Lauren on Living

A Lifestyle Blog about Simplifying Healthy Living

Lesser Known Facts About the Postpartum Period

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When I was pregnant it felt like everyone had something to tell me about what to expect after the baby arrived.  I was told I would never sleep again, that I would never wear nice clothes again, that my son would pee in my eye when I changed him and that if I breastfed the baby weight would fall right off.

Well, in my experience some of this advice was spot on (I rarely wear anything nicer than yoga pants when I’m at home) but some of it missed the mark entirely (I have yet to be peed on, let alone in the eye).  There are however several lesser talked about things that can happen and I thought it might be nice to give everyone a heads up.

1. Constipation –  I’ve heard horror stories about the first postpartum bowl movement being almost worse than childbirth itself, but luckily I didn’t have a problem with it.  In fact I even stopped taking the stool softener that the hospital gave me because I felt that I didn’t need it.  Well, the joke was on me.  A few weeks after Asher was born the constipation set it.  In my case, this delay may have been due to the delay in my milk coming in.  You need to drink A LOT of water to support breastfeeding and to not have it affect the rest of your bodily functions.  If you aren’t drinking enough then your body may pull liquid from anywhere it can to ensure that you have enough milk for your babe, which can result in some rather hostile bowl movements.  I recommend, drinking LOTS of water.  I try to chug a 20 oz bottle every time I nurse.  I find that chugging ensures that I get it all in, because it’s easy to get side tracked when I take small sips.  Stay on your stool softener, eat lots of fiber and go for plenty of walks.

2. Dehydration – I have never been a great water drinker mainly because I find it inconvenient to have to pee all the time.  Prior to becoming pregnant I would often go without drinking much of anything for a whole day only to find myself parched right before bed, so I’d chug a couple glasses, which would invariably result in me needing to get up to pee in the middle of the night.  When I became pregnant, I knew I had to be more disciplined about getting enough to drink so I began carrying a water bottle around with me at all times.  Having a bottle handy really helped remind me to stay hydrated and the fact that I was peeing all the time didn’t really bother me because I considered it par for the course with pregnancy.   If I thought being pregnant meant that I knew what it was like to be thirsty all the time then I really had no idea what I was in for.  After Asher was born the thirst took on a whole knew level.  I was literally guzzling as much water as I could and no matter how much I drank I still had an insatiable thirst for more.  It felt like I was shriveling up from the inside out.  Nothing I did helped. Luckily after several weeks it leveled off and I was able to cut back to just drinking a ridiculous amount instead of an insane amount.  If I ever slack on my liquid intake I get splitting dehydration headaches by the time the evening rolls around.  No fun.  There is a silver lining however.  I rarely need to pee!  It’s kind of like a really weird parlor trick.  I can drink liters and liters of water and barely have to go to the bathroom at all, how cool is that?!

3. Hairloss – Due to the higher amounts of estrogen during pregnancy most women experience a drastic decrease in the the amount of hair that they shed. (1) I have a lot of hair, but it is super fine and dead straight, so when I became pregnant I was so excited about the effect it would have on my hair.  I was amazed by how plentiful and lush my hair was.  I would maybe shed 2-3 hairs a day.  Now I knew that this was only temporary and that once Asher was born I would eventually start shedding again.  What I didn’t know is that my hair would begin falling out in clumps and that I would develop a receding hairline.  At around 4 months postpartum my hair started shedding at an alarming rate.  Nearly every time I showered I would get a ping pong sized hair ball.  Not so tiny tumble weeds consisting of hair and dust bunnies started popping up everywhere.  I once even found Asher clutching a clump of my hair in his fist, which he was attempting to stick in his mouth.  One day I looked in the mirror and noticed that my hair line was receding.  I asked Raf if he noticed and he said that my hair line was always like that, but I wasn’t convinced so I broke out the photo albums and did a side by side comparison.  I have included a few pictures below.

Asher and I at 2.5 months postpartum:

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Asher and I at 4.5 months postpartum:

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Do you see the difference?  No?  Were you too distracted by the cute baby?  Oh, well allow me to give you a closer view:

photo (15)The drop off in the levels of estrogen after childbirth are to blame for the hair loss.  Luckily, this too is just temporary and the vast majority of women who experience this have their hair return to it’s pre-pregnancy volume by a year. (1) So here’s hoping.  In the meantime I have taken to french braiding my hair a lot in an attempt to keep the tumble weeds at bay.

1. Belgravia Centre. (2012, May 28). Postpartum Hair Loss Causes and Solutions. Retrieved May 6, 2013, from The Belgravia Centre: http://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/postpartum-hair-loss/

For Your Reading Pleasure // Precious Treasure

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UHJ
The below quote really resonated with me.  Children are our future and we need to guard them fiercely.  Too often is the value that children bring to society forgotten.  The littlest members of our lives carry the keys to our future.  We need to not only see them but also HEAR them.  They are a precious treasure. There is no screening process to be parents but the way this sacred role is carried out shapes the world we live in.
 
I hope you enjoy the following as much I did:
 
“Children are the most precious treasure a community can possess, for in them are the promise and guarantee of the future. They bear the seeds of the character of future society which is largely shaped by what the adults constituting the community do or fail to do with respect to children. They are a trust no community can neglect with impunity. An all-embracing love of children, the manner of treating them, the quality of attention shown them, the spirit of adult behavior toward them – – these are all among the vital aspects of the requisite attitude. Love demands discipline, the courage to accustom children to hardship, not to indulge their whims or leave them entirely to their own devices. An atmosphere needs to be maintained in which children feel that they belong to the community and share in its purpose.”
 
– Universal House of Justice,  Ridván Message, 2000

Growing up Global

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My mom is British and my dad is American but I spent my childhood surrounded by the dense jungles of the Federated States of Micronesia.  My dad was stationed there as a physician for the public health service.  My brothers and I had care free upbringings consisting of swimming in the turquoise waters of the pacific ocean, foraging for tropical fruit and running through the underbrush wielding machetes.  We also traveled a lot, visiting places like Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, China and Bali.  We rarely traveled like tourists, instead we saw the places we went the way the locals did, in large part due to the fact that we were often visiting people we knew.  When I was 12, my parents and I along with my uncle were smuggled past armed guards into an Afghanistan refugee camp in Peshawar to visit some friends.  The fact that they had three young children never daunted my parents and never stopped them from exposing us to the world that we live in.

My childhood was wonderful, idyllic really, but growing up in the way I did meant that I was always seen as, or felt like, an outsider no matter where I went. The color of my skin made me a minority in Micronesia and the way I saw the world made me one in the United States. I had a global perspective without really understanding that such a thing was a rarity.

My family lived in a small cinder block house with a tin roof, which was practically a mansion by comparison to some of the island dwellings.  Men wore loin cloths and the women were topless. There was one paved road and naked children ran around the streets.  I have lost count of the number of stitches I’ve had, due in no small part to the aforementioned machete wielding.  When jungle fires raged through the brown grasses during the dry season we played in the ashes and listened to the exploding banana trees.  When the monsoon rains hit in the wet season we body surfed the rapids of flooded streams and tried not to drown.  During the typhoons my dad would board up the windows, while my younger brother and I snuck out to jump into the ferocious winds amidst flying coconuts.  This was the world I lived in.  Pop culture and the trappings of the western world were lost on me.

When my family moved back to the United States when I was 15 there was a lot of culture shock.  Even my parents felt the effects, while my brothers and I struggled to cope and assimilate.  I was a fast study or maybe just a good actor.  I quickly adapted to my surroundings and learnt that it wasn’t socially acceptable to be barefoot and that climbing trees often freaked people out. The whole time I kept my knowledge of the wider world close to my heart.  Willing myself to remember the reality of things and not to get swept away by the enticing currents of a material society.

Seven years  after returning to America I moved to Israel for work after finishing college.  I remember feeling like I was at last getting back to my roots.  I guess there is a comfort in not fully belonging somewhere.  There is a certain freedom in being an outsider.

The night I arrived in Haifa I met the man I would end up marrying only 6 months later.  We recognized in each other a common story. He was born in Iran but due to religious persecution his family had to flee the country when he was only 5 months old.  For the next year or so they lived in Pakistan while they waited for their refugee status to go through so they could move to the United States.  Once in the US they moved around quite a bit before finally settling in Texas. We both knew what it was like to be suspended between cultures, between worlds, to never fully belong.

Getting married was another culture shock.  My husband realized that he was more Persian that he thought he was and I realized that I was less American than I had come to believe.  We adjusted and ultimately we grew closer together.  Now, after 5 years of marriage we have started our next great adventure: parenthood.

Our experiences both separate and shared have shaped the way we parent our son.  We are generally very relaxed as parents and especially so for being new parents.  We both realize that children are far more resilient than this society would have you believe.  When my son’s pacifier falls on the floor, I often just give it right back to him.  Being relaxed doesn’t mean that we’re push overs. It just means that we try not to sweat the small stuff.

I want my children to have a global vision, to see the world beyond the small bubble they inhabit and to understand that their actions can have far reaching consequences. I want to accustom them to hardship.  In fact I believe that to do otherwise would be to do them a disservice.  I hope to raise our sons to be fierce advocates for the equality of men and women.  I hope to raise our daughters to be fully aware of their value and self worth.  I want our children to be world citizens and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to go about doing that while living here, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.  I do know that the key is service. When children are allowed to be of service to someone else it opens their eyes to the wider world around them.

Sleep Training // Part 1

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Sleep, blessed sleep.  The thing everyone tells you you’ll never get enough of once you’re a parent and you believe it but can’t quite comprehend it until you are in fact, a parent.

Asher was a fairly good sleeper right from the start due in large part to the fact that I had been given strict instructions from his pediatrician to wake him up and feed him every 2 hours.  Luckily we only had to do that for four days, but it really helped get his sleep pattern in check.  You see, the poor thing was so tired and I was constantly having to wake him up to feed him that it did two things: first, it meant that he became used to waiting for me to wake him up and feed him, which in turn helped get his days and nights set, and really that’s half the battle.

By the time he was 1 week old he was doing a solid 4 hour stretch of sleep at night, and when we started a night-time routine at 6 weeks old he began sleeping 6 hours straight.  The problem was, however, that GETTING him to fall asleep was not so easy.

God forbid if I tried to rock him while standing in place, that child required forward motion and nothing else would do.

It required that I either a: nurse him to sleep, or b: hold him on his side with a pacifier in him mouth and his face pressed to my chest while I paced back and forth patting his bottom and singing him a song.  God forbid if I tried to rock him while standing in place, that child required forward motion and nothing else would do.  This wouldn’t have been terrible if it weren’t for the fact that Raf wasn’t able to do it 8 times out of 10, which meant that the bulk of getting him to sleep fell on my shoulders.  Additionally, the only way Asher would nap during the day for longer that 20 minutes was if he was physically on my person.

Something had to give.

Right before Asher turned 3 months old we had just returned from our trip to Israel and thought that this would be the perfect time to sleep train him.  We decided to rip the band-aid off in one fell swoop.  We moved him into his own room, stopped swaddling him and began sleep training all at the same time.  Sleeping well is a learned skill for babies and the biggest obstacle to overcome is self soothing.

Sleeping well is a learned skill for babies and the biggest obstacle to over come is self soothing.

We used the ‘progressive waiting’ method, which is a more accurate name for the well known ‘cry it out’ method.  This does involve some crying so it is not for the faint of heart or the weak willed.  The keys to success with this method are: 1.  Make sure you put the baby down when they are fully awake. 2. Do not pick them up when you go in to comfort them.  3. Be consistent.  4. Establish a bedtime and nap routine if you haven’t already.

It works like this.  You go about your bed time routine as normal.  For us, this involves taking a bath, playing lullaby music, reading a story, saying prayers, have a night cap, singing a song and finally turning on a sound machine that plays ocean waves.  I know that seems like a lot, but some of these things are happening at the same time, the whole process takes about 30 minutes from when bath time starts to when I put him down in his crib (before sleep training I would nurse him to sleep at the end of his bedtime routine). Ok, once you finish your routine, put the baby down in the crib when they are still awake and leave the room.  I tell Asher “it’s sleep sleep time” and that I love him, give him a goodnight kiss and then leave.  When you first do this the baby will most likely be crying, because they are used to YOU putting them to sleep rather than needing to put THEMSELVES to sleep.  Once you have left the room you wait 3 minutes and go back in and pat and sooth the baby, replace a pacifier, what have you, but DO NOT pick them up or you will have to start all over.  Only stay in the room for 1 minute and then leave again even if they are still crying.  Now you wait 5 minutes and repeat.  Finally you wait 7 minutes and repeat.  If the baby is still not asleep after the longest wait time for that day, keep repeating the longest wait time until they have fallen asleep with you out of the room.

The wait times get longer with each successive day.  I have listed the times we used below but feel free to set whatever times you feel comfortable with, just make sure you’re consistent.

Day 1.  3 min, 5 min, 7 min

Day 2: 5 min, 7 min, 10 min

Day 3: 7 min, 10 min, 12 min

Day 4: 10 min, 12 min, 15 min

Day 5: 12 min, 15 min, 17min

Day 6: 15 min, 17 min, 20 min

Day 7: 17 min, 20 min, 22 min

Do the same thing for all naps.  It took Asher 3 days to fall asleep on his own at night without crying and 7 days to fall asleep on his own for naps without crying.  If your baby is still not falling asleep their own by day 8, then you can lengthen the time as needed, but if they still haven’t gotten the hang of it by day 14 I suggest tabling it for a while and revisiting sleep training when your baby is a bit older or you could always try another method.

I didn’t continue the progressive waiting throughout the night.  Many people do apply the sleep training throughout the night, which normally results in a baby that sleeps through the night.  Since Asher wasn’t even 3 months old, I felt it was still important to feed him in the middle of the night if he was hungry.  In any case he normally only wakes up once at night to feed and then goes straight back to sleep.  Of course there are exceptions, occasionally he will wake up twice and if he’s sick or going through a growth spurt he may wake up every few hours, but for the most part he sleeps 12-13 hours and only gets up once.  The exact time he wakes up for his nightly feeding varies.  Sometimes he will sleep 10 hours straight and then get up, while other times he’ll get up to feed after 6 hours.  Asher will sometimes fuss a bit periodically throughout the night, but I learnt that he isn’t fully awake at these times and is just settling himself back to sleep, while his hunger cry is quite distinct.

It was no easy feat to not go in and scoop him up when he was crying.  The only way I got through it was by putting my head phones in and watching the baby monitor light up when he was crying rather than hearing the cries directly.  All the pain I felt during that time was well worth it because it resulted in a happier, better rested baby and who can complain about that?

All the pain I felt during that time was well worth it because it resulted in a happier, better rested baby and who can complain about that?

After learning to roll. This can not be comfortable.

Our next step is determining if, when and how we are going to night wean.  Stay tuned.

*UPDATE*

We did it!  Check out Sleep Training // Part 2.

Recipe: Hummus

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Humms

This hummus was so easy and quick to make, I have no idea why I waited this long to make my own.

Ingredients:

1 16 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) – drained

1/3 cup tahini

1/4 cup lemon juice + a little extra (bottled or fresh, although fresh is yummier in my opinion)

2 cloves garlic – crushed or diced

1 tsp salt or to taste

water (I use roughly 1/3 cup)

olive oil

paprika

Directions:

In a food processor, blend the chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt and water (the amount of water you add depends on the consistency you like your hummus to be.  Less, for chunkier, more of smoother.  Using just under 1/3 cup gives you a really creamy texture) until the mixture is well blended.  Scoop the hummus into a dish and garnish with paprika, drizzled olive oil and a bit more lemon juice/pulp.  Voila!

Raf said this is better than any store bought hummus he has had.  Success!

Hummus 2

The Most Rewarding

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Almost every time I tell anyone that being a stay at home mom is the hardest thing I have ever done, they immediately reply with “but also the most rewarding, right?”.  To which I generally say “yes, of course!”  However, I am always left feeling guilty because deep down I’m not sure I see it that way.  Maybe I need to redefine my definition of rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE being a mom.  It is my biggest dream come true, but when I think of something being rewarding, I don’t generally envision changing diapers, being covered in spit-up, sleep deprivation and going days without any meaningful adult interaction, instead I think of having a career I’m passionate about.  Curing cancer would be rewarding.  Establishing public health practices in under served communities would be rewarding.

I love the fact that I get to be present for all of Asher’s firsts.  His first smile, his first laugh, first roll, etc.  Is being a stay at home mom really the ‘most rewarding’ though?  Not really.  At least not yet, not for me.  It is hard work.  It is lonely.  It is testing.  Sure it can be deeply rewarding in the sense that I have brought this amazing soul into this world, but I wouldn’t classify it as the most rewarding.  The most important? Yes.  The most rewarding? Not yet.  Maybe this will change, after all my son is only four months old. I just think it’s important to be honest about these things, because if I’m feeling them, then someone else is too. There is too much of a culture of shame in the parenting community.  It’s almost as though parents aren’t allowed to complain about how hard it can get, without also reaffirming how amazing it is and sometimes all this ‘putting our best feet forward’ is exhausting and leaves everyone feeling like they aren’t doing as good of a job as someone else.

I wish more parents would talk about the challenges they face or the tests they endure rather than always presenting their lives as perfect packages filled with rainbows, ribbons and professional looking photographs of gourmet meals that they post on pinterest.  Let’s have a balanced perspective please.  Yes, being a mom is wonderful and fulfilling in ways I never imagined and I am so thankful every single day for being able to take on this role, but if you drop by unannounced, you will find my house in various stages of disorder and chaos.  The bed won’t be made, there will be a laundry basket of clean clothes that has been sitting in the living room for days waiting to be folded, baby clothes, pacifiers and tissues will be strewn about the house and don’t even ask when the last time the house was vacuumed.  My son will generally be smiling after having just completed his most recent abstract expressionism masterpiece consisting of curdled sour milk spit-up in my hair, seriously, I don’t even bother to change into clean clothes most of the time because there is just no point.  Being a parent is the best thing I have ever done but it has yet to be the most rewarding and that’s okay, it doesn’t make me any less of a great mom.

Natural Birth & The Great Intervention Epidemic

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Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my mother had three natural, unmedicated births but I have always known that natural birth was something I wanted to do.  Fast forward to Graduate school, where I learnt all the startling statistics about the gross over use of birth interventions in this country, which factor into the alarmingly high cesarean section rate and I became an ardent natural birth advocate.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard things like: “I will for sure be getting an epidural” or “I want a c-section because I don’t want to be all stretched out down there” or “I want to get induced so I can plan when the baby will arrive.”  And the list goes on and on.  The truth is, there is a lack of proper education about childbirth.  Many young women have no real idea about what to expect and most of their knowledge comes from the media, which portrays birth as a harrowing experience.  Couple this naivete with the current treatment of pregnancy and birth by much of the medical field as an illness or disability and we have ourselves an intervention epidemic.

I found it so aggravating when people would ask me if I was planning on having an epidural and they responded with shock when I told them that I was planning on a natural birth. I mean, really people?!  Childbirth is a totally natural process and the female body was designed to carry out this function perfectly.  Granted there are times when interventions are 100% necessary and life saving but for the vast majority of births this is simply not the case.  In fact for the majority of births added interventions can actually be a hindrance and can have a snow ball effect.

The World Health Organization recommended that the upper limit for the cesarean section rate was 15%, while the optimal rate should be 5%.  In the United States the most recent data show that the c-section rate is a staggering 32.8%, meaning that 1 in 3 women deliver by cesarean section.  The Healthy People 2020 goal is to reduce the number of cesareans among low risk women with no prior cesarean births by 10% and yet in some hospitals throughout the country the c-section rate is as high as 50%.  Furthermore there is no evidence to show that having a c-section rate that is higher than 15% does anything to reduce maternal and/or infant mortality or morbidity, in fact just the opposite may be true.  An increased rate of interventions often leads to highers levels of death and disease among mothers and babies.

So what’s going on here?  Well there isn’t a simple answer since there are a lot of factors at play.  Birth weight plays a large roll, the fact is that we are having bigger babies than ever and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for our bodies to deliver them naturally.  This is why it’s so important to eat right and exercise during pregnancy.  In fact eating right and exercising are vitally important before and after pregnancy as well, but that’s a topic for another day.  Another large factor is the elective and rampant use of interventions during childbirth and I believe this stems in large part from a lack of adequate education about the topic.

The most common major interventions used other than a cesarean section itself are pitocin (used to induce or augment labor) and epidurals. The use of epidurals have become the norm and natural birth is something that is viewed as extreme.  When I told people I wanted to have a natural birth, I was told ‘you don’t have to be a hero’ and asked ‘why would you do that to yourself’.  Child birth is a natural process not an illness or disease and treating it as such can impair the body’s ability to do what it does best.

I said before that interventions can be a slippery slope and here is what I meant.  Epidurals can weaken the contractions that your body has naturally, which then requires you to go on pitocin to strengthen the contractions, but now your contractions are stronger and longer than they should be so you get a stronger epidural to manage the pain, which in turn requires more pitocin, which finally sends the baby into distress (due to the stronger and longer contractions) and you are wheeled off the the OR for a cesarean section.  The same cycle can also be true when labor is induced.  While all this is true it must still be noted that many women do receive epidurals and/or pitocin without needing further intervention.

You have to remember that pitocin and epidurals are serious drugs and whatever you’re receiving your baby is receiving.  Of course these interventions are wonderful and life saving when they’re necessary but they are performed far more than what is medically necessary.  Too many people opt to schedule a c-section or elect to have interventions without really educating themselves about the process.  A cesarean section is MAJOR abdominal surgery, which involves slicing through 6 layers of skin, tissue and muscle and then sewing the individual layers back up again.  Recovery is no picnic especially considering you can’t just relax but instead you have to care for a newborn and be up all hours of the night.  The International Cesarean Awareness Network is a great place to go to learn more.

The last contributing factor I’ll discuss here and perhaps the biggest are policy instruments acting at the health system level. OB-GYNs are faced with more lawsuits than nearly every other medical specialty.  This is because sadly and unfairly if something goes tragically wrong during labor blame is often placed on the medical staff present.  So in order to reduce liability systems are in place to push for more interventions because it is wrongly believed that more interventions means better care.  In order to change this we must change policy, which starts with education.

My intention here is not to demonize birth interventions and I don’t presume to tell women how they should have their babies or ostracize women who opt for birth interventions but I do think it is important to educate yourselves about child birth.  I highly recommend taking a birth class as well as watching The Business of Being Born.  You can also go to The Beauty of Being Born to read real women’s birth stories and share in their experiences.  Also you may want to consider opting to deliver with a midwife that practices out of a hospital or birth center.

If you read Asher’s birth story then you know that I did in fact require the use of interventions.  They were all medically necessary with the exception of one: breaking my water.  This was the first intervention that I  received and I believe that making this choice is what lead to the complications that required me to need further interventions, but that’s just a theory, since there is no way to know for sure.

At the end of the day when it comes to labor and delivery the most important thing is to have a healthy mother and baby, no matter how you get there, I just believe that in the vast majority of cases the best way to ensure that is to have a natural childbirth.

Asher and Raf, 2 hours old

For Your Reading Pleasure // The Secrets of Breast Milk

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Nicholas DayI am a huge advocate for breastfeeding.  THIS article by Nicholas Day touches on both how amazing breast milk is and how much of a mystery it is.  I know not everyone is able to breastfeed, which is why I am so deeply thankful that I over came my supply issues and thrush and have been able to nurse my son exclusively.  It is just so easy and convenient, not to mention cuddly!  I love it!

So read this.