From squishy newborn to cheeky monkey

Once a little bean that simply ate, slept and pooped, over the past couple of months Little Red has really started to boost his character. Of course he always had some semblance of a personality - he began life with quite a penchant for art, spending most of his "awake" time gawking at the paintings and prints that adorn our walls (I've since bought him his first piece of art, none other than Mickey to Tiki Tu Meke by the brilliant Dick Frizzell - but don't get too excited, it's not a limited edition). He was also born with a strong appreciation for good music (Duran Duran and NOFX if you ask Nick, The National and Wilco if you ask me) - flailing his arms and bopping around whenever a song came on. Although having said all this, I'll put down my pretentious stick now and admit that he probably just liked the colours and the noise. It's probably a breath of fresh air seeing and hearing things other than the inside of my belly and the muffled sound of my horrendous rendition of All That Jazz in the shower each night.

The first time he smiled was amazing - from that one simple, cheeky grin oozed as much charm and charisma as a baby can have and I knew then that I had a wee monkey on my hands. Since that day he's begun to laugh and giggle - at Nick's new found "Dad Dance" (which consists of a few knee bobs and far too much pointing), our never ending game of Peepo or, most of the time, nothing at all. He also turns on the pizazz like nobody's business. Recently we've been house hunting and he never fails to render the real estate agents gooey putty in his tiny wee hands. Funny how he screams his head off in the car on the way over (not such a fan of the car seat) only to flutter those big blue eyes and grin from ear to ear as soon as we've reached said house.

His most recent tricks are by far the cutest things I've ever seen. I now have no doubt that by four months old a baby knows a little about how to get what he/she wants. Well, this one does at least. Little Red's first gag is to grab your attention and grab your attention he does! Leave him for a bit on his play gym or in his baby bouncer and once he's gotten a tad bored he'll start with the chatting which then turns into a bit of a growl and then moves onto a barrage of shouting at the poor unsuspecting caterpillar hanging from the play gym. This continues until you look over at him and suddenly he stops only to put on the sweetest, warmest smile you've ever seen and then follows that up with a satisfied sigh and a gentle coo. And as soon as I see this smile, well, I'm all his. 

His other favourite game is the boo-boobie game. This generally only takes place when there's another person present and he doesn't have my 100% attention. Once he's had just enough to satiate himself (but not quite enough to keep him full and happy for the next three hours) he begins the break-up-the-conversation battle. It goes a little something like this.... 

*Feed, feed, feed. Oh no! Mummy's not watching me! Pull off and stare at her until she realises I'm not latched. Ah yes, she's looking now. Big grin, big giggle, big nuzzle and then back to feed, feed, feed. Oh no! She's stopped watching again! Right, I'm pulling back off and staring again. Haha! Look at me, Mum! Grin, giggle, nuzzle, feed feed feed*

And so on. This continues until I apologise to whoever else is in the room, put the conversation on hold and keep my eyes glued to the boy (no tricking, Mummy. I can see you out of the corner of my eye) until I'm satisfied that he's so stuffed he's now grinning in all his milk-drunk glory.

Maybe he knows he's doing it, although it's probable that he doesn't - he's simply being the darling wee bairn he was put on this earth to be. I love the fact that my boy's a little monkey, that he's got personality plus and the only thing he needs to do is flash me a grin or bat his eyes and I turn to mush. The giggles, the coos, the squeals and the cheekiness - it gets me every time!

Babies & boobies - Ruth's breastfeeding story

My little one was born with a very strong suck and very hungry! She fed and fed and fed for the first twelve hours after she was born which was great news for us.

Unfortunately, she was born not knowing how to manage the natural gape reflex - the tongue down action that all babies "should" instinctively do which meant that she caused a lot of damage to my nipples. She was checked for a tongue tie but didn't have one so I had to adopt nipple shields to be able to keep on breastfeeding.

I found that feeding got harder, rather than easier, over the next few days. Firstly, my little one got jaundice and lost too much weight so we had to stay in the hospital for a few extra days, force feeding her to get her weight back up which proved a challenge as she kept falling asleep at the breast and it was a struggle to finish a feed - such a contrast from her first few hours! 

Because of this, when we got home I became incredibly engorged and she still wasn't feeding strongly so I was in a lot of pain.... unfortunately, it turned into a breast infection.
This necessitated antibiotics which upset my little one even more and made her fussy during feeding, just as she was starting to get back that strong suck she was born with.

We had a lactation consultant come see us and were told that she wasn't getting enough milk when she was sucking because of the nipple shields, but due to the way she places her tongue I just couldn't stand the pain of feeding without them.

After a few weeks of anxiety over every feed that she wasn't 'getting enough milk' she regained her birth weight and started growing like a weed, gaining over 400 grams in one week! 

I am still using the shields as we have not yet worked out a way to get her to learn to put her tongue down when she feeds, despite visits to the Plunket Karitane Centre for help. I tell myself that the important thing is that I am still breastfeeding and I should count myself lucky as there are many women who aren't able to do it at all. 

I have hope that eventually we will be able to feed without any of the paraphernalia!

Babies & boobies - Huia's breastfeeding story

Just recently I met a woman about to have her first baby. We got chatting and I asked her if she was planning to breastfeed, “Of course!” she exclaimed, as though there isn’t any viable alternative. I remember being that woman. Our baby is now four and a half months and has only ever been fed breastmilk but it's been one hell of a roller coaster ride! Here is our story....

The decision to breastfeed was an easy one. All the research indicates that breast milk is by far the best thing for baby, designed especially for him and modified constantly to meet his needs. I needed no convincing.  

Wanting to be as prepared as possible we enrolled in Mama-licious' breastfeeding classes. We took notes, actively engaged in class, discussed what we’d learnt afterwards. We also attended antenatal classes, of which one whole evening was dedicated to breastfeeding. I read books, talked to women about feeding - I was prepared to feed our baby and I knew what to do. Yet all the preparation seemed somewhat pointless once he arrived. 

Soon after our little boy was born we attempted the first feed to extract the most divine of all breast milk, the colostrum. He wouldn’t latch. Or couldn’t. He didn’t know what he was doing. And, somewhat surprisingly, nor did I. Despite the reading, the classes, the research, when faced with our own reality things didn’t all fall into place. I will always remember the midwife hand expressing my breast to extract the precious few mls of colostrum with a needle-less syringe: “3 mls - that’s fantastic!” she’d exclaim. 

The next weeks of feeding every 3 hours during the day and every 4 hours at night (from the start of the first feed to the start of the next) with feeding taking at least an hour and attempting to latch him - sometimes successfully (and if not, feeding him expressed milk extracted with the aid of breast pump) - was exhausting. Thank goodness for our midwife Annie, Ann at the Plunket family centre, and a midwife friend - with their support, knowledge and encouragement, baby and I were learning the art of feeding. Not being able to latch baby and feed him “properly” was great self-flagellation fodder. But we did learn to latch and we survived that learning curve.

Unfortunately the next hurdle was just around the corner. In all my focusing on trying to latch baby I hadn’t been focusing on my own comfort... so while baby was learning to latch he wasn’t doing so in a way that was pain free. However, people say to expect “discomfort” so how was I to know that my discomfort was the beginning of a rather huge crack in my nipple? 

The pain of a nipple crack is extreme. My toes would curl as I put baby to my breast. I began to fear feeding time. So it was back to see Ann at the Family Centre to help with my technique and now I needed to take Panadol in advance of feeds (fearing feeding was bound to affect not just my body’s ability to let-down the milk but also, perhaps more importantly, the bonding with my baby). I was prescribed antibacterial gel for my cracked nipple at the risk I would get an infection in the gaping fissure which bled as he fed. 

The only way to fix the crack and keep feeding was to get the latch perfect every time. It was suggested that perhaps I could give that breast a break and express off it and feed baby the expressed milk but I didn’t want to - I just wanted to feed my baby “naturally”. After about ten days the crack healed, yay! I think nipple shells really helped on that front and the nipple shields probably did too, although I found them very hard to use as they seemed so slippery.

Our next hurdle was weight or rather the lack of it. Regular weigh-ins with Plunket to ensure his growth saw him, worryingly, at the bottom of the chart. I think perhaps it was during this hurdle that I came closest to stopping breastfeeding. Mainly out of worry and fear that my milk was not good enough for him, that my milk couldn’t sustain him in the way that he needed to grow big and strong. Feeding my baby was feeling like too much responsibility - what if my milk, all he consumed, wasn’t the perfect potion? If my milk wasn’t good enough, perhaps I wasn’t good enough to be his mother? It was at this stage that breastfeeding became a bit of a head fuck - those bloody charts! Our man is growing. He isn’t a big boy but he’s our long man.

Then came the thrush. I never knew you could get thrush in your nipples! It was in my nipples and his mouth according to the private lactation consultant whom we deployed to assist in baby’s inability to stay latched. He’d latch, suck, and pull off screaming. This cycle would continue until we were both sufficiently traumatised and realised that something wasn’t right. 

The lactation consultant was great - well worth the $75 per hour, but... why is such breastfeeding support not publicly available? With all the research clearly indicating that the “health outcomes” for breastfed babies are so much better, why is there not a gaggle of lactation consultants on magic carpets ready to come to your aid? Better funding is needed to support women in feeding their babies. It seems completely wrong to me that, in order to get the support that I needed, we were compelled to turn to a private consultant. 

The thrush in my nipples is now under-control after 9 delightful days of having to put gel in the dear boy's mouth after every feed (kind of like trying to medicate a cat) and, after vinegar rinsing my nipples, gel on those bad boys too.

Breastfeeding has been bloody hard and I can completely understand why women don’t persevere. I want all women to feel supported in feeding their babies whether that be with breastmilk or formula. Happy mama = happy baby. 

I’ve thought a lot about why breastfeeding is so hard and what could be done to make it easier. I think it all comes down to the way that society is now structured and it's lack of exposure to breastfeeding. We don’t see women feeding and when we do it's seen as rude or impolite to really watch and see what’s going on. Breasts are seen primarily as sexual objects not as feeding vessels and this is were I think a big part of the problem is. We need to see breasts as amazing milk creators and I love that my body can make milk for my baby - I love that my breasts are fulfilling their natural purpose. 

We need to watch women feed, we need to talk about feeding problems, we need to feed our babies around women who have feed theirs not so long ago, because our mothers fed us 20+ years ago and can’t be expected to remember! But the most important thing we must do is really share experiences and discuss breastfeeding. I am so grateful to all the wonderful women who have supported me.

PS. Having our darling boy hasn’t all been hard. He is beautiful and my heart melts in a way I could never have imagined. I would do anything for one of his twinkly smiles and my heart has grown tenfold in love. Our breastfeeding experience has been hard but having a him in our lives has been a delight.

Babies & boobies - real mothers, real stories

Apart from childbirth itself, breastfeeding is by far the most intense and stressful part of having a baby. Along with my own story, I will be posting accounts from some other mamas that took time out from their busy schedules to very kindly write about their own experiences to share with you all. Keep an eye out for these heart-grabbing, inspirational tales....

A most surreal afternoon walk with Little Red

What a beautiful spring Wellington morning it was today.... until mother nature packed a sad and sent the rain in. But then it was sunny again. Kind of. Looks like good ol' Welly is taking a leaf out of the Auckland weather book, eh? 

Anywho, completely muffing up my schedule (i.e. canceling a Plunket course and forfeiting coffee group for a journey up the way that turned out not to be today after all - that's baby brain for you, I guess), the wee pickle and I were at a loss for activities. About to set out on a delicious, sun filled meander down to Island Bay, we quickly halted our plans when the rain set in. What better to do than snuggle in bed on a rainy day? So we did just that. However, both of us suffer from incredibly short attention spans so as soon as the pitter patter of raindrops ceased, Little Red was in his buggy and we were out the door before you could say "walkies!"

Thankfully, the weather held out for most of our journey down to the beach. I was very much enjoying using the Mountain Buggy carrycot that a friend so kindly lent to us - for once it was lovely to watch Redford rocking around and drifting off to sleep. 

On the way back home the sun began to get unbearably hot, yet I could see storm clouds chasing us from the south and all of a sudden it began raining from the warm, sunny skies. It was so surreal, I haven't seen a sun shower in yonks and TV on the Radio was blaring away on my iPod which is always going to crazy things up a bit. The feeling was incredible - the ice cold raindrops pattering onto my hot cheeks and the smell was heavenly - you know that smell when rain hits warm asphalt and freshly cut grass? Yum! The only problem was, while I was thoroughly enjoying myself, I had no rain cover for Little Red.... oops. 

I pulled the hood up but the raindrops were still sneaking in and kissing bubs lightly on his cheeks, forehead, mouth and eyelids. The look on his face was one of pure shock, quite similar to the first time we put him in the bath and he looked at us like we'd just committed some unspeakable crime. Just as I was thinking oh heck, I'm about to have a screeching baby on my hands and scrabbling for my cardigan to put over the gap to fend of the incoming drops, he licked the rainwater off his lips, smacked them around a bit and then began to laugh! And this wasn't some sissy boy baby giggle, this was a full blown, over excited, guffawing laugh. I stopped and stared at him, thinking perhaps it was just a fluke but no, as I pushed the hood of the carrycot back and gave the rain more room to work with Little Red began to laugh more and more with every drop. It was incredible. In fact, by the time we got home I hurried him quickly inside for fear he would start hyperventilating from all the chuckling!

So, it turns out my little man loves the rain. What a surreal experience. Never in his life so far have I seen him so happy, it was the most glorious thing.