Seriously???

Yes, I’m channeling various Grey’s Anatomy characters. I’ve been watching that while I nurse and/or pump because I can’t really hold the hard cover books I’ve been reading lately easily while holding the baby or the the pump. I’m also considering renaming this blog – “The on-going saga of trying desperately to nurse my third child.”

Let me just recap – I started out FINE. She latched on well, everything worked perfectly. Until the third day, when she randomly stopped nursing. Because we were dealing with jaundice, I had been told to nurse her non-stop, and after eight hours of her not nursing at all, I was a hysterical mess and ended up giving her formula. That Sunday remains the day that will live in infamy for me, and for really, anyone who saw me that day, because I cried. All.Day.Long. It was awful, I was devastated at the prospect of not nursing, felt like a miserable failure of a mother, sure that my baby girl wouldn’t love me the way the other two did. But we soldiered on, I got some nipple shields, she figured out that she had to nurse or not eat, and we did okay.

Less than a week later, I think, I realized that she had thrush. Then I got thrush. The medication the pediatrican prescribed worked for her, but not for me, and nursing (on the left side) became incredibly painful. So I got an rx for diflucan. Cleared it up, and it seemed to be pretty good, at least on the really painful side, so I figured it would be okay.

Only then I ended up with a crack in my nipple. I thought it was thrush coming back, so I went into see the doctor, and he said ‘nope, that’s just a crack, suck it up.’ So I did. Back to the nipple shield, lansinoh, and pumping. Three weeks later, it wasn’t improving at all, and back to the doctor we went. Only now, I’ve got multiple fissures, and a staph infection. So I started on an antibiotic, and kept using the shield and pumping.

This morning, I woke up with a yeast infection – caused by the med for the staph infection, caused by the crack that was caused by the thrush. And this time, the doctor I called told me that I’d have to stop nursing for 24 hours because the diflucan isn’t good for the baby. Since I’ve taken it before and not had that warning, I went to the internet to see what I could find about it, and after reading the symptoms of thrush, realized that I’ve probably got it back on that one nipple. The dryness, flakiness, redness, extreme pain… And I’m just floored. Seriously? Thrush? A-freaking-gain? Are you kidding me? This is now just ridiculous. Just to review – she’s just over two months and I’ve been rollercoastering from nursing strike, to thrush, to cracked nipple, to numerous cracks, to staph infection, to yeast infection and back full circle to thrush. I’m so not even a little bit amused.

But on the upside – at least she’s fully breastfed, right?