Electric Cow
I'm about a month in to being back at work, and so far it's... well.
It's not my favorite thing.
My first day back, I have to be honest, I was surprised at how well I handled it. I didn't even cry. I got a little choked up when I left the house, but that was it. No tears. Did that make me heartless? Of course I worried about not worrying.
My mom sent us pictures of Lily throughout the day, and I live (still) for those texts. When I got home that first day, Mom told me Lily had had a tough time, which I probably could have done without hearing. She apparently cried more than usual and didn't eat that much - maybe 4 oz the entire time I was out. Something else to worry about. Would she resist eating if she got upset everyday? How would that affect her healthy weight gain?
Work itself has been pretty decent. On the walk down to my classroom on day 1, it felt like I had never left. That was part of why it was so easy. There was some minor resistance from the students to my presence. They really liked the woman who had been my long term sub, so all I heard all day was how much they were going to miss her and pleading voices begging her to stay (she stayed at work that day to help me transition). Boy, did that make me excited to be back, she said sarcastically. Although I did feel hopeful in another aspect - if the students liked this other teacher so much, it meant they were capable of forming relationships with their teachers, which hasn't been that common for the last few years. I know I tend to be nice and rather relatable to the students, so that held some promise.
A lot of my coworkers told me coming back to work gets easier all the time.
One of the major things that's new to my schedule this year is pumping. There's a "pumping room" off the nurses's office where I now spend over an hour a day. I pump during my first period prep as well as during a meeting time/lunch. I really do like to get in a 30 minute pump, or close to it. Someone else I work with told me it would get quicker, but I haven't found that yet. The longer I go, the more I get. Don't want to cut that short. It's always a longer-than-30-minute process, though, as I have to change clothes and wash out the parts when I'm done.
I was sad about eating lunch alone initially. Then I remembered I don't always have something to contribute to the conversation. So now I watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix with my lunch and pump. At least I'll get a lot watched that I want to.
Lily has picked up on her eating habits. In fact, now my concern every day is being able to pump enough to feed her. I did start pumping very early on in motherhood, but I also paused for awhile when my mother in law visited. I did go back to it, but it wasn't easy when I was the only person home with the baby. I tried to get in at least a little pumping every day so Jon could give her one bottle so she didn't forget what that was like, but I should have been more on top of it. I didn't realize how much I was going to need to produce every day and how much that would marry me to the wires.
I also thought Lily was going to start on formula once I was back to work. My plan was to nurse her while I was home and give her formula while I was out. She's so easy and transitions so well into everything, we assumed it'd be no sweat.
So wrong. The first time we gave her formula, she screamed her head off. She did eat two ounces of it, but it was a real struggle. The next time, she flat out refused it. So we tried mixing it, giving her a bottle with 3 parts expressed milk and 1 part formula. She managed that with no problem. After a day or so of that, we moved up to 2 parts expressed to 1 part formula. She would start to drink, but when we stopped to burp her, it was like she realized the ruse and refused to take any more of the bottle.
I searched out help on message boards, which was a silly thing to do. I asked for advice on how long people had to try one formula before switching to another one without having any dietary reaction. When I asked anyone I know in person, they spoke of switching formulas due to digestion issues, not baby's tastes. People online, rather than even addressing the question I was asking, came back with, "Why don't you think you'll be able to produce enough milk?" That was all they could focus on. No one came close to responding to my actual inquiry.
With all the pumping I was doing and the minimal amount of food Lily was eating at first, I was relieved. No problem, right? I set up bottles with two ounces of milk each in them, and if Lily needed a second in a single feeding, fine. She often did, so I started putting four ounces in a bottle. And my parents continued to give her two bottles. So suddenly she went from four ounces in a sitting to eight, which is kind of ridiculous. She began whipping through all the bottles we left for her, which were maybe five, and on a few days, whoever was watching Lily defrosted another 4-6 ounces from the freezer supply.
Argh! How did she go from 4 ounces to 24 so quickly? I can't pump 24 ounces in a day! I can't even do 20! So at that rate, she was going to burn through the backup freezer supply in a week or two, and then where would we be? It was very nerve wracking for a few days. I'd have to try to really stock up on weekends, which isn't always possible if we're busy.
But we also figured my parents are probably feeding her a little too much. They hear her cry, and they feed her. They don't always try picking her up and moving around with her to entertain her or letting her cry a little bit (or, let's be honest, putting her in a stroller and walking around with her) to get her to sleep if she's tired. Jon and I are pretty good knowing the difference between the cries, but it's not as easy for people who don't spend as much time with her.
So we've had to tell my parents to try to tone it down on the milk to the best of their ability. Two weeks ago, I began pumping less in the morning than usual. I had a cold and was popping cough drops like no one's business. I read menthol can decrease milk production, so maybe that caught up to me. I've also read oatmeal can increase production, so I (re: Jon) started making a crock pot full of steel cut oats for me to bring breakfast. It seems to have helped.
Just like a cow. Feed me the oats so I can make the milk.
I now spend an inordinate amount of time hooked up to this machine. Initially, I was leaving it in school and pumping twice a day. Now, though, I'm up to pumping 4-5 times a day. Luckily, a coworker of mine had a pump she's no longer using that she gave me. Now I can keep one at work and one at home. Lucky me. I feel electronic, always plugged into a wall.
Call me EC. Electric Cow.
The sort of bonus? I think my body also wants me to eat high fat foods to produce more milk. In the time I was producing less, I was also trying to eat less junk. I've gone back to being a little more loosey-goosey in terms of that, and milk production is back up.
Okay. A few pieces of chocolate a day it is, then. My clothes still fit. So whatever.
Sleeping
Lily has always been a good sleeper. Even when she was a newborn and people would give us that knowing look and say with an eyebrow raise, "How much sleep are you getting?" Like it's the law that all babies sleep terribly (honestly, where did the phrase "sleep like a baby" even come from?!), and we must be exhausted because of this.
None of it is true. In the beginning, Jon woke us up more often than Lily, checking on her for every little noise she made. Then there was the time period when we had to wake her every two hours to feed her, but even then, she'd go back to sleep.
Before I went back to work, she had petered out to just one feeding a night, and then we had to set a 5:30 alarm to feed her because she didn't even wake up for that. Now she's weened off that even and can go 12-14 hours a night without eating or waking up. Beyond amazing for a five month old baby.
At her three month check up, the pediatrician recommended moving Lily to her own room and her crib since she already sleeps through the night. We couldn't face up to that. We enjoyed the comfort of having her next to us, the ability to put a hand on her chest in the middle of the night to check on her breathing or even just look at her and marvel at her beauty.
Not to mention, a lot of doctors recommend not moving your baby out of your room until they're six month old and the risk of the dreaded SIDS has decreased greatly.
Of course, my OB recommended moving the baby at six weeks old if she was sleeping well. When we brought up the SIDS issue, his response was, "What are you going to do if you're asleep anyway?"
Yup. Can't make this ish up.
Anyway, we decided not to move Lily. Then we had our four month visit and fessed up to that. The doctor said it was fine, though she thought we'd have a harder time eventually moving Lily the longer she got used to being in our room.
Personally, I didn't think she'd have a problem. She doesn't seem to mind change and transition that much. (Yes, I recognize the irony of that statement given the diatribe about formula above.) Plenty of people keep their kids in their rooms for a whole year. I think it's more likely that a child's personality determines how hard a time they have with going to their own room.
We did start putting Lily down to sleep and leaving our bedroom about a week before this visit, and she took to that very easily. It was nice to get an hour back to ourselves (although I use the vast majority of that time to be an EC now).
Given this, I also didn't think she'd have a problem transitioning to her room earlier, which I mentioned to Jon, and we decided to give it a try. I go to choir on Friday nights, but he said he was willing to give it a go on his own. I thought that'd be harder since Lily was nursing to sleep at the time. But four weeks ago, I came home from choir, and she was out. No issue at all.
Lily still often nurses to sleep, but it's not all the time. She sometimes has her last meal as early as 6:30 and doesn't go to sleep until 7 or 7:30. Jon gets her ready and possibly gives her a little rock, but she's very good at being put down in the crib with her pacifier and falling asleep even if she's not 100% out at that point. She's magical that way.
She's less magical when it comes to napping. She still fights us on that. Most of her napping is still done in the stroller or car seat, or occasionally on me if I nurse her when I get home from work. You read about the dangers of all these things, about the necessity of putting a baby down for a nap and letting them cry for 10 minutes or so until they fall asleep. We've tried it. It doesn't seem to work. And you know what? We worked hard for this baby, and she'll only be a baby for so long. If she needs a cuddle to fall asleep, so be it. We'll blink, and the cuddling days will be over.
So does it get easier?
No. It doesn't. If anything, I'd say it's gotten harder. I stop in to see Lily twice before work - once with Jon and once again before I go - and sometimes she wakes up and gives us a big smile. She's very happy when she wakes up. It makes me want to scoop her up into a cuddle right away and stay home with her. I have her baby monitor hooked up to my phone, so I generally get to see and talk to her while I'm pumping in the morning.
There are plenty of times I just feel sad. I walk around in a funk because I want to be with her rather than at work, where I often feel underappreciated and even sometimes unnecessary. I sit alone in the pumping room crying because I miss her. I wallow in the self-pity of living in "the greatest country in the world" that has no national maternity leave policy. I dread the thought of Lily having a first and our not being there to see it.
It's not all the time. But it is rather often. I've had calls from a local mental health clinic thing that took my information when I was in labor and delivery and got my permission to call and check in for the first few weeks. I have her number; I've thought about calling, but I don't really think this is postpartum. I just think it's the suckiness of being a working parent.
A few people have said to me, "You made this choice. You chose to be a working mother." But no. I did not. I live in a country where you don't have a choice anymore. If we want to afford our house, put food on the table, have our cars, have the internet, save for college, etc, I need to have a job. I have no choice. That's the way American works.
Not to mention the whole sudden biological need to have a child, whether it was what I planned or not.
Ugh. America. We can so do better.
It's not my favorite thing.
My first day back, I have to be honest, I was surprised at how well I handled it. I didn't even cry. I got a little choked up when I left the house, but that was it. No tears. Did that make me heartless? Of course I worried about not worrying.
My mom sent us pictures of Lily throughout the day, and I live (still) for those texts. When I got home that first day, Mom told me Lily had had a tough time, which I probably could have done without hearing. She apparently cried more than usual and didn't eat that much - maybe 4 oz the entire time I was out. Something else to worry about. Would she resist eating if she got upset everyday? How would that affect her healthy weight gain?
Work itself has been pretty decent. On the walk down to my classroom on day 1, it felt like I had never left. That was part of why it was so easy. There was some minor resistance from the students to my presence. They really liked the woman who had been my long term sub, so all I heard all day was how much they were going to miss her and pleading voices begging her to stay (she stayed at work that day to help me transition). Boy, did that make me excited to be back, she said sarcastically. Although I did feel hopeful in another aspect - if the students liked this other teacher so much, it meant they were capable of forming relationships with their teachers, which hasn't been that common for the last few years. I know I tend to be nice and rather relatable to the students, so that held some promise.
A lot of my coworkers told me coming back to work gets easier all the time.
One of the major things that's new to my schedule this year is pumping. There's a "pumping room" off the nurses's office where I now spend over an hour a day. I pump during my first period prep as well as during a meeting time/lunch. I really do like to get in a 30 minute pump, or close to it. Someone else I work with told me it would get quicker, but I haven't found that yet. The longer I go, the more I get. Don't want to cut that short. It's always a longer-than-30-minute process, though, as I have to change clothes and wash out the parts when I'm done.
I was sad about eating lunch alone initially. Then I remembered I don't always have something to contribute to the conversation. So now I watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix with my lunch and pump. At least I'll get a lot watched that I want to.
Lily has picked up on her eating habits. In fact, now my concern every day is being able to pump enough to feed her. I did start pumping very early on in motherhood, but I also paused for awhile when my mother in law visited. I did go back to it, but it wasn't easy when I was the only person home with the baby. I tried to get in at least a little pumping every day so Jon could give her one bottle so she didn't forget what that was like, but I should have been more on top of it. I didn't realize how much I was going to need to produce every day and how much that would marry me to the wires.
I also thought Lily was going to start on formula once I was back to work. My plan was to nurse her while I was home and give her formula while I was out. She's so easy and transitions so well into everything, we assumed it'd be no sweat.
So wrong. The first time we gave her formula, she screamed her head off. She did eat two ounces of it, but it was a real struggle. The next time, she flat out refused it. So we tried mixing it, giving her a bottle with 3 parts expressed milk and 1 part formula. She managed that with no problem. After a day or so of that, we moved up to 2 parts expressed to 1 part formula. She would start to drink, but when we stopped to burp her, it was like she realized the ruse and refused to take any more of the bottle.
I searched out help on message boards, which was a silly thing to do. I asked for advice on how long people had to try one formula before switching to another one without having any dietary reaction. When I asked anyone I know in person, they spoke of switching formulas due to digestion issues, not baby's tastes. People online, rather than even addressing the question I was asking, came back with, "Why don't you think you'll be able to produce enough milk?" That was all they could focus on. No one came close to responding to my actual inquiry.
With all the pumping I was doing and the minimal amount of food Lily was eating at first, I was relieved. No problem, right? I set up bottles with two ounces of milk each in them, and if Lily needed a second in a single feeding, fine. She often did, so I started putting four ounces in a bottle. And my parents continued to give her two bottles. So suddenly she went from four ounces in a sitting to eight, which is kind of ridiculous. She began whipping through all the bottles we left for her, which were maybe five, and on a few days, whoever was watching Lily defrosted another 4-6 ounces from the freezer supply.
Argh! How did she go from 4 ounces to 24 so quickly? I can't pump 24 ounces in a day! I can't even do 20! So at that rate, she was going to burn through the backup freezer supply in a week or two, and then where would we be? It was very nerve wracking for a few days. I'd have to try to really stock up on weekends, which isn't always possible if we're busy.
But we also figured my parents are probably feeding her a little too much. They hear her cry, and they feed her. They don't always try picking her up and moving around with her to entertain her or letting her cry a little bit (or, let's be honest, putting her in a stroller and walking around with her) to get her to sleep if she's tired. Jon and I are pretty good knowing the difference between the cries, but it's not as easy for people who don't spend as much time with her.
So we've had to tell my parents to try to tone it down on the milk to the best of their ability. Two weeks ago, I began pumping less in the morning than usual. I had a cold and was popping cough drops like no one's business. I read menthol can decrease milk production, so maybe that caught up to me. I've also read oatmeal can increase production, so I (re: Jon) started making a crock pot full of steel cut oats for me to bring breakfast. It seems to have helped.
Just like a cow. Feed me the oats so I can make the milk.
I now spend an inordinate amount of time hooked up to this machine. Initially, I was leaving it in school and pumping twice a day. Now, though, I'm up to pumping 4-5 times a day. Luckily, a coworker of mine had a pump she's no longer using that she gave me. Now I can keep one at work and one at home. Lucky me. I feel electronic, always plugged into a wall.
Call me EC. Electric Cow.
The sort of bonus? I think my body also wants me to eat high fat foods to produce more milk. In the time I was producing less, I was also trying to eat less junk. I've gone back to being a little more loosey-goosey in terms of that, and milk production is back up.
Okay. A few pieces of chocolate a day it is, then. My clothes still fit. So whatever.
Sleeping
Lily has always been a good sleeper. Even when she was a newborn and people would give us that knowing look and say with an eyebrow raise, "How much sleep are you getting?" Like it's the law that all babies sleep terribly (honestly, where did the phrase "sleep like a baby" even come from?!), and we must be exhausted because of this.
None of it is true. In the beginning, Jon woke us up more often than Lily, checking on her for every little noise she made. Then there was the time period when we had to wake her every two hours to feed her, but even then, she'd go back to sleep.
Before I went back to work, she had petered out to just one feeding a night, and then we had to set a 5:30 alarm to feed her because she didn't even wake up for that. Now she's weened off that even and can go 12-14 hours a night without eating or waking up. Beyond amazing for a five month old baby.
At her three month check up, the pediatrician recommended moving Lily to her own room and her crib since she already sleeps through the night. We couldn't face up to that. We enjoyed the comfort of having her next to us, the ability to put a hand on her chest in the middle of the night to check on her breathing or even just look at her and marvel at her beauty.
Not to mention, a lot of doctors recommend not moving your baby out of your room until they're six month old and the risk of the dreaded SIDS has decreased greatly.
Of course, my OB recommended moving the baby at six weeks old if she was sleeping well. When we brought up the SIDS issue, his response was, "What are you going to do if you're asleep anyway?"
Yup. Can't make this ish up.
Anyway, we decided not to move Lily. Then we had our four month visit and fessed up to that. The doctor said it was fine, though she thought we'd have a harder time eventually moving Lily the longer she got used to being in our room.
Personally, I didn't think she'd have a problem. She doesn't seem to mind change and transition that much. (Yes, I recognize the irony of that statement given the diatribe about formula above.) Plenty of people keep their kids in their rooms for a whole year. I think it's more likely that a child's personality determines how hard a time they have with going to their own room.
We did start putting Lily down to sleep and leaving our bedroom about a week before this visit, and she took to that very easily. It was nice to get an hour back to ourselves (although I use the vast majority of that time to be an EC now).
Given this, I also didn't think she'd have a problem transitioning to her room earlier, which I mentioned to Jon, and we decided to give it a try. I go to choir on Friday nights, but he said he was willing to give it a go on his own. I thought that'd be harder since Lily was nursing to sleep at the time. But four weeks ago, I came home from choir, and she was out. No issue at all.
Lily still often nurses to sleep, but it's not all the time. She sometimes has her last meal as early as 6:30 and doesn't go to sleep until 7 or 7:30. Jon gets her ready and possibly gives her a little rock, but she's very good at being put down in the crib with her pacifier and falling asleep even if she's not 100% out at that point. She's magical that way.
She's less magical when it comes to napping. She still fights us on that. Most of her napping is still done in the stroller or car seat, or occasionally on me if I nurse her when I get home from work. You read about the dangers of all these things, about the necessity of putting a baby down for a nap and letting them cry for 10 minutes or so until they fall asleep. We've tried it. It doesn't seem to work. And you know what? We worked hard for this baby, and she'll only be a baby for so long. If she needs a cuddle to fall asleep, so be it. We'll blink, and the cuddling days will be over.
So does it get easier?
No. It doesn't. If anything, I'd say it's gotten harder. I stop in to see Lily twice before work - once with Jon and once again before I go - and sometimes she wakes up and gives us a big smile. She's very happy when she wakes up. It makes me want to scoop her up into a cuddle right away and stay home with her. I have her baby monitor hooked up to my phone, so I generally get to see and talk to her while I'm pumping in the morning.
There are plenty of times I just feel sad. I walk around in a funk because I want to be with her rather than at work, where I often feel underappreciated and even sometimes unnecessary. I sit alone in the pumping room crying because I miss her. I wallow in the self-pity of living in "the greatest country in the world" that has no national maternity leave policy. I dread the thought of Lily having a first and our not being there to see it.
It's not all the time. But it is rather often. I've had calls from a local mental health clinic thing that took my information when I was in labor and delivery and got my permission to call and check in for the first few weeks. I have her number; I've thought about calling, but I don't really think this is postpartum. I just think it's the suckiness of being a working parent.
A few people have said to me, "You made this choice. You chose to be a working mother." But no. I did not. I live in a country where you don't have a choice anymore. If we want to afford our house, put food on the table, have our cars, have the internet, save for college, etc, I need to have a job. I have no choice. That's the way American works.
Not to mention the whole sudden biological need to have a child, whether it was what I planned or not.
Ugh. America. We can so do better.
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