I have a biter!

Preface: When I started this blog, I promised myself that I wouldn’t do too much censoring - that was the point of making it (semi-) anonymous.  This means you get the good along with the bad, embarrassing, and petty.  I wanted a reasonably accurate record of the fact that babies aren’t always sunshine and roses so that other women could feel a little less alone when their babies aren’t doing what they’re *supposed* to do.

That said, Maya starts daycare full-time in a little over a week, and boy, am I going to miss her.  I had planned on writing a long post about how I’m savoring every second of my last days as a stay-at-home mom, but then the biting started, and this is what came out instead.  Still, I want you all to know that I am indeed savoring every moment and am still sort of at a loss about what I’ll do without her most of every weekday!  So, my little lovebug, if you’re reading this many years from now, know that this was but a small blip in our otherwise wonderful life :)  Now, onto the biting….

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It's par for the course, I guess, considering that Maya’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nurser from Day 1.  She’s a great nurser in terms of weight gain (so I can only complain so much), but terrible in terms of 1) the fact that she’s always been a squirmy, kicking wildebeest who gets distracted by a pin dropping, and 2) the pain she has inflicted upon my poor, abused boobs.

Maya is teething again, about to cut her upper central incisors.  When her lower ones came in last month, we had about 4 days of biting and bad nursing during which she didn’t eat much milk and I mostly pumped...and worried, because I knew she wasn’t getting enough fluids since she’s still mediocre at best with drinking from a bottle.  But then she stopped biting once the teeth were through, and we’ve had a remarkably good nursing month since then!  However, it appears that we shall be repeating the cycle with this set of teeth as well.  

Biting - especially during teething - isn’t all that rare, but what is rare is that she bites at the beginning of a nursing session, chomping me with her razor sharp nubbin teeth instead of latching (most babies are “bored biters” who chomp you after they’ve finished draining a boob, so all you have to do is watch them for cues that they’re about done and unlatch them before they bite - this is not the case for me).  It turns out that when she’s teething, I literally cannot get her to latch unless she’s *just* the right amount of tired.

I tense up and dread every single attempt to latch, wondering whether she will choose “nice baby” or “barracuda” for that particular moment.  In addition to the nipple trauma (and damage to my psyche), the biting also creates another problem, which is that my boobs get super overfilled without proper nursing and then I have to pump and pump and pump.  I’m getting better at pumping, but I’m still not great at it (i.e., I can’t read or answer email or do any other things while pumping, I have to sit really still, close my eyes, and spend the entire time *envisioning* milk or nothing comes out).  Thus, teething time is filled with a) pumping while the baby looks at me and whines because I’m not holding her (~30 minutes for setup, pumping, and then dismantling of the pump), b) fighting with her to take the bottle that I just pumped (~ another 30 minutes), and c) cleaning/sterilizing bottles and pump parts (cleaning is like 2 minutes, but sterilizing is like 25 minutes once per day).  However, nursing - all inclusive - takes me about 10 minutes total per feed, so the lack of nursing is a serious deal.

My bloody nipples remind me of the before time, in the long long ago, when Maya and I were learning how to nurse.  This time was filled with lots of painful pumping to increase my supply because my milk came in sooooo laaaaate, as well as the great privilege of watching my baby promptly spit up not only every bit of hard-won milk I managed to get into her belly, but also mouthfuls of my own blood.  It was awesome.

My very first pumping effort, five days after Maya was born.  I wish husband had gotten a photo of me holding the bottles, because I cried a whole lot during the 20 minutes that it took to get this much milk out.  Pretty sad.

See all the blood all over her clothes and the burp cloth?  Yeah, that's mine.  From my nipples.
(As a side note, OMG she is SO little here!!!!)

And so I’ve developed all sorts of tricks to ease us through more teething: a constant rotation of cold teethers, ice in the mesh feeder, strategic doses of Tylenol, tons of middle-of-the-night nursing.  This evening, after being bit twice, I actually rocked her to sleep before nursing, secretly latching her on when she was finally too unconscious to bite me anymore (aka, dream feeding).  That works pretty well :)  I hope the biting again only lasts for a few days, but I’m worried.  Last time, the biting didn’t start until after the skin had broken, but it’s early this time.  I’ve been watching the teeth descending through her gum, but they’ve not broken the skin yet - and I have no idea how much longer it’ll take.  They look close to me, but what do I know???

As embarrassed as I am to say it, on nights like these, I sometimes joke to husband that I had a better nursing relationship with our cat than I’ve ever had with our baby.  When Abby showed up under our porch, she was somewhere between 10-12 weeks old and still happily stuck in Suckle Land even though she didn’t actually need (and I certainly wasn’t providing!) any milk.  I had a fuzzy purple blanket that I’d lay across my knees, and she’d come over every time it was out for hours of snuggles, kneading, and some fake suckling (complete with little slurping sounds).  She did this until she was about 8 months old, actually.  It was so, so adorable :)  This sounds way sketchier than it actually was, so I'm including a video so you don't think I'm a weirdo :)

Aaaaaaand because I like to end on a high note, I'm leaving you with a cute photo and another video.  Baby boo is trying to pull herself up!  A gargantuan effort, so it seems :)

Mom, could you tell me why, exactly, I've been penned?  The injustice!