Shit on my hands

MH

On the third morning after PJ’s birth I traipsed gingerly (only 3 stitches, but ow!) to the bathroom and copped an eyeful in the mirror. Oh yeah, baby! I was spilling out over the top of my breastfeeding singlet. I immediately alerted my husband and SOMH co-correspondent by text that The Mad Cans Have Arrived. Hubby’s response: ‘Lucky me!’; BB’s: ‘Make sure you get a photo.’ ‘Check ‘em out,’ I proudly invited to the midwife on her rounds. Possibly for the last time in my life, I had a complete stranger palpitate my girls and marvel, ‘Ooh, you can really feel the heat in them. Your nipples are looking great too.’ Further marvelling from the hospital paediatrician and a different midwife occurred when PJ herself announced the arrival of my milk with an almighty transitional crap. Woot! Over the next 24 hours she was apparently narcoticized, crashing into a deep 4 hour slumber after every guzzle. Then things started to get a little out of hand. Literally. Stewart Loewe (nickname: ‘buckets’) may have been able to hold a footy in one hand, but even his massive paws wouldn’t have been able to grasp one of my tits. When we arrived home from the hospital, the breasts entered the front door a full five minutes before the rest of me. PJ was up to the task though, stacking on nearly half a kilo in a week. M managed to achieve the same weight gain in the same time frame – but unfortunately there were no congratulatory plaudits from the visiting maternal health nurse for him.

But then my mad cans went a little, er, mad. Mastitis = aches, pains, fever, very sore very hard right boob. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with a particularly breast-focussed prize fighter – with a few punches to the head thrown in for good measure. Antibiotics cleared up the infection pretty quick, but I still felt sore and crap. And I was losing my brain capacity. While trying to teach a legal studies class, M received a phone call from his maddened wife threatening suicide because she couldn’t identify the house key on her keychain and was thus stuck outside with two screaming under-3s.

Was advised by an online friend (what did we do before Facebook?) to seek treatment from a physiotherapist. Two sessions of ultrasound treatment and education about what NOT to do to treat mastitis (NO massaging lumps; NO hot showers or heat packs; NO antibiotics unless you get crooker and crooker over 3 days) and the inflammation went down – just as the stomach cramps from the antibiotics set in. Sigh.  To top everything off, the physio pointed out that those angry looking red lines under my nipple were stretch marks likely caused by milk engorgement. Evidently, I was getting my comeuppance for crowing to all and sundry that I had made it through the pregnancy stretch mark-free. I shall wear the scars of my abundance for the rest of my days. At least that’s something I can hold over PJ should she ever accuse me of being a selfish mother.