Well, it seems I have been preordained to encounter every single breastfeeding nightmare imaginable. Just throw a little colicky baby in with all of it and I might as well put down roots in my little corner of new parent hell.

As I mentioned last week, I had a bout of mastitis. Well, plugged milk ducts are to blame for such infections and apparently I’m on my third or fourth of those today. I had a very fruitless phone call with the lactation counselor yesterday where she rambled off a list of things to try:

1. Hot compresses, a hot shower, etc.
2. Express some milk before each feeding
3. Position the baby so that her lower lip and chin point towards the plugged duct
4. Drink lots of water
5. Rest
6. Massage the lumpy, hard, painful parts
7. And last but not least, a very sketchy and questionably effective herb called poke root…I’ve already got an order placed.

All of these I have tried and to no avail…the reason I was calling her! And by the way, when the plugged duct is on the top half of your breast it is incredibly impossible to manage trick number 3. You can imagine the hysterics we were in trying to do that one!

So, when all else fails I call Chrissie, my soon to be aunt-with-a-nursing-license. She came over for dinner and was treated to me begging her to stick my nipple with a needle. Yummy, right? Well, she was totally game always on the lookout for new and interesting cases on which to practice her medical skills. So, we went straight away to the bathroom, me looking away so as not to disturb the surgeon in the act by my cowardly fear of needles aimed at sensitive body parts. It didn’t pop my little plugged duct/milk blister but it allowed for at least a little relief. Now, I’m taking the rest of my antibiotics to stave off another mastitis infection until I can get to the doctor on Tuesday next week.

I’m just so worn out from all these problems. I feel like as soon as I recovered enough from the c-section I started having breastfeeding issues and the roller coaster began. A few days of sublime latch and feedings are always closely followed by an equal or greater number of days with breast infections, plugged ducts, engorgement and bad latches. I can see why so many women don’t even attempt to breastfeed. It’s certainly not easy. I just hope I can keep my resolve and hang on until things get worked out and we’re nursing like old pros. I’ve always had a goal of doing it for the first year but in the past few days I’ve whittled that number in my mind down to 3 months, the pain and stress taking its toll on my stamina and courage. Let’s hope the doctor’s visit sets things right again and I can forget my momentary faltering commitment to the milk gods.

Over the weekend I came down with some nasty symptoms, much like the flu except way way worse. My temperature soared over 102 degrees, my joints felt like they were going to walk off without me, my head was in a death grip, and my boobs ached and were hot to the touch, even hotter than my feverish body. That’s when I called my OB’s office at 5pm on Sunday only to find out they couldn’t issue me a prescription since all the damn pharmacies in this small mountain town were already closed for the day. Needless to say, I was in utter shock that the only relief to be had would require a trip to the emergency room. So, I hunkered down with my fever and waited for morning. What a tedious night!

No one told me that breastfeeding your baby came with so many potential pitfalls and as it turns out one of those happens to mainly affect the bovine among us. But I am not a cow! How did I find this out, you may ask? Why, google, of course! Alongside all the helpful literature on dairy farming were a plethora of sickening images of cow udders the size of the beasts themselves. Scary news indeed. So scary were those pictures that I think this may go down as the only time in my long internet search history that I actually wish I could take back my query. Unfortunately no amount of purging my browser history can erase those images from my mind’s eye.

Anyway, the doctor wanted to see me on Monday afternoon to determine my illness but I had already self-diagnosed from the aforementioned google pages. It was mastitis, an infection of the breast caused by bacteria entering the nipple and setting down roots in a mammary duct. Sounds appealing right? Well, the doctor had us drive all the way down there just to tell me my suspicions were correct, there was thankfully no abscess forming, and to finally write me the script for some 20th century penicillin knockoff. (Makes me wonder what happens to those organic cows where the farmers agree not to give them any antibiotics. Cruel animal punishment I say!)

So, I’m finally on the mend but still not feeling totally human…still a little bovine in spirit it seems. Maybe I’ll go moo my way to bed now. Moooooo…

1. Wake a sleeping baby?

Simple. Just try to release her death grip on your shirt and put her down in her crib, bassinet, boppy, stroller or any other flat surface perfect for sleeping.

2. Calm a crying baby?

Make an utter and complete fool of yourself for 20 minutes, singing all the songs that come to your head, dancing and prancing and jiggling your way around the house, running every electrical appliance you’ve been told has a soothing vibration, and then when you think there’s nothing else left to do, stick finger in baby’s mouth and VOILA! A happy baby reappears.

3. To get nominated for worst new parent of the year?

Complain that the crying baby, now crying incessantly for hours, cannot be consoled. Then, watch as a family member asks some ridiculously easy question like, “Did you check her diaper?” and then proceeds to change said diaper, revealing the big wet poopy mess that she had been sitting in the whole time she was crying. Damn newbie parents!

4. Scare the unwed, non-parent friends we have left?

Talk about poop. The color of poop. The frequency of poop. How often and in what consistency poop ends up on lucky people’s clothes. You get the picture. Poop stories work!

5. Annoy new parents?

Recount for us the wonderful Saturday morning you had yesterday when after a night of binge drinking and staying out until closing hours, you then proceeded to sleep the day away, only waking at noon the next day and then choosing to relax on the couch and stay in your pajamas eating bon-bons or any other frivolous food you could think of. Thank you. Thank you for reminding of us of freedom. We’ll remind you of liver failure in a few years.

Benoit and I have noticed a new phenomenon of our nightly sleep-deprived routine, a wealth of funny and imagined conversations between us in the dark. I’m convinced it’s not just the lack of sleep but some weird first-time parent syndrome that we’ve discovered. We’ve single-handedly offered the medical community a new and baffling disease that strikes only couples with newborns. Awesome! Maybe I can get my name mentioned in a scholarly journal someday.

The conversations, if you could call our nighttime ramblings that, go something like this at 2am:

Me: (lifting up my shirt) Where’s the baby? She has to finish feeding!
Benoit: (pretending to be awake but really sleeping) I already put her to sleep.
Me: huh?
Benoit: (snoring)
Me: (sitting up in bed but still not turning on the light) Wait! I’m so confused! What happened? Where’s the baby??
Benoit: (hearing my panic) She’s in my arms!
Me: (seeing him rolled on his side and fearing that he’s suffocating her) WHAT?? What are you talking about? Are you sure? I’m SO confused!!
Benoit: (sitting up a little and seeming more alert) Wait. No. She’s in her bassinet.
Me: (completely awake by now and turning on the light) Oh, MY God! (then hysterical laughing & crying at our incompetence as parents)

It takes another 5 minutes or so for Benoit to figure out what has just transpired but eventually he gets that the joke is on us. And then we repeat a version of this kind of conversation every night afterwards and each night it’s new to us. Each night we fight through the same delirium and miscommunication, hallucinations and dream states to make our way to 2am reality, where we eventually find Gianna sleeping peacefully, if a little hungry, in her bassinet.