Wow, my poor blog has been overtaken by posts about babies and baby related topics. Does this make me a mommy blogger? God help me. Another in a series of "what has my life become comments"...worth it of course but wow how quickly things can change!
So, two words about breastfeeding?
UTTER HELL.
I DISLIKE BREASTFEEDING.
Ok, that was 5 words. But seriously? AWFUL. 6 words. And I'm sure I could add more... Now before I get a bunch of hate mail because "Oh my god, breast is best and you are a terrible person and blah blah blah, I love breastfeeding" (shoot me) let me just SAY. I LOVE the aspect where I get to bond with my son, where I am the person keeping him alive and nourishing him and it is amazing in all regards in that respect.
BUT. I am just slightly jaded right now.
I have never felt such pain in my LIFE. Part of the issue was that I was just clueless. CLUELESS. I thought breast feeding should be easy. You just attach the kid and go, right? Ha. Ha. Ha. Freaking lactation consultants (and moms) all over the world are laughing at me. WHO THE HELL FREAKING KNEW that breastfeeding was so damn complicated? From the latch to the letdown to the various ailments that can occur? OH MY WORD, was I ever clueless.
My problems started when my right nipple decided to crack open and bleed about 4 days in. Right around when my milk came in. But, I talked with consultants who said that this was normal and it would toughen up and heal as long as I used nipple butter (CHECK, I could probably be a majority investor in all freaking nipple butter companies at this point...) Then when nipple butter did not help the cracking and it looked like my nipple was the grand canyon with a crater in the middle, I moved on to St John's wort... supposedly the "miracle" relief for cracked nipples. I would like to slap St. John for lying.
And let me just say: my kid has a great bottom lip (apparently important) and latches well (also important)... but for those first two weeks? DOES NOT MATTER ONE BIT because you are still yelling four letter words every time the latch happens. My feet would drip sweat, it hurt so bad. And after I started talking about this with girlfriends I found out this was normal. Are you KIDDING me? Why did I just hear about this now?! And please also pass the bourbon because it would have been much better had I done a shot before each feeding... at least for me.
So, the kid has a good latch, eats well, is gaining weight (meaning my supply is great... there's also a thing as an imbalanced supply... again, WHO KNEW... luckily, not one of my problems which is good because I have so many other problems covered...), but my nipple is oozing and has a crater in it and I start to feel a pain deep in my breast. I didn't think much of it because why would I? My nipple makes if feel like I am being stabbed repeatedly so it's probably just transferring pain. Right?
HA.
WRONG. Again with the things I didn't know then but I know now...
A few days later, I start to develop a redness around my nipple. Of course, I consult my dear friend google who after telling me that I might possible have a rare form of breast cancer (isn't that always the first result on google? You *might* die...), I thought I had thrush. After pondering on just what in the holy hell thrush was for about a day, I finally figured out that thrush is basically a yeast infection of the breast that is caused by cracked nipples. Great, I thought... I probably have thrush. Thrush is painful, red, and can pass to the baby in the form of white spots in his/her mouth. Looked in Owen's mouth and yep, white spots. Great, we have thrush... well, at least I have an answer as to why it's been hurting so bad.
So, I consulted a natural website I like who recommended grapefruit seed extract for treating thrush. At around 9pm one night, we put Owen in the car and went to the natural foods store for a bottle and (hopefully) some relief for my poor boobie. It helped a bit... luckily a few days later, we were seeing the naturopathic doctor for Owen's two week well check so I showed her my boob then and had her check Owen for thrush. NOT THRUSH. His white spots are normal calcium deposits and not thrush at all. Great. So I probably just have a boobie problem like a clogged duct, which is weird because the redness is right next to my nipple and typically a clogged duct is more out in the, you know, duct part... not right by the nipple (but then again nothing about my breastfeeding experience thus far has been normal so, again, should have known). She sent me home with various ideas on what to do for a clogged duct, all of which I had been doing anyway as treatment is similar for thrush. Heat and massage the affected area and make sure to continue nursing on that side as it will pull out the clog.
Again... HILARIOUS...So, you're telling me to hook my kid up to my nipple with a hole in it, have him ingest blood, make me scream 4 letter words upon attachment, then MASSAGE the area where it hurts while he is nursing my poor wounded nipple? How is this not some rare form of torture? Oh, yeah, and before all this, heat up the area to as hot as I can handle with a moist compress. At this point? I just want to cut off my own boob. Would be less painful. But, I did all of this. Repeatedly. A million times a day.
We saw the midwives a few days later and they asked if I was having any troubles. I think this was the appointment to talk about emotional troubles but I don't have any of those unless you count wanting to chop off my own boob as some form of post partum depression. We spent the better part of our time together on my boob issue and I showed them my boob (I'd already consulted them a few times on the nipple) but once they saw it they really freaked out. NO KIDDING! It looked scary. Just use your imagination. They gave me a nipple shield (OHMYGOSH why had I not heard of this either?? AMAZING) as well as some homeopathic treatment that should help with the inflammation. Um yeah... it didn't.
A couple days later, it was Owen's three week check up with the naturopath and I made an appointment with her too to figure out my boob. So, to complicate matters more, Owen's poop has been a little greenish tinted and mucus-y meaning that he is allergic to something in my diet. What? We don't know. So we are talking about this and she looked at Owen's poop and put me on a strict elimination diet... basically nothing but rice, turkey, sweet potatoes and oatmeal...all "safe" foods until we can get his poop more normal and then start adding foods back in to make sure they are safe. Great, I can do that for 4-5 days, no problem. She then looked at and felt my boob and agreed with me in that it was still clogged and to just keep doing what I'm doing but add in castor oil packs as treatment. Basically soak castor oil in flannel, heat it and it draws out the clog. Ok, I'll add that to the list of torture to my boob that I perform 400 million times a day.
So I do that for a day or so along with the elimination diet for Owen's tummy. Good news? His poop normalizes. WIN (finally!) Bad news? On Saturday of that week, I felt like CRAP. Like flu-ish, I took a nap and just felt beyond normal "I've been not sleeping due to the baby" crap. Justin felt me and said, "it really seems like you have a fever" so we took my temperature. 101 degrees. Shit. An hour later? 102.5 degrees. And an hour after that? Tipping at 103 degrees. I called the naturopath at around 102 degrees and said that I definitely have mastitis (what a clogged duct can turn in to if it does not get unclogged) as mastitis is characterized by all of the symptoms I had previously with the telltale sign of a fever. She tells me that she is going to call in a prescription for antibiotics but if I want to try to tough it out until my fever breaks naturally I can try that. Bad news in this is that if I start antibiotics the antibiotics will start us back at ground zero in regards to Owen's tummy. BAH!!
A few hours later, I'd gotten the prescription and just decided to go for it. I knew it was not getting better and the fever was just going up and up. That night the fever broke which was good news, bad news for our bed as I sweat more than if I'd just run 15 miles. Gross. We continued on in the week and the pain was not better. I simultaneously wanted to schedule a masectomy or just chop off my own boob all at once. It was not pleasant. On Thursday of that week, I talked to the naturopath and we agreed that I'd wait it out through the weekend to see if the antibiotics started to work. On Friday I decided there was no way it was getting better. So after meeting a girlfriend in the morning and putting a call in to the naturopath, I was referred to a boobie doctor and was fit in for a little procedure. They did an ultrasound first to determine what was going on. Basically the clogged duct turned mastitis had turned into an abscess...the worst of the worst. It only happens to about 3% of people who get clogged ducts or mastitis...lucky me!
After the ultrasound determined that I did indeed have an abscess, the doctor performed the procedure to drain it which basically entails putting a needle about a pea width into my boobie, numbing it with lidocain, then using the ultrasound to guide them to the abscess and extracting the junk (pus) in the abscess pocket. Yes, it is indeed as disgusting as it sounds. Then they send what they extract to a lab to determine what kind of bacteria it is and what it is sensitive to- meaning, what antibiotics it will respond to.
A couple of pictures from the day of the little procedure- thank god Justin was there to entertain Owen as we were there for 3 hours!
And the doctor gave me a flower for enduring it all...
At the end of the day... Justin was wiped, Owen was crashed.
A week or so later, it was determined that it was a staph bacteria and most likely was the result of my wounded open nipple. Awesome! Good news was that it was sensitive to the antibiotic I was on so it *should* work to break up the lump and make the infection go away. Bad news was that I had to increase the dosage because it had not gotten much better which meant more tummy troubles for Owen.
So, where does that leave us now? Well, I wrapped up the 2 weeks worth of antibiotics a couple of days ago but the lump is still there. So now we are in a holding game of see if it goes away or not. If not, I'll probably have to have it drained again. So as it stands now the boobie saga is still a little open but hopefully we are on the road to recovery. I would say HANDS DOWN breast feeding has been the hardest part of this whole experience, no questions asked. I'd rather be pregnant for the rest of my life and that's saying something. Anything that could have happened to my poor little boobie really did so I am now a walking vast of knowledge for all things breast feeding. I guess that is good but I think I would have preferred to have not lived through it! I'm hoping that once we are through this hurdle I develop more of a love relationship with breastfeeding... we shall see.
