{"id":3554,"date":"2012-11-26T13:58:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T18:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=3554"},"modified":"2012-11-26T13:58:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T18:58:00","slug":"back-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/back-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Why, yes. I did<\/em> flame out of NaBloPoMo last week. Whoops.)<\/p>\n

I went back to work last week after three months of maternity leave. I was expecting it to be really and truly awful (and it was definitely hard to leave my precious baby behind), but it ended up being better than I thought it would. I didn’t even need to use the emergency stash of makeup that I packed in case of sudden onset bathroom crying.<\/p>\n

In some ways, it felt like I never left. I was pleasantly surprised at how well I picked up where I left off. And it sure was nice to do things like start a task and then fix it without having to stop to change a diaper. And eat lunch with two hands.<\/p>\n

(You really can’t underestimate how awesome it is to do things with two hands).<\/p>\n

My biggest problem (aside from the fact that around 2pm I start jonesing to see my little sweet pea like you would not believe<\/em>), is that Lilian has stopped sleeping through the night. She used to go to sleep around 10pm, wake up around 5am for a snack, and then get up for good around 7:30am. Now, she still stays up until 10pm or so, but she’s up a few times demanding to be fed. And I have to be up by 5:30am in order to get to work.<\/p>\n

I am… not very well rested.<\/p>\n

I know it’s because she’s eating less during the day, so she needs to make up for it at night. It’s called reverse cycling and it’s super common among breastfed babies who go to daycare. They eat just enough to take the edge off and then get the majority of their calories at home. I should take it as a compliment that she prefers me over a bottle, but I’m just too tired. Like, bone-weary tired. Like, my brother-in-law had to drive my car home on Saturday because everybody we were with recoiled in horror at the thought of me behind the wheel tired. Like, I would give a kidney (possibly both!) for a full night of sleep tired.<\/p>\n

The other day, I had a slight tummy ache and ended up having this elaborate fantasy that maybe it was appendicitis. Because, you see,\u00a0 if I had my appendix out, they would have to let me sleep at the hospital. This is when you know<\/em> that you’re tired. When you fantasize about having major surgery because it would mean that might actually get some rest.<\/p>\n

I did a little bit of online research, but the gist of people’s advice was basically “suck it up, cupcake” with a smattering of “don’t even think about giving your baby formula unless you want to poison her.” There were a lot of warnings about how supplementing can make your supply go down, which will just make the problem worse. I am aware of the fact that breast is generally best, but I could also use some practical advice about how to make this work. Advice that doesn’t involve a bunch of unrealistic options. Because all of these women online seem to think that it’s trivial to extend your maternity leave so that you can keep breastfeeding (we’d lose our health insurance and we need my paycheck to do things like pay the mortgage). Or that you can somehow magically feed your kid yourself on your lunch break (I couldn’t even drive to daycare and back within a lunch hour, let alone feed Lilian). Or maybe I’m just supposed to be so happy about being an earth mother that I forget that I’m subsisting on three chunks of two hours of sleep every night?<\/p>\n

I ordered some extra bottles so that I don’t have to spend quite so much time doing dishes every night. And we are going to attempt to gradually move her bedtime up so that I can go to bed a little earlier. Other than that, I’m honestly not sure about what I can do. I will attempt to pump more in the hopes that she’ll eat it all at daycare. But you know what else makes your supply go down? Sleep deprivation. And caffeine.<\/p>\n

Before I went back to work, I told myself that it was OK if I couldn’t keep breastfeeding Lilian exclusively. I already gave her three months, which is no small accomplishment. But I’m too darn stubborn to give up just yet. Especially since there isn’t anything physically stopping me from doing it. But, at some point, I’m going to say uncle. I can still keep breastfeeding, it just doesn’t have to be exclusive. I wish that there was a resource out there that could help me find the best way to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Why, yes. I did flame out of NaBloPoMo last week. Whoops.) I went back to work last week after three months of maternity leave. I was expecting it to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,52,2,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-gummybear","category-random","category-work"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-Vk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3554"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3558,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions\/3558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}