Induction Indication

Yesterday was the day I was to go off birth control in order to begin the next step in my lactation induction protocol.  This morning, I took the herbal supplements (blessed thistle and fenugreek seed) recommended as well as the domperidone that I've been taking for six months.  I forgot to eat oatmeal for breakfast, but I'll do better tomorrow.  Interestingly, the protocol I'm on says that oatmeal has shown to increase breast milk production and it's suggested I eat it for breakfast at least three times a week.  

This morning, I began pumping for the first time.  The tentative plan has always been to pump often and in short bursts at first, to get my nipples used to all this suctioning.  Poor nipples.  So anyway.  I pulled out our pump and had to read the instructions, haha.  Then I did about five minutes of pumping on the left breast - only to discover that after pumping, there was a little pearlescent droplet of milk hanging out.  Um, what?!  That is crazy.  I've only been off the birth control for a day, and that is supposed to suppress breast milk.  The protocol tells us that you shouldn't expect milk for up to a week (or more) after beginning to pump.  So to get a little drop on the first pumping pretty much floored me.  Way to go, Lefty!  

Then it was Righty's turn.  I did the same thing, five minutes of pumping - and found that Righty had several MORE droplets of milk and the milk had actually leaked down and wet the areola where the pump contacted it.  Whoa!  Righty, you're even more awesome.  

All in all, I'm mightily impressed with the girls this morning.  Way to be, breasties!  

I'm really starting to let myself feel optimistic about this.  I think I've been so concerned that the induction would fail and I'd let myself down that I never really allowed myself to hope that it really could and would work for us, as a family.  Even if it doesn't work as well as I want, I will try my best and we'll see where that takes us!  

(Sorry for an entry centered on my breasts, certainly that must be odd...  Oh well.)

If You Give A Pregnant Woman A Steam-Cleaner...

She's going to want her wife to steam-clean all the carpets in the house.  Hey, we should start in the living room!  But before we can steam-clean the carpet, we need to shove all our furniture into our combination kitchen/dining room.

While her wife is steaming, the pregnant woman will reconsider the arrangement of the living room furniture.

Once the carpet is dry, she'll want to try out some new furniture scenarios.  But in order to try new things out, it involves moving the television and entertainment unit to a different wall, requiring that the cable for satellite TV be run through a different exterior wall.  Which will require a masonry drill bit.  Which the steam-cleaning wife and the pregnant woman don't own.  Then the lucky father of the pregnant woman gets to come save the day by assisting the pregnant woman in running the new cable through the wall.  Then, the rotten father of the pregnant woman will suggest that in addition to vacuuming, wiping, and zip-tying all the cords at the back of the unit together, she should also cable-staple said zip-tied cord bundles to the back of the unit in accordance with the brickwork-style compartments in the Ikea unit.  Because everyone hates seeing cables behind entertainment units stuffed with electronics and children's DVDs and toys and books.

If the furniture gets rearranged, then all the previous decorations in the living room will need to be altered.  The new space on the walls will of course need new things to occupy them, including MORE photographs than already adorn our home.

And once all that is accomplished, there are of course more rooms to rearrange, redecorate, and steam-clean.


Naturally, I trust you all understand my tongue-in-cheek humor here!  Truthfully, I've found T's new nesting instincts to be rather charming and adorable - likely because I know they aren't here to stay!  I've enjoyed helping out, and I absolutely don't want her doing anything chemical-ish anyway so I'm the first one to volunteer to handle these things.

As I would hope you could tell, nesting has set in for my wonderfully pregnant wife.  Things I don't think I'd ever expect to come from her mouth have been issuing forth at a somewhat alarming pace.  To mention a few:
"I'm really tired of the hard water stains on our dishes.  I think I'll soak the dishes in vinegar and rub the stains off. "
"I feel like I NEED to clean out the junk drawer.  It's driving me crazy."
"Next time most of the silverware is out of the drawer, we should put the plastic divider into the dishwasher."  (This one I actually agree with, lol.)
"The linen closet really needs to be gone through and reorganized.  I think I'll wash everything in there after work tonight."
"Would you mind dusting and then wiping down the ceiling fan blades and housing this weekend?  I really want to balance it better so it STOPS CLICKING ALL THE TIME."
A couple weekends ago I even caught her dusting the fire extinguisher.  (She doesn't seem to appreciate the humor in this that I do.)

To her immense credit, she's been very productive.  She did clean out the junk drawer, she did clean out and reorganize (and label) the shelves of the linen closet.  She's been going through old documents that we tend to neglect by leaving in giant piles and discover again two years later.  Not to mention that she's already washed and put away the baby clothing she received at her surprise work shower in June.  And we've finally cleaned out the cabinet in the kitchen that was devoted to our foster kids - kid dishes, sippy cups, baby food, formula, bibs, meds, you name it.  Haven't even looked in that cabinet in seven months, but now it's been cleaned out and reorganized as well.

The biggest thing left on our list is to clean out the office and create a guest bedroom in its stead.  This is on my To-Do list for this weekend while T handles a huge Catholic youth convention ... I'd rather be me than her this weekend, and that is saying something because the office is a huge undertaking!  Once we can get the guest room going, we'll be able to finish up Ever's room and then we'll be much closer to ready.

Speaking of ready.  I've spent much of my time lately occupying that place of total delight in the idea of meeting my daughter while simultaneously being in denial that she's really going to be here sometime in the next three to seven weeks.  Same old story, right?

In the next couple weeks we'll be doing a casting of T's belly, too, and I'm pretty stoked about that.  Also, my lactation induction protocol is about to change majorly!  I'm stopping the birth control after tomorrow, and beginning to take breastmilk production enhancing herbs and starting to pump.  We'll see in the next couple weeks if we've got any luck!  Let's see, what else... Oh, we took some cute photos!  And T got a new lens for the camera for her birthday, and we're really excited about that.  Photos from the new lens to come soon, hopefully.  Here are the cute ones we took from last weekend to tide you over:

With our dog, Manni!

Knitting Evie's newest beautiful hat.

Caught her stretching - whoa, lookit that belly!

4 Months!

Okay, I guess *technically* T isn't four months along until tomorrow, but close enough.

Couple things happening in our lives right now!  First, T has been experiencing the baby moving around in there since last Friday!  She says at first, it was like maybe once a day she would feel like she was getting poked from the inside.  But now it's happening more and more; she thinks that when she first began to feel movement, it was only when the baby made a huge effort at it.  Now, she's beginning to feel enough subtlety that she's experiencing the "bubbles" or "flutters" that everyone claims is the first movement she would feel.

I keep hoping every day that maybe it'll be my turn to feel some of these pokes or flutters from the outside, but until that day happens I'm okay to wait.  Not too long though!

Sunday morning we were taking advantage of a lazy day, and stayed in bed reading after we woke up.  T placed my hand over her belly, and I was surprised to discover that there was only what could be described as a palm-sized lump in her lower abdomen.  Until now, it's always been kind of a generalized round belly that was pretty firm.  But this... was almost reminiscent of a tumor or something, haha.  It was amazing.  A few minutes later, she mentioned that the lump was in a different place.  I felt again, and indeed the baby lump was in a different place.  Over the next twenty minutes or so it went from being stretched out horizontally under T's belly button, to laying vertically on first the right side and then the left side, curled up in the middle, and then stretched out way down low.  At one point I even had my hand cupped over the lump, and T pressed into her belly just beside it and I actually felt the baby roll underneath my palm!

I can't help but look at this little lump in T's belly and be incredulous.  There really is a baby in there!  Whoa!

Which brings me to my next upcoming event: our anatomy scan is scheduled for April 3rd - TWO WEEKS away!  We are hoping to learn the sex of the baby.  If baby cooperates.

A common question surrounding learning the sex of our baby is, "Do you have a preference?"

You know, I used to.  I don't anymore.

I've hoped for years that our first baby would be a little girl.  There are reasons, but none of any real weight. I imagined that learning we were having a boy would disappoint me, and that fear drove me to request that we learn the sex of the baby before the birth.  It is important to me that the day of the birth is only a day of joy, not one with anything less than that.  Much less disappointment or resentment.

In the past week or two, I've spent a lot of time thinking about sex preferences.  I discovered that there is no reason for me to be disappointed over having a son first over a daughter.  I've known little boys and loved little boys, it isn't difficult for me to imagine having a son or loving a son.

I know that the sex of the baby is determined at the moment of conception - but knowing it doesn't always equal living it.  It finally hit me that wishing and hoping for a girl didn't do any good after we learned T was pregnant.  We're already getting who we are getting.  Our son or our daughter is already in there, we're already in love, so what does it matter which one it is?  I actually began to feel intense guilt about it.  That if we're having a boy, I've been wishing for someone other than him this whole time.  It isn't his fault he's a boy.    And ultimately I haven't been wishing for someone other than who's in there.  I want exactly who is already in there.  So whether this baby has boy-parts or girl-parts, it doesn't matter at all.

Now I'm just excited to learn which one it is!

Lastly, my domperidone finally came in after some drama with the pharmacy in New Zealand, so I ordered from another place in the UK.  So I've been taking the domperidone and the birth control since Friday, and now we're anxiously awaiting to see how severely the hormones are going to affect me.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed that I remain the unemotional, level person I always have been!  (Snicker.  Yeah...  Let's hope for NOT a crazed lunatic and call it a WIN.)

Okay.  That's been long enough.  I leave you with photos.  Happy first day of spring today!

Doctor Approved!

We headed to our family doctor this morning to talk with her about inducing lactation for me.  It was pretty much the average experience, you go, you check in, you convince the receptionist to change your last name in their system from your maiden name to your married name (which has been legally changed since April 2010 and they have yet to change it in their computer...), you wait, you get measured and weighed and have your pulse and blood pressure checked, you get put into a room for more waiting... you know the drill.  T came with me, as this appointment was one of interest.

The doctor walks in and sits down with her laptop and her iPhone.  "So.  What's going on?"
"Well, my partner T over there is 12 weeks pregnant, and we're wanting to discuss with you our interest in inducing lactation in me so we can both breastfeed." I replied.   In hindsight, I don't think she was prepared to think this much in her first appointment of the day.
She got a slightly glazed look over her face.  "Uhhhm, ooookay."  She turned to her laptop and began typing furiously.
We waited a few minutes as she tapped on the keyboard and hemmed and hawed.

After another minute, she says, "Well, I just Googled it."
I handed her a sheaf of papers and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were going to do that.  Here is the protocol I'm interested in."
She took the papers from me.  "Oh, great!" and proceeded to look them over interestedly.
She glanced through all the pages, punctuating the silence with the occasional "huh." or "ahh."
"Well," she said, "I'm more than happy to help you do this if you want."

She proceeded to talk with us about the risks of the high-dose birth control and of the domperidone.
"Also, you aren't going to be able to get the dom here in the States, I don't think.  Let me check."  She pulled out her iPhone and scrolled through a few pages.  "Yeah, dom isn't even listed as available."  (Yep, there's an app for that.)  "You can get it from Canada, though." she glanced at her computer screen.  "Have you researched the costs?"
"Uh, not really."
Come to find out, it's actually not that bad.  Looking at about $75 for 500 tablets, which at the peak of my domperidone use will get me through about two months.  That's totally doable!

I really enjoyed being able to sit in there and feel at ease with her, because typically it can be a little tense dealing with medical professionals with issues that are specifically related to being gay.  But our doc is very "queer friendly" and we are pretty confident that she's gay.  And she has kids, so it's all the better.  It's just a bonus that she is funny and easy to be around.  I appreciate a doctor who is willing to follow me off on a tangent that I researched and am interested in pursuing.  She even scanned in the induction protocols that I brought, saying it is good to have them "just in case".

At one point, we'd been discussing the birth control, and she lowered her glasses and looked at me intently.
"Now, I need to let you know that you aren't going to be protected from pregnancy until you've been taking the birth control for one month."
I couldn't help but burst out laughing.  We all had a good chuckle over it.

The receptionist brought in a prescription for the birth control, but the doctor noticed she'd hyphenated my maiden name with McGill instead of just changing it outright.  The doc gave it back to her to fix.  She brought it back in, last name fixed, but first name spelled wrong and it had our old address.  She took it again to fix it. Woo boy, that took a lot of fixing.  Dr. L ended up writing the scripts by hand, after spending a few minutes digging through drawers to find script pads - which she said she hadn't used in approximately forever.

Anyway.  The moral of the story here, boys and girls, is that things are official.  I've ordered domperidone and  will fill the birth control and once I possess both medications, I'll begin taking them.  The plan is to take the birth control and the dom from now until six weeks before T's due date, at which point I'll stop the birth control and begin pumping.  Doesn't the whole thing sound positively enjoyable?   Speaking of pumping, it's recommended that we look for a hospital-grade breast pump.  Anyone out there have a recommendation of a strong, portable double breast pump?  Let me know!

But you know what?  If I'm able to make any milk at all, I'm going to be so ecstatic.  I'm perhaps naively hopeful at this point.

P.S. T was 3 months pregnant, as of yesterday!  We need to take 3 month pictures, but aren't going to be able to for a couple days.  Keep your eyes open!  And thanks again, to everyone.  Your support speaks volumes to us and it will never go unappreciated.

Two moms = two sets of breasts

I made a decision this week that is a fairly big decision, and may change much about our life with a new infant.

I've read about other lesbian families in which the non-gestational mom induced lactation in herself so both parents could breastfeed the baby.  I admit, I was always intrigued by this but our focus has been so heavily on getting pregnant that it had left my head a bit.

After T became pregnant, I've had a lot of time to think about my role in our new family - particularly at the beginning, when emotions are raw and things are changing fast.  A friend of ours asked if I had considered inducing lactation so I could feel like I was more useful.  I had, in the back of my mind, felt a desire to do it but I hadn't really given it much thought in a few months, nor had I done any actual research on what inducing lactation entails.

I must be frank.  I've always found the idea of a wet nurse, or using donated breastmilk, to be odd concepts.  The woman giving birth should breastfeed her own baby, she shouldn't also offer to feed her neighbor's baby, right?  One mom, one person breastfeeding.  It's what is "normal".  So the idea of having two breastfeeding mothers for a single baby is a bit unorthodox for most people, I'd imagine.

But the idea of breastfeeding *my* baby, even though I won't have given birth to her or him, isn't unusual to me.  The thought of being able to nourish my own child is satisfying to me.  The idea that T won't have to be solely responsible for every single feeding makes me feel good.  The knowledge that I could take our baby out by myself without having to bring bottles of T's breastmilk is a positive thing for me.

Certainly, it's an idea that others will need more time to get used to than I will.

Now, just because I can fantasize about being able to accomplish lactation does not mean it will definitely work.  Two years ago I had a breast reduction surgery, and the surgeon told me the odds would only be about fifty percent that I would be able to breastfeed.  He did ask if I wanted to do so at some point, which I told him that I absolutely planned to breastfeed.  That's definitely my biggest concern with the whole thing.  Waiting and wondering if it will work.  I don't even know at what point I'll have a definitive answer about it.

There are a lot of different protocols to induce lactation, as it turns out.  I've read through a few and I think I'm most interested in one called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol.  This is a pair of docs who have come up with this protocol for mainly adoptive mothers, but it's been used successfully in many situations.  It involves taking active birth control pills (with a specific progesterone/estrogen ratio) every day in conjunction with an additional medication, domperidone, for milk supply.  The birth control is to convince my body that I am pregnant, so it will begin to prepare my breasts for bringing in milk.  Up until six weeks before the baby is due, I take the birth control and the domperidone.  Then six weeks before T's due date, I stop taking the birth control and continue only with the domperidone.  After I stop the birth control, I can begin to add certain herbal supplementation to my diet to aid in milk production.  At this time, I also begin using a breastpump to encourage milk to come in.  This method has proven that the milk a woman produces when her lactation has been induced is nutritionally the same as a breastfeeding mother at ten days post birth.  I think that's pretty great!

So I went ahead and called our family doctor to schedule an appointment.  The conversation was quite amusing, as I suspected it would be.

A: Hi, I'm a patient of Dr. Levine and I'd like to make an appointment to discuss inducing lactation.
receptionist:  Um, okay.  Are you pregnant?
A: No, that's why I need to *induce* lactation.
receptionist: (15 seconds of silence) Um, well, the next available appointment is Wednesday.
A: Great, I'll take it, thanks!

I have no idea what thoughts were running through her brain, but she actually handled it better than I'd imagined she would.  It gave T and I a good laugh.  Regardless, I have an appointment Wednesday morning and I'm looking forward to getting this party started.  For the record, I'm NOT looking forward to breast pain and enlargement, but it is worth it for a shot at breastfeeding our little baby.  And it will give us an idea of if I'll be able to breastfeed the baby I bear in a few years, so that's a plus.

Our family doctor is really great, she doesn't take new patients often but she always will take in people who are referred to her from Wingspan, which is our local LGBT organization.  We think she is gay, and we've been told by a friend who sees the nurse practitioner in the same office that she is also likely to be gay.  Our doctor has always been incredibly welcoming, friendly, and kind.  She's a considerate person, an attribute I appreciate greatly in doctors particularly.  I know she'll listen to us, I just don't know if she's ever helped anyone induce lactation before.  We'll see after Wednesday, I guess!

If you're interested in learning more, I've found this to be the most helpful website.  Lenore Goldfarb is one of the two people responsible for coming up with the Newman-Goldfarb induction protocol.
www.asklenore.com