Monitoring Appointment 2

Today didn’t go as well as I had hoped, and I spent the day crying. I still have the follicle on the right, but might lose it while we wait for the follicles on the left to catch up. I went from 6-7 follicles on the left to having 4 measured between 9 and 11mm.

The nurses were VERY rushed and didn’t spend a lot of time looking for follicles. They didn’t mention if there were any other smaller follicles that would catch up or really tell me much of anything. When it came time to get the flow sheet updated, the nurse literally said “We can’t spend any more time in this room, we need to get to the next one.” Didn’t instill much confidence in the clinic treating me as a person and not just another person walking through the door.

I tried to ask them about the Cetrotide after having a pretty nasty reaction (see pic below) but they didn’t look at the picture and told me to keep taking it.

Cetrotide reaction

The current plan is to continue meds as prescribed and come back Friday for another monitoring appointment and blood draw.

Med list:

• Wednesday- 1 vial Cetrotide in am, 300 IU Follistim, 30 HCG-LH, 6 units Omnitrope, 1 tablet LDN, 400 mg Ubquinol
• Thursday – 1 vial Cetrotide in am, 300 IU Follistim, 30 HCG-LH, 6 units Omnitrope, 1 tablet LDN, 400 mg Ubquinol

Lab test results:

• Estradiol – 779.1 pg/ml
• Progesterone – .155 ng/pl

Total counts:

• Blood draws – 7
• Ultrasounds – 5
• Injections – 61

New Year Goals

I am not one for making resolutions. I stick to them for about a week or two, and then give up. It’s not that I don’t want to make changes for the better…..I really do……it’s more that I can’t change overnight and am kind of an immediate response kind of a girl. So this year, rather than make resolutions that I know I won’t stick to, I created a list of goals that I would like to accomplish.

~ Our first goal of the year is to work on our finances. I’m not going to lie, I have a couple of really old (like from college) debts that I need to work on paying off. It’s been hard to find the finances, but I really feel like we can make it happen this year……slowly but surely.

~ One reason we need to get our credit cleaned up is to have a clean credit report…..the other reason is goal #2. We would like to purchase a house towards the end of the year. Ideally we would like something with 3-4 bedrooms and a large yard…..but we’ll see what happens.

~ To help us with cleaning up our credit and buying a house (goal #3) I would like to make a decent income working from home. I’m hoping that between my new blog on baby product reviews and becoming more active on YouTube, I can earn at least a couple hundred dollars a month…..or more.

~ Goal #4 would be to really work on my diet. I definitely don’t eat like I should. Prepping meals ahead of time will help immensely with eating more frequently/healthier food.

~ Come February, Ronny and I are going to start attempting to expand our family. The ultimate goal #5 would be to get pregnant before June…..but I’ll really be happy with conceiving anytime in the next 12 months.

~In the next few months, goal #6 is to become better at taking more professional looking photos. Right now the photos I take aren’t necessarily the best. I try, but I just don’t get angles and lighting and whatnot.

~Goal #7 is pretty odd, but I would love to figure out twitter and hashtags. I’m just not good at it!

~My last goal…..#8….. is to be more organized in the new year. I’ve fallen into a pretty bad habit of not knowing when things are scheduled and double, even triple, booking us for appointments and the like.

What are your goals or resolutions coming into the new year?

Changes Are Happening!

For someone who absolutely, without a doubt HATES change, I am pretty excited about all the changes happening in our lives right now. There are changes all over the place! Changes with Luke, changes in our living situation, changes in my blogging efforts…….just changes everywhere.

Luke is doing about a billion times better than he was even a week ago. Yesterday was the first time in his life his poop didn’t contain any mucus or blood. I am so excited that the Elecare seems to be working. Today’s poop did have mucus in it, but no blood so I think we are on the right track! He’s sleeping better, and even spent his first night in the pack n play. It was great! Ronny got Luke to sleep while sitting on the couch playing on his iPad.

It was the cutest thing in the world! I was pumping when Ronny brought Luke into the room so I had him lay Luke in the pack n play on the brand new pnp mattress we got. Luke didn’t even wake up when he was laid down. He slept in the pack n play until 5 am, waking at his normal times to eat and go back to sleep. He didn’t even really seem to notice he wasn’t snuggled up next to momma.

I hadn’t planned on transitioning him last night, but I did.

We are also busy packing for our big move at the end of the week. We are literally moving across the street, but I’m trying to go through and purge what we don’t use/need so that I don’t have to move more stuff than I want in our new place. We are going today to get measurements for the apartment and take a peek inside. I’m kind of sad that we are moving from the place we conceived Luke in, but that’s okay.

The biggest change of all is coming to my blogging. I am in the process of starting up a product review blog. My hopes is to review children’s products and possibly get some paid sponsorships. I was torn between starting a new blog and posting here, but I really struggle with what to post on what days with only one blog. I don’t want to double post a few times a week, and feel like my daily updates would be incredibly long if I skipped a few days to do some other stuff. Problem solved: two blogs. I am estimating rolling the blog out on Wednesday if everything goes well (meaning Luke is low maintenance and I can get some stuff done).

I’m really excited to be giving this a go. I want to get into social media marketing, and feel like this would be a huge help in establishing myself in the market.

Wish me luck, I’ll probably be overwhelmed with the changes tomorrow.

I Just Want to Comfort My Baby

Last night was rough the toughest night I have ever had with Luke. The night left me physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. This morning I feel horrible. Yesterday, Luke’s pediatric gastroenterologist started Luke on a 10 day trial period of exclusive hypoallergenic formula. You can read more about it here.

Thanks in large part to my incredibly low supply, Luke is used to bottle feeding during the day while I attempt to pump. At night he breast feeds for his last meal of the day and then in the middle of the night when he wakes up at 2ish and 4ish. It’s kind of become our nightly routine. Well…..until last night anyways.

Luke started getting fussy and was ready for bed at about 10:30 p.m. When I tried to give him a bottle, he freaked out and started screaming like I had just cut his hand off. He wouldn’t take the bottle or the pacifier, he wasn’t happy in the swing or bouncing on the yoga ball……he wanted to nurse himself to sleep like he has done every night since we brought him home from the hospital. At one point before I got him to bed (and several times throughout the night) he was clawing at my shirt, trying to lift it to get to my breasts. It took a couple hours but he did finally settle down, accept the bottle and fall asleep.

All throughout the night he kept rolling into me, trying to nuzzle into my breast and comfort feed as he had done so many times before. I felt like I was trying to run away from him all night long. Every time I gave him the bottle instead of my boobs he would wake up screaming and take FOREVER to get back to sleep. He would grab at my shirt and root like mad. He was definitely a little boy who knew exactly what he wanted….momma milk and comfort sucking.

I am so drained. I have given so much to breast feeding. I have done literally everything I could possibly do to increase my supply enough to feed my baby. He loves to comfort nurse, even if he isn’t really getting much by way of nutrition. Now that I have been taking the Domperidone and finally have milk to give him, I can’t even feed it to him. I have about 155 ounces of liquid gold in the freezer that I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to give him.

I feel like I have been knocked down time and time again on this journey, but have fought my way through each obstacle only to run into another wall. At this point I am wondering if God was trying to tell me something this whole time by giving me issue after issue. Maybe he was trying to warn me that my milk isn’t good for Luke this whole time and rather than give up, I stubbornly  kept on trying.

And to be honest, it isn’t even about the milk. I am struggling with my son wanting so badly to nurse, to seek comfort in my breast, and having to deny him that. He hasn’t been the easy baby that I am used to …… well he’s never been easy, but at least I could give him some comfort. Now I have nothing. He is very hard to soothe and even harder to get to sleep. He isn’t happy anywhere, doing anything or being with anyone.

 

I guess Luke is more like momma tha I thought…..he hates change too

Domperidone: Does It Work?

As someone who suffers from numerous breast feeding issues, I didn’t think Domperidone would work for me. We finally figured out what was going on with my body, and why despite my best efforts I could not increase my milk supply. My problem is three-fold: I suffer from mammary hypoplasia (also known as IGT), have a slow refill rate and low prolactin levels. Each problem in itself is easily rectified…..the three together is somewhat more of a challenge.

Mammary hypoplasia, IGT, occurs when a woman does not develop proper glandular tissue during adolescence. While breasts can be either small or large, the most common characteristics are narrow widely spaced breasts, swollen/puffy areolas, asymmetrical breasts where one is much larger than the other, and milk that either never comes in or comes in after 3-5 days after delivery. Women with hypoplasia will never be able to exclusively breast feed (or at least most won’t). The only thing that you can do is try to feed from the breast as much as possible and supplement using either donor milk or formula to meet the babies needs. At this point the maximum milk that my breasts can hold about an ounce and a half.

I also suffer from a slow refill rate. Basically milk making breasts never totally empty, but the more they are drained the quicker they fill back up. Somehow there has been a disconnect between my brain and my breasts to where I can empty them to a point of no milk able to come out and then it takes more than a few hours for them to refill back to the ounce to ounce and a half mark. Usually it takes about 4 hours to refill…..no matter how many times I pump or put Luke to the breast, it still takes a very long time for them to refill. The only way I have found to get them to refill faster is to put the baby to the breast more frequently….which hasn’t helped me out at all.

The last issue is low prolactin levels. I’m not sure how it works exactly (I don’t have much time to google it right now) but somehow prolactin is critical in breast milk production. If you have low prolactin levels, you will produce low levels of breast milk. This is easily fixable by increasing prolactin levels.

So on to the critical question: is Domperidone working?

Here is a picture of what took me all day to pump prior to the Domperidone:

I’ve seen a stead increase in my milk supply, but still not anywhere near where I would want it to be.

From upper left to lower right here is my results for the first 6 days. I have consistently pumped about 5 ounces each day, other than the first day. It does seem to have kind of plateaued so I have started today increasing from 90mg/day to 100mg/day and will go up gradually until I hit my max output.

Pump In Style Advanced Vs. Spectra S2

When it comes to breast pumps there are three big names out there: Medela’s Pump In Style Advanced (PISA), Ameda Purely Yours and Spectra S2. Depending on your location and insurance company, you may qualify for a free or greatly reduced PISA or Purely Yours. I know that when I was looking for the best pump on the market, I researched them all.

The first pump that I got was the PISA through Edgepark. Ordering was quick and easy, and I had my pump 2 days after hitting submit. The PISA features a two phase expression with an automatic let down phase, double electric pump that can also be used as a single pump, lightweight design and several options for carrying.

I was originally thrilled with the PISA. It was light weight, easy to use and easy to clean. I went out and bought extra flanges, extra bottles and a battery operated pack for traveling. The pump was extremely easy to set up, taking only minutes to go from out of the box to ready to use (after sterilizing of course). The one button operation is great when you only have one hand to use for pump operation.

Ultimately I wasn’t very happy with the PISA after my son was born. I had to have the suction turned all the way up in order to be able express any milk at all, which caused swelling and painful nipples. The letdown feature never brought on a let down for me either. After a week of multiple daily uses the motor began to go out and I could only use it as a single pump. The suction was rough and the let down phase does not mimic that of a child. The pump was very loud, so loud that it would wake my husband and sleeping child. There was also a noticeable air leak sound that I could never find the cause of. A call to Medela for support yeilded a new pump being sent overnight, but I had the same issues with the new pump.

Next I tried the Ameda Purely Yours

The Ameda Purely Yours features separate controls for speed and suction. It is a closed system pump meaning the milk does not go into the tubes or the motor. The dual pump can also be used as a single pump.

I really liked the speed and suction controls separate. It gave me more control over how quickly and strongly the pump was working. The built in bottle holders were a big help when done pumping so that milk wouldn’t spill all over if the bottles got tipped. The flanges fit nicely and can be switched out for smaller or larger sizes if need be. The tubing is long enough that you don’t have to sit right next to the pump or strain yourself trying to get the pump to work.

With all the benefits of the Purely Yours, it has a few major flaws. The biggest flaw I found with the pump was that the suction was pretty low even at the highest setting and the pump made an audible beeping noise when on. If you are trying to pump in a quite room, it is quite noisy. I found it quite hard to juggle both of the bottles and the dial at the same time. It doesn’t have the let down feature at the beginning so you have to constantly manually adjust speed and suction to maximize output. Eventually this pump began to lose suction and once it started it was a downward spiral. I tried to replace the tubing and the valves, but still the suction was worse and worse.

My last hope was the Spectra S2. I had read a few blogs from women who swore it was the best pump ever, and got a great deal on one from Amazon.

The S2 is a hospital grade pump with a less than retail price. The S2 features a dual pump with adjustable speed and suction, separate letdown and expression phases, a closed system that prevents milk from getting into the tubes and motor, a nightlight and lightweight design. The S1 also has an internal rechargable battery that allows up to 3 hours of operation without being plugged in.

I love my S2. It was so easy to set up and use. I was able to adjust the cycle and suction to mimic that of my sons sucking patterns and the one button let down/expression allows you to easily switch between the two for maximum pumping output. The flanges fit really nicely and the suction even at its very highest is gentle and doesn’t hurt. I have found that the S2 can empty both of my breasts more quickly and thoroughly than either of the other pumps. The light weight design (less than 3 pounds) makes it really easy to move the pump from room to room. The pump is really quiet when in use and rarely wakes the baby. And the night light feature comes in really handy when you are trying to pump in the middle of the night in the dark.

The S2 does have a wide mouth collection system, which fits the Avent bottles. You can purchase a bottle adapter that will allow you to pump into the Medela collection bottles or any standard neck bottle.

There are of course a few things I don’t like about the S2. First and foremost, the collection bottles are not very sturdy and often tip over from the weight of the flange and valve system. I’ve lost multiple ounces of liquid gold from the bottle tipping over or falling off of the table. There is a built in bottle holder, but it only holds one bottle at a time and doesn’t even hold the one bottle well. When the bottles tip, milk gets into the valve system and causes loss of suction issues. I also don’t like how the pump automatically starts on the expression phase, so if you want to trigger a let down you have to first push the let down button and then switch back to expression once the milk gets flowing. The other thing I don’t like about the S2 is the tubing is sticky and constantly get wound up.

Of the three, I highly recommend spending the money for the S2. You get an amazing pump for half the cost of the PISA and Purely Yours. What you trade in convenience of parts in the store, you make up for in a durable and effective pump.

What pump do you use? 

4 Month Check Up Concerns

Luke is four months old today, and I couldn’t be happier. This has been one of the most wild rides I have ever been on, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be a mom.

At four months, most babies go in for routine screening and shots. If you’ve read my previous posts, Luke hasn’t had the easiest of times with medical issues. We’ve been working our way through them and I thought that things were getting better. Well, I was wrong.

I’ll start with the beginning of his appointment. We arrived at the doctors office at 2pm and I had to fill out a development survey. Luke is doing really well and has mastered all of the tasks on the 4 month assessment and some of the stuff on the 6 month assessment. Ronny got Luke undressed and the nurse came in for measurements. Luke weighed 13 pounds 10 ounces, which is the 14th percentile. He is continuing to drop percentiles each time we go in, but is gaining weight overall. He is 25 inches long, and sitting pretty in the 42nd percentile. She had to measure his head twice because it has only grown 1cm in 2 months from 40cm to 41. He went from the 77th percentile down to the 29th. They didn’t seem concerned about that though.

The doctor then came in and asked us how Luke was doing. I brought up my concerns with the continued blood and mucus in his bowel movements despite being 100% dairy and soy free. I also asked about his cough/tugging on ear, lump in his butt crack and continued reflux issues. She gave him a thorough exam, looking in his eyes, ears and mouth, checking his legs and joints for motility issues, took a look at his bum and listened to his heart and lungs. I showed her a picture of one of Luke’s diapers and she could see the mucus and blood in his stool. She had a hemo-something drawn and ordered his shots.

This is where the problems come in. When the doctor was listening to Luke’s heart, she detected a murmur. It was concerning enough that she recommended we go in for an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist to have it assessed. Apparently some babies are born with a small hole in a valve, that grows closed as the baby gets older. Sometimes a murmur forms as the hole is closing and the muscles get stronger. Either way it could be nothing, or it could be something. Only a trained professional can tell us what steps we need to take, but it will probably include an ultrasound of his heart to check everything out.

We also need to go and speak with a pediatric gastrointestinal doctor. Luke’s iron levels were low enough that she was concerned that something is going on in his GI tract given the blood and mucus stools despite switching to a hypoallergenic formula and strict monitoring of my diet. Paired with the continued reflux issues we should really have him more thoroughly evaluated.

To be honest with you all, I went into the appointment terrified that something was wrong. When we were told about the murmur I damn near started to cry. My poor baby already has had so many issues…….he doesn’t need anything else going on. The doctor made a flippant comment about if my husband knew about all of my medical issues before we decided to reproduce. The comment was meant to be funny, but really it made me feel pretty badly. Like I somehow have doomed not only Luke, but all my future babies to a life of medical misery.

Anywho……here’s my little fella at 4 months old….

 

 

Luke’s Life: 4 Weeks Old

Luke was born 4 weeks ago today. (It was actually yesterday, but I got distracted and never finished the post) It’s amazing how different life is now than it was a moth ago. We are still trying to figure things out, but it is getting better every single day.

Luke is doing so well. He is really starting to put on the baby fat, although he is still pretty tiny. He is currently 9.5 pounds, 21.5 inches long and a 15 inch head. He is sitting comfortably at the 20th percentile for his age and size. We are still supplementing with formula, but have switched from regular formula to soy formula. The hope is that I can increase my supply a bit and be able to pump enough to supplement solely with breast milk, but we shall see how that goes.

Luke eats roughly 4 ounces every 3-4 hours. The longer he sleeps the more he eats. He is constantly peeing, and has roughly 2-3 bowel movements a day. He sleeps roughly 18 hours a day right now. We are able to get in about a 5 hour stretch at night before waking up hungry.

Luke is able to hold his head up for brief periods of time, and can turn his head from side to side. He reacts when spoken to and even smiles at times. He loves to look at lights and watches the flickering on the television. He likes to suck on his hands when he is sleeping (he does this when he is hungry too) and turns his  head when he hears a familiar noise.

And how is mom?

Physically I am doing pretty good. My back is a bit sore at times, especially while breast feeding, but most of the pregnancy aches and pains have gone away. I did discover this week that I have several small tears in my abdominal muscles, which is why I have been having so much belly pain. That should clear up hopefully soon.

Breastfeeding is going a bit better than it has been now that the thrush has pretty much cleared up. I am still having some pain upon latching in the right nipple and bee sting like feelings after he is done eating. I have also had it confirmed that I have Raynaud’s of the nipple. It isn’t a  big deal, but it is kind of freaky.

I am down to 122.8 pounds, and looking pretty good if I do say so myself. I have some firming up to do still but I’m pretty  happy overall with my progress.

Mentally I am still struggling a bit. I still cry at least once a day, and constantly question myself as a mother. It’s a weird feeling. I know that I am doing a great job. My baby is happy and healthy, and I am so incredibly grateful for that. I just can’t help but wonder if there is anything I can do to make him happier or more healthy. I took a postpartum depression test at the hospital when I went in for a checkup. It came back right on the edge.

I’m struggling the most with feeding (both breast and bottle). Luke picks and chooses when he wants to eat from me and when he has had enough and is ready for the bottle. I don’t think that he is getting the nourishment he needs to thrive from me, which is breaking my heart. When he does eat from me he doesn’t seem full and wakes up after only a short nap looking for more food. He is struggling with the bottle too though. The regular formula is giving him an upset tummy and the soy formula gives him really thick poops that he has trouble passing. I really wish that breast feeding went so much better from the start.

Baby Pictures