Anna Marie has Breast Cancer

[bluelady]

I wanted to breastfeed my boys, despite my mom thinking it was ridiculous.  My hubs was all for it.  With my first it was a disaster that made me feel guilty on multiple levels.  I have insufficient glandular tissue (IGT) that went "undiagnosed" until my son was 3 days old.  I don't produce enough milk to sustain a baby.  Because of that, and a tongue tie, he refused to latch.  The nurses kept trying to help me, saying "if you want to breastfeed, we'll make sure you breastfeed" Finally on that Friday (my son was born on Tuesday and we were still in hospital) they called in a lactation consultant who took one look at my breasts, left the room and came back with a breast pump and formula and gently explained that it was highly unlikely I'd ever exclusively breastfeed.   By that time my son was dehydrated and jaundiced and needed light therapy (the name of that escapes me now).

With my second I was proactive.  I met with a lactation consultant before baby was born and we came up with a plan.  Son #2 was fed through an SNS system that allowed him to take formula through a tube attached to my nipple, letting him get whatever small amount of breastmilk I could give at the same time.

It's easy to say "fed is best", and I believe that to be true, but for those of us who wanted to breastfeed but whose bodies let us down it's still a hard pill to swallow.

[OhNoNike]

On 2/3/2020 at 7:26 PM, Hane said:

(He’s the easiest damn kid I’ve ever met. He’s 12 now, and I’m hoping he keeps up the good work and doesn’t turn out to be an ax murderer.)

This... this is a gal who watches a lot Dateline!

?

[PennySycamore]

@bluelady,  we in the breastfeeding support/lactation field were only beginning to recognize the existence of insufficient glandular tissue about 35 years ago.  IIRC,  Dr Marianne Neifert of Denver was among the first to recognize it at her clinics.   She began to see that some mothers that struggled with making enough milk for their babies, despite doing everything "right", had breasts that looked different -maybe more tubular than rounded or more widespread than is common, etc and so she began to investigate what was going on.  She determined that these mothers did not have the usual milk making tissue in their breasts.  While Dr Neifert may have overestimated how many mothers had IGT (there was some discussion years ago that her figures were way too high), it is good that we recognize now that it occurs.

Kudos to you for finding a solution that worked for you and your baby.  I know using an SNS is not the easiest thing in the world to do as I used one for seven months with Katherine.

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

On 2/3/2020 at 7:26 PM, Hane said:

(He’s the easiest damn kid I’ve ever met. He’s 12 now, and I’m hoping he keeps up the good work and doesn’t turn out to be an ax murderer.)

My 17 year old nephew was the easiest kid ever. I’ve nannied and babysat a lot of kids for reference. He has always been incredibly laid back with a go with the flow attitude. People marveled at him when he was a quiet and well behaved toddler in restaurants.

HOWEVER this attitude also makes him so lazy! Omg that boy. You have to hound him to get him to not procrastinate with everything. He drives his mother nuts.

[Hane]

@JermajestyDuggar, I guess now isn’t the time to point out that my one and only grandchild is extremely self-motivated and never needs prompting to do his homework! His only issue seems to be with food textures. He’s a self-identified vegetarian (his parents aren’t) and eats a very narrow range of foods, most of them healthy. Waiting for the other shoe to drop...

@PennySycamore, thank you for bringing up the concept of insufficient glandular tissue. My daughter’s friend and her mother hardly lactated at all, despite having breasts that looked “big enough,” and the idea that a healthy new mother *couldn’t* lactate seemed not to be on their caregivers’ radar. 
 

 This issue isn’t new: I recall an 1800s-era novel or two that mentioned a family keeping a goat “for milk for the baby.” There was also a Western? Pioneer movie? in which the wife was stranded alone in a blizzard with her newborn twins and said to her husband when he got back, “It’s a good thing I had the cow or I would have lost both of ‘em.”

 

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

My 17 year old nephew was the easiest kid ever. I’ve nannied and babysat a lot of kids for reference. He has always been incredibly laid back with a go with the flow attitude. People marveled at him when he was a quiet and well behaved toddler in restaurants.

HOWEVER this attitude also makes him so lazy! Omg that boy. You have to hound him to get him to not procrastinate with everything. He drives his mother nuts.

This is my son too. Although he was the class clown in school, but his personality always mitigated that trait. We call him type Z, and lazy OMG, yes! 

[JermajestyDuggar]

19 minutes ago, Hane said:

@JermajestyDuggar, I guess now isn’t the time to point out that my one and only grandchild is extremely self-motivated and never needs prompting to do his homework! His only issue seems to be with food textures. He’s a self-identified vegetarian (his parents aren’t) and eats a very narrow range of foods, most of them healthy. Waiting for the other shoe to drop...

@PennySycamore, thank you for bringing up the concept of insufficient glandular tissue. My daughter’s friend and her mother hardly lactated at all, despite having breasts that looked “big enough,” and the idea that a healthy new mother *couldn’t* lactate seemed not to be on their caregivers’ radar. 
 

 This issue isn’t new: I recall an 1800s-era novel or two that mentioned a family keeping a goat “for milk for the baby.” There was also a Western? Pioneer movie? in which the wife was stranded alone in a blizzard with her newborn twins and said to her husband when he got back, “It’s a good thing I had the cow or I would have lost both of ‘em.”

 

My nephew is also the least picky eater ever, lol. He’s just one big garbage disposal. If you aren’t finishing your meal, he will finish it for you. He’s very tall though. So he needs all that food to keep his giraffe limbs moving.

[smittykins]

19 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

On 2/3/2020 at 7:26 PM, Hane said:

 

My 17 year old nephew was the easiest kid ever. I’ve nannied and babysat a lot of kids for reference. He has always been incredibly laid back with a go with the flow attitude. People marveled at him when he was a quiet and well behaved toddler in restaurants.

HOWEVER this attitude also makes him so lazy! Omg that boy. You have to hound him to get him to not procrastinate with everything. He drives his mother nuts.

When I was working at Burger King, one of my coworkers had twin sons who were about two years old.  They came in one night, and she bought them kids  meals and they sat at the table in their booster seats and ate without a peep.  It was almost scary.  When I mentioned this to a different coworker, she said “They know better.”

[JermajestyDuggar]

27 minutes ago, smittykins said:

When I was working at Burger King, one of my coworkers had twin sons who were about two years old.  They came in one night, and she bought them kids  meals and they sat at the table in their booster seats and ate without a peep.  It was almost scary.  When I mentioned this to a different coworker, she said “They know better.”

My kids tend to behave pretty well in public. Only because they know I will immediately take them home if they don’t. It’s a privilege for them to go to McDonalds or something like that. I don’t care if we are in the middle of eating. If they Start acting crazy, I’ll pack up and leave. But when my kids are at home? They are animals. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

My kids tend to behave pretty well in public. Only because they know I will immediately take them home if they don’t. It’s a privilege for them to go to McDonalds or something like that. I don’t care if we are in the middle of eating. If they Start acting crazy, I’ll pack up and leave. But when my kids are at home? They are animals. 

My mom used to say if a kid can only behave well in some environments it's better that it's outside the home, strangers are less forgiving.  Wise words that kept me sane through their childhoods.

[JermajestyDuggar]

Just now, HerNameIsBuffy said:

My mom used to say if a kid can only behave well in some environments it's better that it's outside the home, strangers are less forgiving.  Wise words that kept me sane through their childhoods.

I try to let them be themselves at home. But damn. Their true selves are fucking loud and obnoxious! I was too at their age. So I can only blame myself. 

[PennySycamore]

@Hane,  there was some recognition in the old days that some women just seemed to not be able to produce enough milk and maybe even some midwives recognized the breasts this seemed to be true for.  The why of this phenomena only became elucidated when Dr Neifert and others studied women's breasts and found that some women did, indeed, have insufficient glandular tissue.  Fortunately, mothers with IGT now have the choice about how to feed their babies: if they want to breastfeed, they can use a supplementer and supplement (either formula or donated milk) or they can formula feed.  There are advantages to both methods.  What's most important is that the baby is fed and loved.

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

40 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I try to let them be themselves at home. But damn. Their true selves are fucking loud and obnoxious! I was too at their age. So I can only blame myself. 

I made a similar mistake in allowing my kids to have opinions and teaching them to think critically for themselves.  At times a little blind obedience would have been nice.   

[Giraffe]

@smittykins, I got the sense from your post that the twins were not “well behaved” out of experiencing consequences like what @JermajestyDuggar mentioned but that they were too well behaved. I’ve seen that before and it’s seriously scary to see!

[smittykins]

Yeah, that’s how I meant it.  I’d never seen kids that young just sit there and eat so quietly(not that you should condone their running around and screaming like banshees).  Maybe the “consequences” would’ve only meant going home without finishing their meal, I wasn’t privy to their home life.

[mango_fandango]

It’s so true about diagnosing diseases/conditions being based on men. Like with ASD... the standard diagnostic tools (eg ADOS) are based on the typical male presentation. ASD often presents differently in girls/women. There’s a trend these days of women in their 30s/40s etc getting diagnosed, usually because their child is going through the diagnosis procedure, and the mother is reading about the symptoms and recognising it in themselves. With me, it was first mentioned as a possibility when I was six (that teacher must’ve had some experience of ASD, given that she turned out to be correct), it was then mentioned again when I was 16, and then I finally got properly diagnosed at 22. It’s a similar story with ADHD. You think of ADHD, you picture an elementary-school-aged boy who acts out and gets into trouble. Girls are more likely to be the inattentive type. (Of course there are exceptions, I’m just generalising). 

[pook]

21 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

It’s so true about diagnosing diseases/conditions being based on men. Like with ASD... the standard diagnostic tools (eg ADOS) are based on the typical male presentation. ASD often presents differently in girls/women. There’s a trend these days of women in their 30s/40s etc getting diagnosed, usually because their child is going through the diagnosis procedure, and the mother is reading about the symptoms and recognising it in themselves. With me, it was first mentioned as a possibility when I was six (that teacher must’ve had some experience of ASD, given that she turned out to be correct), it was then mentioned again when I was 16, and then I finally got properly diagnosed at 22. It’s a similar story with ADHD. You think of ADHD, you picture an elementary-school-aged boy who acts out and gets into trouble. Girls are more likely to be the inattentive type. (Of course there are exceptions, I’m just generalising). 

To the bolded.  You rang?

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, mango_fandango said:

It’s so true about diagnosing diseases/conditions being based on men. Like with ASD... the standard diagnostic tools (eg ADOS) are based on the typical male presentation. ASD often presents differently in girls/women. There’s a trend these days of women in their 30s/40s etc getting diagnosed, usually because their child is going through the diagnosis procedure, and the mother is reading about the symptoms and recognising it in themselves. With me, it was first mentioned as a possibility when I was six (that teacher must’ve had some experience of ASD, given that she turned out to be correct), it was then mentioned again when I was 16, and then I finally got properly diagnosed at 22. It’s a similar story with ADHD. You think of ADHD, you picture an elementary-school-aged boy who acts out and gets into trouble. Girls are more likely to be the inattentive type. (Of course there are exceptions, I’m just generalising). 

Yep.  When my eldest son was diagnosed with sensory integration disorder I was gobsmacked there was a name for what we'd all chalked up to weirdness in my family regarding inability to tolerate certain sounds, fabrics, tags in clothing, socks with the lumpy toes.  Ditto misophonia.  We'd all grown up being told we were too sensitive, too picky, too intolerant.  Turns out getting ragey about mouth sounds wasn't all of us deciding to be difficult.

[PennySycamore]

My daughter Shannon, whose son Robbie is on the spectrum,  mentioned to me last year that she wondered if her dad might be on the spectrum.  I've wondered the same thing.  Of  course, I've wondered this ever since I read a list in the New York Times about traits of people on the autism spectrum.  Everyone in our family -husband, girls and me- have a number of the symptoms of ASD.  We're all a bit off the beam.  

[mango_fandango]

We've sometimes wondered about my dad having ASD, and my mother having ADHD. Neither have been diagnosed. My mother's cousin was diagnosed a few years ago when he was in his 50s. Incidentally he's the only religious member of the family, he's a Catholic priest and the headteacher of a prep school (which, over here, means a fee-paying school for 3-13 year olds). He's married with two kids, which happened before he became Catholic (I think he was Anglican first). I've only ever 'met' him once, I say it in quotes because I was a baby at the time (my mother has two older cousins, and they all had their first kids at around the same time, and there are some photos of us meeting when we were really little). 

I read a book by a woman who's in her 40s and was diagnosed about five years ago. She's more "typically ASD" than me; she's got sensory problems (which I don't really have), likes to stick to routines (I do best with routine and structure, but I'm not too fussed if it changes) and so on. But the social problems, yeah that's me. Her first marriage was when she was 20, which she entered into because she thought it would make her "normal", or something like that. She then met her current husband whilst she was in rehab for a benzodiazepine (Valium) addiction and he was there for depression. She was adopted at a young age, and in the book she mentions that adults would say things like "she's adopted", "she's spoiled" etc for why she was an "odd" child. The book is called Odd Girl Out by Laura James for anyone who's interested.

[EmmieJ]

4 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I try to let them be themselves at home. But damn. Their true selves are fucking loud and obnoxious! I was too at their age. So I can only blame myself. 

A college roommate who came from a family with 9 kids told me that when she or her siblings were getting rambunctious, her mom made them run laps around the exterior of the house.  If five laps didn't help them burn off some of that loud energy, then five more might, and so on.  After I met her mom, it was even funnier to me because she was all of 4'11" - this tiny little lady, soft spoken, yet the kids ran laps when she told them to run laps.

[pupper]

I think one key factor in kids behaving appropriately, especially in restaurants, is prepared parents. I am a firm believer that it is ridiculous to bring a baby/toddler/child to a restaurant and expect that young one to self entertain. If you aren't planning to interact with your child, leave them home with a sitter. I always had a bag of stuff in the car - sticker books, coloring, books and other small quiet toys. As the kids got older, we brought card games or played word/guessing games. My husband and I talked to our kids at all ages when we were in public places. We got to eat, talk and play together instead of scolding and fussing.

[usmcmom]

2 minutes ago, pupper said:

I think one key factor in kids behaving appropriately, especially in restaurants, is prepared parents. I am a firm believer that it is ridiculous to bring a baby/toddler/child to a restaurant and expect that young one to self entertain. If you aren't planning to interact with your child, leave them home with a sitter. I always had a bag of stuff in the car - sticker books, coloring, books and other small quiet toys. As the kids got older, we brought card games or played word/guessing games. My husband and I talked to our kids at all ages when we were in public places. We got to eat, talk and play together instead of scolding and fussing.

YES to all of this!!
 

My daughter is 25 and she teases me when we go to lunch.  As we walk in, she says “Oops. Forgot my activity bag!” She remembers that she and her brother always had a small, quiet,  age-appropriate activity bag when we went out. Eventually it was just a chapter book or a hand held game (on mute!) They gradually learned on their own to set their activity aside and converse with us and others in our party. At about age four, we had them put their toys down, look at the server and place their own orders. We would tell them “Look at her eyes and say ‘I’d like the chicken fingers, please.’” It got them used to prooer restaurant behavior but allowed them to be kids, I think.  
 

 

[Granwych]

1 hour ago, EmmieJ said:

A college roommate who came from a family with 9 kids told me that when she or her siblings were getting rambunctious, her mom made them run laps around the exterior of the house.  If five laps didn't help them burn off some of that loud energy, then five more might, and so on.  After I met her mom, it was even funnier to me because she was all of 4'11" - this tiny little lady, soft spoken, yet the kids ran laps when she told them to run laps.

Kinda lengthy tale here.   When my sister's and I were teens we were visiting relatives out of state.  There had been a flood in the area and the national guard was called in to help.  For a few days trucks full of young men went by the house and we'd wave to them .    One truck stopped and the guys came over to flirt with us.   My 5 year old cousin kept interrupting until one guy got the idea to pay the kid a quarter to run a few laps around the house and leave us to our chats.  That little cousin must have made $10.00 in quarters that day.  Plus, he slept like a log that night. 

[Baxter]

My four year old son is generally well behaved in restaurants. Like other people have mentioned, we bring age appropriate things for him to do. I'm open to eating at most restaurants with him. But I do like ones with a bit of noise since sometimes he could make a bit of noise before we could get him quieted down again. I don't want to disturb anyone's dinner. 

When he was two, my son and I tagged along with my husband to a conference. One of his co-workers suggested we go for dinner at a restaurant on the resort. Well it turned out to be a very formal, very quiet restaurant. It also would have been very hard to duck out with him if he needed a bit of a break. But thank goodness, he was perfect that night. He sat quietly and played with his toys and talked quietly to the other people at our table. Near the end of dinner, a guy at another table came over and told me how wonderful my son was. That's pretty much the dream when you are a parent! Lol!

My husband and I laugh about this because the next night at dinner when it was just us, our son couldn't sit still and we had to walk around with him while the other one ate quickly and we ended up having to leave the restaurant really quickly. So you never really know what you're going to get with kids.