Baby Mama Drama

Greta has been plagued by sinus headaches since Seamus' birth. She has a long history of sinus problems, so it's not that surprising: for the last week, she's been staying in an overheated (or perfectly-heated, from Seamus' perspective) apartment, during a cold spell here in NYC -- the perfect recipe for bone-dry air.

I had set up a humidifier before the birth, so I couldn't understand why it was so dry in here, until I took a look at the humidifier's "wick" thing yesterday. Disgustingly, it was more cat hair than wick -- I hadn't changed it for a few months. Even worse, because it's a wick, the cat hair was all wet ... eww eww eww! So basically, we've been breathing in damp hairballs and dry air for the past week.

I replaced the wick yesterday, and the apartment's air is much better now, and Greta's sinuses are getting better, too, I think. But in the meantime, I had called midwife Karen to ask if she had any advice about Greta's headaches. Karen called us back immediately, alarmed that Greta might have preeclampsia, a dangerous, high-blood-pressure-related condition that occurs sometimes in late pregnancy. You may recall the 24-hour pee test that the midwives had her take just before labor started ... well, the result of that test came back positive a couple of days after the birth; Greta had had a slight case of preeclampsia. This makes me even more glad that we did the castor oil induction, as awful as it was. Greta's condition could have become serious enough to make homebirth impossible, and it would have been a shame to have to deliver in a hospital after all of our preparation.

Preeclampsia, almost by definition, is cured by delivering the baby, but in some rare cases, it lingers after birth -- hence Karen's concern. And once Karen voiced her concern, suddenly we were all concerned. Karen told Greta to take two Advil and call her back in in hour; if the headache went away, it was probably a sinus headache; if it didn't, Karen wanted us to take Greta to the emergency room to get her checked again for preeclampsia.

"I am not going to the ****ing emergency room," growled Greta, but Sandy and I sternly admonished her that we would drag her there if need be, if that's what Karen recommended.

Fortunately, the headache responded to the Advil, so the crisis was defused. This was a couple of days ago (sorry that I can't be more specific; time has an elastic quality for me this week); last night, Greta was feeling headachy and overall poorly again. Grampy Cliff had arrived to take Sandy home (sniff), but delayed his departure to run over to the drug store and get an oral thermometer. (We do have the other kind of thermometer on hand for Seamus should he need it, but I didn't want to subject Greta to that.)

It turned out that Greta was running a slight temperature (100.6), so the crisis atmosphere ramped up again. Did she have preeclampsia after all? Or a sinus infection? Or some other kind of childbirth-related infection?

Fortunately, this time, Karen calmed us. She said that Greta's temperature was not high enough to be of great concern. She suggested that Greta was slightly dehydrated, and Sandy and I had to admit that we had not quite lived up to our responsibility to push fluids into her over the past half-day or so.

So we rehydrated my poor wifie, gave her Advil and Tylenol, and helped soothe Seamus so she could nap. Within an hour, her temperature came down and she felt better. Crisis averted again ... but I will be making sure that she drinks enough (breastfeeding women need to drink a large amount of fluids) and gets enough rest.

We need Seamus' help with the last part, though. Last night, after the Powells left, he put us (Greta, mostly) through a marathon of half-hour-plus feedings every hour for six hours in a row. This might have been bearable if Greta hadn't already been exhausted, but it was very challenging and frustrating under the circumstances.

Fortunately, Seamus has rewarded us with several two-hour plus sleeping periods since that time, so we feel almost human again. But while standing at the kitchen counter at 3am while Greta nursed our insatiable little boy yet again, I desperately searched the Internets for help in dealing with the ordeal. And on the discussion boards of the outstanding hippy-dippy-crunchy-dolphin-safe (and I mean that in a good way ...) website Mothering.com, I found a couple of useful suggestions that we will be adopting:

- Learn to breastfeed with you and your baby lying on your sides in bed, facing one another. That way you don't have to fully wake up in order to breastfeed, and the baby doesn't have to be moved when he's done eating, and will therefore be more likely to stay asleep.
- With a newborn, be strict about sleeping when he sleeps. The temptation to do other things (such as blog posts) while he sleeps is strong, but if you give in, you will pay for it with exhaustion later.

Several people on the boards also mentioned that you should not panic and assume that what a newborn is doing during a given time period is a pattern that he will continue to follow. They change a lot.


One other person had a scary post about how her child had breastfed every half-hour for the first year. But even that mother, and others with similar experiences, did not sound bitter about it. The overriding attitude of all of these posts was, It's extremely challenging for everyone -- take care of yourself, adopt whatever strategy works for you, and remember that this madness won't last forever. And that it's totally worth it.