Finally, when all else fails, I do have a few tools in my arsenal for increased post-partum body reshaping motivation.

Namely this…

And this…

Hey, sometimes, we need real, tangible things to get us off the couch!!