Geek in Heels - Page 111

Nov 22, 2010 • In Baby, Claire, Motherhood, Parenting, Personal

My Goth Baby (And More Breastfeeding Woes)

In my last post I asked if anyone could guess why my breastmilk has turned purple.

Well, kalen, mlwindc, and LatteLove got it right: it is due to gentian violet, which I am using to treat our latest bout of thrush.

While gentian violet is proven to be one of the most effective remedies against thrush, I had been reluctant to try it because of the ick factor, the “ick” being that it is messy. Gentian violet is a deep purple solution that seems to get everywhere once the bottle is open, and it is almost always guaranteed to stain fabrics permanently and skin temporarily.

Before giving Claire a cotton swab of the purple stuff, I had dabbed her lips and area around her mouth with Vaseline as suggested by numerous sources in order to prevent staining, but it only helped a little as you can see in this picture:

This is actually a lot better than last night, when the purple stuff was all over her chin and cheeks.

My nipples look pretty comical as well after undergoing the gentian violet treatment, resembling bruised and tumorous boysenberries. I would show you a picture but I’ll keep this blog PG-13.

We will continue with the gentian violet for a couple more days, and I am praying that this will work.

First, Claire developed thrush in her mouth and passed it on to me. The thrush in my boobs led to my developing mastitis in my right breast. And by taking antibiotics to treat the mastitis, I managed to develop thrush again, this time with a vengeance — I get hot, shooting, searing pains in my right breast every time I pump. I have tried not emptying the breast completely and nursing directly in order to try to lessen the pain, but have had no success so far. The pain lasts for about an hour after each pumping session and it is so bad that my body jerks and spasms every time another jolt passes through my chest.

The mastitis and thrush has lessened the milk supply in my right breast considerably. Meanwhile, my left breast seems to be producing extra milk in order to compensate, and so I am suffering from oversupply and engorgement there.

So for the first hour after each pumping/nursing session, my right boob is in excruciating pain. But as soon as my right boob starts to feel better, my left boob gets painfully engorged to a point where it hurts to hold my baby.

Oh, and my boobs are lopsided now too. Lovely.

It has been like this for the past week, and J is starting to lose his patience. Not with my (lack of) recovery, but with how miserable I have been. Last night, as I was unable to show my face at a family dinner due to my breast pain — choosing to lie in bed instead, spasming with each jolt of pain with tears in my eyes — he held me tight and told me that he would much rather that we give our daughter formula than my continuing to be in so much pain and feel like a bad mother for continuing to have so much trouble breastfeeding.

I know that quitting breastfeeding will be no easy task either — engorgement in both breasts! — but it is looking mighty tempting at this point.

Purple Breastmilk

And now for this week’s fun/gross (over)sharing post…

Anyone care to venture a guess as to why my breastmilk has taken on a purple hue?

I have not digitally altered this picture, except to up the
saturation a bit so that you can see the purple better.

Just in case you’re wondering, I know why my breastmilk is purple. But I won’t tell you why. At least not yet — where’s the fun in that?

So anyone?

(And no googling!)

The Geekinheels.com Web Empire

Webempires is a neat tool that aims to visualize the traffic of every website on the web. Basing its figures on the popular traffic aggregator Alexa, the site can be used to answer questions such as:

What if your website was a country?
What if all your visitors gathered in one place?

And more!

As of today, Alexa lists this blog as having 9,537 visitors per day. So if Geekinheels.com were a country, it would be larger than Montserrat!

And if all the daily visitors were to gather in one place at the same time, it would surpass the number of people who gathered to break the Guinness World Record for the most people simultaneously making snow angels in one place:

How does your site, or another favorite website compare?

Via Neatorama.

Baby Hadouken!

…or just some impeccable timing caught on camera.

Still, it made me LOL this sleepy Saturday morning.

Via haha.nu.

Having “The Talk” With Our Children

No, not that talk. The other one. The other, very important one.

Not sure what I mean? Take a look at this Public Service Announcement from Asylum:

Here are some sobering facts about the world today: Every day, millions of kids go to sleep having never been introduced to Chewbacca, and, worse, countless more think Greedo shot first.

We here at Asylum want to make sure you and your child have an open and healthy conversation about Jar Jar and the differences between a “good trilogy” and an “uh-oh trilogy.” So we’ve provided you with this, a PSA on talking to your child about Star Wars:

J and I swear that we will always reinforce the fact that Han shot first. And that Jar Jar kills puppies. And that Episodes 4-6 will always prevail, despite the embarrassment that is Episodes 1-3.

Now the great question remains: when is the best time to tell our kids about Luke’s father?

Via The Daily What.

Talkin’ ’bout My Generation

Since 1900, there have been six generations in the United States: G.I., Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, and Z. While most people identify with one generation, I have the luck of having been born during a generational overlap — between X and Millennial.

Could you have guessed this based on what social trends influenced me while growing up?

USAToday believes so. In fact, they have created a fun interactive quiz which guesses your age based on your cultural experiences.

I have always been told that I act older than my age, and that my tastes and preferences belong to someone who is older. This must hold true to some regard, because USAToday guessed the year of my birth as 1973, not 1980!

How about you? Were your results accurate?

Via Flowing Data.

May the Force of Typography Be With You

Star Wars + typography = a very happy geek.

Via The Daily What.

Breast Fest 2010 Postponed

Unfortunately, J and I have decided to postpone Breast Fest (that’s my name for my 24-hour, breast-only, no-bottles-allowed marathon) a week or two.

We have always known that Claire has a “witching hour” — a period at night where a baby is extra fussy and cranky — but it has progressed to full-blown colic over the weekend. The past few nights have been hell. None of our usual tricks seem to work, and as soon as she seems to have calmed down, she will start screaming again once we relax.

Her fussiness has considerably gotten worse during the daytime too.

(And before you give any suggestions, please know that yes, we probably have tried it already. We have tried everything that friends have suggested, or read about in books and websites. And no, Claire does not have any medical problems. We can only deduce that it is colic, and that we will need to wait it out.)

They say that fussiness usually peaks at 6 weeks, and since Claire is currently 6 weeks old we are thinking that holding Breast Fest this week, when she is especially cranky and uncooperative, may not be the best idea.

I am praying that the colic will not last too long, and that it will not get any worse than this.

Wednesday. It’s On.

I am pretty sure that I do not need a lactation consultant.

Claire has a perfectly good latch. I do not have any supply issues. I am comfortable in different breastfeeding positions. I have read La Leche League’s The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding front to back, and am always visiting breastfeeding support forums, so I am certainly informed.

What I do have is an impatient and lazy suckler.

One out of every five times, she will take from my breast and drink for a good 10+ minutes straight.

It is only the other four out of five times that she will only suck for a minute or two, tire of it (because it’s more work than drinking from a bottle), then proceed to start screaming. And the girl must have inherited my stubbornness, because once the screaming starts she will refuse to eat from the breast for the rest of that session.

So unless you think I need to pay someone $180+ (that is the going rate for a home visit by a lactation consultant in my area) to sit there to be a cheerleader, no I do not need a lactation consultant.

What I need is a lot of time and patience — and perhaps a bit of stubbornness on my part too. What I need is some time alone with just the baby and myself, so that I do not feel pressured, or feel bad for anyone who might be subjected to the crying.

I am pretty certain that if I stay gung-ho and only offer my breasts for a full 24 hours, no bottles allowed, Claire will need to admit defeat and surrender.

I have asked J to ask his parents not to come over on Wednesday for this purpose.

J asked if I would like him to work from home, and I told him no.

Wednesday will be a day for just me and Claire. A day when I will be adamant about teaching my baby to associate my breasts to eating, to prefer my breasts over any bottle.

And a day filled with many tears, to be sure.

Please wish me luck.

Crotch-Punching Cloudy

Last night J and I decided to dress Claire in her take-home outfit to see how it would fit her now, at 6 weeks old. (She was positively swimming in it when we brought her home from the hospital, as even premie clothes were too large on her for the first week of her life.)

No surprises there — the shirt now fits her a bit too snugly.

We kept the outfit on for her nightly picture with Cloudy. J even snapped a picture with his phone and immediately uploaded it to Facebook, only to receive the following question from a friend:

“Is she crotch punching Cloudy?”

We immediately took another look at the picture in question, and sure enough, there it was…