Back in the Saddle Again…Again

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“No excuses, play like a champion” – Wedding Crashers anyone? I have no excuse for my lack of writing, life just happened. So let’s just move on to some updates…

For those who care, I finished out my sugar detox on a strong note and then promptly dove back into eating like crap. No one is surprised. It is so incredibly hard to develop consistently healthy eating habits. Again, life happens and before you know it you’ve ordered another pizza for dinner because it’s 6pm on a Thursday night and everyone is starving and exhausted. I am not exaggerating when I say that we have eaten pizza at least once per week for the last 3 months. And it makes me so incredibly sad. I have a million reasons (ahem, excuses) for why all of those pizza orders were necessary, but none of them are really valid. When I dig really deep and get really uncomfortably honest with myself it’s because this life is overwhelming and it’s easier to order a pizza for delivery. Planning, purchasing, prepping, cooking & serving a meal is just not a priority in my weakest moments. It falls to a negative level of importance, which is really crazy when you actually think about it. The food that I’m putting in my body to keep all the systems functioning should be really important to me, but in that moment it just isn’t.

I’m determined to be better moving forward though, not just for the health of it but because we are spending so. much. money on crappy food. Which is another topic I want to cover…the ever present anxiety about our finances. It seems like the bills just keep coming and we just keep spending everything we have. We are not the kind of people who buy a lot of new clothes or techie gadgets and we certainly don’t go out to fancy restaurants or bars. But somehow every month when we should have just a little bit saved, we have nothing. So I am in the process of doing a FULL inventory of our spending habits to see what little things we can stop doing that will help us start saving. I think I have some good ideas; like my semi-regular trips through the Starbucks drive-through – it feels like I only go once a week but the $$$ tells a different story, or my husband’s random mid-week $30 Whole Foods snack-food haul – he says it only happens “once in a while” but that actually meant two times last month and three the month before – that was $150 over two months! When I actually calculate the amount spent and the frequency, it’s pretty insane and a little embarrassing. I have literally spent $300 on Starbucks since the beginning of the year – 6 months time. That is money that could have gone into our savings account and instead was spent on crappy coffee (sorry Sbux lovers, but it’s the truth) and most likely a sugary treat that I didn’t need. That $300 breaks down to $50 per month and around $12.50 per week.

So beginning today – a random Thursday midway through June – I am going cold turkey on Starbucks. Instead, every time I have a craving for a latte or an iced coffee or a really terrible brownie, I’m going to transfer $6.25 to our savings account. Same thing with the pizza, we have been spending $30 per week on pizza for about 20 weeks (the last 6 months minus the 21 days that I was detoxing), that is FREAKING SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!! If we were to continue this through the end of the year we would have spent over a thousand dollars on takeout pizza this year. OH MY GOD. It is completely horrifying. Which is why we have to stop, today.

I know everyone and their brother has a great budgeting secret/trick/tool/amazing app/whatever, which is great. But in the past – the one time we successfully saved a shit-ton of money over a relatively short period of time – I just made a budget in good old-fashioned Microsoft Excel for every single monthly expense, we stuck to the budget religiously and never, ever, went out to eat. I know this really isn’t a sustainable way to live because we are the kind of people who go on binges when we feel like we’re restricting ourselves, but I think we can manage to go a month at a time with a really strict plan and then allow a little planned splurge. It helps that we have a toddler with a 6:30pm bedtime and live in a bit of a “anything other than chains or coney’s” restaurant desert.

So cheers to budgeting and saving and becoming less of a consumer!

 

 

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Success, Failure, Cravings & Resolve: Weeks 1 & 2

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So weeks 1 & 2 of the great 21 Day Sugar Detox are complete! As the title suggests we had some success, a little failure, a few cravings and strengthened resolve.

WEEK 1 RECAP

Unfortunately my sister had a TON of homework coming off spring break the last week of February and she wasn’t able to get all of her grocery shopping and food prep complete. This set her up for a rough start to week 1 and resulted in only 1 day of successful meals. Womp, womp. Because she’s either watching our toddlers, in class or working on homework during the week, she just wasn’t able to get back on track. Her son’s 2nd birthday was also this past Saturday so of course she was stressed and knee deep in planning and prep for the party. So for now I’m continuing on the sugar-free lifestyle by myself.

I also struggled with the meal prep portion of the plan simply because Andre worked last Sunday and we didn’t make it to the grocery store until MUCH later in the evening. But I was determined to kick things off on Monday so I improvised my meals a bit and made it work. Instead of the buffalo chicken egg muffins planned for breakfast, I simply made some plain scrambled eggs and tossed in some fresh spinach which wilted nicely. I typically don’t eat until I get to my office so I wrapped the container in aluminum foil and my food was nice and warm when I arrived at work. I also hadn’t had time to prep out my lunch, so I had leftover taco ground beef with a little rice on a bed of butter lettuce topped with avocado. It was perfect. We got back on track with the meal plan for dinner on Monday night and the mexi-meatloaf was delicious. I will definitely be making it again.

I found myself improvising a bit more during the week when we couldn’t get a couple of ingredients for some of the Asian dishes (meatballs and pad thai) and it actually worked out pretty well.

In terms of cravings, I was feeling really good with no serious cravings until Friday – day 5. I really wanted something starchy, carby and sugary on Friday. Then with my nephews birthday party on Saturday I was this close to giving in and having the mac-n-cheese, fried chicken, cornbread and birthday cake. BUT, I didn’t cave. Instead I had leftover chicken with spicy almond sauce, a little rice and broccoli. It was not the same but I felt a renewed sense of determination and pride after the party.

WEEK 2 RECAP

Week 2 was much the same in terms of failing to prep enough in advance. Story of my life. Andre worked again on Sunday and my sister and I took the little boys on a quick road trip to see our 92 year old grandmother. She lives in an assisted living facility in the town where our dad grew up and we hadn’t been to see her since December because of all the sicknesses everyone had been passing around. I had a good breakfast and packed some nuts to snack on. We stopped for a late lunch at a koney island place and I had a “taco salad” that consisted of chopped romaine lettuce, ground beef, tomatoes and cheese. LOL. It wasn’t terrible and it did tide me over until we got home for dinner but it definitely reminded me to be more prepared for going out.

After super random eating on Sunday and Monday, I made it to the grocery store on Tuesday evening and picked up several meals for the week. My sister inspired me to make a homemade paleo version of hamburger helper which actually wasn’t too bad. Just ground beef, spices, a little cheddar cheese, almond flour and milk for the sauce and then I made a batch of rice and mixed it together. It wasn’t stellar but it was great for reheating on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday I tried my hand at an almond flour pizza crust because I was seriously craving pizza – which Andre ordered on Tuesday night and proceeded to eat the rest of the week. My homemade version was pretty “meh.” The crust wasn’t bad and I added a bunch of seasonings to the basic recipe I found online (almond flour, ghee, and an egg) which helped a bit. But I think I made the dough a little too thick so the ratio of crust to sauce to cheese was off. I did make a pretty tasty sauce though. I combined tomato paste, water, garlic, onion, oregano and pinch of salt and then let it simmer while I waited for the crust to prebake. I ended up saving the leftover sauce and I’ve been using it to make English muffin pizzas for Owen this weekend.

Saturday night I loosely followed a Whole30 recipe for a chicken, apple, brussel sprouts, sweet potato, and bacon skillet dish. Since I can’t eat sweet potatoes on the 21DSD, I substituted some butternut squash which got real mushy (duh, I should have thought of that!). I also omitted pretty much all of the herbs and spices the recipe called for because I wanted to taste the flavors of the veggies and of course the bacon. My mother-in-law came up for the weekend and she said she enjoyed the dish but she could have just been polite. But I thought it tasted good and had it again for lunch today and I’ll definitely make it again since it was so easy.

The meals for the rest of the week are:

Sunday – coconut curry turkey meatballs & rice

Monday – cauliflower shepherd’s pie

Tuesday – leftovers

Wednesday – pork egg roll bowl

Thursday – mexi-meatloaf

Friday – leftovers

I also wanted to take a minute to talk about what I’ve learned so far in the two weeks I’ve been sugar and refined grain free.

  1. I feel AMAZING. Seriously, my stomach feels a million times better and I am significantly less bloated than I was. I also think I’ve lost weight but it’s hard to know exactly how much because our scale doesn’t have batteries! However, based on the way my clothes are fitting and the smaller belly pooch when I sit down, I’m definitely dropping lbs.
  2. I have more energy. Yep, once I got through the initial slump and withdrawl, I feel less brain fog and more clearheaded energy.
  3. I still crave sweet things. I’m a little concerned about this one because I know how much I struggle with self-control. Even though I’ve been able to stop myself from eating all of the candy and sweet treats that have been tempting me, I still have that craving.
  4. I need to make this a permanent lifestyle change. I’ve decided that after the initial 21 days are up, I’m going to move to an 80/20 lifestyle. For me this will mean that 80% of my meals will be grain-free and mostly sugar-free (essentially paleo+dairy). I’m going to allow myself to have a “cheat day” where I can eat whatever I want – in moderation of course. I’m also going to incorporate a few natural-sugar (honey & maple syrup) treats into my week to avoid the temptation to eat the really bad stuff on my cheat day.

I think in general this detox has shown me how much happier my body is when it doesn’t get any refined sugar. The stuff is really the root cause of so many health problems and I just don’t need it.

Sugar Detox: Week 1 Meal Plan

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Tomorrow begins week 1 of the sugar detox, get excited! I based our meal plan on The 21 Day Sugar Detox book by Diane Sanfilippo but simplified and rearranged it a bit for our small family. The author has 7 different dinners and 2 lunches in week 1 and they all serve at least 4 people so I plan to have us stretch things out a little bit and only do 5 different dinners and 1 lunch – with lots of leftover eating. For breakfasts I’m only doing 2 different meals split up between the 7 days rather than her 3 separate meals – I am doubling one recipe to make that happen though. I also simplified some of the snacks because I just don’t have time to make the 5 separate snack recipes that she has in week 1!

If you’re interested in seeing the full recipes, I recommend purchasing the book (https://www.amazon.com/21-Day-Sugar-Detox-Cravings-Naturally/dp/1936608111)

or even just visiting Diane Sanfilippo’s website (https://balancedbites.com/21dsd/).

She has a TON of free recipes, strategies for managing cravings, links to coaches, videos and even a podcast. Once we get through the first 21 days, I am SURE I will want to find more recipes and support for keeping the lifestyle going.

But without further ado…

Here is our week 1 plan – let’s do this!

Day Breakfast Lunch Dinner Snack
1 buffalo chicken egg muffins, steamed spinach, avocado salmon salad with capers & tomato, leafy green wraps mini mexi-meatloaves, creamy herb mashed cauliflower, 1/2 cup rice hard-boiled egg + nuts
2 leftover buffalo chicken egg muffins, steamed spinach, avocado leftover mini memexi-meatloaves, creamy herb mashed cauliflower, 1/2 cup rice asian-style meatballs, fresh cabbage & bok choy slaw, 1/2 cup rice full-fat yogurt
3 leftover buffalo chicken egg muffins, steamed spinach, avocado salmon salad with capers & tomato, leafy green wraps leftover mini memexi-meatloaves, creamy herb mashed cauliflower, 1/2 cup rice hard-boiled egg + nuts
4 green apple breakfast sausage, raw carrot sticks, raw almonds leftover asian-style meatballs, fresh cabbage & bok choy slaw, no-miso soup, 1/2 cup rice sheperd’s pie, green salad with dressing of choice full-fat yogurt
5 leftover green apple breakfast sausage, raw carrot sticks, almonds leftover shepherd’s pie, green salad with dressing of choice ginger-garlic beef & broccoli, 1/2 cup rice hard-boiled egg + nuts
6 leftover green apple breakfast sausage, raw carrot sticks, almonds salmon salad with capers & tomato, leafy green wraps leftover shepherd’s pie, green salad with dressing of choice full-fat yogurt
7 leftover green apple breakfast sausage, raw carrot sticks, almonds leftover ginger-garlic beef & broccoli, 1/2 cup rice chicken pad-thai hard-boiled egg + nuts

21 Day Sugar Detox…aka 3 weeks of withdrawl from what is essentially legal cocaine

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So my sister and I are planning to cut sugar from our lives, temporarily at first and then hopefully on a more permanent basis in the long term. We are both firmly addicted, as is most of the Western world. We’re starting with the 21 Day Sugar Detox plan by Diane Sanfilippo and seeing how that goes. There are some big scary reasons that we’re doing this now and I thought I’d share in case anyone wants to join in on our “fun.”

  1. We have an INSANE family history of Diabetes Mellitus Type 2
    1. No joke, our father, both of his brothers, our grandmother, our great-grandmother, and our great-aunt all were or are Type 2 diabetics. Basically our father’s entire family has been completely addicted to sugar since the turn of the century and we are clearly genetically predisposed to develop diabetes.
  2. We have watched our father struggle with his sugar addiction and diabetes for the last 15 years…it really sucks
    1. He is just not able to break the addiction to manage the diabetes with diet and exercise. After years of increasing amounts and types of medication, he is now on injectable insulin. He must check his blood sugar multiple times per day, take several medications with each meal and inject 40 units of long acting insulin into his belly in the afternoon. This is the only way to keep his glucose (sugar) levels safely in the 100’s rather than the 200’s or 300’s.
  3. We don’t want our sons to grow up the way we did
    1. We both love our parents so so much, but they set us up from birth to continue the sugar addiction by setting a terrible example. Our mother is a candy squirrel, she hides candy all over the house. It’s not unusual to open her desk drawer and find bags of peanut M&M’s, Cadbury eggs, and Starbursts tucked in the back. You can usually find some kind of chocolate in her purse and she bakes cookies or brownies on a very regular basis. Our father is less sneaky about it. We know exactly where he has the bag of tootsie rolls in the kitchen cabinet with the peanut butter, the stack of Hershey bars in the cabinet next to the stove, the ice cream in the freezer. On every road trip, no matter how short, he will always have his shirt pocket filled with tootsie rolls and halls cough drops. And he always offers to share. When we were little our dad would surprise us with treats while we were doing homework or playing or watching TV. He’d come into the room with a medicine cup – you know for dispensing cough medicine when you’re sick – filled with M&M’s and those bright pink wintergreen mints, we called them “pink things.” As a child it was so great and we know it was one of the ways he expressed his love for his daughters. I still think about it with incredible fondness even though I know it helped to cement our sugar addiction. But in our father’s defense it’s how he was taught to express love by his mother and grandmother. He told me recently that he and his brothers saw their grandparents every day when they were growing up, whether they had dinner together as a family or walked to their house to hang out after school. And my father’s grandmother was a woman who believed strongly that kids should have all the food and treats that they wanted, she was a serious pusher. Her younger daughter, my father’s mother, was born in 1925 and as a family they barely survived the Great Depression. When things got better and they had money again, they started baking delicious treats and never stopped. I have wonderful memories of learning to bake with my grandmother and going to her house meant all the sweets you could want. Even now, she’s 92 years old and lives in an assisted living community but she still has a perpetually full candy dish. But my sister and I don’t want our sons to experience the same things, we want the cycle to end with us.
  4. We both have a SERIOUS addiction
    1. Yesterday, not including the added sugar in things like ketchup and bread, I had:
      1. A peanut butter chocolate Cliff bar – 21 g sugar
      2. A GIANT piece of store-bought cake someone brought in to work – 40 g sugar
      3. A handful of Kroger gummy bears – 20 g sugar
      4. A banana – 19 g sugar
      5. A cup of french vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles – 25 g sugar
      6. That is an estimated TOTAL of 125 g of sugar – the recommended daily amount for an adult woman on a 2,000 calorie diet is 25 g – yesterday I ate FIVE TIMES that and to be honest it wasn’t even an especially bad day for me.
    2. My sister is just as bad but she has the added problem of sugary energy drinks – she loves RedBull and as a SAH mom with a two year old, who is also in school full time at night, AND watches our son 4 days a week, who can blame her for needing caffeine and sugar to cope.
  5. When I was pregnant, I was borderline for gestational diabetes.
    1. During the 50g oral glucose test, my blood glucose was 128mg/dl. The cutoff for doing the second round of testing, the 100g oral glucose test, is 130mg/dl. My Dr. debated it and then decided that all of my other tests were fine and the baby was strong, healthy and not measuring too big so we didn’t do it. My son was 9 days overdue and weighed 8 lbs. 10 oz at birth…by no means a small baby. He outgrew newborn clothes in 2 weeks and was back to his birth weight plus some by day 3. Now part of that is probably genetics, I’m tall, 5’7″, with a medium frame and our mom’s family breeds big Swedish people. Our mom’s father and brothers are all well over 6′ and we have a cousin who is 6’7″. My husband comes from a very tall but skinny family on his mom’s side with 4 of 6 siblings – men and women – all 6′ and over. So chances were that our child was going to be bigger than average, but I can’t help but wonder whether my sugar intake and glucose levels played any part.
  6. I want to lose weight
    1. My son just turned 1, he has basically weaned himself from breastfeeding save for once before bed and once first thing in the morning, and my body still feels foreign to me. It is squishy and bigger than it used to be and I just don’t like it. I am all for the body positivity movement and loving my scars and stretch marks and floppy bits. However, I know I’m not at my best self right now and I just can’t love that. I need to eat better and exercise AND love my body.

So there you have it, all the reasons we know we need to cut sugar from our lives.

Per Diane Sanfilippo’s recommendation in the 21 Day Sugar Detox book, we are spending the next 7 days preparing. I’m putting together our meal plans with recipes from the book, we’re going grocery shopping and doing prep, using up/giving away/throwing away the things we won’t be able to eat, and generally just getting organized. We’ll officially start the sugar free life on Monday March 5th.

I’ll be documenting our journey here and posting all of the meal plans and if you want to join in or comment I’d love to hear from you!

 

Breastfeeding Hurt Like a Bitch

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So months ago when I first started thinking about trying to blog again writing THIS was the first thing that came to my mind. This post is especially dedicated to all of the exhausted new mothers who are doing exactly as everyone told them not to do, Googling in the middle of the night. I am so so hoping that by the powers of SEO and Dr. Google, maybe just one person who really needs to read this, will.

This is a topic that is extremely close to my heart…literally…this post is about boobs. If you have a problem with boobs and breastfeeding babies then please look away now.

I always knew I would exclusively breastfeed my child. Like before he was even conceived I knew. My mother breastfed my sister and myself for over a year each; my sister breastfed my nephew for just over 15 months; and my friends have all breastfed their children beyond their first birthdays. In my community it’s just sort of understood that’s what you do and everyone I know did it without problems.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son I immediately started researching everything there was to know about pregnancy and birth. I bought What To Expect When You’re Expecting for myself and Dude, You’re Going to be a Dad for my husband (sidebar, he did NOT like the Dude book and felt like it really talked down to him like he was too stupid to understand basic human biology or too grossed out to know what was actually going to be happening during labor and birth. My mom bought him a copy of The Birth Partner and he liked that one a little better.). I downloaded multiple apps that tracked my pregnancy progress and provided fun little daily tidbits on my baby’s growth compared to various fruits. I obsessed over every twinge, tickle and pain and spent hours searching Google to see whether other women had ever felt what I did, spoiler alert: they have. I first felt my son move around 18 weeks and spent the rest of my pregnancy compulsively poking my belly every hour to make sure he was ok in there. When our 20 week ultrasound showed very conclusively that “it” was a “he,” I began researching how to raise a boy because I felt woefully unprepared for the chaos that was sure to accompany him. Later on in my pregnancy I even bought a copy of What to Expect the First Year and started reading about child development and milestones beyond the womb.

But in all of my research I never took the time to learn about breastfeeding or more specifically, the challenges that might come along with it. I remember very distinctly when late in my pregnancy my best friend, who was also pregnant with her first child but about 8 weeks behind me, mentioned something about a breastfeeding problem that she and her husband had discussed in their birthing class. She asked if I had knew anything about it and what my thoughts were. I remember very confidently, “ahem” cockily, replying that I wasn’t going to research any potential problems because it seemed pointless to worry. Secretly I was thinking that of course I wouldn’t experience any issues with breastfeeding. HAHAHA.

So imagine my shock and disappointment when my son was born, a ravenously hungry little piranha child who latched perfectly, and I experienced HORRIBLE, toe-curling, scream inducing, knife-like pain in my freaking nipples. I sobbed while trying to nurse him in the hospital immediately after he was born. I screamed in pain when the lactation consultants and nurses helped me latch him on in the recovery room. I balled my eyes out and gripped the bed as literal shards of glass stabbed me in the nipples every time he nursed for the whole 24 hours we were in the hospital after his birth. (Note to self and reader – there WILL be another post about our hospital experience – it sucked and I will eventually talk about it) About 8 hours after his birth, at the urging of our nighttime nurse we ended up giving Owen formula because my milk hadn’t come in yet (which I later found out is COMPLETELY normal) and the nurse felt like I wasn’t nursing him enough because of the pain. She also brought a pump for me to use and I ended up getting about ¼ ounce of colostrum. During our 24 hours in the hospital we saw 3 different lactation consultants who all said the same thing, he’s latching great, he doesn’t have a tongue or lip tie, you shouldn’t have any pain, it’ll get better soon. The one small bit of helpful information we got during that time actually came from the labor & delivery nurse who was there for Owen’s birth, she had casually informed me that I had slightly inverted nipples as she was helping me with my bra immediately after he was born. I remember looking at her in confusion because no one had ever noticed or said that to me before. She said not to worry, it was fine and normal. Oh how wrong she was.

Anyway so fast forward to our first week at home. I’m attempting to nurse every 2 hours but the pain is completely unbearable. On day 2 my milk came in so I basically switched to exclusively pumping and feeding Owen bottles of expressed milk. This made me feel slightly better because at least I wasn’t a complete and total failure as a mother and was producing milk. (To be clear, this was my personal thought process in a muddled haze of new mom guilt. I FIRMLY believe no mother is a failure if they can’t/don’t want to breastfeed, however you choose to feed your baby is 100% your family’s decision and fed is best all the way.) So at this point I’m totally resigned to being an exclusive pumper and I’m Googling the shit out of tricks to pumping enough. Which, if you don’t already know, there is a woefully small amount of helpful literature out there for exclusive pumping moms. I’m not the one to write about it but someone else definitely should!

In the meantime, we’re continuing to go to the lactation clinic and every time we see a different lactation nurse, which is super awesome, who has us change our positioning or switch sides more often or sing the alphabet while we try to latch. Of course it all sort of works without too much pain in the clinic but the minute we get home and I try to nurse Owen on my own, it all falls apart and we’re a sobbing, screaming mess of agony again.

I’m still Googling every chance I get and around week 2 I became completely convinced that I was experiencing nipple vasospasms. If you’re not familiar with these you’re in good company. Basically when the baby compresses the nipple to nurse the compression cuts off the blood flow through the nipple causing deep shooting pain, color changes (nipple goes from white to blue to purple to red to pink), tingling, and burning. The pain usually happens a few seconds to a few minutes after nursing.

I also stumbled across one tiny little article describing something called nipple adhesions. Apparently when nipples are inverted they can actually form tiny strings of tissue (adhesions) that hold the tip of the nipple into the inverted position. When a new baby begins nursing on that nipple they pull the tip of the nipple out of its little hidey hole and stretch those skin strings – which hurts like a BITCH until the adhesions actually break and the nipple is no longer as inverted. I tried to talk to my Dr. about my findings but she was pretty dismissive and just referred me back to the lactation nurses at the clinic who again kept telling me that “breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt, if it does then something is wrong with your positioning.”

Well fast forward to week 4 and I’ve had enough of the stupid hospital lactation clinic with their completely unhelpful songs. Since we lived in the amazing boob-friendly city that is Portland, Oregon at the time, I found a private certified lactation consultant a few blocks away that could see us the following week. What a huge difference it was. We spent 90 peaceful minutes with her and she listened as we talked through all of our issues and concerns. She watched as Owen and I attempted to nurse and she provided a few helpful positioning suggestions. Then she actually examined my nipples post-nursing. Low and behold she CONFIRMED that yes she could see evidence of adhesions as well as very clear vasospasms. And then she uttered the words that completely changed my thought process about the entire experience, “breastfeeding is not always pain free, especially in the beginning and especially with these issues.” OMG. Every single lactation nurse we had seen up to that point kept saying that his latch is good, our positioning is good, so it shouldn’t hurt. I had felt like there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow deficient, because these professionals kept telling me that everything was good and I shouldn’t feel pain, but I did. Finally, here was someone telling me that my situation was different and that my pain was to be expected because my anatomy was slightly different. Immediately I felt 1000% better.

By this time I had already been starting to experience slightly less pain and had found myself actually wanting to attempt to nurse before simply pumping. But now this woman had validated my pain AND she even had some solutions. In terms of the vasospasms, the biggest issue was temperature change. When my nipples got cold, it triggered the spasm. Of course when you’re half clothed nursing a baby, you’re bound to get cold. Her advice was to buy air activated hand warmers and keep them in my bra. After nursing or pumping I would slather on some nipple balm, then my breast pad, then a hand warmer and it was heaven! Even now, 11 months later, I found myself buying a few hand warmers when we had insanely cold temperatures a few weeks ago.

As for the adhesions, unfortunately there’s no easy solution. For me, the act of nursing/pumping for about 7 weeks seemed to finally break them all. From everything I’ve read/been told, I shouldn’t have to go through this again with any subsequent babies because 11 months of nursing has changed my anatomy enough that my nipples aren’t as inverted – but we’ll see. In cases where there is serious inversion and the issue is known prior to delivery, there are other options such as a hard nipple shield that actually pulls the inverted nipple out or the Hoffman Technique where you essentially just stretch the nipple out using your thumb and finger. Breast pumps should never be used prior to delivery because the nipple stimulation can cause contractions and premature labor.
All in all, my biggest takeaway from this entire experience is that I just needed someone to acknowledge my pain and think outside the box with me to figure out what was causing it. Once that happened I actually felt like I understood what was going on, the pain was to be expected and I could either choose to deal with it or not. And I chose to keep going, even though there were SO many times where I just wanted to stop. But this isn’t one of those “I’m so glad I kept going” kind of things, because it really would have been completely ok if I had decided that I wanted to stop. I still would have bonded with my child and he still would have gotten the nutrition that he needed. Now I am happy that I stuck with it because I do enjoy nursing now. But I am also really excited that we’re coming up on a year and are slowing down. Caring for a baby is exhausting emotionally and physically and I tip my hat to every mother out there as she makes the best choices for her and her baby.

New Year, Same Resolutions

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For 2018 I am challenging myself to “make something every day.” I feel like I let my creative side slide this last year…first because I was super pregnant and tired all the time, then because I was a new mom and tired all the time, and in the last few months because we were in this great state of upheaval with moving and I was tired all the time. The thing that I’ve discovered though is that, like exercising, making things when I’m feeling tired actually energizes me. I need to be creative on a daily basis. So while I have other pretty typical 2018 goals involving getting organized, writing more, blogging more, eating healthier, cutting out sugar, and finding a way to be active, I am also challenging myself to feed my creative side on a daily basis. Whether it’s simply spending a few minutes working on my doodle notebook or knitting a few rows on one of my many projects, every day I’m going to “make.” I predict it will be challenging with a kiddo new job and the normal stresses of life but I know I’ll feel better when I do it. So I’m putting it out there to the world (or the 2 people that have come across this blog) and will do my best to stay accountable.

In the meantime, please enjoy the result of my first few days of the “2018 Make Something Every Day Challenge!” This project came about because we quickly discovered that the windows in our new apartment aren’t so great at keeping the warm air in Owen’s bedroom so we needed to figure out a way to keep him warmer at night. We decided to take a three-pronged approach and did the old plastic on the window trick + a blackout insulating cellular shade + a winterized sleep sack. I searched all over the web to find something that would be warm enough but didn’t have any luck so I decided to make it myself. I had a bunch of leftover fabric from several different projects and it turned out pretty good. 

Front
Back
Fuzzy Inside
Buttons!

The front and back are flannel and the inside is a soft furry fabric. I also did a layer of medium weight wool batting as added insulation. For the pattern I simply traced the outline of one of his cotton sleep sacks onto a couple paper bags and taped it all together. I decided to do buttons instead of a zipper mainly because I suck at sewing zippers. Unfortunately I then realized that the 3 layers of fabric was too much for dinky sewing machine to handle and I ended up sewing the button holes all by hand. I’m not going to lie, the first one SUCKED. But by the 4th I was getting the hang of it and felt pretty proud of myself.

All in all this was a fun, practical, challenge project and it got my creativity flowing for future making. And do far it’s keeping Owen nice and cozy 🙂

The Biggest Move

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I don’t know what to do with my life. Yep, I’m one of those stupid millennials that everyone loves to complain about. I grew up thinking that I could do “anything” and have realized how both true and false that really is. Since graduating from college in 2008 – F-you “great recession” – I have had various administrative type positions in several different industries. I took a detour back to school to be nurse and then remembered I was pushing 30, about to get married, and nursing school was going to take another 4 years. So I went back to the corporate world, had a baby, and then moved back in with my parents. Yep, I’m also one of those millennials. I like to think we’re in a multi-generational living situation rather than thinking I’m married, with a 9-month old, mooching off my parents for free rent while we figure our shit out.

To really understand how we got here I have to go back a bit, to 2008, when I graduated from college and my then-boyfriend now-husband and I decided to move OUT WEST. Yes, that’s some intentional caps lock right there. When you grow up in the midwest all of those west coast states are OUT WEST. Anyway, we made this decision to move to Portland, Oregon right after I graduated from college. We visited once and loved it but this was before Portlandia and the idea of “where young people go to retire” so don’t think we’re followers like that, it’s important. Anyway after a year of planning, hemming and hawing (on my part), and lots of saving, we packed up a rented SUV and drove across the country in June of 2009. The first year in Portland sucked ass. I won’t lie. I was miserable and depressed and I missed all of the people I loved. We fought, a lot. I cried, a lot. We almost broke up, a lot. The second year was a little better but we had the added strain of my husband’s mother living with us, not that she’s not a lovely person it was just hard. The third year was ok. We had begun to make friends and feel more comfortable in the city; it finally started to feel like home. The fourth, fifth and sixth years were really good. We moved into an amazing neighborhood in NW, 10 blocks from downtown, and we made more wonderful friends. We got married in the middle of the Oregon woods in 2015 and it was a perfect handmade affair. In 2016 we decided to have a baby and in February 2017 we welcomed the most amazing, beautiful, hilarious, smart, curious little boy. And then the shit hit the fan.

We thought we were prepared for the level of upheaval that would accompany our son, but we weren’t. I had 10 weeks of maternity leave after his birth and it was great. When I went back to work my husband Andre was transitioning into a new position and ended up having about 8 weeks between jobs. At first we were great. I would go to work from 6:30am-3pm and Andre would watch our son, Owen. When I got home we would all hang out together and it was wonderful. Then Andre started his new job, I got a full load at work and we started our new schedule. Andre watched Owen, alone, until 3:30pm when we would switch and I would be with him, alone, the rest of the afternoon and evening. Andre was a Sous Chef at a new restaurant so that meant 50-60 hours a week and working until 2-3am. I was a Project Manager at a software company working 45-55 hours a week. As you can imagine, getting up with a screaming infant 3-5 times in the middle of the night was torturous. We also lived in a one-bedroom apartment, because of course we did. We were so confident, before Owen was born, that we were going to be in that apartment for at least a year. We told everyone “oh yeah, it’ll be great because the AAP recommends sharing a room with your baby until at least 6 months.” And then we actually shared a room with a baby for 8 months.

It was ok in the beginning, actually to be fair, it was good in the beginning. We only stayed in the hospital for 24 hours after his birth so our first night at home was with a 27 hour old newborn and it was terrifying. We took turns holding our tiny sleeping baby the whole night. The second night we put him in his crib but I slept on the floor next to him and jolted awake every 20 minutes to make sure he was breathing. The third night we bought a rock and play bassinet and I pulled it as close to my side of the bed as possible and then still woke up every 20 minutes to check on him. He slept in the rock and play until he was 4 weeks old and I read an article about how it can cause plagiocephaly (flat head syndrome) and was panicked that he would have to wear a helmet. So we moved him to the crib where he slept happily and safely, waking every 2-3 hours, for the next 7 months. But I digress. If you’ve stuck with me this long, know that I’m sure I’ll talk about this whole baby sleep thing again because now that we’ve done it, I have opinions. Anyway, we thought we were hot shit and had a great plan for “LIFE” after O arrived but in reality we didn’t know anything and everything fell apart, quickly.

The biggest issue, bigger than sharing a bedroom with a baby, was the fact that we couldn’t really afford childcare (in Portland it’s typically around $1,500/month for infant care at a licensed center) and had to work opposite shifts to make it work. Now please note, we had been working opposite shifts like that for the majority of our relationship – almost 10 years – so we really and truly thought it wouldn’t be a problem. But we didn’t account for how hard it would be to be alone with a baby and a dog, in a 5th floor apartment, in Portland (where it rains A LOT), for hours at a time. We also didn’t account for how little we would actually see each other when we were both conscious, nevermind have productive and pleasant conversations.

Ok so I recognize that this is the part of the story where the internet trolls say, “well duh, they’re so stupid, of course that’s a bad idea. Why would they even have a child? They’re so irresponsible. If they can’t afford it, they should never have had a baby.” And to that I say, blah, blah, blah, go fuck yourself. Our species will die off if only the people who can truly and confidently afford everything that comes along with having a child, have children. Life is expensive. Life, particularly in this country, is expensive. Outrageously, ridiculously, stupidly expensive. Again, this is definitely a topic I’ll cover in the future because as you might expect, I have opinions.

Anyway, we had a baby because we had good jobs, a car, a place to live, supportive people who love us, and we wanted a family. Owen is amazing and we don’t for one split second regret our decision. But it had a cascading effect. We tried to get into a good routine but we were riding the struggle bus SO hard. We were exhausted constantly which meant we felt like we weren’t able to give it our all at work or at home. We were trapped in our one bedroom apartment because we couldn’t afford a two bedroom downtown ($2,000/month) and needed to be close enough to our jobs to make our one car situation work because we couldn’t afford a car payment on a second car. We were burned out from constantly being home alone with Owen and paying for childcare wasn’t a viable option so we couldn’t change our work schedules. It was a vicious circle of impossible solutions.

So we did the only thing we could think of that might work, we decided to move back to Michigan and in with my parents.

And that’s where we are now…living in limbo and trying to figure out our next step. So I thought, why not? Why not finally start that blog that I’ve been talking about doing for YEARS. I certainly have a lot of opinions about things and I feel like our current life experience is pretty relatable for a lot of people our age. So this is it, please join me if you feel so inclined. Just don’t be too much of a troll or I’ll block your ass because I don’t have time for shitty people 🙂