Almost ashamed

I fed Baby today, walking along in a hurry to get the bus, pushing the buggy with my other hand. (Incidentally, Lilypadz are very easy to use - hold baby up in one arm, use that hand to push buggy, use other hand to raise shirt and adjust bra and remove Lilypad, latch baby on, adjust arms for more comfortable buggy-pushing).

I refused to feed Toddler in public, though. I am a bad lactivist. I just couldn't handle it. We had a hard day; Dad was too tired to be helpful, Mum and Toddler were hungry because the packed lunch turned out to be a bad idea, Baby was a Baby. Feeding would have helped Toddler a lot but when she asked we were on a standard width footpath/pavement/sidewalk/insert your dialect here, and there was nowhere to sit other than in the dust at the side of the road. Which is where I sat when she sat down and refused to be moved, but that wasn't for feeding purposes.

So I am quite happy to feed Baby in public, indiscreetly (she can't latch on discreetly, she doesn't know how) and I can't bring myself to feed Toddler in public unless we have somewhere comfy to sit and can be vaguely discreet - I don't mind it being obvious that I'm feeding, but I'm more comfortable showing flesh when I feed Baby than when I feed Toddler.

Sometimes I'm glad I know nothing about psychology. I don't want to know what's under all this.

Barbie Boobs

I recently acquired a set of Lilypadz because mere absorbent breastpads cannot possibly hope to cope with my supply. The idea is that these pads actually stop the leaking, rather than merely soaking it up before it reaches the outside of my clothes.

They seem to work so far, though I haven't tried them in the morning when things are soggiest.

The freakish thing is that they work basically by pushing the nipple in and holding it there. Looking down, it looks like I'm wearing some kind of padded bra. I've been smoothed. Sculpted. My clothes look different. It's very disconcerting.

I have a vague feeling that this nippleless look is considered desirable in parts of the US, partially because of the blurb on the box, not quoted here for fear of perpetuating scary anti-nipple rhetoric.

[mildly crossposted]

Engorged. Swollen. Full. Bloated. Distended. Inflated. Tumescent.

I'd use more words but the thesaurus at dictionary.com doesn't even know the word "engorged" so I can't find any without standing up and finding a real thesaurus (I love me my Roget).

Anyway, this morning, freakishly, Toddler didn't ask to come in for a morning feed, and Daddy happily amused her, pleased and proud that he was enabling me to catch up on some desperately-needed rest. And he was, and I did, but when I woke...

Ow. And all I had to combat it was one bewildered newborn, far smaller than the combined mass of mammary I confronted, no pun intended, her with. She did her best, poor love, but we still ended up lying in puddles and pools, both with soaked nightclothes, on damp sheets, thankfully with a damp-absorbing towel under the sheet so the mattress is probably fine.

It took until about 11 am for the pain to go away. This is what it was like last time, when Toddler was a baby, and I had no older, larger, more-internal-volume child to deal with the excess. I'd forgotten.

Ow.

Tandem input: easy. Tandem output: hard.

Feeding them both together is easy. They both want to do it. They both enjoy it. It's quiet and peaceful and, ok, makes me really, really hungry... but it's not difficult.

Simultaneous nappy changes are another thing altogether. I have never in 28 months come as close to hitting Toddler as I did this morning.

I changed Baby's nappy. Fine; she squalled a bit but the change went ok, I put the pooey one aside and persuaded Toddler to lie down on the mat. With her book.

Ugh. I had become resigned to toddler-nappies, but compared to an exclusively breastfed nappy they are truly revolting. And the fabric wipes weren't absorbing the water; I think they had accidentally been laundered with fabric conditioner.

But I managed to get her mostly clean, and then she stopped cooperating. As soon as she was comfortable again, she wriggled. And held her legs rigid. And tried to put her hands into the remaining ick. And rolled over.

I got her clean. I found the clean nappy.

She rolled. She stood up and went and poked at Baby. She lay down again (ok, I sort of tripped her gently) and held onto the side-table with the laptop on it. She pulled it over. She turned on her side so I couldn't fasten the nappy. I tried pinning her down, but with my c-section incisions (the internal ones hurt most) she's stronger than I am. I shouted at her. Then I set my teeth and listened to the little voice in my head telling me "It would work, you know. She'd know you were serious. It wouldn't hurt. Once wouldn't do her any harm. It's a tool like any other."

I got a wrap loosely assembled around the nappy and brought her to her room so that we could both calm down. Yikes. That was nasty.

Habit-forming

Breastmilk is a gateway drug; it leads on to bigger things, like cosleeping, demand-led feeding, and this weird new habit Toddler has of waking about 1-2 am miserable and needing, mainly, attention and a feed. She'd been sleeping through the night reliably for ages.

It does seem to me that she really needs proof that she can still get all her needs met by us, that she hasn't been replaced, that Baby isn't more important than she is, and that she hasn't lost anything she used to have.

She does go back to her own bed for the rest of the night, voluntarily, which is a relief. But it's a bit weird, just the same.