Growing, Adapting, Coping

 

November is flying by! I read something a while ago that said that our lives feel short when things are routine. That’s why being a kid feels so long, everything is always changing, we are always growing and learning. On days when John is at work, the day is so busy, it blends into a mush of feeding, pumping, washing, and cooing with Calvin. I have been in awe at how Calvin is growing and changing. He seems so observant, he looks at objects we present (sort of), and he seems to perk up and tune in when he hears someone speaking in Cantonese. When I was dealing with the mastitis and baby not latching I began pumping regularly, slowly building up a “freezer stash.” I couldn’t wait for my breastfeeding journey to end and so I collected milk with the hope of stopping this madness a few months early and still having enough milk to feed Calvin for the recommended year. We didn’t mind using formula if needed, and that made this whole process less stressful. Since then, all the issues have sorted themselves out, and I thought that we might burn through some of the older bags of milk which were stored in tiny increments (apparently babies increase how much milk they need over time) and refresh the stash since it only lasts so many months. We defrosted the handful of bags from September, and Calvin seemed to drink it fine when he first woke up, until he didn’t! He screamed and fussed and rejected the bottle. I thought maybe he didn’t like the bottle, I blew through 5 bottles, he didn’t want any of them. We figured it was on off day, set the bottle aside and tried again a few minutes later. I offered the boob and he happily took it. Then I took a whiff of the bottle. Oh dang, that milk smelled like straight up trash. Soapy, metallic, funky garbage. It turns out if you have “high lipase” over the course of a few days, weeks or months, this happens... even when frozen. If you breastfeed from the boob, this wouldn’t matter since the milk doesn’t have last long. I talked to the doctor about it, and she said the milk is safe to drink if the baby will accept it, which he kind of does. I joked with a friend that it’s a lose-lose situation. Either Calvin won’t drink 2 months of frozen milk and I did all that work for nothing, or he doesn’t mind it and doesn’t have discerning taste, not promising being born into a foodie family. The doctor said that I could scald the milk on the stove and then ice bath it before freezing the lipase is deactivated. I’m doing this now to every batch of milk till we run through our freezer stash, then I’ll do it to half of the milk. So add this to the mix of new daily routines! It’s so incredible that I went from not thinking I would breastfeed to being overwhelmed with the complications that comes with making this work for us. I know the doctor says it’s safe but it’s pretty tough feeding something to your baby that tastes like soap. We’ve finally gotten to mid-October milk which doesn’t smell quite so bad. I feel proud that John and I figured out a plan to work through this hiccup, which when we discovered it felt so disheartening. Last night, I woke up to pump (and to get ready for the dentist appointment to get my bone graft checked, didn’t expect another gaping hole so soon in this journey, but that’s another story), and Calvin was still asleep after 4.5 hours! John and I looked at each other and couldn’t decide if we were supposed to wake him up or not! He ended up sleeping 5 and a half hours straight! I hope it wasn’t a fluke! It’s funny that everytime something goes wrong, it feels like that’s the way things are going to be now forever. Sometimes it is and we get used to it, but most of the time it’s not. But when something goes right, I’m terrified it was a one-off. It’s so hard to make time for things outside of the routine right now that I keep fantasizing about doing all these projects, making clothes, modifying diapers, redoing my kitchen, making my own toys. And rather than recognizing that the number of hours in the day is too short now, my sleep-deprived brain is making logical leaps which has resulted in me buying a serger, and really really pining for a scroll saw and routing table.