What Christy Turlington and I Have in Common

I got pregnant on our second try.  After three months of nausea, I had a pretty fabulous pregnancy.  Toward the end of it, my blood pressure rose and I had unexplained headaches so they delivered our son three weeks early.  We had asked our families to come visit a few weeks later (when he was supposed to be due) so it was just my partner and I in the room with the doctor.  The nurse came in to set up our son’s “station”, but other than her infrequent visits it was just the three of us.  Soft music was on, the lights were dim and we were calm.  After my sister’s delivery I had witnessed the year before with the Staying Alive soundtrack on and six of us in the room with her, my situation seemed unusual.  It was quiet.  It was sweet and very purposeful.  Our son was born and he was pretty perfect.  I was famished!  I had my first Diet Coke in months and a turkey sandwich while being wheeled to the Mother/Baby Unit.   We couldn’t have been happier.

Once in the other room, I was told to go to the bathroom frequently to help my uterus contract.  Unfortunately, I kept passing out and bleeding profusely.  I woke up to several nurses yelling my name and some yucky smelly stuff under my nose.  I remember saying with an exacerbated tone, “WHAT?”  What happened next was a blur.  I was given more pitocin to cause contractions and some sort of pain medicine – then I tried to make myself disappear.  We think they performed a D&C in the room although my records are spotty.  Then I slept and slept.  I had lost a great deal of blood and was pretty sick.  I’ve asked my partner to write about this from her perspective, but even after five years – it’s still too close, too scary.

It took weeks to feel better and my milk really didn’t “come in.”  I was a snack for our son for six weeks, but that was about it.  He was fine and eventually so was I.

After a few years of wondering what really happened to me, I came across a foundation that the amazing Supermodel, Christy Turlington Burns, began.  It’s called Every Mother Counts.  In 2003, she also experienced Post Partum Hemorrhage (PPH) after the birth of her first daughter.  Ah, so it did have a name and Christy Turlington and I have something in common!  I love it.  Like Christy, because of the wonderful care I received, I survived.  It can, and often does, mean death for thousands of girls and women around the world. In fact, PPH is the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the world, including in the US.

Christy wrote, “Once I learned that hundreds of thousands of women around the world were dying each year I needed to know why. And when I learned that almost 90% of these deaths are preventable I committed myself to doing all that I could to stop these senseless deaths.”  Her foundation makes people aware of the condition and helps them do something positive with the awareness they now have. 

As I grow with The Parenthood Journey, I learn new ways that we can support each other and support parents around the world.  I hope you will join me in this journey.

Lauren Boyd
Director of Programming and Membership at PHUMC
Partner to Candi and Mother to Miller who is 5

Micromanaging Maternal Instincts

(Guest Post from Rosie Connolly)

Just before I found out I was pregnant, my friend Heather gave birth to her son. I was so grateful for her willingness to share her thoughts and experiences, especially since she’s so frank. I wanted to know, from her first 6 weeks as a mom, what she would have liked someone to tell her from the beginning.

“Breastfeeding is hard. It’s hard and it hurts. They tell you it isn’t going to hurt, but it does.”

I filed her thought away, and I listened to all the doulas and lactation consultants tell me the standard line—breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt. If it does, pop the baby off and relatch.

If only this had been the worst of my breastfeeding problems.

After a short labor with an exhausting amount of pushing, they placed my new son, Diego, on my chest. I started at my alien, cone-headed baby as the nurses scrubbed him up and listened to his heart and lungs, and my midwife fussed over me. I just stared. It was probably one of the most surreal experiences of my life, having this little creature crying on my chest. I didn’t get it—the connection, the maternal understanding—until a while later when he finally latched on.

Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t slept in 48 hours. Maybe something worked out right that first time. But it didn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, the rest of the time in the hospital was not spent in breastfeeding comfort. Latch. Ouch. Pop. Relatch. Ouch. Pop. Frustrated baby. Frustrated momma. When I asked the nurses for help, they just shoved his open mouth onto me. When the lactation consultant asked me how much it hurt on a scale of 1 to 10, I said, oh, maybe a 4, and showed her the huge blood blister on my nipple. Her response was, at this stage, if it only hurts at about a 4, just let the baby nurse. It’ll get better, and he needs the practice.

As a woman who frequently suffers from migraines and was stupid enough to get a tattoo on her foot, I am quite familiar with pain. Perhaps my scale of 1 to 10 equals someone else’s 1 to 50. I don’t know. Nonetheless, I gritted my teeth, continued to nurse, and took my baby home on Wednesday afternoon.

At the Friday appointment with the pediatrician (who wasn’t our regular pediatrician), Diego had lost more than ten percent of his birth weight. The pediatrician furrowed his brow and sent spasms of anxiety through my sleep-deprived mind. The nurse gave me ideas on how to increase milk supply, and they made us an appointment with their on-staff lactation consultant for the next day. She spent an hour with us on Saturday. She watched. She gave me tips on how to open his jaw wider. She showed my husband, Jose, how he could help. She pointed out that Diego’s jaw was uneven. She suggested he might have a tiny tongue-tie. But, ultimately, what she taught me to do—which no one at the hospital had done—was teach me how to teach Diego to nurse.

On Sunday, we went in for a weight check. He had gained 10 ounces, and had almost returned to his original birth weight.

With a sigh of relief, we went about our lives. Jose and I juggled ways to get me at least one four-hour sleep cycle—as recommended by the lactation consultant to help milk supply. I spent my nights awake, watching terrible TV, as my son nursed every two hours overnight, and then slept from 8am to noon. My mother came to support us. Everything seemed fine.

Ten days later we went back to the pediatrician (I don’t remember why). The first thing the pediatrician (yet another in the practice) noticed was that our son had gained an average of 2–2.5 ounces a day in 10 days. “That’s too much,” he said. “We need to slow him down.”

Back to the on-staff lactation consultant. She gave me tips on how to reduce supply: peppermint tea, block feeding, pacifier use. And she sent us home.

I did these things. My mother left and Jose’s parents arrived. They spent almost their entire two weeks with us passing around a crying baby while, between naps and feeding sessions, I hid in my room, trying not to cry along with my baby.

After another ten days, we returned to the pediatrician’s office again. In ten days my son had gained one-tenth of an ounce. He had gone from “gaining too much” to not enough. Not nearly enough.

With my sweet mother-in-law at my side, I almost burst into tears. All I wanted to do was feed my son, help him grow and thrive and be a happy baby. I couldn’t even do that. I had continued to suffer through clogged ducts, blisters and tight latches, frustrated baby wails as I would try to relatch him. Add to that the mental beating I gave myself daily because I either fed my baby too much or too little as my body developed into a glorified milk factory.

I needed a second opinion, or I would lose my mind. I called Bloomington Area Birth Services (bloomingtonbirth.org), where we had taken our birthing classes, and made an appointment with one of their lactation consultants. I met with her the day after my in-laws left, and told her my story. She listened with rapt attention, and then sat in silence on the floor, stunned.

When she recovered her senses, she told me something that no one had bothered to mention, through our birth classes, from the pediatrician’s office, in the breastfeeding books, or anywhere:

Babies will not eat too much.

Babies aren’t like adults who go out to dinner, have an appetizer and a salad, are already full before their entrée comes but still eat it AND dessert, and then sit back and unbutton their pants. Babies eat until they are full and then they stop. There’s no reason to heap on that extra helping of milk after the first helping of milk. It’s not chocolate milk, after all.

Then she suggested my new plan: to have no plan. Stop letting others micromanage my instincts. Feed my baby the way that felt right to me. And stop worrying about if he’s eating too much or not enough. He’ll take what he needs and no more. But let him get what he needs.

And so we did. He nursed when he wanted to—which was a lot—and he stopped when he was done. He continued to gain an average of 2 ounces a day for several months. But the constant crying that prevailed during my in-laws’ visit almost entirely ceased. And a happy baby emerged.

My son will be ten months in the middle of January. His jaw is still uneven, and so I still get the occasional blister, but I have one of the happiest babies I’ve ever met. And, by the way, he’s HUGE. At his nine-month appointment, he was in the 92nd percentile for weight and 90th percentile for height. The only problem I see? It’s exhausting to carry around a 24lb infant.

After all of this, I understand what Heather meant when she said breastfeeding is hard. But just after Diego was born, she also said, “Stick with it. If you want to breastfeed, then breastfeed. Through all the pain and frustration, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences of motherhood, and you’re the only person who can do that for him.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Rosie Connolly is a mom to 10-month-old Diego. She lives in Irving, TX with her husband Jose, Diego, and two jealous cats.