starring milo, as triumph the comic insult dog

yesterday morning, as i scrubbed enough poo for ten babies off milo's behind, he tensed up, contorted, and then blew liquid poo all over me and the changing table. all i could think of was that dumb dog puppet triumph snarling, "i POOP on you!!!"

as great a time as that was, times are not good. in a week and a half, milo gained only an ounce, and hasn't gained any since friday, and the lactation consultant has determined that everything is working except for my inherent ability to produce, or rather inability, and so the supplementation has started, and it is hell.

i thought feeding milo every hour was rough, but it was NOTHING compared to the current nightmare, and let me tell you - supplementation is not a portable practice, which makes it even worse, if such a thing is possible. he went a little longer during the night, but by day he is still asking for the boobie hourly, so i'm still trying to feed just as often PLUS when i'm not feeding i'm pumping (which hurts like hell and which now makes breastfeeding hurt where it didn't before) or cleaning bottles or tubing or parts i am sure to lose or getting the next round ready or spraying shout on his clothes and mine. as i write for the first time in two weeks, he's howling, but he's going to have to howl for a few minutes.

even more frustrating is that he's not taking a bottle from me, or rather he takes it and then lets it run out of his mouth. with justin, when he's not working, he will take the bottle and only let some of it run out but he also spits up, so who knows how much he's getting. the supplementary system leaks all over kingdom come, and he will only take about half as much extra as he is supposed to be getting, which means dumping half of what i've pumped - so pointless.

i'm also taking gigantic quantities of fenugreek to try to boost my supply, which stinks like maple syrup gone funky. it is disgusting and i am sick of it but desperate enough to keep grossing out myself and everyone within sniffing range of me.

this is not how it was supposed to be.

we go back to the doctor and the lactation consultant tomorrow, if i haven't yet been committed to an institution. god help us all.

for those looking for happier thoughts, there are a few more pictures of milo out there. go help yourself to a heaping helping of cuteness.

so cool, he's gotta wear shades

flasher ***now with milolicious updates!***

maybe it's that after the thousands that have now viewed my hoo-ha (and the signifcant percentage of those viewing my hoo-ha who have also stuck their hands inside it), i have no room left for modesty, no sense of personal dignity. i remember getting prepped for the d&c when i lost the tadpole, and when the staff tried to shield my nakedness with a sheet while i moved from the gurney to the operating table, i just laughed; jumping naked across the room meant nothing to me any more.

whatever the cause, the loss of giving a damn is serving me well when it comes to public breastfeeding. i've breastfed milo in the living room with a casually draped receiving blanket while a dozen people danced around us - and i've done it in restaurants, my mother-in-law's living room, and a movie theater. and in the target parking lot, i don't even bother with a blanket (much to the amazement of the seven-year-old boy who got an eyeful the other night).

i'm not trying to be in anyone's face - i just don't care. i'm feeding milo, which is more important than what anyone else thinks. and i'm completely blown away to feel this way. i have to say, it rocks.

*****

quick milo update: at monday's weigh-in, he'd lost another three ounces, and his bilirubin was high, so we delayed our departure for florida by a day and went back to the doctor yesterday. his bilirubin was down but he had lost about a third of an ounce (thanks for the conversion, eve!), so we've delayed one more day and are headed back now for another weigh-in. if he's still not gaining, we're going to start doing the tube-affixed-to-my-nipple supplementation. it's not what i want, but milo's need to be nourished is more important than my pride in breastfeeding.

he's still lovely, and funny, and completely amazing. we just need a little more of him around.

***update! he is up almost 2 1 /2 ounces today! supplementing is averted! we're still down a little more than a pound from his birth weight, but we are gaining, dammit! woohoo! so we're off to florida tomorrow - which means probably zero posts for the next week and getting further behind on other blogs - through which i have read exactly once in the last two weeks, at 12:3o the other morning, while feeding milo. soon, my pretties....

itsy bitsy teenie weenie

milo goes for his weigh-in tomorrow, and i'm terrified, that we'll need to supplement with formula, that he'll be hospitalized, that he's somehow not thriving and as a result of my inadequacy as his food source he'll be permanently brain-damaged. these feelings are despite the constant stream of wet diapers, and the four poops a day, and feeding him on demand (and the demand is very, very high), and his increasing alertness during the day (in which he is beginning to assert an attitude), and the reassurance of my fellow bloggers and moms. he's just so tiny, and baggy, and in certain lighting, from the right angle, he looks a little gollum-like.

i find myself torn between overwhelming joy at his presence and the need to plan for how to handle his death. will there be a time when i won't need to keep checking to make sure he's still alive?

*****

i need to write about his birth, for him, and for myself, but i can't stitch together enough private minutes at one time to do it yet, and we're leaving tuesday morning for florida, so who knows when. if i had known how long it would take me to get it done, i would have made notes during the process. okay, maybe not. but i should have.

the one thing i did get done today was to add more pictures to his page. really - how fantastic is he?!?!?

progress

justin and my mom kept milo downstairs half the day while i slept; justin brought him (and chocolate soymilk) up to me when he needed to eat, and i spent the rest of the time zonked out, and it was heaven. this afternoon justin had to return to work :( - but my mom and i have gotten milo's birth announcements put together and labeled, and i've had a shower, and i've taken off the peeling nail polish that's a day older than milo, and shaved my underarms for the first time in 10 days, and i've paid bills, and i just ate some pepper jack cheese. i'm a new woman.

we finally started to get milo's picture page updated; get your fix of milotasticness here. more soon.

send sleep

today is that day: so, so tired; so, so dysfunctional. i need sleep, i need to pay bills, i need milo to not pee on his umbilical stump every time his diaper is changed, i need a lifetime supply of shout to keep up with all of those clothes on which he has peed, and i need sleep. i also need milo to start gaining some weight; at monday's almost-1-week checkup, he had lost a whole pound, which of course is just something new to freak out about, besides his breathing problems at birth, and the universe's way of slapping me down for being so smug about breastfeeding being such a breeze. i need a 24-hour coma. or a 24-hour twilight sedation while receiving spa treatments and fluids.

i also have a great need to write, but insufficient time for the task. so in short, a couple of the things on my mind:

• does it make me a bad parent that in his 9 days of life milo has been to target four times? and which is worse: that i'm setting a poor example for him as a global citizen by going to box stores, or that i'm circulating him out among the masses at such an early and susceptible-to-disease age?
• don't get me wrong: ina may gaskin is still a loon, but there may be the tiniest nugget of truth in her madness (as there usually is in all insane theories). i've been thinking about the eroticism of the whole birthing process, but it's a long post i need time to develop. let me get back to you on this one.

someday, i will write again, and i will post pictures - we only have about a thousand of milo at this point. i'm working on sooner rather than later. but i'm not in a position to make any promises.

the bestest baby of all time

when i was logging into blogger just now and the "most recently updated" blog list was scrolling past, i saw one titled "the bestest blog of all time" - quite a claim, i must say. i didn't go check it out, so who knows whether it's an accurate title or not, but i feel quite comfortable proclaiming milo the bestest baby of all time.

he is sweet and cuddly and curious and funny and ferocious about the boobie. he makes this great face where he looks at me with one eye and curls his lip in an elvis-like sneer, and it's only one of the many faces in his dramatic little repertoire. he is not bothered at all by loud music - perhaps because we had music playing at his delivery and in the room for the first few days, he seems actually more comfortable with us rocking out than not. he's been held by at least 30 people now, before he's even a week old, and not even counting medical staff, and he takes it all in stride. no matter what i eat - and i've eaten all kinds of funky ethnic foods and hot sauce and onions and garlic and more hot stuff - he digs the milk; the only thing he likes even more is his fruit-flavored vitamin drops, which claim to be sugar-free, but i have my doubts, judging from the way he gulps them down with great gusto. he has the fuzziest ears i have ever seen on anyone under the age of 70, and the cutest little upside-down U-shaped dimple in his chin, and already, i cannot imagine a world without him in it.

that said, he is a human being, and a newborn one, and he has the most ridiculous concept of both night and day and of how often he should eat. during the day, he sleeps at least two hours, and usually three, at a time, wakes to eat, and then starts the cycle over. but the second and third nights at home, he was awake almost continuously from 11 pm to 6 am; during that time slot, the cycle becomes wake up howling, eat for 15 minutes, get burped and then diaper changed, snooze for five minutes, wake up howling, and repeat. last night was a little better; we got the cycle stretched out from 30 minutes to an hour by offering extra boobie before we went to bed (a term i use very loosely) and by playing the baby sleep system cd i had forgotten we had until last night. i also gave in on a couple of things, like letting him sleep on my chest after feeding when i was too zonked to get up and put him back in the bassinet, and just sitting up with him while he was alert after feeding and enjoying the interaction when i was awake enough to do so instead of trying to rock him back to sleep. i'm not any less tired today, but at least i got some quality staring-into-each-other's-eyes time. yesterday we were with justin's extended family, and milo's cousin that is 7 weeks older sleeps through the night, and his second cousin who is six months older has slept through the night since she was two weeks old (while being breastfed), so it gives me hope that this whole cycle will eventually morph into something more sane. and even if it takes a while, the sweetness of him in bed with us, curled up in my arm, latched on and looking up at me with his big eyes - it makes the sleep deprivation and the worry and the nasty diapers seem worthwhile.

as the week goes on, i find hans popping up more and more. i see more every day how much my two sons looked alike, even if (i think) their personalities were very different. and while yesterday was a lovely day with family, all of the picture-taking - the three cousins with their babies, the great-grandmother with all her great-grandbabies on her lap - was bittersweet, because hans should have been there, the oldest of the crew, the big kid the other babies would soon be following around. and the little references that people make that exclude hans are like tiny daggers to my heart. friday night, we took justin's dad to his sister's house for the night, and she asked him how it felt to be a grandpa now, and of not one but two babies (meaning milo and our niece); i wanted to say something obnoxious about him having already been a grandparent for a year and a half, and that he had three grandchildren, but how does one inject such a thing into the conversation? especially when the people saying these things are full of good will - it's impossible. i don't have a problem correcting such people, as gently as i can, when they make such comments to me and about me, but i come up short when they're not addressing me directly. i wish i could do more for hans, and for his memory; i'm going to have to figure out how to make it happen, because it's too painful to let him be glossed over.

my mom is here now, and she is snuggling with milo while we rest, which is the best gift. this afternoon, we're taking milo in for a one-week checkup, because we had a little scare with him in the hospital - i still want and need to write about his birth, and will, as soon as i get my wits better about me.

*****

a quick note re: the post-birth pic of me and milo - no, i was not wearing lipstick, not after having sweat my way through the night, and never ever that color. i had been sucking on cherry popcicles all night - that's the only reasonable explanation i can come up with. i had a really easy delivery, but not that easy a delivery.

a thousand words

justin's dad has arrived from vermont this morning and has taken over the role of primary adorer of milo so we can chill out for a few minutes. there's so much to write, and i will, and so many blogs i haven't read in a week, but i will - just give me a little time. i need every opportunity to rest i can, especially after milo woke up to take boobie hits at 3, 4 and 5 am, which should teach me not to brag about his eating habits so quickly.

meanwhile, some new pics of milo right after birth, dressed for coming home from the hospital, and hanging out in bed with daddy last night:

uz jsme doma

uz jsme doma is (1) the name of justin's favorite band in the entire universe (no small statement, coming from him), (2) czech for "we are home," and, (3) as justin has declared, our theme for today.

we got home about 4:00 this afternoon - with milo!!! - and after justin hauled in all of bags and flowers and we showed milo around the house (he seems mesmerized by the hot pepper green walls of his room), we headed upstairs to sleep. the extent to which i need sleep, precious sleep, is great, but i find now that we're home i'm a bundle of nerves. not just nerves, really, but a bundle of frayed, live, nerve-endings. so justin and milo are napping and i came downstairs to read all the lovely comments left and to get at least a little of the events of the last four days off my chest in the hopes that it will give me some peace.

so for one thing, yes, milo looks quite like justin. i was thinking he looked like justin's family more than justin himself until just a couple of minutes ago, when i sat down at the kitchen table with the laptop and saw the photo justin's grandmother gave me a couple of weeks ago of justin as a toddler, and now it's crystal clear he is the spitting image of him. in fact, if reproduction worked the other way around, justin may have needed maternity tests to prove i was the mother. i will say that i think milo has my hands, which are probably one of my better features, so it was a good thing to take away from my half of his DNA.

he also looks a little like hans. i wondered all through the pregnancy whether they would look alike, and as we got closer to the end i worried they would look too much alike. when he first came out, i thought he looked completely different, but justin started seeing it over time, and when milo's head is turned to the side, i do see the resemblance. whatever our flaws, we have a sterling track record of making beautiful boys.

and may i brag about what a top-notch boobie-boy milo is? i cannot begin to describe how nervous i have been about breastfeeding. i will try to describe more later, because i need to work out some of my thoughts on the subject, but for now let me just say that he has made it so freaking easy for me. he's hungry every 3 hours, and no sooner, and he latches right on and is focused and extremely task-oriented (which also does sort of call into question the source of his DNA, because neither of his parents are like that), and so efficient a leech is he that my milk has already come in this afternoon. when i put on my current bra, just before we were discharged from the hospital mid-afternoon, it was comically saggy, and now it's filled out like a jane russell cross your heart commercial.

he's crying now for another round, so while justin changes his diaper, let me just say i feel like the luckiest girl in the world. i never knew it could be like this. i am completely blown away. i will write more later, and load more pictures (which are now legion) - let's face it, i will have TONS to say and show. you know me. :)

a few pictures, some zzzzz's and a change of clothes

First off, thanks for the incredible support. It's 4somethingam, just changing clothes and plan to grab a few zzzzz's - many more pictures to follow, but here's a sneak preview.

Milo is now out of nursery - it took a few hours, long story, but all seems well - and in our room, currently sleeping aside Laura. He's a very sweet boy - quite the host of the tens of people who poured into our room for an impromptu coming out into the world party (thanks hospital staff for being so cool key about that!)