For The Birds!!!

Newsflash - Life with a newborn is crazy hectic!!!

How can one little cutie cause so much trouble???

And ongoing medical issues have not helped at all.  Want to hear the rundown? (TMI warning!)

First off, my incision is still not healed properly.  The right side of the incision is still oozing and bleeding.  It's not as bad as it was a few weeks ago, but the fact that I'm almost at the four week post-surgery point and this wound isn't healed is concerning.  I was at the doctor yesterday and she cleaned it up for me and removed some of the stitches.  She thought that it was weird that the stitches still hadn't dissolved, and she thinks that maybe I was having some sort of weird reaction to the stitches.  Hopefully now that they're removed, the bleeding and oozing will stop.  If it's still not healed within the next 10 days, I'm supposed to go back.

I also have tennis elbow is my left arm, something that is apparently common for new moms.  It's caused by stress on the joints from carrying around your baby and feeding.  It's pretty painful and it makes it harder to hold him, particularly when I'm feeding him.  I've been using lots of pillows to use as support instead of my arms, and that's been helpful.  But it's still occasionally painful.  How ridiculous is it to have tennis elbow from a baby???

Then, as if that wasn't enough, this past weekend I was diagnosed with an infected nipple and a breast infection.  I was prescribed an antibiotic on Saturday and started taking that immediately.  Do you know what they tell you have an infection and you're breastfeeding?  "Just keeping nursing through it!"

Are you kidding me!??!?!  It felt like I was being electrocuted every time I tried to feed him on that side.  It hurt soooo bad, I can't even describe it.  I thought about stopping breastfeeding altogether right then and there, but fortunately within 24 hours the electrocution pain stopped and it just felt like something was chewing on my nippled (oh wait, there was something chewing on it.) 

Sounds like enough, right?  But THEN, overnight Sunday I developed multiple clogged milk ducts.  I'm not 100% sure what caused this but I think it's because I was feeding him more on my right side due to the soreness on the left side, but then once the horrible pain on the left stopped, I went back to using both sides evenly.  Within that time, my right side thought there was more demand, so it increased supply, but when I stopped feeding more on that side, there was too much in there.  This happened at night, when I often go longer between feedings than usual because he's sleeping, and I woke up Monday morning in incredible painful, with a rock-hard right breast. 

It SUCKED!!!  I was useless all day Monday and all of a sudden EH wasn't getting anything from that side.  Ugh.. Seriously, this breastfeeding thing is FOR THE BIRDS!!!!***  I wanted to quit really badly.   But all of my online research said that one of the only things you can do for a clogged duct is to keep nursing through it. It was super frustrating because he was even fussier than usual since he wasn't getting as much food as he was used to getting.  And did I mention it was painful?  I was useless.  I was so uncomfortable, so miserable, so sad....

I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and she confirmed that really all you can do, other than use warm compresses, is to keep nursing through it.  *Sigh.*  I guess I'm stuck with this, at least for now.

The good news is, last night when EH was eating, I suddenly noticed that he was going for longer than normal and seemed to be getting a lot of milk.  Later than night I noticed that the hardness had decreased and by this morning, the clogged seems to be completely gone!!!  I am thrilled, and feel so much better. 

And of course, the general lack of sleep hasn't help with any of this.  BUT, I hear there's always a light at the end of the tunnel!

At least now I finally feel like I can get on with my life.  Hopefully, for all of you, that will mean more blog posts this week! I know that I'm behind!!!


*** In case you haven't noticed, whenever I say that something is "for the birds," it's usually something that I am currently doing and will probably continue to do, but sort of wish I wasn't.