Welcome to Planet Earth. We Mean You No Harm, er, Sort Of

I attend a retreat each summer in the east mountains of Albuquerque called the Long Dance. It's several days of workshops and community building, and culminates in a dusk-to-dawn as a mother drum--boom, boom, boom!--pounds away

A handful of the attendees live to drum. I have seen people stay on it for four hours straight. When one of the three drummers gets tired, he/she raises their hand to signal that they need a breather. However, as the night wears on, it becomes more difficult to find someone to sit in, and toward the end of the dance the same five or six die hards rotate on and off the drum until sunrise.

Also at the Long Dance are a handful of people who, for their own personal reasons, do not feel compelled to heed the call of the drum. A few years back, I had been on the drum for an hour- and-a-half and raised my hand signaling for someone to fill in. No takers. At last, I waved one of the dancers over, someone who had been coming to the dance for years.

"Will you drum for a while?" I asked. "I need a break."

He smiled, and without a hint of guilt or hesitation said one word: "No."

Now, I have always tried to be a team player. I learned this from my late, great Grandma Cele who      instilled in me an all-for-one mentality. "Tommy," she used to say, "always remember, there's no ' I ' in team." Thus, when I told her about the guy at Long dance who wouldn't spell me off the drum, she lowered her glasses, looked at me in that grandmotherly way she had, and said, "What an asshole."

Jenn and I have a parenting/life agreement. She will stay at home to mother our new daughter, and I will beat the pavement to earn two dimes to rub together to support our family in the way to which we have grown accustomed (i.e. food on the table, a roof overhead, kitty litter, Netflix).

At my current place of employment, I see anywhere from 18 ton 23 clients a week, co-facilitate three groups, am regularly inundated with a mountain of paperwork, and am in the process of learning two new types of therapy. Yet, after hearing Zinnia wail for the last hour-and-a-half (and counting) while Jenn continues her attempts to soothe our child in the bedroom, I feel much like that guy refusing to spell a tired drummer. If Jenn comes and asks me to give her a breather I, of course, will, but I won't like it, and I suspect neither will  Zinnia. To my mind, it makes little sense for me to take our daughter from the one person who calms her the most in the world; but after hearing our baby cry for the last two hours, I feel (as my ancestor so delicately put it) like a bit of a fucking asshole.

Needless to say, I am still challenged by the piercing, inexplicable wail of our infant daughter. Earlier this evening, while I paced with Zinnia in my arms, she began to sniffle and squirm, clearly on the edge of a full-lunged, cacophony of rage.

I went  over the check-list twice:

Diaper? Dry,

Hungry? Nope.

Wants to be held? Not by this motherfucker.

Tired and needs to sleep? Yes to both, but refuses to give into the latter.

Wants mama? Always a good bet, but tonight even the soft bosom of Zinnia's mother is of little consolation. What on earth does this baby need? Perhaps the answer can be found in Wikipedia:

Colic (also known as infant colic, three month colic, and Infantile colic) is a condition in which an otherwise healthy baby cries or screams frequently and for extended periods, without any discernible reason.   

(Editors note: Hmmm, I feel strangely intrigued. Tell me more.)


The condition typically appears within the first month of life and often disappears rather suddenly, before the baby is three to four months old ...

(Editor's Note: Yes!)

... but can last up to 12 months of life.

(Editor's note: Noooooooooooooo!!!)


One study concludes that the chances of having colic is lower in breastfed babies.



 This last point is a difficult one at the moment, but bears addressing: Jenn's breast milk never fully came in. I understood this was a big deal for a woman, but until I witnessed Jenn's agony around not being able to breast feed, I had no idea just how big a deal it actually was. Since Zinnia's birth, Jenn has spent many waking hours trying to induce milk production, thinking about how she can induce milk production, and conducting research into as-yet untried ways on how to induce milk production. She has run marathons on the breast pump, taken medication (domperidome) to induce her milk, consulted our midwife several times, and canvassed close friends and relatives for any sage advice. Jenn even spoke to a lactation specialist--a woman who had all the warmth and charm of a block of tofu--who gave us a bag full of accoutrements to help us try to trick Zinnia into nursing. (To do this, Jenn was supposed to wear a bottle of formula around her neck and then run a thin, plastic a tube down towards her nipple to encourage Zinnia to fully latch on. She tried the device several times before tossing it into one of our kitchen cabinets in disgust. When she last referenced the gadget, it was the first and only time I have ever heard the word "hate" cross Jenn's lips.)

As a stopgap, we even (and gratefully) received about five pounds of frozen breast milk from a mother whose son refused to nurse on anything but the good stuff straight from the tap. We figured any breast milk would be better than formula, but when Jenn offered it to Zinnia, she made a face as if we had given her a bottle of seawater.

Late last night, I asked my wife if I might disclose all of the above, as well as the following, on my blog. Her response: "We've been open about everything else up until now. Lets keep going."

Bravely spoken.

To wit: We have narrowed Jenn's lack of milk production to two likely possibilities--stress and/or Jenn's breast reduction at age 17.  I will address both points, even with the knowledge that embedded in this attempt to "narrow" is the implication that someone or something is to blame, or that somehow things didn't unwind exactly as they should. I disagree with both of these premises, but lets dive in anyway.

Potential Contributing Factor #1: Breast Reduction

In 1991, an extremely self-conscious 17 year-old young woman was living and walking the earth of Portland, Oregon. Her sexual energy had not yet blossomed, and she wanted nothing more than to blend into the crowd to the point of invisibility.  In this breast-obsessed society (and yes, I have been a card-carrying member since setting eyes my first National Geographic), Jenn would often feel her chest being visually raked over by male passers-by. She discussed the procedure with her mother and decided to get the reduction.At the time, the doctors told Jenn that it shouldn't/wouldn't interfere with nursing if, down the road, she should decide to have a child. With hindsight, it was one of those guarantees that a doctor had no right to make, but for Jenn, chronically shy and self-conscious about her body, any foresight into her future was outweighed by the immediate need for relief. The bottom line is, we have no idea how (or if) this affected her ability to nurse Zinnia, but it seems a strong possibility.

Potentially contributing Factor #2: Stress from spending Zinnia's first two-and-half-days of life in the hospital.

The night Zinnia was born, she was laboring to breathe. We expected the wheezing to go away once her lungs had cleared, but in the morning she was still snarfling like an asthmatic on a high pollen day. We called our midwife who told us to call the pediatric clinic who informed us we should take her to the Pediatric Urgent Care at UNM hospital immediately.

It was the one place it had been our greatest wish to avoid. For good reason, as it turns out. Our initial experience at UNM Hospital  put us at the whim of a well-intentioned-but-fear-based doctor and the medical team equivalent of the Key Stone Cops.  When we informed her about our home birth, the doctor raised a patronizing eyebrow and ran down the list of potential catastrophic infections and diseases that Zinnia could somehow have contracted, ignoring the fact that the most likely place she could pick up any of these bugs was the hospital itself. The doctor discussed the strong possibility that our 12 hour-old daughter--just to be safe--might require two types of IV antibiotics and any number of vaccinations. They poked Zinnia's heel 4-5 time to draw blood, and bent her hand so far down that it was pressed flat against her wrist while they attempted to hook her to an IV line in case she needed meds once she got downstairs to the NICU.

Through all of this, bright fluorescent lights beat down on our newborn's face--the face we had hoped to keep in a darkened, warm environment at home for at least a month to ease her entry into the sensory world. The medical aides attempted to take her blood pressure, but didn't have a small enough cuff to get a good read from Zinnia's undersized arm. (Mind you, this on a Pediatric Urgent Care unit.)  They tried three different EKG machines, but each time a huddle of nurses and techs ended up scratching their heads in bewildered confusion, wondering if the machines actually worked. Why? Because each time they ran an EKG, the results were so widely disparate as to make the entire process less than useless. I pointed this out to the doctor, who denied what was going on before her eyes while explaining to me -- using lots of interesting medical jargon--why it was important to blah, blah, blah.

"Yeah," I said, interrupting, "but how does that explain how you can base any kind of decision on three EKG machines that keep giving us different readings?

She re-explained her first explanation, but this time with an even kindlier tone,

"Yes," I repeated, "but all of your machines are getting different results, and your trying to make decisions about our daughter's life based on these inaccuracies. How can you possibly do that when-"

The doctor interrupted and tried once more to get us to see the light, speaking more slowly so we could follow the wisdom of her words.

Zinnia was admitted to the Intermediate Care Unit downstairs. ,Jenn, stepping into her Mama Bear role, looked  stressed and ferocious.  When we got there, the nursing staff was in the middle of their shift change meeting. They requested that we leave our daughter with them in an incubator and step outside until their meeting was over.

"I am not leaving my daughter," Jenn said calmly.

The nurse tried to affect patience while not-so-subtly rolling her eyes toward her co-worker as if to say, Oh, we have another one.

"Ma'am," she said, "we can't have you stay here during our briefing. HIPPA requirements state--"

"Fine," Jenn interrupted, "We'll go sit out in the hallway until your done, but I am not leaving my daughter."

I couldn't have been prouder.

The nurse relented, and there we were, in the midst of incubators, nurses, and NICU babies. Zinnia  had handled it all with the aplomb of a tightrope walker.

After shift change, a male nurse came over and talked to Jenn. She informed him about the chicken-with-head-cut-off response we received in Urgent Care, and when she told him about the antibiotics the doctor had suggested, the nurse frowned, gave Zinnia a quick once over, and declared, "There's nothing wrong with this baby. She doesn't need antibiotics."

He was half right. She didn't need the drugs, but there was a problem. Zinnia was still laboring to breathe and was jaundiced. The latter is common in newborns, but usually doesn't happen until somewhere between days three and five of life. The fact that her skin had a yellowish tint right out of the shoot meant she had excessive bilirubin (unwanted red blood cells). This can be potentially dangerous and, if left unmonitored and unchecked, can sometimes lead to brain damage.

The three of us spent the next two-and-half-days at the hospital. We availed ourselves of their family room--a small cubby hole just off the care unit. The room had a camp-cot foam mattress, a telephone that didn't work, ditto for the clock, and no sheets or blankets until we asked for them.  However, it did have a lovely, spacious bathroom with a hot shower. For all its shortcomings, the room was a god-send, a place where we could nap and store our things behind a locked door.

We soon found our rhythm. Jenn and I spent most of the day (and Jenn--all of the night) by Zinnia's incubated bedside. I shuttled back home one or twice each day to get things that she/we needed (e.g. change of clothes, hygiene products, snacks) and to take care of the cats and water the garden.

On the third morning, we were told by the nurse that due to still-too-high bilirubin levels, we would be spending at least one more night in the hospital. Jenn looking frazzled but resigned, and left to make a phone call and get some food. While she was gone, the attending doctor (who is now Zinnia's pediatrician) approached with a smile and informed me that Zinnia's levels had dropped to within safe limits and we would be discharged with all due expediency.

When Jenn came back from the family room, she looked resolved and exhausted.

"We're going home," I told her with a smile. Jenn's eyes welled up with joy.


                                                                      *            *            *

Day three at home--nothing. No milk.

Day Four--Very little

Day Five--The day Jenn had been told it was likely her milk faucets would start to run--Almost nothing.

We started to wonder if the stress from the last three days had somehow shocked her body and was preventing her from nursing. Jenn was sitting at the breast pump 4-5 times a day, but was only producing a teaspoon or two each time.  We treated what milk we did get like liquid gold and would blend it with formula, pouring it back-and-forth from bottle-to-bottle like a mad scientist mixing a magic potion.

The breast pump itself provided a bit of amusement. Jenn's mother picked up on the subliminal message hidden among the nih-wuh sound it made with each contractive pull.

"It sounds like it's saying nip-ple, nip-ple."

Sure enough, when one tuned in, the machine emitted a breathy, mechanical whisper that sounded as if it were repeating the word "nipple." Naturally, this inspired the now famous Nipple Dance. To soothe  Zinnia, I would hold her, belly down, and slide one foot in front of the other as I worked my way across the house, repeating nip-ple, nip-ple  in imitation of the churning pump. Our daughter fell asleep to the Nipple Dance a number of times ... until she didn't. Now it just makes her cry.

When Jenn gave up on the pump, she had to work through it in layers, the self-recrimination, guilt, and grief that came with throwing in the towel. She had desperately wanted this bonding experience with our daughter, but had been denied. Jenn was mad at herself, mad at her body, presumably, at least a little mad at her mother for giving her permission to have the procedure at such a young age, and mad at the lying sons-of-bitches doctors** who mislead and misinformed her ...

(Here it comes--the requisite ... ) However, even though Jenn is still mourning the loss of this experience, there is a third explanation alluded to above: Things have played out perfectly the way they needed to, and no one and nothing is to blame. For whatever reason, our little Zinnia has chosen a mother who will nourish and love her in every way imaginable, but our daughter will grow her Michelin Man baby rolls not from a sweet fount of mother's milk, but from pulling on BPA-free bottles filled with blessed organic baby formula.

**Exaggerated for dramatic affect.