8-1

I hadn't intended to leave that last post up there for so long without updating. I didn't want all of you to think that I had gone all Brooke Shields v. Tom Cruise on you. While I'm thankful that more people in the mainstream public are talking about postpartum depression, the downside of more awareness is that everyone is suddenly hyperaware. It's sometimes hard to express how I feel about motherhood without people jumping to the conclusion that I must have a serious depression problem that puts both myself and my child at risk. I had a significant depression once. I don't now.

But, on the positive side, things are starting to smooth out a little in this southeast Texan home. Zac sleeps for 3-4 in the beginning of the night and then progressively wakes up more and more as dawn breaks. I've watched more local news in the past three weeks than I thought was possible. I don't even like local news, but it's hard to find anything else on at 4am. I find myself silently pleading with him to give me just one more two hour chunk of sleep before we both get up for the day. My favorite time with him is usually between 9:30-11am. Zac and I watch the end of the Today show and most of the Ellen DeGeneres show, he nurses intermittently, and then we both take naps.

Medically, however, my body is once again rebelling (does it sometimes seem like I shouldn't have anymore children? If bodies could speak, mine might say, "What the hell are you doing to me?") I woke up Saturday morning with an unbelievably sore right breast and the chills. It's hard to get the chills in Houston. It's 85 degrees here by 9am, but I still had to cover myself with blankets and shivered until my parents got home from their running practice. I knew that if they didn't come home soon, that I wouldn't be able to take care of Zac by myself. That was such a scary feeling...to know that I was too sick to sit upright and nurse him. I don't know what I will do if I get sick when my parents aren't around.

With a temperature of 101.9 my Mom and I went back to the hospital, this time the emergency room, where I was diagnosed with mastitis. It took them four hours to diagnose what I already knew that I had, but I was desperate for some antibiotics and not willing to leave until I got some. For those of you unfamiliar with mastitis, it is an infection of the breast caused by germs transmitted from baby to mom through breast feeding. No, Zac isn't sick. Nor is he particularly germy (I reserve the right to change this opinion if he keeps peeing on me every time I change his diaper AND consistently peeing in the bathtub), but it's something that just happens. Now I have a clogged milk duct from the infection and a low-grade fever. Sucks.

If you want to imagine what a clogged milk duct feels like, tie a rubberband around your finger and watch your finger get swollen and turn purple. Now imagine that someone has done that on the inside of your body in a very sensitive part. There you have mastitis.