The Breast Milk Gestapo

Saturday morning, my mom cooked up a thick creamy white soup from two live fishes, to help me recover and heal faster.

That same day, I take 2 capsules of Fenugreek seeds. Twice.

Our son refused to suck and instead chose to continue on with his favorite pastime these past 60 hours, perfecting the art of slumber.

That evening, my breasts turned to a couple of hard rocks.

It was the most excruciating pain I have felt since last Thursday's anesthesia shot. This must be what it feels like to be punched by Pacquiao, except even the slightest touch would send my pain sensors in full swing. I considered gravity my enemy at that time...sitting or standing up, as long as I was in a vertical position, would send me wincing in pain. But it was nothing compared to the late night (or early morning, however you look at it) 2 am surprise visit from the...

Enter the Breast Milk Gestapo

Clad in white, and dark rimmed glasses, she had a stern presence and commanded attention from everyone in the room (that being, myself, my husband, and my mom. The cat has checked out and the human calculator has not checked in yet). Or perhaps the fact that she came in unannounced at 2 am, while we were deep in our sleep, and turned on all the lights and started speaking loudly and angrily, was what gave her such a commanding presence.

Either way, she announced: " What are you doing sleeping throughout the night?!? Why aren't you pumping? And you dare get formula milk from the nurse station?!? Look at you, your breasts are hard as a rock!"

 (Proceeds to prod and poke my breasts unannounced, without warning, and sends sharp, painful pangs throughout my whole body, the MOST painful feeling I've gone through). The closest analogy I can think of is being punched in the breasts by Mike Tyson, or Manny Pacquiao. Or let's just call in a fictitious boxer, Rocky Balboa (what, you didn't know he didn't really exist? big "blow", huh? Pun intended.)

My boobs became public property from that day forward.

She commanded (yes, demanded if you want another term), my husband and mom to get to work massaging and pounding and pumping my twin rocks until they became soft, which didn't happen in the next 3 hours, but massage and knead they did, alternately, as we only had one manual breast pump at the time. They worked tirelessly from 3 am until sunrise, allowing me to squeal in pain and take breaks in-between tears of pain, in order to take another attempt at hobbling to the bathroom, only 2 days from my double surgery C-section.

I can boldly compare the pain to the pain of giving birth, without anesthetics. Scoff if you will...

Ultimately, the next morning, my mom dutifully went to the local bakery shop to buy some soft dough and cabbage. The gestapo lady was still on duty at 7 am, and she proceeded to march to my room and slapped the dough onto both my rock-hard breasts, leaving the center to peek out (for what reason, I'm not entirely sure as no one, nor anything can penetrate that thick dough fortress) that made my breasts resemble being wrapped in plaster.

Strange as it felt and even stranger the way it looked, after about 3 hours, I was told to remove them by washing them with warm running water. A load of sticky mess and 10 minutes later, I felt my breasts no longer in pain from engorgement. Alleluia! Thank God! That is also the last time I will let a stranger touch my boobs.

As for the cabbage, we were instructed to keep it chilled in the fridge and put it inbetween my brassiere and boobs to cool down the next engorgement episode. But the best prevention is to keep pumping, she said. As of writing, I can proudly say that I am all pumped up and this has thankfully not recurred.

The gestapo nurse's home remedies for engorged breasts:

A. Soft bread dough method

1. Buy soft bread dough from the local bakery (ask them nicely and try not to tell them the real reason why you are getting it otherwise they might give you a strange look)

2. Divide into two (for obvious reasons), and pat around firmly around each side, leaving the center to peek out for whatever reason.

3. Cover each side with cling wrap or a thin plastic film to prevent the dough from sticking to your clothes.

4. Wait for the dough to harden and dry*, then peel off and wash off excess residue with warm running water.
(*In my case it took me almost 4 hours for it to harden, though even then it did not completely harden as the though was rather thick on me.)

B. Chilled cabbage method

1. Buy cabbage heads from the market or nearby vegetable store.

2. Chill in the fridge

3. Insert in-between brassiere and breasts

Use any of these two simple techniques whenever you feel pain or harness, and couple with non-stop pumping and massaging until you feel them become soft.

Good luck!

Getting creative when in pain and prior to sleeping

There are days when you are bursting with stories and feel especially eloquent. Then, there are those days when you just can't be bothered by something as irrelevant as proper words/ English.

After just the first year together as a married couple, we found a way to make our lives easier (and make speaking more efficient) through coining a few useful daily conversation terminology:

I. On the topic of pinpointing where to massage me, highlighting painful areas (an official medical chart of the back shoulder muscles has been provided below for reference):

Brad Pits: massage of the underarm (arm pit) muscles (or close to it anyway, with shirt on, of course or that would be gross)

Chicken wings: massage of Teres minor (see diagram below)

Ground zero*: pain central

       * Oftentimes, there is not just one ground zero, so this is further subdivided into several         subcategories, conveniently named in bullet points, such as ground 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and so on and so forth...

Then there are a few more, honestly, I can get quite creative when in pain and duress, but as I usually don't have a notebook beside me at the same time, some crucial keywords have slipped out of my memory bank. I'm sure it will come back to me, it's just like riding a bike, as they all say.

II. On the topic of the bedding landscape:

"P.M. me":  Contrary to popular culture, this does not mean "Private message" me (oh, please... how lame). Instead, it means, "Pillow Mountain" me. As in, (help me) build a mountain of pillows of varying firmness and terrain according to the shape of my body to prepare me for a better sleep.

Now, obviously, this is way too long to explain to my husband every night. So that is where "P.M. me" comes in quite handy.

"De-slut the rabbit"-

My husband bought me a pregnancy pillow during my second trimester (I didn't start using it until towards the end of this semester, but we thought buying early would somehow make more sense as we'd end up buying it eventually anyway).

I chose a cute light pink rabbit print pillow that has little drawings of a girl rabbit going about her daily routine (such as watering the plants, walking her...dog(?!), pushing her baby in a pram, holding a bunch of balloons, you know... usual things that rabbits enjoy doing.

It honestly did look like this at the start, as it was advertised on the shop's online site:

However, after a few weeks of usage, the two "legs", shall we say, refused to stay together, and the fillers moved about in all the wrong places, and thus had to be shaken upside down to get the fillers back to where they should be, and slapped silly to get the two "legs" to close...

Thus, the term, "de-slutting"...

Oh, the things I learned in a very strict all-girls Catholic school upbringing.

On a side note, this is on my wishlist:

You can probably guess where each part of the pregnant woman goes, the photo is quite self-explanatory... As almost every part of my body aches (even parts I didn't know even existed), I would really really love to get a professional massage. Not that my husband's aren't enough, but well... yeah I suppose they aren't...but he did give me an always replenishing, never dwindling supply of "100" free massage coupons from a "hunky" masseuse (Read: him) as one of his gifts last last Christmas...

I find it impossible for any massage therapist to take me on as a client here in Shanghai, even the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctors who specialize in special care (and who could need more special care than a pregnant woman?) gave me a look that was bordering on "Are you retarded?!?" when I asked to book a session with the TCM masseuse doctor.  In fact, the only time I was able to soothe my aching muscles professionally was when I went to the blind massage parlor next door to our village. And that speaks loads that the only reason I was accepted as a client was because my masseuse was .... visually impaired.

With this bed, I can bypass their lame excuses of not being able to lie flat on my stomach, I mean, hello?!? Isn't this China, the world's factory? Aw come, on! They could make this at a snap of my fingers, for sure. Wouldn't it be awesome if it were available here? :)