Babywearing for the WIN!

I have recently rediscovered a great love of babywearing.  This new found joy is not just about being crunchy this time.  Babywearing is saving my nursing relationship with Asher, and that is very important to me.  You see, I've developed a very rare set of symptoms which are exacerbated by nursing and the hormonal response triggered anytime that I hear Asher crying.  I am overcome with intense pain and I feel as if every muscle and bone in my body is on fire: burning and stinging and stabbing and throbbing and painfully numb all at once.

I believe this is all related to Growth Hormone Deficiency, which I was diagnosed with as a child and I was treated for this condition with synthetic growth hormone from the age of six until I hit puberty.  Unfortunately, medical science at the time was of the opinion that once a person stops growing, they don't need any additional growth hormone to be injected anymore.  They could not have been more wrong.  The Magic Foundation has a few FaceBook groups set up for those who have health issues related to the continued deficiency of growth hormone as an adult. I have been trying (so far unsuccessfully) to schedule an appointment with an endocrinologist so I can be evaluated and resume growth hormone therapy, albeit a much lower dose than I was on as a child because I don't need to grow taller.  My body just needs to regain and be able to maintain homeostasis.  In the meantime, I am suffering and I am trying not to allow this to affect my bonding with Asher, or my ability to effectively nurture Lucie in this very important transition to being a big sister from an only child.

How does baby wearing help ease my pain? 

Wearing Asher while I nurse does two things:

1) It redistributes his weight away from my hands, arms, shoulders which I would use to hold him.  It also holds him off of my lap.  The lessening of the weight appears to help a little bit.  He is only 8 lbs, but when I have a flare up of symptoms, he may as well weigh 8 tons.  

2) It frees up my hands and arms to move.  I am not forced to remain with my hands and arms in one position for an extended length of time.  This prevents the numbness and stiffening which has been occurring.

When I am not nursing, Asher enjoys the closeness of being worn, and he likes to rest his head on my chest to listen to my heartbeat.  Baby wearing also allows me to hold Asher while caring for Lucie by refilling sippy cups, retrieving dropped crayons, or even just having the hands free to hold a book to read to her.

I was first introduced to the local baby wearing community by a mom at a La Leche League meeting that I attended one week before Asher was born.  As I had not breastfed Lucie, I was a bit clueless and a little nervous that my history of growth hormone deficiency would affect my ability to produce breast milk.  The pituitary gland which produces growth hormone is also responsible for the production of prolactin, which is what stimulates the production of breast milk.

This wonderful momma told me of her love for Didymos wraps and how comfortable they were.  She said that they made nursing in public easier because everything was kept under wraps (yes, that pun was totally intentional).  After she gushed about how amazing they were, I just had to have one to try.  Plus, "The Art of Breastfeeding," which is La Leche League's breastfeeding handbook, encourages baby wearing and echoes the idea that it was easy to nurse in public incognito when your baby was being worn.  This appealed to me.  Always on the go, I need to be able to feed Asher any time and this seemed like a win-win to me.

I joined a local FaceBook babywearing group and I was welcomed by many like minded mommas.  I looked in awe at the beautiful photos of these moms (and dads too!) wearing their babies and everyone always looked so happy and... the babies looked so contentedly sleepy.  I read accounts from parents about their babies being cranky, so they would wrap them up, and the babes would fall asleep within minutes, comforted by the warmth of their mom's (or dad's) closeness.

I found a wrap I loved from Didymos, Heralds of Spring, and I ordered it in a size 7, because that is the size their website recommended to be able to do any wrap technique with my current clothing size.  Unfortunately, I would soon learn that it is just too much fabric for the South Carolina heat.  When you wrap that many layers of 100% cotton and go outside... not only will you end up sweating like you just did an hour long hot yoga class, but your baby will have difficulty maintaining proper body temperature. 

You see that "Mischief Managed" Harry Potter inspired art?  That is on the tail of a custom ring sling that I commissioned my friend Katherine to create for me.  My ring sling has a gathered shoulder which allows the fabric to be spread out and distributes Asher's weight more evenly, so that there is no one spot which is feeling a lot of pressure on it at any given time.  In fact, I'm wearing Asher in this ring sling, nursing him as I type right now, almost pain free.  Before I discovered that ring slings decreased my pain from a 9 1/2 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst... down to a 2... I had been ready to give up breastfeeding altogether and switch to exclusively pumping.  That is why babywearing is saving my breastfeeding relationship with Asher.   

Unfortunately, I don't have any action shots of my ring sling yet, because I've been wearing it mostly in my bedroom, nursing Asher.

Oh, and remember that Didymos Heralds of Spring 7 that I said was too long and as a result too hot?  Katherine is going to convert that into a ring sling, a shorty (short wrap), a headband to keep my hair out of Asher's reach, and a nursing necklace.  Since the Didymos Heralds of Spring was the very first thing I ever used to wear Asher, it holds a lot of sentimental value for me, and I'd rather convert it to something I can and will use than let it sit unused in my closet, or part with it completely.  Thanks to Katherine, I won't have to.