Making It Up

as we go along

breastfeeding

Saturday Snippets 11 October 2014

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{thinking} that the weeks seem to fly by more and more quickly. Doesn’t seem two minutes since I was writing out the last snippets post.

{reading} Endgame: The Calling. (partial) review with giveaway to go up tomorrow. Make sure you hurry back.

{watching} Tron: Legacy (via Amazon Prime) and really rather regretting it. I usually quite like Jeff Bridges, but this was painful. And I only recognised Bruce Boxleitner by his voice. The soundtrack was intrusive (Tim said he would have used the word annoying) and the whole thing just felt utterly implausible. Wreck It Ralph did it better.

{getting} distracted. I have the attention span of a drunk goldfish. Ooh look, shiny! What was I saying? Honestly, I started this post 20 minutes ago. Then I went to look up Bruce Boxleitner, got distracted by twitter, read an article on Tron 3 and completely forgot I was writing this. Hopeless. I can’t focus on anything at the moment.

{running} did a decent run this morning. And really dropping carbs but increasing protein has kickstarted my weight loss again. I have felt hungry a couple of times, but I’d rather that than the constant bloated feeling I had before. And if I’m hungry I have a drink or some fruit and it stops. The bloated thing wasn’t wearing off at all. I wonder if there are some metabolic changes that could be kicking in? Odd, whatever it is.

{savouring} the end of breastfeeding. Smallest is coming up 5. Given that I fed her through Tigerboy’s pregnancy and tandemed for a short while, that means I’ve been feeding for nearly 5 years straight. I *will* miss that lovely snuggly closeness, but only a little bit. And I will very much miss the baby years, as that’s it, we’re done, but I don’t miss pregnancy at all.

{still} slowly decluttering. I have made a difference, but it’s such slow going. Slow and steady and try not to let it slip back, that’s the idea.

#52memories

Tigerboy

Snapshots

Big is off without us (but with a guardian!) scaring at Scaresville, hopefully having a wonderful time and not getting too cold or wet. Shades of a rapidly approaching future as she spreads her wings. Small and I have come to an accommodation about his education, which means he’s spent the last couple of days learning physics. Knows lots about atoms now, which is probably good. Still working on getting him programming. Smallest did baking this week – it didn’t work terribly well, but she was very good about it. Am trying to have something special to do with her each day. Tigerboy is pushing the boundaries of 2. And this week we were told that his speech is good enough he will be ceasing communication group in a couple of weeks.

Me? My 101 things isn’t really progressing terribly well, but I did manage to get out to Knit and Natter this week for the first time, so that was something. I picked up the tapestry crochet I started back in 2006 and managed a whole extra row (which is 190 stitches, so not actually to be sniffed at).

If you’d like to share your snippets, there will be a linky here very soon.

I'll give you something to cry about.

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This morning I brought Smallest to the swimming pool for her weekly swimming lesson. It runs alongside a women’s only swimming session, populated mainly by women of a certain age. This leads to an interesting mix in the changing room, and this morning we just couldn’t seem to get out of the way of an older woman who came repeatedly in and out of her cubicle to fetch each item of her clothing one by one, walking through the space where we were trying to get Smallest changed, and round the carseat with Tigerboy on the floor. Not once did she catch my eye though I tried to smile and apologise, but there you go.

Another of the children coming to the lesson was not in the best of moods. In fact, by the decibel level issuing from him, you’d have thought he was being flayed in front of us. His mother was being calm and unflustered and continuing to encourage independence as she got him changed, and I admired her self restraint as she dealt with her tantrumming offspring.

Once the children had been delivered to the teachers, I retired to the cafe, with Big was rocking Tigerboy in his carseat. The older ladies arrived to sit at the next table, and ignoring us sitting next to them, proceeded to loudly criticise my friend’s parenting skills.

“What’s wrong with a little tap on the leg?” one of them asked the other.

“Yes, when they’re making that noise, say do you want something to cry about, and then a little tap on the leg.”

Or words to that effect. They went on for a while, before moving on to another topic.

I wish I’d had the courage to interrupt them and ask if, when they are upset, they prefer to be listened to, or told that if they keep it up, they’ll be given something to cry about. Because there’s pretty much always someone whose had worse than what you’re going through, so surely there’s no reason for you to get so worked up. But you’re an adult, a person, and you don’t think anyone would ever be as disrespectful as to do that to you, and certainly no one would hit you for crying.

So why on earth would you think it’s right to do it to a child? A young child at that, struggling to make sense of a world that they have little power or control over. A child that trusts you to make it right, to look after them, to soothe hurts and take away pain. Why would you add to it?

Oh, I daresay if you kept it up as a parenting method it would work. Your child would learn that crying to you is pointless, that you don’t help, you increase pain. They’d learn that expressing your emotions is an empty strategy, and they’d shut down, withholding communication from the ppl they should open up to most. Life would probably be a lot quieter, and a lot colder too, without the trust that should exist between a parent and child.

I really do wish I’d had the gumption to challenge them and their sad, small minded, aggressive attitudes. But instead I contented myself with whipping out a breast and defiantly breastfeeding on demand in public. Because somehow I doubt they’d have approved of that either. Perhaps I should have let my 7 week old baby cry. Or given him something to cry about instead 🙁

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

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No, not inconceivable. (Though go to the top of the class for recognising the Princess Bride quote. Bonus point if you know which character says it 😉 )

In this case, the word is Average. It gets bandied about lots. In discussion of children’s school achievement. Talking about pay scales. It is so often abused in the news. And this week, I’ve allowed health professionals to beat me with it as though it were a stick.

Average weight gain for a breastfed baby is 30g (or 1 oz – which isn’t the same even though she used them interchangeably) proclaimed the doctor on Tuesday night. So we need to weigh him on Thursday and see that he’s putting weight on, 60 g. Put aside for the moment that their scales weren’t that accurate and let’s think about what this means.

This means that they are expecting the average weight gain to occur every day for two days. Even though the baby they are looking at isn’t average to start off with – he’s small. Even though average does not imply in any way, shape or form, daily. Instead what this means is that if you measure a sample of babies over a period of time, add the weight gains up, divide by the number of babies and the length of time, that’s where the 30g comes from. (I assume. There are other ways you could get to it I suppose, but that seems like a sensible approach to me. Actually I went searching. Kellymom has a different set of measurements that seem much more appropriate and reached in a very sensible way)

What it doesn’t mean is that all babies will achieve this every day. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed that very few of them will. Kind of like if you look for an average height 12 year old in a class of them, you won’t necessarily find any child of that height. (My own 12 year old is the height of an average 14 year old. Intriguing, eh? And she was a slightly small baby.) So what was I thinking when I agreed with the doctor yesterday that there should be a weight gain of around 200 grams by next Friday?

I was thinking that a highly trained professional ought to know what he was talking about. I was thinking that he is supposed to be there to first do no harm. Not that he was ticking boxes, causing stress (which works against breastfeeding and indeed good parenting), and had absolutely no good reason to suggest that 200g was a reasonable weight gain for this child, this week.

Now, it’s entirely possible that he could gain that weight. He’s done more than that before. But it’s also entirely possible that while being healthy and well fed he won’t achieve the bizarre target of the average. And at that point, if all is well, if he’s alert, happy, growing, and still filling nappies with gay abandon (which trust me, he’s doing at the moment) I hope you will all remind me to tell any nosey parker unsupportive health professional to take a running jump.

Average indeed.

We're here again – hospital adventure part two.

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10.38. Today’s nurse didn’t seem to care whether we ended up sitting with a bunch of possibly infectious children til I pointed it out, so now we’re in a room at least. No cot, so again I’m pleased I brought the car seat in. We’re on the appt board today, name spelt wrong obviously, so at least there appears to be a plan. Not that anyone is carrying it out.

This place just seems to be disorganised, without anyone having a real clue what is going on.

10.50 nurse came to weigh him, and took us to scales that only display one decimal point. Pointed out that they won’t even show up the weight gain the doctor is looking for and then dissolved in tears, about not knowing what is going on, and the doctor saying giving up breastfeeding and just everything. Returned extremely promptly to my room without weighing him and nurse gone in search of a doctor to explain what is happening.

11.05 We finally see a doctor. Who seemed completely uninterested in seeing Tigerboy, and was very much there to see me. Apparently all the blood test results were back and absolutely normal, so it’s felt he has breastmilk jaundice. I quoted a figure of 10% of breastfed babies still being jaundiced at 1 month, doctor didn’t know 🙁 What he was concerned about was the slow weight gain – both doctors appeared to be convinced that breastfed babies put on a steady 30g (or 1 oz – which is it then??) a day, which is not my understanding of how it works at all. At this stage I pointed out (again, having already mentioned it to the nurse) that the scales they are using don’t go that accurate. He didn’t seem to know anything about that, saying that as long as his weight hadn’t dropped he was happy for us to go home and continue with feeding.

Lots of questions about feeding, again the suggestion that I express so that I can see what he’s getting. It disturbs me that so many health professionals seem to know so little about feeding and the mechanics of it that they recommend expressing as a first response instead of recommending that you see an expert who can evaluate the feeding.

Nevertheless we did the weighing (heartstopping moment when the scale looked to be reading 3.5 which would have been a loss, then it went back to 3.6. Phew.) and then we were cleared to go home.

11.44 after a feed (obviously) going home.

This whole experience has been demoralising and stressful. The doctor I saw on Tues night seemed to be implying there was a high risk of something seriously wrong – today’s just as obviously knew all was fine. Which made me very cross that he’d left me worrying, and dragged me up to the hospital just to weigh Tigerboy on scales not suitable for the purpose, costing me fuel, parking and time, meaning we missed Smallest’s swimming lesson too. Not to mention the NHS time and resources that were wasted.

Obviously if there’d been a need for us to see a doctor I’d have been very happy to go up there, but there really wasn’t. And I should have been focussing on feeding instead of being undermined and carting car seats around hospitals.

I will be making a complaint. I’ll put it up here too.

And thank you so much for all your support. Here, elsewhere, twitter and texts – you’ve been my lifeline.

Crisis of confidence.

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Tell me I’m doing it right?

Tigerboy is feeding on demand. Sometimes it feels like he’s feeding round the clock. I do sometimes distract him – pop him in the wrap and go out for a walk for example, but mainly when he wants food he gets it.

He made his birth weight back in 5 days, and put on nearly 9 oz in the next week. However since then he’s only put on another 6 oz, making a pound gain since birth. And the jaundice, which disappeared entirely after a day in a sunny conservatory is today back with a vengeance. So today’s health visitor, after dispensing the third oral vitamin k dose, made us a hospital appt for this afternoon.

Aaargh. Tigerboy seems determined to do things differently. First early baby. First yellow baby. And now first baby with hospital referral. Tell me it’s all ok?