Hippie Mom in a Preppy World

Archive for the ‘Baby Fox’ Category

A lot has happened over the past few weeks, not all of it worth reporting. After months of constant stress over having care for Shammy while I worked, we have finally found a long term solution.

I had a very strong aversion to commercial daycares when Shammy was an infant but I am ok with the idea after 1 years old. So after our babysitter put in her notice we then started the frustrating search for the right place. It was quite an adventure to navigate all of the options available. Our friends and acquaintances seemed to think that we were made out of money or really needed to save our son’s soul for all of the recommendations that we were getting cost more than I make in a day at work thus making it cheaper for me to just stay home or it was religious based.

We do believe in exposing our son to different religious to foster understanding, acceptance and help him find his path when he is old enough to make that choice but we are against emphasizing a religion that is not our own on a daily basis by sending him to a place that has bible time in lieu of story time.

For a while I was so frustrated and overwhelmed that I started to considering private babysitters again, what a barrel of rotten apples that was. In previous occasions we had found the right person very quickly, but this time it took us almost 2 weeks to find the right place.

Early in my search I had come in contact with a brand new licensed home day care not far from our house. It looked good on paper and the address had symbolism special to us, it took us a week to finally set up a meeting. It has a maximum enrollment of 5 and it is set up like a preschool classroom with a play based curriculum. The price is right, home cooked nutritious meals are included and cloth diapers are cool.

How do I know that we found the right place? When I go to pick up Shammy and at first he is happy to see me and eager to nurse but as soon as he’s done breastfeeding he waves bye bye and goes back to play. He is only going 3 days a week but so far he likes going to “school”.

During his first day of "school"

Over the past month I have been doing in depth research on educational options. Despite what some people may think, I don’t aspire to become a doula or midwife, I don’t have what it takes and quite frankly I’m not very interested in that. Since I get paid to talk about breastfeeding and I still don’t tire of it I feel most drawn to pursuing a breastfeeding specialty certification. The ultimate goal would be the IBCLC certification since it’s the only title that is widely recognized but sadly the fact that when I went to college I took the wrong classes since I never imagined myself working in the health field means that I would have to go back to college for 8 classes in addition to the lactation education required.

I would totally do this is if wasn’t for the fact that I can’t afford such a large tuition cost ($300 per class plus fees at the local college). I’m still struggling with my student loans from my first stint in college over 10 years ago which messes up my changes for financial aid.

So IBCLC is out for the time being but there are a variety of other options available. The title earned varies by school but the course content is practically the same. The tuition ranges from $700-$1,000, still steep in our current situation but not so impossible. There is one program that offers me a payment plan that I can almost afford so I may just go that route, depending on how much time I find to study it can take me 6 months or 2 years. Since the Certified Breastfeeding Counselor title doesn’t open as many doors or brings as much money as IBCLC I have also looked into becoming a Certified Childbirth Educator as an additional revenue stream. So I just need to find a spare $1,200 to get this all accomplished.

So in the meantime, I’ll start small with Breastfeeding USA, it’s very affordable to become an accredited Breastfeeding Counselor through them because it’s a volunteer gig and I’m already doing it with every non-WIC mom that I help. The most expensive thing is the textbook, which is also the required text for the bigger course so if you really want to support me I could use this book

Some people mistakenly assume that I have a problem with mothers that choose to formula feed, my problem is not with the mother but rather with the formula companies and their marketing tactics. While I listened to the Health Department’s Head of Tobacco Prevention discuss their program I saw many similarities between what tobacco companies do in their marketing that formula companies do as well and wonder if we (meaning lactivists) should take the same approach of grassroots work to get local resolutions or ordinances to regulate the marketing of Artificial Baby Milk. I am not advocating a formula ban, not at all, but rather for Enfamil/Similac/Nestle/etc to stop their predatory practices undermining breastfeeding.

And then we come across the latest big debate about the free formula samples given in hospitals, my boss firmly believes that there would be riots in the local hospital if the free samples were no longer available. But like a popular article recent states on hospitals sending breastfeeding newborns home with formula “is like giving somebody divorce papers at their wedding.”

So since formula freebies are an addition for some just like cigarettes and every body ears violence at the unfairness of completely removing them from hospital cold turkey, how about locking them behind a key and distribute BY REQUEST ONLY to moms that are only formula feeding! that way the mom that is breastfeeding and doesn’t need a confidence buster won’t be tempted and the mom that is dead set on her god given right to give her baby substandard nutrition can still get her free can.

And this installment’s rant:

As you all know I hate bucket babies, I totally get the convenience of getting a sleeping baby out of the car without waking them up by just taking the car seat out, we’ve done that here. What I hate is when the baby spends the better part of the day in the bucket and gets minimal skin to skin.

So imagine my disgust when at a consignment sale I come across a contraction that allows the mother to “wear” the car seat, OMG! I’m all in favor of babywearing but this is just ridiculous, those car seats are heavy without the baby and this is far from ergonomic. The one I saw for sale was practically new indicating that the mom didn’t get the benefit intended from it, I would be that the money she was hoping to make selling it would go towards her chiropractic expenses after messing up her back.

My back hurts every time I look at this

My previous post seemed to have caused quite the shock in some and since comments were disabled I got some comments privately but I just wanted to clarify a misunderstanding that some people seem to have. Yes, I was disappointed I didn’t have him the way it was planned but I knew that plans are made to be broken and the actual birth experience was not traumatic for me. I do not believe that I had an “unnecesarean.”

Speaking of unnecesareans, in my work I come accross many mothers that have the same surgeon that cut me open as their OB, and I started to notice a pattern where they all had cesareans. It became an alarming pattern so for the past 10 days I’ve been keeping an anonymous count of moms that have “delivered” with that doctor and right now the tally stands at 21 cesareans/0 vaginal births, scary huh?  Given that the pattern has been in place for months before I started counting I feel I can safely rule out coincidence as a factor.   

Moving on… no just because he turned one I am not weaning.  That is the answer that I had to give our pediatrician at Shammy’s 1 year appointment.  I really only go to him because I don’t have private insurance to take him to Dr Punger.  He knew to back off when I spoke his language and said “I work as a breastfeeding couselor for the Health Department”, he then knew that there was no point in pressing the matter.  He forgets that the AAP states breastfeeding for 1 year as a MINIMUM and the World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 2 years.

A lot of people seemed surprised that I didn’t do the ritual turning around of the car seat on July 30th.  “But he’s legal to face forward now” they say.  Just because it is legal, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe.  The American Academy of Pedriatics recommends that children remain rear facing until 2 years old.  He doesn’t know what he is missing and I have more peace of mind.

A few weeks ago Shammy got his first haircut, it was a bittersweet experience.  I loved his long hair but it was hard to keep it looking groomed.  We got him a mohawk and boy did he look cool.  For his first experience we took him to a kids salon and it was worth it, they had tons of toys, Spongebob Squarepants was there and he got his hair cut while sitting in a police car.  At the end he got a certificate with some of his hair, a balloon and a sticker.  Aside from the McDonald’s drive thru toy in the waiting area I was very satisfied with them and would recommend them.  I miss his hair but love his new look.

First Haircut Accomplished!

This post has been in the works for over a year.  It started by floating around my head before I decided to write it, then a draft kept changing and changing, sitting idle and then changing again.

As much as I enjoy motherhood and my son brings me immense joy, the whole journey has not been entirely rosy. As you already know from my birth story, my homebirth plans went down the toilet and resulted in an emergency c-section.  I ended up suffering from PTSD which evolved into PPD, people immediately assume that it was from the surgery  but that is not so.

As detailed in my birth story, when I was hooked to the monitors and I could hear Shammy’s heartbeat, I would notice that his heart rate would drop every time I had a contraction and would practically stop every time I pushed.  The doctor wasn’t in the room most of the time so I had the midwife still telling me to push while my husband and doula cheered.  Nobody noticed but me so I did the only thing that I could think of at the time I started to fake push.

I didn’t expect my husband or doula to catch on because they’re not trained and not even focusing on the monitor but the midwife kept looking at the monitor to check for contractions yet seemed oblivious to the drop in heart rate.   It wasn’t until days later that I shared with my husband what had happened in that room.

I realized that I couldn’t fake pushing forever so as soon as the doctor came back into the room I pushed for real, it took 1 push for him to notice and immediately ask me to stop and say that for baby’s safety a surgery would be best.  By then I already had plenty of time to evaluate the situation and had come to the same conclusion so I admit that for a moment felt relief knowing that there was an end in sight.

I was surprisingly calm for the circumstances but at the same time I was terrified.  By then I was sure that Shammy would be alright so I only had to deal with my fear of the surgery itself.  And the rest as they all say, is history.

After the birth I had to deal with frequent flashbacks of being told to push and listening to the beeps in the monitor slow down only to pick up again when I stopped.  This scene has replayed in my mind endlessly for the past year. I was so happy to have a healthy baby yet I was crying regularly at the reoccurring memory.  After several days of nightmares I realized that this wasn’t the typical baby blues brought on b the typical hormonal changes.

At first I didn’t know what to do, therapy wasn’t an option at the moment and I was too exhausted and overwhelmed with a newborn to really apply my spiritual practices that have helped in the past.

At 1 week postpartum I broke down crying while the OB checked the healing of my incision.  I could see by how uncomfortable he was that talking to him was not an option so he helped in the only way that he knew how but pulling out his prescription pad.  I was prescribed an anti depressant but I didn’t immediately take it and instead chose to suffer longer.

The prescription for Zoloft had been filled, the pills were sitting on my desk but I wouldn’t take them.  I kept researching it’s effects on breastfeeding.  I was scared that the OB said that I would have to take them for a minimum of 3 months and couldn’t just stop them cold turkey, it felt like such a huge commitment since I couldn’t expect immediate results either.  My fears were somewhat calmed by Dr Punger sharing that I could only take it for a week if needed.

At 3 weeks postpartum my parents were flying in from Puerto Rico to meet their grandson.  Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t have a very close relationship with them and any sort of interaction with my family brings a wave of anxiety oftentimes resulting in full blown panic attacks.  In the past a shot of tequila would help but that wasn’t an option this time.

At the encouragement of my husband that is when I finally surrendered in hopes of having an amiable visit with my parents.  It helped a lot and I could see results sooner than I expected but I also started to experience side effects just as quickly.  I had to take the daily pill right before bedtime and I had 15 minutes to get settles before “the high” would kick.  But this wasn’t a good high, I felt like I was on a bad trip along with hallucinations, the only way to really deal with them was to sleep through it.  If Shammy woke up within 4 hours of me having taken the pill I couldn’t walk with him because I was just too unstable and would literally walk into walls.  Despite all of that I felt that the benefits were outweighing the side effects.

I did have to keep a close eye on how the pill was affecting Shammy.  I did notice that the fat content in my breastmilk had dropped greatly while I was taking Zoloft but that is something that I knew would happen and I just made sure that Shammy’s weight was regularly monitored.  He may not have gained weight as fast initially as other breastfed babies but he still held his ground on the growth charts and it was never an issue.

Another weight related side effect that I did notice was in my personal weight loss.  Before the pill I had lost 32 pounds of pregnancy weight by just sitting on the couch and breastfeeding but that stopped once I started the medication.  At first my weight just plateaued but after a month I gradually started to gain weight.  It wasn’t until I stopped taking the pill that I started to loose weight again but even then it has been slow but I blame that on my sedentary lifestyle and being less careful with my nutrition.

My original plan was to take the pill until my parents left town but then it became time for me to prepare to go back to work and that brought a whole new round of anxiety so I took it a little longer.  As you already know if you’ve been reading this blog a while.  I didn’t last long at work.  I was hopelessly depressed while at work and I spent more time crying at my desk or in the bathroom than getting any work done.  Add to that the challenges with pumping and management trying to change my schedule I don’t want to imagine how it would have been if I was not on medication.

Overall I took Zoloft for almost 4 months, once life started to feel stable and I felt like I had the hang of motherhood I started to self wean.  By then I didn’t have health insurance so even though I was supposed to step down with a doctor’s care that was not an option for me.  I started to take the pill every other day, after a while I went to once every 2 days.  Until one day I just forgot to take it, and forgot again the next day, and the day after that.

During that time I was experiencing some weird symptoms that had started to scare me, for a moment I even thought I had vertigo or some other sort of weird disorder but with no health coverage I couldn’t seek a diagnosis.  I had problems with vision and balance.  After about a week my husband wondered out loud if my symptoms were related to me not taking the pill anymore.  The thought had not crossed my mind!

So I consulted the doctor for the uninsured, Dr. Google and found no shortage of people in my situation.  I was experiencing withdrawals and my only option to feel better was to start taking the pill again.  I did not want to become a junkie, it had already been over a week so I decided that cold turkey was how it was going to be and I would just have to grin and bear it.  It took over a month for my body to fully detoxify and for all of the withdrawal symptoms to disappear.

For months I lived in fear of a relapse but thankfully it didn’t come to that.  I regret not having been able to have gotten traditional counseling but thank the support of strangers in PTSD/PPD and C-Section recovery forums for doing the part that the pill could not do.

I consider myself lucky that things didn’t get as dark as they could have and I have to give credit for me accepting that there was a problem early on.  It would have been a much steeper hill had I been in denial.

I am disabling comments on this post because just like I didn’t want to talk about it during the first year, I still struggle with bringing my vulnerabilities out in the open so this is being posted for that new mom days, weeks, months or years down the line that finds herself in the same situation and just needs that stranger’s story to know what she needs to do.  Just like that stranger mom with her blog post did for me.