* Swedish for grandma or mother’s mother.

At least I have my last breast pumping sometime mid- to late-2012 to look forward to!

I hope Eskil’s ovum donor, whoever and wherever she may be, have a great year ahead.

Wherever you are in this journey of ours you are, I hope 2012 is wonderful for you.  It truly is amazing the difference some years can make in your life.

This time of year is like minesweeper for me. My darling first son Blobby died a week before Christmas. I think of him every day, but even more so at this time of year. This time of year is especially good for flashbacks where it suddenly feels like I’m experiencing his death or events that happened near his death all over again. Sometimes I can predict what might trigger them and try to avoid them, but like minesweeper sometimes it just happens. Game over.

Everyone seems to think that having my darling, living boy means the pain of Blobby’s death should be gone. It’s not. I don’t really understand this attitude. If I’d had two older children and one died I can’t imagine that people would think it was OK to loose one.

So as wonderful as it has been to experience Christmas with my living son, I miss my first boy.

It would be nice to go back in time and whisper in my ear that all would be well. It would be nice if I could have believed that whisper and enjoyed having Sparky on the inside instead of spending the whole time worried. But I don’t think my history would have allowed it. And it wouldn’t have been very ‘me’ to actually enjoy myself.

Here are some images of Little Spark a year ago today and today:

One of These Embryos Is Our Little Spark!

I wonder if she remembers the significance of today?  I wonder if she thinks about the results that could have come from that OPU?  I wonder if Sparky is going to look her up when he’s 18?  I wonder if in his rebellious teenage years he’ll tell me I’m not really his mum?   His life is his own – my gift to him – and I’ll love him regardless.

But what matters to me now is that he exists.  He’s happy (when not gassy).  And I’m happy.

• Put them away when not in use.  This is easier said than done, but I do try to remember to put my breasts away when I’m not pumping.  However it’s almost inevitable that there will be some reason you run out on your front porch with them exposed.  Such as when your husband bounces bub after a big feed and said big feed is suddenly back up.  If you keep old towels for cleaning up the dog’s paws before she enters the house on your front porch, your neighbours are going to get a show.  Yeah, speaking from experience.
  
• Try to get a grip.  If you are producing breast milk, this means you are a hormonal creature who is also probably facing some issues and stresses.  Keep this in mind and be kind to yourself.  But also keep in mind that there are worse things than having to exclusively pump – such as not having a baby to pump for.
• You need a good breast pump.  I use a Ameda Purely Yours mostly, and a friend has very generously leant me a Medela Swing as it has a great design for pumping on the go.  (However I’ve only done this once.  You still have to clean all the pump bits and store the mild safely – which can be hard on the run.  Plus it can be hard to relax pumping in the back seat of you car  in a car park or in front of your mother-in-law’s house!)
• Bite me.  I realised the other day I use this phrase a lot.  However it’s is quite useful.  If you’re out and giving your son a bottle of your preciously expressed breast milk and someone looks as you askance, give them a high five in the face and say ‘bite me’.  It’s no business of theirs what sort of milk you’re giving your bub.
• Have a pumping station set up and ready.  It’s much easier than getting things out and away each time – you’re going to be doing this a lot.  Have a glass a pitcher of water within easy reach.  Have hands-free or single-handed things to entertain you within easy reach – your phone (I LIVE on Twitter and Facebook and playing minesweeper), a TV remote, whatever.
• Massage your breasts while pumping.  Massaging or using compression on your breasts helps A LOT.  I’ve cured painful blocked ducts myself this way, but it also helps make certain you empty each breast well each time – which is important for maintaining supply.
• Get some rest.  I’m chuckling as I write this because it’s really not that simple, is it?!  But I do notice that I have more milk if I’ve slept between pumps.
• Run a 24/7 dairy operation. Yeah.  Unfortunately I don’t go longer than 3 or at the most 4 hours between pumps.  And that’s not between when you stopped and when you start again – that’s between when you started and when you start next time.  So even though my bub has been sleeping through the night for weeks, I’m still a zombie.  I pump twice in the night – at either 1:30 or 2:30 and 5:30 or 6:30.  Sucks, but it seems boobs don’t adjust as well to long stretches if you’re pumping as opposed to if you’re breastfeeding.  And if you’re dedicated to keeping your supply up you must pump routinely.
• Put used pumping equipment in a bag in the fridge.  This way you can do bigger wash-ups rather than washing each time you pump.  But of course that’s optional.
• Buy washing up gloves.  You don’t have to sterilise for breast milk like you do for formula feeding, but you do have to wash flanges, bottles, etc in HOT soapy water and let everything air dry.  If you don’t use washing up gloves you will soon have hands that are cracked and bleeding.  I speak from experience!  Also have a separate sponge just for breast milk stuff that you keep away from other washing up things.
• Keep an eye on your husband.  He will do stupid things like use your precious, clean breast milk stuff washing sponge to wipe something off the kitchen floor.  Because husbands don’t understand clean.  He will also pick up tissues from the ground and wipe bub’s mouth.  Idiot.
• If you’re too stressed or are not getting support, don’t be a martyr; give up.  I’m in the swing of things now, but there was a time when I should have given up.  Ditto with trying to breastfeed; at one point it was doing horrible things to my relationship with my son.  Don’t use me as a guide.  Keep in mind I did 14 ovum pick ups;  I’m just too stupid and too stubborn to give up when I should.  As the child health nurse said to me, there’s more to raising a child than breast milk.  There is formula out there to help.
• Serving suggestions.  Some people will say you must bring breast milk back to body temperature  before you give it to your bub.  I think that’s a crock.  My son has a slow teat, so he only gets a small stream.  It warms up in his mouth pretty much instantly.  I’m not willing to warm up a whole bottle if he might not drink it all; no way do I want to set myself up for throwing any of my hard-won breast milk out!  If I’ve just expressed or I know he’s going to have a good feed he has it warm.  Otherwise he gets it cold, has done for weeks, and hasn’t complained or had stomach upsets.  Maybe that would be different in winter, but it’s late spring here in Tasmania.
• Cream rises to the top.  Yes, even with human breastmilk.  Giggle the bottle to incorporate it back into the milk.  When you’re travelling and the milk it giggled, it might form little blips.  As long as you know the milk hasn’t gotten cold, these are just fine and a result of the chilled milk being jostled around.
• Don’t let your husband mix batches from different pumping sessions.  He’s always trying to do this, and I want to be sure I know how old the milk is – you can find storage rules in your pump’s instruction manual or get these for your child health nurse.
• Have a wine or beer!  Yes, sometimes I have a wine or beer straight after my last pump of the day.  I have test strips to check for alcohol in breast milk, but as long as I go 4 hours I’ve never had any trace of alcohol.
• Rotate your stock.  If you’re lucky enough to have breast milk in the freezer, even if bub doesn’t need it yet rotate it every week or so.  I only have 3 x 200 ml in the freezer, but I’ve been rotating it (i.e. taking a bag out and putting another back in to freeze that day) every week or two.  Ready for that inevitable growth spurt!

YES!

Even more than I did pre-Sparky, I feel pulled in a million directions.  My dog Lottie wants my love and attention.  My husband wants love and affection (good luck getting the physical kind!  ).  My friends want emails.  Eskil’s grandparents want photos.  My garden wants to not be choked with weeds and perhaps get some water now and then.  But because the most important person not just wants me but needs me, Eskil comes first.

And some people aren’t coping well with that.

But there’s another important person I need to take care of: me.  Because I’ve realised that taking care of me is taking care of Eskil.  I need to keep my sanity, whether it’s by blogging so I can sort out my thoughts, having a shower to relax, or having half an hour while I’m pumping to have my own head space.

I’m finite. Don’t try to spread me too thin.

He’s growing and doing new things each day.  He grasps things, can see something then give it a whack purposefully.  He’s more vocal daily, gurgling and laughing and chatting.

I love him more than anything, even though I still can’t believe he’s real.  And what does he seem to think of me?  He thinks I’m hilarious.

At antenatal class the midwife said we’d have a chance to ask any questions while we were in hospital, so I figured I’d be all right with that.  I knew nothing; not how to swaddle, not how to change a nappy, not how to give a bath, not what those sounds coming from the cot meant and whether or not I was supposed to react to them, etc.  They pretty much covered that and other things I couldn’t have even imagined while  in hospital.

And I still haven’t read any books.  I hate to say it, but it’s been easier than I thought.  Not the lack of sleep and breast refusal part, but the other stuff hasn’t been awful.  He gets hungry; I give him something to eat.  His nappy becomes crappy; I change it (sorry – one of the bizarre little chit-chats I have while changing him is talking about changing him from a crappy nappy into a happy nappy chappy).  When he’s awake I chat to him.  I smile; I’m animated.  I read books.  I tell him about the world.  We leave the house every day.  I tell him about his conception.  I teach him that my opinions are actually fact: Weird Al is the bestest musician and instructor in cultural literacy and Jane Austin’s best novel is Northanger Abbey, not Pride and Prejudice.

I felt even better about my approach when a friend said she regrets reading so many books.  She thinks she tried to over prepare herself so much that instead of reacting to her daughter she was constantly searching for what the books said would happen and said she should do.  Not that I think it’s all intuition, but so far there are people like child health nurses who tell me anything important.  There are so many supports around that there is always someone to ask – and I could of course crack out my book.

And things aren’t always easy.  And I’m probaby missing really important things I have no idea about.  Sometimes when I see older children I wonder how in the world I will ever deal with the problems that come with whatever age that child is; after all, I’m not qualified.

Then I realise that just as with the age he is now, we’ll just figure it out together.