I so very, very often go over the time we got to spend with Maddie, as short as it was. When the grief and despair are at their worst (like right now), I sometimes think of the futility of singing to her, rocking her, kissing her. She was already gone, she never got to experience them. It is my firm belief she knows our love in Heaven, but those motions... those were for us. I so desperately wish I could have done something for her.

My OB (who I adore) got me in yesterday. He treated my bouts of mastitis, but he looked at the weird red streaking and said, "I have never seen that! Let me grab the determatologist."

She said it was either very atypical mastitis, or an infection from a human bite. I am on FOUR medications. Ick!

When Maddie was born, my milk coming in (and then leaving) were incredibly emotional experiences. I so wanted to feed my baby with that, and it broke my heart when it went away, as if my body were forgetting her. Because of all of this, I knew without a doubt that I was going to be incredibly determined to breastfeed with Alice. I was going to start off with small goals (3 months, then 6 months, etc.), and try to attain each separately.


We started off incredibly rough. A lost over 10% of her body weight in the hospital, and they almost didn’t let us leave on the last day. My milk finally came in, and we were allowed to leave. All went well for a week or two, and then things went south. She was losing weight, my ni.pples were bloody and cracked, so they wanted us to supplement with formula. I got mastitis (103 degree fever and all), and my supply dropped a ton. I started seeing a lactation consultant, and we found that Alice’s tongue was too short and her palate too high – she wasn’t able to properly nurse. I started pumping almost exclusively but still nursing her on occasion, and we did that for several months. Due to my PCOS, the supply issues were very difficult to deal with, but I was able to fix them with a TON of work and dedication – she’s only probably ever had about ten bottles of formula. Around four months, she was big enough that we were able to switch to nursing while I was home, and things went well. I had one more bout of mastitis and about nine clogged ducts, a blood blister and one case of thrush, but it’s been much improved. I’ve been incredibly proud that The Pickle turned 8 months yesterday, and despite having just about every problem possible, we have battled through this to do what I felt was best for her.

Then she bit me.

To be accurate, she’s been biting for a while off and on, mostly when she’s ready to switch sides or is bored. This one on Saturday was awful, though. She just had the first bit of her first tooth poke through a week and a half ago, and so she bit me hard enough that I bled. And bled. I bled when she nursed. I bled when I pumped. Finally I got it to stop bleeding by Sunday morning, and have been putting Bacitra.cin and lanolin on it after every nursing session. However, during last night’s nursing sessions, the pain got a ton worse. It felt like I was getting stabbed – I have had radiation and several surgeries, but THIS was horrible. It kept me up a good portion of the night, and it’s incredibly sore all of the time – I found a little bit of white on it this morning. I have a call in to my OB/GYN, because I’m pretty sure that it’s infected.

I don’t, don’t, don’t want to wean her, but this is awful. Any words of advice? I’m just getting ready to clock in to work, but would appreciate any words of wisdom anyone may have! It was (and still is) my intention to nurse her until a year, and then to mix nursing with whole milk.

I’ve always thought superstitions are largely silly. For the most part, I still do. JTD got a job at the hospital where Maddie was born, and I never thought twice about it. I wouldn’t hesitate to move houses or jobs just because they were what I was doing when Maddie was born – those things aren’t associated with her, they were just coincidences.


However… I do find myself avoiding certain stupid, inane things that I did in the hours and days preceding her birth. The weekend before she was born was the 4th of July, and so we’d gone shopping for her crib and nursery furniture. It was to be delivered the next week (which it still was, and is in the nursery still). We had been using that room for storage, so we had to get a bunch of junk out of there. My grandpa and dad came over on the day before I went into labor and helped JTD move stuff, and I lifted a few pillows and things. After we were all done, we went to a local place and got sodas. I can’t even drive by there now without having a fit of sadness.

On the day I went into labor (the 6th), I thought I just had the flu until the contractions really started coming. I had a fever, vomiting, and back pain, but didn’t know what it was. I stayed home from work, and was lying on the couch watching whatever was on TV. There were a couple of old sitcoms that were on when I started having contractions, and I won’t let anyone in our house even flip to them if I see them on.

While Alice and I frequently go to the hospital to visit Daddy, and the entire OB ward has been redone, I can’t even look in the room where she was born. This one makes a little more sense than the others, but it’s still just an irrational block in my brain.

I wonder if everyone has these weird things that they avoid and fear? I’m guessing that they’ll be there for forever – but in a way, it almost seems like they’re healthy. They’re fixed things upon which I can pin my fears and emotions.