i was so worried every little noise meant she was hungry that i didn't sleep past 3:45am, around when she'd usually eat. i basically stared at her with the nightlight the entire time while she kicked around but stayed asleep... and between the missed feed and squishing my engorged boob while lying on my side, i now have mastitis! that's a breast infection for those who don't know (and probably would have liked to keep it that way). i'd been so elated about violet's sleep that i didn't think much about how unusually cold i was in the morning, even for me, and i attributed my bad hangover feelings to the less than four hours of sleep. after a somewhat stressful visit to my office to deliver christmas gifts, i got home feeling flushed and decided to take my temp, which clocked in at 101.5. long story short, my ob sent antibiotics to my pharmacy, and the ass-kicking fluishness has really subsided. unfortunately i don't think i've yet managed to clear the plugged duct (or ducts - this boob hurts!) that brought on the infection, despite efforts including a hot compress of microwaved diaper (yes, water-soaked), and so far as i can tell, the worst that can happen is my boob will turn black and fall off. thanks for that warning, internet.
oh right, this is a blog about an adorable baby, not the black boob of death. check it out!
violet's latest pursuit is trying to grasp things and put them in her mouth. we are both perpetually covered in drool. her favorite things to nom on are her fists, of course. she's big into squawking too, and my latest project is trying to differentiate between "squawking is awesome, mom" and "i'm a baby on the verge of a meltdown." tummy time is still on the outs, so we've ramped up the number of sessions, though not the duration. but thanks to her demands to be sitting (or "standing") almost all of the time, i broke out the bumbo yesterday. so awesome! she likes it for awhile, so long as there are things to look at, but inevitably she wants picked up for her preferred skytram view of the world. what can i say, we're raising a baby who likes to look down on everything. but look how cute she is!
Oh no! I hope that you feel better soon. No one ever warns you that breastfeeding is such a fraught activity - or that breast infections are so incredibly painful. (Perhaps the only upside: after mastitis, thrush is a piece of cake. Not that I'd wish thrush on you. That was just my experience.)
ReplyDeleteAnd I can definitely remember the hard adjustment to sleeping through the night. Ironic, isn't it? I started to get really freaked out any time that Simon slept for a long period of time because I was worried that he wasn't okay.
Ah, the black boob of death. I agree with t, no one tells you how hard breastfeeding is going to be, they just talk about how awesome it is and skip over all of those uncomfortable things it causes. :) I'm sure you looked up all kinds of remedies, but I had to deal with blocked ducts and mastitis about twice a month until Johnny was about 6 months old, so I got a system down. Whenever one of my breasts started feeling really sensitive (and unusually lumpy), I would start Johnny feeding on that side and massage that lump while he was eating to work out the blockage. Sometimes I'd also apply a hot compress in addition to the feeding/massage to speed the process along. I found that if I caught it early enough I didn't have to take any antibiotics. :) Oh, and I avoided pumping when I was feeling a blocked duct coming on and that also seemed to help; pumping can sometimes bring them on, so it helped to avoid it when getting rid of the blockage.
ReplyDeleteHope it helps next time! Well, hopefully there won't be a next time.
ouch--so sorry you've been hurting. But yay for a new wave of sleeping through the night (knock on wood.)
ReplyDeletethrush and duct issues twice a month?? now i feel like a wimp. i appreciate the advice you guys. and seriously why is breastfeeding so much harder than anyone realizes upfront? i mean, it's awesome, but also fraught. (initially i typed bf-ing, but is it just me, or does that abbreviation bring something else to mind first? i need to quit reading mommy sites with all of their shorthand crap.)
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