Jul
23

The Spice of Life.

You may have noticed that the site was down periodically over the last few days. Not to worry, everything is fine. Their were server issues at my hosting company, and as long as there was going to be downtime I figured it was the perfect opportunity to switch hosts, something I had been meaning to do for months. Everything seems to have made it over intact, thanks once again to the inimitable Margot, who helped me after it became clear that the concept of moving data from one virtual location to another made just about as much sense to me as imaginary numbers (remember those?).
While I was gone Flotsam celebrated its third birthday. I was surprised, in a way, to find it has only been three years; this last year seems to have wheezed on for at least a decade or two. It is hard to believe that a year ago I hadn’t even begun my IVF cycle, and that in the interim I have finished said cycle, been pregnant with twins, lost one at 22 weeks, spent nearly a month on bed rest, two weeks of that in the hospital, given birth prematurely, endured over 90 days of NICU time, and now have an almost-six-month-old daughter. It gives me vertigo to think about, truly.

A dear reader wrote to ask if I would talk about my experience with Domperidone, and I am happy to oblige: I take 30mg three times a day, and within four days of the first dose my milk supply increased from about one ounce (combined) per pumping session to closer to four ounces. We still use the nipple shield, and pumped milk for some feedings, and we have to supplement my supply with the occasional bottle of formula. But I love being able to nurse my baby, and she seems to love it as well, now, and I honestly couldn’t care less that this is only achieved with the use of galactagogues and the floppy plastic cone we refer to as my Milk Hat. I went from having stopped breastfeeding entirely because it caused Simone to wail and slap at me, to being able to pull my crying baby from her crib and recline in bed while she nurses herself happily back to sleep. It’s awfully cozy, and it sure beats hauling myself to the kitchen at four a.m. to heat up a bottle.
Because I am terribly forgetful, I neglected to notice that I was running out of pills, and as a result am rationing my last doses while I wait two weeks for a new shipment. Almost as soon as my dose dropped, so did my supply, so it seems that I will have to be on the Dom until I wean Simone (ideally not for a good long while).
I use a pharmacy in New Zealand (InHouse) recommended by several other bloggers, and so far the annoyance of not being able to get a prescription stateside is the only downside I have found. Ok, not the ONLY one: Domperidone can make a girl a bit…windy, if you know what I mean (and I think you do), and the increased supply means I can no longer be away from either Simone or her sister Pumpy for any length of time without significant pain and Breast Pornification (technical term), but these are small prices to pay. I am an ardent believer that women should feed their babies without guilt, whether with formula or breastmilk, via flesh or silicone nipple. But after the tumultuous year my body and I have had, it is heartening to take pride in its function once again. Besides, it is much easier for me to nurse one-handed than to bottle-feed that way, leaving the other hand free for the remote/a cookie/my computer.

Moving on, I have a little plot twist for you: I have become besotted with exercise. I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming. I certainly didn’t, but it’s true, and it has even rejuvenated my healthy eating campaign. I had fallen off the WeightWatchers wagon hard enough to leave an Alexa-shaped hole in the dirt—dirt which may or may not have been made of chocolate—but oddly, once I was exercising and my body felt stronger and more energetic, the siren song of truffles became quieter and I wanted to do other nice things for my body, things like feed it peas. My muscles still get sore, but now it is the vaguely pleasurable Soreness of Virtue rather than the crippling Soreness of Disuse. Believe it or not, the time I take to exercise is now one of the best parts of my day. The key, for me, has been my own forgetfulness. I have a whole passel of different workouts to choose from, and I do one on Monday and then the next day, rather than forcing my aching limbs to do the same thing again, I do something different, and eventually I forget how difficult Monday’s workout was and choose it again, in a sort of avoidant rotation. I call it The Forgetful Dilettante’s Fitness Program. I have some yoga workouts, T-Tapp, and this DVD of three intense ten-minute routines. Knowing the routine is only ten minutes long gets you through any rough spots, and though I was only planning on doing one at a time, I ended up doing all three back to back, and afterward was fairly certain I could have lifted a horse over my head, Pippi Longstocking style. The first of the three is cardio/weights, the second Pilates, and the third is kickboxing—which makes me feel pleasantly hardcore, and when I get behind the music I just bop around punching things until I catch up. On days when the Soreness of Virtue is particularly strong, like today, I pop Simone in a sling and we go for a walk.
The hardest part of exercise is remembering how good you will feel afterward, and convincing yourself to walk ALL THE WAY to the closet for the yoga mat and then ALL THE WAY back to the living room again. For this I generally rely upon reading something like this by Linda, who has managed to turn herself into one of those supernaturally fit women who always seem to be trying on jeans in front of the three-way-mirror directly outside my dressing room door just as I step out wearing a milk-stained t-shirt and the same jeans eleventy sizes larger, also known as size HOW ABOUT A MUUMUU?
That’s all for now. I’ll be back tomorrow.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |