Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Crying Over Spilt Milk

Jane: still cute.

Okay, on to the next item of business! No, really! Oh, all right. A little more about Jane. They messed with the vent again. And... she went from 59% to 85% on her oxygen. But she spent an hour and a half snoogling with me (yes, it's true! we talked an RT into helping us out, and he was waaay more nervous about it than Joel is but he did it, and another RT watched because she'd never seen an oscillator baby moved before so now she could, in theory, do it too if she weren't too freaked out about it. yay!) and her oxygen started to come back down. Behold my powers! By the time I left for the day she was back down to 60%. And they didn't have to readjust the vent at all. I'm good.

On to the next item of business, for real. Last weekend, as you may recall, we left the lake house. We cleaned and packed and schlepped our stuff home. Included in that stuff was a week's worth of breastmilk. Which, it turned out, was not kept adequately chilled. Forty ounces of which thawed and was thereby rendered unfit for Jane's consumption. Let me repeat that figure: FORTY OUNCES. That's a quart and a cup of my very own painstakingly expressed milk. That's two days' worth of my efforts, over two solid hours at the pump, dumped unceremoniously down the drain.

Here, let me show you just what that looks like:



And, down the drain it goes:

Ironically, I drank a glass of (cow's) milk at dinner tonight after dumping my milk. And felt weird about it for the first time in my life. I think I have too much sympathy for what my sister cows go through to do that again.

(Ice cream, on the other hand, I won't be giving up just yet. My love for Chubby Hubby and Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and good old Breyer's vanilla runs too deep.)

5 comments:

Unknown said...

You ARE soooo good! Love that you got to "snoogle" with Jane again - so, that's an hour and a half today and, I think, two hours yesterday. Obviously not enough still, but inching ever closer to "H". Not to jinx, but waa hoo!!!!!!!! Don't want to go there about the "spoiled" expressed milk. As is said, a pic is worth a thousand words. Your pix are worth even more. Those viles of expressed - "spoiled" milk spoke volumes. (Painful, time-consuming volumes, as has been told to me from friends about expressing milk). Glad you haven't lost your sense of humor, or you're taste for icecream!!!!!!!!!!! Hope Jane inherits both!!! Love, Ann

Karen said...

OH.MY.GOD. As a fellow mom who is currently breastfeeding, I ache for your loss. 40 ounces??? I've never even had that much pumped at once. (I hate to pump and was already in awe of the fact that you are managing to provide all this milk while pumping.) Ironically, I recently had the same weird thought about drinking cow's milk the other day when we were putting all the milk from Costco away in the fridge. We go through alot of milk and I looked at the 12 liters we had just bought and thought "wow! that's alot of milk that came from some cow...probably not just one cow but still..." However, I'm very happy to hear that Jane has stabilized so much over the last week AND that the RTs at the hospital are becoming more comfortable with kangaroo care. I can imagine it does wonders for Jane so I'm glad they're figuring out how to let it happen. Take care. Karen

R said...

You're a power snoogler, that's for sure!

The spilled milk is very sad. Though I can't say I've given up the white stuff, even after pumping myself...

mommatosena said...

Yeah for snoogles! Boo for dumping....I was sad for you until I saw the pics and then I cried...yes cried...silly as it sounds I can't imagine the freak out I would have had...well I think tirade would be closer to the truth...I am in awe of the moms that can pump and provide...and have a whole new perspective on what the cows go through...I thought it was bad enough that they had to be perpetually pregnant. Can't wait until you post about the trip H.

Sheila Peuchaud said...

Here are my tears for your spilt milk, bg.