Any recs for a decent nursing bra for someone with biiiig boobs? (40 DD/aka E ) Right now I have 3 Target nursing tanks, which are meh, because they tend to roll up at the bottom, and a regular bra from Motherhood, that ends up doing something weird to my boobs, where half of it breaks out between the ‘frame’ part, and the ‘flap’ part, so that I have like, double cleavage. Not Cool.
I have a really good camera, the Olympus C5050z, that has served me well for several years. It’s way more camera than a lot of people are fortunate to receive (for free), and I really love the balance of features and the discreet size. It was one of my dad’s cameras to use at graduations, but as he phased in more and more DSLRs, the 5050s went to my mom and I. ANYWAY.
Since my dad wants me to help at a few weddings this summer, he left me his D70 & Speedlight to play with a few days ago, and oh my lustfulness. I’ve used the D70 several times, but more for workhorse purposes — shooting 1500 graduates in a day, or taking 8 zillion tournament pictures, you know? But now, hot damn, I have a SUBJECT, which is MY BABY, and the difference between my beloved 5050 and D70+freakin’ speedlight is huge. It’s stuff like that that makes me want to have an income again. Getting a beautiful shot is just so damn EASY with that setup (and my baby, of course, is a beautiful subject.) I feel spoiled that I even have a 5050, but I am now fantasizing about dad leaving the D70 in the sameway he left the 5050. But seriously, LOOK at the pics!
My dad holding Ingrid:
Dave takes over (see, because *I* was too busy getting all gooey over the camera. Bad mama.)
All of my favorite things in one place: My family, my cat, and my iBook. 
Is it wrong that when I put her in her garish Ocean Wonders Aquarium Swing, I say "time to sleep with the fishies?"
(For photo geeks, that swing is in motion, OMG I love the D70.)
See, she’s not always pissed.
I have a thing for her feet, apparently. More pics in the Ingrid gallery, too…
Dear Ms Ingrid,
Today you are one whole month old. You’ve now seen every number day there is, because you were born in May, which is an ‘all the rest’ month. I’ll explain when you’re older. You have gone from a googly-eyed, wrinkly-toed, head-antennaed newborn to a (sometimes) googly-eyed, red-faced, smelly-necked one month old. I canhardly believe it!
There are things I forgot to tell you about your birthday, like how Auntie Em had more barbecue chips than you would even IMAGINE in one of those snack size bags, because she kept eating them between helping me push,and I just could not believe that the bag wasn’t empty yet, goddammit, or about how your grammie and grampie were waiting at a hotel all day to hear when you arrived (when they weren’t eating in the hospital cafetariea, "just in case.") or how after everyone left that night, your dad I just stared at you for as long as we could, taking it all in.
In those first days, you balled up just like you’d been insideme, and your outside movements made the weird inside movements I’d been feeling make sense. You’dmarch in place, just like you did inside me, and you still do. You are amazingly strong, those marching legs now propel you up my chest when you’re really angry, you push yourself into a downward dog position and inchworm your way up, sometimes using my navel as a foothold. You’ve turned over from belly to back a few times for your Dad, mostly motivated by severe irritation at the concept of "tummy time."
When you get angry, you start by windmilling your limbs, and opening your mouth and turning bright red,but it takes you a good minute or two to really let fly with the crying. In that minute, you just vibrate with energy. When you sneeze, it’s usually four in succession, and you used to punchyourself in the face with each one, but that’s gotten better as you’ve gained more control of your arms. Your hands are often curled up into fists, with your thumb peeking out form your index finger, which is the ASL sign for the letter "T." The heat of early summer has given you a rash from the top of your head to your chest, basically, and while it pains us to look at it, you don’t seem too bothered. We’ve also learned that broccoli makes you throw up, and that you don’t like to be gassy.
You can see your fishies on your swing as they spin around, your head tracks their movement and you seem mystified that as one disappearsout of your range of vision, another one appears. In the last week or so, though, you’ve suddenly started looking at
us.Not at the high contrast of our heads against a light background, but
really LOOKING at us. You seem to even know when we’re coming near; when you start to cry, you pause when you hear us on our way to comfort you.
You make use laugh, more than anything else, even when its cranky o’clock. In addition to seeing us, you’ve even started to smile, real smiles, not gas or flukey smiles. We can’t get you to smile on command, which is almost better, because those drive-by grins are such a surprise, every time they happen, and we adore every one of them.
The other night, we were all in bed, and you and your daddy were asleep, when you startled yourself awake, yelped, and flailed your arms wildly, trying to regain your senses. I reached out my hand and you grabbed it, relaxed your head to ths side and dropped back to sleep, your tiny little long-fingered hand pressed hard against my own. It’s moments like that that make me realize what it means to be your mother, to be able to quiet a bad dream by being there to hold on to. The bad dreams will get bigger and badder as you get older, and my hand will eventually cease to be the source of comfort it was that night, but I’ll always be reaching out to you to try to make it better.
Love, Mama
Okay, so I ordered a slingset pouch and support from the clearance section. (And um, am trying to negotiate a deal for a second pouch, thereby procuring a "whole shebang" set for like, 40 bucks less than retail. At least i can say my sling habit is satiated with used and/or clearance slings, even the custom was on sale. Right?)
AND, I don’t feel AS bad, because I have a job interview to schedule with your favorite Maine outdoor retailer, the Double L to the Bean, if you know what I mean. I did the online app the other night, after hearing that they offer evening training hours for evening employees (which is what I’d be), I was pretty stoked. Google Maps puts itat 2 miles from my house, but that’s taking the main roads, and not the shortcuts, so literally, more like 1.5, and only 2 lights away. REALLY DAMN CLOSE. That’s cool for me. They pay a great wage, there’s a 40% discount, and while it’s seasonal, there’s opportunity to become regular part-time. (Or more, I would kick six kinds of ass as a trainer for them, I just know it.) I’m very excited about that. Job interview means less sling-guilt.
But, I’m also supposed to shoot at a wedding on July 2 (also my birthday, yay 31!) but it’s a Sunday. And the wedding is back home. But then an hour from my parents house back home, and Dave was going to come with us and he and my mom were going to be on Ingrid duty, but it turns out Dave has to work on the 3rd (and then the 4th is off) so it would mean either my mom having Ing for a whole day, or dave driving us back at like, 10pm. Neither sounds good, and we both don’t think it would be in anyone’s best interests to have my mom solo for 8 hours, for the first time Ing is away from mama. I’m pumping, and she will take a bottle, but her fussy hour (anywhere from 4-9pm) can be taxing, and it’s a thousand times easier to share that with someone. I WANT to do the wedding, Dave wants the income (of course, see Biggest Fear number 2), but damn, that will be way rough. The other wedding I’m doing is HERE, so at least the babe would have all of her own stuff handy, and it would be Dave and my mom on duty, and then I’m just a half hour away if all hell breaks loose.
The clients aren’t expecting me, it’s more of a "let’s try this out" kind of thing, where my dad does the traditional wedding stuff, and I float around and take pictures of random stuff, more photojournalistic stuff, to see how that goes over. If I’m NOT there,no one will know the difference. If I AM there, they get lots of extra (hopefully) cool shots. I explained the situation to my mom, and we’re going to try to work SOMETHING out, if I can even go for part of the wedding on the 2nd, just to see how it goes, and she and Dave maybe hang out in the town where the weddingis, and then Dave and I take the babe and go home at a reasonable hour, but I’ve still done something. That might work.
The job I’m interviewing for is not only reallllly close to home, but also evening hours (so Dave can handle that) and training doesn’t start til Mid-July, when many mamas are already back to work full-time, because we are not Canada. I think that that would be a fairly decent blend of income and not needing childcare. Also, hello, it’s taking phone orders from a catalog, so my brain won’t be ripped in two every day, most likely. Banal, part-time, decent wage, superclose to home, evening job. (That has a ‘first aid room’ that I bet 5 bucks is where I get to pump, too.) I could swing that, I think. And hell, if I can’t? I quit! It’s not the end of the world if I quit a customer service rep job, you know? We’ll figure it out.
Everything will work out. I’ve been saying that since day one. Everything will work out. I justknow it. And having the proper slings for the proper occasions is just part of that process. RIght?
If only TypePad had an auto-save feature, because it NEVER FUCKING FAILS to lose my longest posts. And I never fail to save-as-draft at that point. Argh argh argh.
ANYWAY.
Basically, I was writing about what works and doesn’t work for us at this point.
Works: OMG, the sling. We each have a KKAFP, and I’ve used mine a ton, and Dave used his in a moment of crisis the other night when I wasn’t here and Ingrid needed serious snuggling to calm down. I was surprised he remembered where it was, but when I got home, she was calm and sleepy, and Dave was, well, hot, because fleece is fucking HOT in summer. And of course, my love of the sling but hate of the hot means that I now have a custom sling on it’s way, made by a WAHM starting a sling business. Of course, that doesn’t keep me from ALSO lusting after a Slingset, because the custom is a non-stretch pouch, and the slingset allows for some cool wrap-like configuring, without the 15 feet of fabric. Clearly, I have a problem. Anyway, I love the sling. I’ve gotten some pretty good comments on it, when out and about, but I had my first mama-bear moment in TRU wearing it yesterday, when two women walked by and after they passed, one said "that’s not healthy." My initial reaction was to tear her a new asshole and ask her just where she got her medical degree to determine what was healthy, and then maybe school her a bit in the correlation between lots of time in the baby bucket and plagiocephaly, but I refrained. After the primal instinct to tell her to fuck right the fuck off passed, I realized that she could have been talking about the fact that Ing had a pacifier in (yep, we’re paci people, who knew? It was that or me making the choice to never, ever wear a shirt again, and I must say, it hasn’t interfered with nursing, not one bit…) or maybe it was about something else entirely, because the world does NOT revolve around The State of Ingrid. Except to ME, of course. (I still think she was talking about the sling though.)
ALso working, despite really digging my sling, is the stroller — we’ve gone on many walks in the neighborhood (one today even!) and I truly can’t imagine slinging her when it’s hot, and I’m a postpartum furnace, while walking and increasing my body heat, in the heat. Sling is great for cool evenings or stores with airconditioning, but since most people don’t have A/C in their homes (including us) home use is limited. Except in a crisis. (But see, maybe that Slingset would make it easier in hot weather, which is the OTHER allure of it, strechy, but reportedly MUCH cooler than fleece. Know what would really rock, would be a stretchy pouch made of Coolmax. Seriously.) We like the stroller, and partly because it’s the one piece of baby gear that can be stowed easily in our tiny coat closet.
Ingrid also digs her swing, and this week started tracking the fishies as they spin above her head. She hangs out inthe swing while we eat, or when I need to put her down to move between floors, or when I do the dishes, both those times. The bouncy seat, less so, but it ends up getting left upstairs more often than not, after it’s primary function as "place for Ing to hang while mama gets a shower and thus preserves her sanity." She digs it for shower time, staring intently at the Cowgirl Brothel-themed 1972 bathroom vanity. The contrast of the inlaid gold foil on the shiny white laminate is utterly FASCINATING, apparently. The Boppy gests used quite frequently by Dave, but nursing pillows in general were a flop for me. The kissaluvs are fabulous (the prefolds are a little trickier, and I’ve USED them, but no poop experience there, and the KLs are just so much EASIER) and the Imse Vimse covers are great, too. And they MUST run huge, the newborn size that AnneMarie convinced me to buy, after saying they run huge, the velcro tabs still MEET, and if it was possible,could probably overlap. Also digging the liners, we’re using them twice before tossing (once if poopy), and that seems to be okay. The PackNPlay lives in the dining room, and is baby-central, and 99% of diaper changes happen there. She doesn’t sleep in the bassinet feature or anything, but the bassinet portion is great for stashing dirty laundry! Heh.
What didnt: Nursing pillows… the My Brest Friend was raved about and recommended by anyone who’d used it, but I found it to be a big pain in the ass. I have a great chair for nursing, and a bed pillow in front of me was suitable for the football hold that we used exclusively at first. Now I don’t use anything at all, and we can use the cradle hold with no problems.
The Snugride. OMG, I hate that thing. The whole ploy of convenience ended up not panning out here, because I can’t open the handle with the SR in the CAR. Well, I CAN, but then can’t get the seat OUT. So, it’s a whole thing of take out carseat, put on ground, extend handle, and then lug awkwardly to destination, and reverse. SO much easier to just take her out of the seat at the car and carry her in the house (granted, we park about 4 steps from our front door) or put her in the sling to go inside. We have a Decathlon (just arrived!) that I’d love to install NOW,but Dave spent somuch time getting the snugride in right, I don’t have the heart to ask him to scrap the baby bucket idea. The only time I can think that it will be handy will be when I have my 6w postpartum appt, because it means I don’t have to sling her during a pap smear. (ALthough, in an OB office, I bet I could find someone to hold her for the moments I physically CAN’T.)
The things we haven’t used at all yet: the crib & mobile (save for, "OMG, Mama has to pee, you wait here" moments), the monitor (since she’s usually ON us or within 6 feet at all times), and we’ve only used the glider a few times. I’m glad to have all that, as I’m sure it will get used when she’s a little older (we’re just surviving the 4th trimester here)but for now, not much going on in the babyroom. (As I predicted months ago, I think.)
But anyway, yeah, and then there’s Ingrid — she turned over from belly to back last night, during a particularly infuriating round of tummy time with Daddy, and today she started to smile at things AND THEN NOT FART. Definitely a different smile than the gas ones, which is fucking adorable. Of course, she is covered in baby acne, from the top of her head to her nipples, basically, and it looks worse when she nurses or cries, but everyone tells me it’s normal. We love her anyway. If she could do laundry and dishes, life would be perfect.
Holy CRAP, I feel like I’ve managed to get so much done — washed the diaper wraps, emptied the dishwasher, pumped 2 oz and even applied for a JOB today. DAMN, I’m good. (The job is LLBean, seasonal/temp work taking orders at the call center around the corner from my house. I’m hoping it’d be a decent evening P/T mama-job through the fall, while I finish my degree. evening P/T = no extraneous childcare expenses, so, yay. Plus, maybe I could wrangle myself some awesome corporate training gig? One can wish. ANyway.)
So, the feat that places just above "we lose everything we own in bankruptcy/foreclosure because Gretchen doesn’t have a damn job" for Dave is, "we lose everything we own in a fire." He’s worked so damn hard for every little thing he has, and losing it all in some tragic way is his number one phobia. Yesterday, when I was chatting one-handed with jeanne, and I heard a ‘thump’ in the basement and the power flickered, I got a little nervous about that myself. In fact, I didn’t go to the basement because I couldn’t decide what to do with Ingrid — do I take her and risk the thump being a fire that’s about to take out the stairs (we have no other egress from the basement aside from the kitchen stairs), or do I go alone and risk Ingrid being alone when the stairs collapse? Um, yeah. Mama paranoia, much? So, I left the door open, and kept chatting with jeanne, figuring if it was all about to go bad, at least she’d know what happened right before.
When Dave came home, I was hesitant to tell him about the sound, because if it was just some random neighborhood power bump (did I ever tell you about the time when my mom was here alone, and pushed down the button on the toaster at the exact moment a tractor trailer truck hit a pole down the street, knocking out power to most of the West Side? So she tried to call Dave at work, because she thought she’d blown out the whole house’s power trying to brown some bread? Hee) he would still pace all night, waiting for the worst. I told him anyway, andhe , as predicted, freaked out and started checking everything — inside, outside, upstairs, everywhere. Like, maybe it was a tree branch that fell, or something the cat knocked over, or something. I kept saying (as he passed) "I shouldn’t have said anything, now you’re never going to sleep again, I’m sorry I even mentioned it …" over and over. On about his 11th pass by, and my 10th apology for needless worrying, he said "NO, you SHOULD have said something." Apparently, when he opened the door to the hot water heater, he saw this:
Uhh, yeah. A soot-filled box, and melted wires are NOT what the HW timer is SUPPOSED to have. It’s all good, he replaced it today (AND I STILL GOT ALL THAT SHIT DONE!), but, uh, yeah. EEK.
And now, some requisite baby photos.
Um, the family self-portrait didn’t quite work out. But check out that cleavage!
Poor girl has a spread of baby acne cropping up.
And yes, that’s my nipple. Behold.
The elusive sleep-smile, captured at last. Miss Ingrid loooves the eatin’ round here.
the thing is, even in the most awful hours, when I’m really stressed out or tired or just worried, I never don’t want to be doing this. Our worst night was the night before my last post (COULD YOU TELL?) and even THEN, she woke up and wasn’t exactly grinning, but she was bright eyed and calm and just gazing up at us and OH MY GOD, it’s good. If it were any other baby crying and fighting the breast at 3 am, I’d be all like "How’s about I sell you to the circus, or the Jolie-Pitts or someone" if it weren’t MY kid crying. My kid, I’m just wanting to make it BETTER.
If all I had to do was take care of Ingrid, I would be ALL SET. What ends up sending me to frustration land is trying to do anything ELSE. It took me TWO HOURS to pay four bills last night, in between feeds and changes and "what’s wrong, babybug?" and that was WITH Dave’s assistance. Seriously, to write four checks, get them in their envelopes, with stamps and a return address — TWO HOURS. And, HA! I thought I’d get laundry folded, and no, I didn’t, because the BILLPAYING took so damn long, so there are what, 2? Maybe 3? loads of laundry on the guest bed, waiting to be folded. And thank you notes, those are dangling over myhead as well, and let’s not even MENTION my last papers for school. INSANE. It will all get done, in due time, right?
Ingrid’s doing well; today is National Spitup Day, apparently, since she’s wrecked three onesies so far, and my shirt, and Kate’s hoodie in the process, so I dug out Ingrid’s First Bib, a cute froggy number from kb (hi, kb!) that her daddy loves because it is frogalicious. And maybe it will salvage onesie number FOUR. She eats and sleeps and poops, and now she spits. It just figures, since I am so ANTI-puke, that my baby is a pukey one. Sigh.
I still love her, though, even when her tiny fists are pounding at my breast in the wee hours of the morning. I’ll be really excited when she makes the connection that the fists pushing me AWAY are her OWN. Seriously.
Holy shit, is it ever hard to do anything when you have a babe-in-arms for at least 20 hours of every day. I can click and READ shit online pretty easily, but getting info back OUT is an absolute boondoggle. This post is brought to you by a post-shittiest-night-ever trip to the peds, where Miss Ingrid passed out in her carseat on the way home and stayed asleep when I brought her inside and put her in her swing. Thank ye gods. ANYWAY.
So, I’m reading email and blogs and such, and if I haven’t replied, yo, I’m so sorry. I haven’t even paid bills or sent thank you notes (shout out to NJ — LOVE the outfit, not too frilly AT ALL, in case you were worried! Brown with pink accents is totally a different league than pink with pink accents. And appliqued pink ducks. Why not just put the baby in a vagina suit? ANYWAY) I can click easily with one hand. Clicking is good.
What else — our first foray out into The World was with Kate, on a trip to walmart, which I normally hate, but i needed disposable diapers for overnights (loving the Kissaluvs, btw, and the Bumpy covers) and I can’t afford the noble high road of 7th gen, and WalMart is the only place that carries the hypoallergenic White Cloud generic brand. that trip sort of totally sucked, in that I felt like Stupidest Mom Ever (I know, in WALMART) because I forgot the sling, so we carried her in the bab buciket, but I couldn’t figure out how it’s supposed to sit on top of the child-seat area, so I tried to put her in the cart, but the first cart I had she wouldn’t fit so I had to get an EVEN BIGGER CART, just to get a pack of fucking DIAPERS. Then she woke up and started to freak out (who wouldn’t to wake up in the bottom of a WalMart shopping cart, really) and I’d forgotten a paci. I ended up carrying her, while kate pushed around the Giant Cart withonly a baby seat and pack of diapers in it, and i felt like a TOTAL DUMBASS. yesterday, I vowed to avenge my first trip out, and I remembered the sling, and the paci, and went to Target.
TOTALLY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE. I am such a light packer anyway, I never carry a purse, even, so hauling a HUMAN and the required accoutrements is daunting. BUT, with the sling, I popped her in, took my small backpack that functions as her diaper bag for the time being and put that in a basket, and was able to get what I needed with BOTHHANDS FREE. I felt much more like "gretchen + baby" as opposed to "HERE COMES MOMMMMMYYYY!!!!" totally redeeming.
Today was her ped appointment, and yay, my tits, in that she’s gained almost a full pound since birth, and grown an inch. The ped was hoping she’d just be back at birthweight, and clearly, we met that goal. She’s 90th percentile for weight, and 75th for height. That’s about right, coming from my body. And, her cord is healed up great. Go, Dave!
Something I didn’t know before:
In the car, at least a crying baby is a breathing baby. I seriously wish one of the damn mirrors we bought would actually reflect my kid’s face back to me, ferfuckssake, so I’m not driving around terrified that she’s not ASLEEP, but having some massive choking episode. Sigh.
Today is my first solo day with Ingrid. It got off to a great start (well, after the tears when Dave was getting ready to leave, uh, on MY part) in that in my first two solo hours, I had showered, dressed and fed the baby, and dressed myself in REAL PANTS, even. Then I fed her again, and she hurled spectacularly, managing to nail all of our clothes, so we had to change again. Plus, dude, she hurled. It’s a lot of work getting all that IN, so it’s sort of depressing to see it come back UP. Also, GROSS.
Dave did make it home for lunch, but might have to stay a little late tonight as they’re prepping for a telethon. As long-timers know, Dave & telethons are a stressful combo — all he has to do is run camera, but that means looking at an endless parade of sick and dying/dead/almost died kids for HOURS upon HOURS. It skews one’s perspective, that’s for sure, and this is the first year (obviously) that he’s running camera with a newborn at home. So, he’ll be a wreck at work, and I’ll be home alone for TWELVE HOURS. TWELVE. Which has me a little paranoid, as you can imagine.
Anyway, other than throwing up on Mama’s last pair of clean Real Pants (I’m now in sweats, ugh), Ingrid has other tricks… she likes to climb up us, extending her legs so that she’s in a downward dog position and totally pissed that she can’t just stand up and WALK like a REGULAR HUMAN, dammit. We also have several nicknames for her, as you do, including "BabyBug," "Frog Princess," "Squirmin’ Merman" and "Jesus Christ, Was That You?"
So far, so good.
I am so dreading Dave’s return to work. Have I mentioned? Because I am. We’re so lucky, I know, to have even had THIS time, but still. I’m going to miss him. It’s so great to see him so involved, and so totally INTO the fatherhood thing. Tonight he was looking at her and said "She really IS beautiful, like, more than other babies, isn’t she?" His chest is going to implode the first time she smiles at him, you think?
Things are going well here — we went for another walk, and since it’s been 80+ here, all the neighbors were out, so she’s now met EVERY neighbor on our street (that wanted to meet her, anyway, which is five houses worth.) I also managed to get her in the KKAFP in the tummy-to-tummy hold, which is great (though, not so much on the hottest day of the year thus far, but will be nice when we go to the grocery store or whatever, I’m thinking.) She’s also learning to hang out in her bouncy seat & swing, which makes the idea that I might get a daily shower in more feasible.
Daily showers have been key to my state of mind so far. They are easy to get when Dave’s here, obviously, but I’m hoping some bouncy acclimation will help me get showers on solo days, at least showers before noon. It’s like hitting reset or something. I’m hoping to keep it up.
Things are going well, though — Ingrid seems to be doing all that she should be, at all the right times. My postpartum hormones have me extra-emotional, especially in the evening, when I get the "8 oclock weepies" where I cry for no reason for a while and then recover. And I HATE TO CRY. I really miss being pregnant, honestly. And not in an "I was the center of attention!" way, because I really wasn’t, but I miss the baby that was inside me. It’s almost like they are two separate entities, like Ingrid is her own amazing person, but the baby that marched in place and hiccuped and rolled around inside of me is gone. My belly feels flabby and floppy, while pregnant it was tight as a drum, wrapped around the creature inside. It’s just odd to not have her THERE all the time, and to be actively working to help her forge some independence from me.
Anyway, I don’t think my weepies are in the realm of PPD (but we are sort of keeping our eyes open to that, based on my own history) but just part of the biological process of postpartum recovery. Having a baby is BIG EVENT, you know?
