Disclaimer: Like most of my posts recently, this one may contain details that you really didn’t want to know about me. Read at your own risk In addition, this account may paint a gloomy picture of breastfeeding. It’s my understanding that it’s rarely this tricky for most people so don’t let my story scare you.

Breastfeeding is hard. Many of the women whose birthing stories I heard or read mentioned that they had trouble breastfeeding. Thanks to this, I knew that breastfeeding, while natural, is not necessarily easy. I prepared as much as I thought I could. I read numerous books, attended a La Leche League meeting, and both Jaeger and I attended a breastfeeding class at a hospital. In addition, most hospitals have lactation consultants on staff for new mothers. As a result, while I expected there to be some minor challenges, I thought I had enough resources to figure it out.

At first, everything seemed to go great. While I did have a cesarean, Calvin was breastfeeding within an hour of being “born.” The latch looked great and he loved to suckle. I fed him 15 minutes on both sides and he’d still want more so I’d go back to the first side again (the lactation consultant told me I shouldn’t allow him more than that during any one feeding). We did have some minor issues with him latching on to my left side but he seemed to figure that out without too much trouble. Naively, I thought that would be the extent of my breastfeeding issues.

By the end of the first full day, my nipples were tender. I knew that a properly latched-on baby shouldn’t hurt but it was unclear exactly how much discomfort I should feel. By the end of the second day, my nipples were bleeding. This seemed sub-optimal but all the nurses assured me that the latching looked great so there didn’t seem to be a reason for my nipples to be so uncomfortable. However, Saturday night, they weighed Calvin and he had lost 14 oz of his birth weight. It is normal for babies to lose up to 10% of their birth weight. However, the nurses were concerned about how fast he had lost weight. They barely managed to convince us that he needed to be supplemented with formula. We were very unhappy with this but I wasn’t comfortable ignoring medical advice so we went ahead and started finger feeding. After breastfeeding each time, Jaeger or I would then finger feed Calvin additional formula. Calvin accepted the finger feeding fairly easily but I felt incredibly guilty every time I fed him this way.

All things considered, I felt very good after the cesarean so we went home on Sunday. Sunday night was a nightmare. I think I had become engrorged and Calvin couldn’t latch on. I tried manually pumping and taking hot showers but I didn’t seem to get anything so my breasts wouldn’t soften. It wasn’t that it was painful for me, it was that poor Calvin was starving and wouldn’t go to sleep. I think I got about 2 hrs of sleep that night when Jaeger woke up and finger fed him for a bit. First thing that morning, I called the hospital lactation consultant, R, and we went in to see her. After listening to my problem, she agreed that I was probably engorged and hooked me up to her hospital grade pump. She also evaluated Calvin’s suck and determined the reason my nipples were so sore was that in addition to sucking, he was also chewing. Unfortunately, Calvin had lost another ounce and was down from his birth weight of 8 lbs 15 oz to 8 lbs even. The lactation consultant said that we needed to get his birth weight up as soon as possible and we needed to stop finger feeding him and start bottle feeding him. R also suggested that we should let my nipples heal up before trying to breastfeed again. She rented me a hospital grade pump, suggested some herbal supplements to boost my milk supply, and we went back home.

It was a huge relief to figure out what the problem was. I was almost completely incoherent with lack of sleep and frustration. Monday night was completely blissful. I had to get up to pump but even then, I got substantially more sleep that night. After that day, we settled into a routine of me pumping every 2 hrs during the day and every 3-4 hrs at night. Jaeger had the week off so he fed Calvin most of his night feedings. Neither of us were getting huge amounts of sleep but we both were sleeping.

Several days later, my nipples had healed. I tried breastfeeding Calvin again but it was still painful. In addition, my milk had allegedly “come in” by this point but my milk supply was much lower than the lactation consultant wanted. As a result, I was only able to provide about half of the milk Calvin needed and had to continue supplementing the other half with formula. However, now that we were feeding him, Calvin steadily started gaining weight.

R would check up on us every other day and suggest some other way to boost my milk supply. Even though I’m not always a huge fan of supplements, I was pretty desperate so I started taking More Milk Plus, alfalfa tablets, soy lecithin, and brewer’s yeast (I did clear all of these with my doctor). My milk supply didn’t substantially increase but Calvin’s appetite did. I started taking 3-4 oz a feeding so the percentage of breast milk he got continued decreasing. I continued faithfully pumping every 2 hrs (this is two hrs from start to start so I really have about 1 ½ hrs in between pumping). I read all the books I could about low milk supply issues and almost all of them said the best way to boost milk supply was to breastfeed more. However, I still couldn’t handle breastfeeding for more than 5 minutes a couple of times a day. In addition, these books all seemed to claim that if I truly had a good latch, it shouldn’t hurt. I couldn’t find much information about infant’s chewing or how to go about correcting that.

Initially, learning that Calvin had a chewing problem was a huge relief. Having a problem meant that a solution might be possible. However, since a solution didn’t readily appear, the pumping and feeding routine started to become overwhelming. About a week after Calvin was born, my mother arrived to help out and Jaeger went back to work. I started doing both my nighttime pumping as well as feeding Calvin so Jaeger could sleep enough to go to work. Each morning after mom got up, I’d hand Calvin off to her and get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep before reappearing for the day. The pumping/feeding situation was sustainable but just barely and only if I didn’t need to do anything else. Many of the books I read indicated that Calvin might spontaneously outgrow his chewing habit sometime between 4-6 weeks so I started hoping the problem would eventually magically go away.

A week ago last Friday, I started Reglan. One of the off-label uses of the drug is to increase lactation though it can have pretty severe side affects for some women. I’ve been lucky and haven’t noticed anything. Last Tuesday, I went to a local La Leche League meeting. I almost didn’t go because I was exhausted but Jaeger convinced me that it would be a good idea. It was a good idea. I got a chance to talk to other breastfeeding moms as well as the leaders who all had a lot of experience breastfeeding. One of the leaders found several books that suggested various pumping techniques (many of the books I had found only considered pumping a “last resort” and so didn’t discuss pumping technique). I read through those books and got several more hints of things to try. Previously, I had bought a breastfeeding bra from Walmart and cut it up so I could insert the breast pump flanges and not have to hold them the entire time I pumped. Among other things, this allowed me to use massage to express more milk than pumping alone. Most of the books I read emphasized the importance of breast massage so I doubled my efforts in that area.

Under the impression that more opinions on our breastfeeding situation couldn’t hurt, Jaeger called to schedule an appointment with another lactation consultant. We met with E last night. She performed another evaluation of Calvin and believes that if we could get my milk supply up, his sucking problem may correct itself. She believes that he’s pretty much outgrown the “chewing” problem but has become lazy and is now sucking improperly due to bottle feeding which is continuing to hurt my nipples. She suggested we could try SNS feeding with the tube attached to my breast. However, other than that, most of her suggestions were aimed at increasing my milk supply. She said that in principle, I’m doing everything right but she did suggest some websites to read as well as some other pumping techniques to try.

Today, I’m trying Power Pumping which is one of the techniques the lactation consultant suggested. It involves pumping for 10 minutes, resting for 10 minutes, and then repeating. It sounds like many mothers will try power pumping for an hour each day and then go back to their normal pumping schedule. Supposedly, this might trick your body into thinking you have a very hungry baby. Currently, I’m trying the “boot camp” version of this which involves power pumping for an entire day. I don’t know if it’ll work but it seems worth a shot.

I’m hoping we manage to figure out these breastfeeding issues eventually. I have no idea how mothers managed to breastfeed back in the era when it was actively discouraged. (I have heard from several older mothers who indicated they wanted to breastfeed but didn’t have enough support and gave up. So, maybe it’s only those that had a relatively easy time that persevered.) Without the support of Jaeger and all the other resources available I would have given up long ago.

Please compare and contrast:

1. Real Life Corn Syrup Ad
2. Clip from Thank You for Smoking

(For the record, I do believe that high fructose corn syrup has been excessively demonized. It’s empty calories but not the root of all evil. However, equating it with “natural” is taking it a bit far.)

Today I tried yet again to make American Pizza. Last time I rolled the dough too thin and didn’t have enough toppings. This time, I used a whole batch of the pizza dough recipe. I also used the same pizza sauce recipe (1/2 cup of sauce for the pizza). For toppings, I included onions, olives, mushrooms (except on my side), red bell pepper, and of course cheese. Due to a cheese shortage I used “pizza cheese” from the supermarket instead of the mixture I’ve come to like (5 oz Mozzarella, 2 oz Swiss and 1 oz Parmesan).

Preparation: Like before, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees with a pizza stone. I rolled out the pizza dough and then transferred it to the back of a pizza pan covered with oiled aluminum foil. Next, I slathered on olive oil, stabbed it with a fork (to prevent bubbling), and then put the toppings on. I slid the pizza with the aluminum foil from the back of the pizza pan to on top of the pizza stone in the oven and baked it for 8 minutes.

Results: Well, it was edible but not all I was hoping for. At 8 minutes, the cheese looked broiled and the bottom of the crust looked done so I was afraid to keep it in longer. However, as I feared the crust wasn’t as crisp as I was hoping (and the cheese was definitely too done). Also, Jaeger felt that it could have used a little less oil and salt and needed a flavor boost somehow which I agree with.

Notes for next time: Try putting the crust (with a little less olive oil and fork marks) into the oven by itself for 5 minutes. Take the pizza out and lower the temp (maybe to 400?) put the toppings on, place on a pizza pan instead of straight on the pizza stone and place back into the oven until the toppings look done. Not sure exactly how to boost the flavor more.

I’m not sure if the new revisions will work or not. Part of the problem is that conventional home ovens weren’t designed to do pizza from scratch. However, I’m stubborn so I’m going to keep trying.

As I mentioned previously, life since Thanksgiving has been very busy. One of the things that has been occupying my time is making Christmas candy. Every year, mom makes Peanut Butter and Coconut balls as well as a variety of other candies.

Up till last year, I hadn’t followed the tradition and made Christmas Candy mainly because I couldn’t figure out what to do with the vast quantities of candy that would result. However, last year it occurred to me that I could inflict the candy upon the staff within the library district. I mostly stuck to the “traditional” Christmas candies last year. However, this time I decided to experiment a bit more.

• Peanut Butter Balls
• Coconut Balls
• Almond Toffee
• Rice Syrup Caramels
• Apricot Balls
• Lemon Truffles
• Almond Balls
• Orange Mint Patties
• Peppermint Bark

The first 4 I had made last year. I received compliments on several of the remaining candies but I think the only new one I’ll make again is the Almond Balls. They are the same recipe as the peanut butter balls except you use almond butter instead of peanut butter and substitute ground roasted almonds instead of the graham crackers. I was hoping the Apricot balls would turn out like See’s Apricot bon bons but they were a bit of a disappointment. Oh well, that just means I’ll have to try something new next year

I don’t like drinking cow’s milk (though I use it in baking/cooking) so I’m always looking for good alternatives. My default choice is soymilk. However, some days I will eat daily bowl of oatmeal with soymilk, have a veggie burger with soy in it and follow-up with tofu for dinner. While I believe soy is a healthy food, I also believe every food should be eaten in moderation. I’m aware of other milk alternatives such as rice and almond milk. However, I’ve resisted using them because they aren’t the nutritional equivalent of milk/soymilk, particular with regards to protein.

Sunday, as I was wandering the aisles of vitamin cottage, I ran across hemp milk. Many of the natural, particularly vegan, cookbooks I’ve run across recently praise the nutritional virtues of hemp seed but I hadn’t seen hemp milk before. It was horribly expensive, about twice what normal soy milk costs. However, I was intrigued by the nutritional facts. One cup of hemp milk contains 5 grams of protein and 20% of the RDA for iron. I’ve become especially interested in these two nutrients since becoming pregnant. In addition, it claims to have 1.2 grams of Omega-3 (though it’s in the ALA form).

How does it taste? In my opinion, not great by itself. I’m not sure I can describe the taste exactly but it’s more savory than I prefer for a plain drink. However, I tried watering it down and using it as a substitute for mushroom soup in Garbanzo Pot Pie and I think it worked pretty well.

Hemp Milk probably won’t become a staple in my pantry but I might buy it occasionally for a savory base in some entrees.

Today I tried making American Pizza using the leftover dough from my previous pizza making attempt. Unfortunately, I managed to roll the dough too thin and Jaeger thinks it needed more toppings. However, he liked my pizza sauce and also I think the cheese mixture was about right.

Notes for next time:

• The pizza crust is about right but make sure not to roll it as thin
• The pizza sauce was good. I used about 1/2 cup for the pizza (more than that would probably make it too soggy)
• I created this pizza with olives and artichokes. Jaeger thought the toppings were a little sparse and suggested adding the following next time: mushrooms (obviously just on his side ), peppers, tomato (if possible)
• I also like the cheese mixture which consisted of 5 oz mozzarella, 2 oz swiss and 1 oz Parmesan

For Jaeger’s and my birthdays, my parents bought us a compressor ice cream maker. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while because I like ice cream but don’t like the mess that the ice and salt require.

After some mix-up with the shipping (the ice cream maker seller mistakenly addressed it to someone else on our street who, unfortunately, does not speak English), I unpacked the ice cream maker Wednesday night. According to the instructions, I was suppose to let it sit for 24 hrs before using it.

I asked Jaeger what type of ice cream he’d like to try and he decided on French Vanilla. Thursday night, I went and gathered the ingredients. Vanilla Bean can be pretty expensive but I was happy to discover that Vitamin Cottage sells them at a fairly reasonable price. French Vanilla Ice Cream requires first making a custard and then chilling it. It was obvious that chilling was going to take too long so I decided we’d have the ice cream Friday night with Apple Pie.

The Apple Pie tasted fine but I managed to mess up the crust (I don’t know why I have such trouble with pie crusts). The ice cream maker worked great. I’m not a huge fan of vanilla ice cream but it tasted fine to me and Jaeger seemed to like it.

It occurred to me that if you stopped the ice cream making when the ice cream was still fairly soft, you could mix in other stuff and probably have a Dairy Queen blizzard-like consistency. Something to try another day, perhaps in summer

I haven’t been experimenting in the kitchen as much as normal since I’ve been pregnant. In the first trimester I had an aversion to vegetables. Thus, the only thing I felt like making were desserts, not the best plan for my weight. To the distress of my doctor, even avoiding excessive kitchen time, I gained ten pounds in my first trimester. Now that I’m in the second trimester, my aversion to vegetables has diminished somewhat. I’m not back up to my normal vegetable eating habits but it’s been better.

This morning I woke up with the urge to make pumpkin scones. After discovering that none of my cookbooks suggested a suitable recipe, I turned to the internet. I stumbled on a pumpkin scone recipe from a blog called Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea. After some fairly minor modifications, I came up with my own version (as Jaeger will tell you, I am incapable of following a recipe exactly). Jaeger and I agreed that they turned out quite well. I also suspect that this would be fairly easy to make vegan by using margarine instead of butter and soy yogurt instead of regular yogurt.

Buoyed by my success with the scones, I decided to try making pizza once again. Pizza is one of those items that I find incredibly hard to make at home. I’ve tried time and again to make decent pizza only to have Jaeger stare reproachfully at me*.

I finally have perfected the pizza dough to my satisfaction. Rose Levy Beranbaum provides a very good chapter on the theory of pizza dough in her The Bread Bible. However, I prefer a variation of McNair’s pizza dough recipe. You can see my variation of it here.

Today, I tried making a potato leek pizza inspired by a recipe in McNair’s Vegetarian Pizza book. I haven’t refined it to my satisfaction so I’m not putting it on my recipe website but here’s a synopsis of the topping:

I took 1 lb of fingerling potatoes (red or yukon would work fine) and thinly sliced them. Next, I finely sliced 1 cup of leeks (onions would work but leeks have such a nice flavor). I mixed the leeks and potatoes together and added 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, 4 minced cloves of garlic, 2 tsp salt (way too much, next time I’ll try 1 tsp), freshly ground black pepper, and 3 tbs finely chopped fresh rosemary. The oven was already preheating for the pizza so I mixed the potato topping ingredients together and then spread out on a baking sheet to roast in the oven for approximately 10 minutes.

Next, I rolled out the pizza dough and brush it with extra-virgin olive oil and then thinly spread yogurt on the dough (about 3 tbs). Once the potatoes had cooled, I sprinkled them on top of the pizza. In another bowl, I combined 2 oz swiss cheese, 1 oz Parmesan, and 5 oz mozzarella cheese. I sprinkled the cheese over the pizza and then popped it into the oven for around 10 minutes.

Conclusions: As noted above, the potatoes were way too salty. In general, the flavor combination was good but as Jaeger mentioned, it was missing something. I think next time I might try substituting 2 oz of the mozzarella for feta which might give the pizza more of a bite. In an attempt to liven it up a bit, Jaeger tried adding ketchup to the finished product Out of morbid curiosity, I did the same for a couple of bites. It actually wasn’t a horrible combination but neither was it very compelling.

I froze half of the pizza dough recipe. Later this week I’ll probably defrost it and make yet another attempt at an American pizza. Based on my experiments today, I think 8 oz of cheese is about right and the mozzarella/swiss/Parmesan mixture seemed good.

* I should note that about 3/4 of the baleful staring is usually a result of my trying to make a more “exotic” pizza such as the ones we had in Rome a couple of years back (though most of his family and I liked my Spinach and Artichoke Pizza I tried a while back). In spite of this, he’s never been impressed with my normal American pizza attempts either.

Originally posted to the anonymous pregnancy blog August 18, 2008.

At my conference last week I discovered a pastry shop that makes exquisite danishes. I’m a pretty decent cook but I can’t make pastries. However, once I got home, I decided it was time to try again. I pulled out my copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking and attempted their Cheese Danish recipe. They didn’t turn out horrible, but neither were they fantastic.

The pastry dough was too tough. I can’t decide if I kneaded too long, added too much flour, or the toughness was the natural result of including some whole wheat flour in the recipe. The whole wheat flour I use is the King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour. It’s one of my favorite flours to bake with. In most items, such as cookies and sweet breads, I can use at least 50% of the white whole wheat without a noticeable difference. The recipe did specify whole wheat pastry flour but I’ve made these substitutions before without any issues. It’s also possible that I just need more practice making danishes before they come out right. However, it’s such a labor intensive process I probably won’t try it anytime soon. After all, donuts are much easier to make and just as tasty

If you bake and are looking to increase your use of whole grains, I strongly recommended going to your library and seeing if they have a copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. My cheese danishes notwithstanding, almost every recipe I’ve tried from this book has turned out great. I’ve made Hazelnut Waffles with Pear compote, Chewy Oatmeal Cookies, Lemon-Oat Squares and Baked Oatmeal. They aren’t necessarily the healthiest of recipes but they taste great and you can pretend they’re healthy with the various whole grain flours the recipes use.

Another baking book I love is The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. She provides very detailed directions for all of her recipes. In addition, Bernabaum adds little “understanding” notes explaining why certain ingredients work the way they do within the recipe. Most of her recipes call for using bread flour. However, I’ve had very good luck substituting half of the flour (by weight) with white whole wheat flour and adding about 1 tbs of vita wheat gluten per cup of whole wheat flour (to compensate for the protein differences between the flours). Bernabaum is a stickler for precision and would probably be horrified to see how I mutilate the recipes. However, the recipes still turn out great. Her Cinnamon Raisin Loaf recipe is particularly good as a base for French Toast.

Yes, I know I’ve been very negligent about posting. Summer came and all of a sudden life got very, very busy.

Updates:
Jaeger & I have gone either camping or backpacking around every other weekend for the last couple of months. This has been very fun but leaves the house in a dreadful state. Our shower always looks dreadful if I don’t clean it at least weekly.

I went ahead and signed up for the CSA I joined last year. Produce started arriving late due to the initial cool weather. However, once it started coming, it came with a vengeance. I am now swimming in potatoes, onions, turnips and kohlrabi. We get other stuff too but these are the items I have trouble using at a respectable pace. We’ve been getting lots of zucchini too but I’ve just been making that into breads for the winter and cake. The cake recipe was an experiment and turned out pretty good. When I get around to it, I’ll have to post the recipe. In addition to produce, I also bought a fruit share. So far we’ve gotten 10 lbs of cherries (5 lbs for two weeks) and a large bag of apricots. My manager wondered what I would do with 5 lbs of cherries. I told her I was going to eat them. She was dubious. However, it appears that Jaeger and I can each easily manage to go through 1/2 lb/day of cherries.

I’ve always become enamored with frozen bananas and grapes. Via Costco, I purchased large quantities of both fruits. Worried that they would go bad before we could eat them all, I sliced up the bananas, rinsed the grapes and then frozen them. They’re a perfect snack when I get home. Nice and cool in our very warm house