Boobs and Poop

Boobs

I keep having these reallllllllly weird breastfeeding dreams. Some of you might remember that I have already dreamt that my boob was made out of chicken breading and that MP started nibbling at it and it fell apart.

Last night, I dreamt that I was trying to breastfeed the new baby, who, incidentally, I had left on a table wrapped up for a good 24 hours or so, forgetting completely about her. (In my dream I panicked, ran over to the table, grabbed her. She was, thankfully, okay, despite not having been fed for ages and ages.) I lifted up my shirt and my boob started squirting milk like a psycho sprinkler, dousing the baby's face. Every time I tried to bring her to my chest I basically drowned her. Finally I switched boobs and all of a sudden realized that my beloved baby had turned into a green gummy bear. I held the gummy bear to my chest but that wasn't going to work...then I dropped the gummy bear and was frantically searching for it in the swaddles of blankets covering the floor....

Random thinks I'm just nervous about breastfeeding, about not doing it right or something. Funny thing is, I've taken a class on it, read books about it, and feel pretty comfy about it in my waking life. It's just in my sleeping life that I seem to be a freak.

If you'd like to play armchair psychiatrist with me and interpret these weird bf dreams, please, be my guest.

Poop

In other news, MP is using the potty quite frequently. This morning she went poop for Random, and they announced it to me in stereo as I emerged from the bedroom puffy eyed and unrested (I'm a pregnant wreck right now, if you must know....36 years old going on 64). "It was a really big poop," Random told me in a semi-awed whisper. About an hour later, MP decided she had to go poop again. "Use the potty!" I chirped, not really paying attention. A second later she ran out of the bathroom half-naked and announced that she had pooped in the potty again. I went in to check, laughing, disbelieving (after all, she had already pooped; also, yesterday she told me she pooped four times and each time there was nada poop to be seen--that's called "The Girl Who Cried Poop" in our house). Anyway, there to greet me in her potty was one of the biggest poops I have ever laid eyes on. It was MAMMOTH. At least six inches. And FAT. I looked at her increduously.

"YOU did that?"

MP: Yeah! I did that! I pooped in the potty!

Me: Is that the old poop? Or did you just poop now?

MP: No, that's a NEW POOP!

Me: Holy moly. That's one giagundo poop. Hold on. I have to verify this.

Me: RANDOM! DID YOU ALREADY CLEAN UP THE FIRST POOP?

Random: YES! (Horrified I might consider he would leave such an item just, er, LYING AROUND). Why?

Me: Can you come down here for a minute?

Random comes down. Goes in bathroom. I hear a manly gasp.

Me: (To Random, as he walks out looking stricken and amazed) Okay, fess up. You did that, didn't you? To trick me? You pooped in her potty and left it there to freak me out, right?

Random: What the hell, you think I'd do that?!!!?!?!?

Me: Yes!!!! I think that you would do that over MP pooping that....that....MONSTER. Her butt's too little for something of that magnitude!

Random: That is ONE BIG MAN POOP. MP, that is a BIG POOP!

MP: I get TWO jellybeans now! I get two jellybeans! Daddy, you happy? I pooped in the potty!

Me: (Going into early labor on the floor, because I am laughing so hard)

Now we will hear about the poops all day long. Every time MP gets in trouble for, say, dumping Random's coffee all over the carpet, and we are attempting to discipline her, she will smile and say "But I pooped TWO TIMES in the potty! You happy!"

Yeah, kiddo. We are. 

Comments

[Carol]

I can so, sooooooo relate to this post.

First, the breastfeeding anxiety dreams. I drempt while pregnant with both kids that I had forgotten to feed them, or it had been forever since I fed them and my boobs were bursting because they were so full but I couldn't find them. Or that I was waiting to feed them but the nurses had them and wouldn't give them back. Etc.

Oh, and I don't want to scare you, but the boobs spraying uncontrollably and choking baby with their milky excess is what happened to me, oh, every day of the 14 months that I breastfed DD and 8.5 months that I breastfed DS. I was a dairy volcano. Sometimes I would spray over the sink after let-down just to get out the excess so that I didn't choke the babe. It was kind of fun to be spraying over the sink and then call DH over to watch the freak show.

Oh, and my kids save up their poop for days and then poop these gigantic poops in the toilet that are as thick and long as if a 300-pound adult cranked them out. Their poor little butts. They've both been doing this forever. With my DD it's because she's afraid to poop. With DH it's because he's potty training and I think I have him all messed up psychologically over it or something.

Maya sounds so smart. The things she says are really sophisticated for her age!

[JuliaKB]

Poop like that runs in my family. Much fun for my husband when he has to deal with the plumbing problems in our bathroom. :)

Spraying boobs happen to me too. It's kinda comical for a bit, but hungry babies don't find it as funny since it's hard fro them to latch. I used to put bags of frozen veggies on the boobs ten mins before a feeding- helps with that and makes it easier to latch.

MP is just adorable.

[Orodemniades]

Ah yes, leakage. My boobs don't spray, but nowadays if they're not leaky like a dripping faucet, sometimes it's as if the faucet has actually been turned on.

Breast pads. You're going to need them

And blocked ducts? Much more painful then you realize. Hot water compresses and massaging will do the trick. HOpefully.

[Kathleen]

Wacky breastfeeding dreams were very frequent around here while I was pregnant - you just reminded me. The weirdest, most disturbing - I dreamt I was nursing a baby, and it started to hurt, and I looked down just as the baby looked up at me, and its head was sort of a cat's head (body still human) with these gigantic fangs and it had been chewing on me and had all this blood dripping from its teeth. So, yeah.

Happy to say, 8 months in, breastfeeding has been great and there has been no blood, fangs, and/or morphing of baby into strange animals.

[Jan]

Delurking because I am singularly unable to resist an offer to play armchair psychologist.

I think you've feeling pretty comfortable/BTDT about mothering in general, but since you didn't breastfeed MP, your subconscious thinks that is a foreign/weird/scary/unknown part of the experience. Particularly weird.

That said, I don't know a single woman who carried a pregnancy to term that didn't have at least one of those "I forgot about the baby" dreams.

[midlife mommy]

Ah, but did your husband take a picture of it? For my daughter's first, and for the larger deposits, I swear my husband has gotten the camera. Now what am I supposed to do with those pictures?

[Sarah]

I was LOL really hard at the idea of you laughing so hard at her poop that you'd go into labor! What fun!

[Karly]

You mean you didn't take a picture of the poop? To put in her baby book? ;)

[sheilah]

Oh, and there is yet more poopy excitement to come in the future. When she statrs WIPING HER OWN BUTT!!

That is the big excitement around my house lately. My son now wipes his own butt.

I am more happy about that than I had ever thought I would be.

[julie]

I agree with Jan that the nursing dream is your brain freaking out about the parts of this round of parenting experience that will be newest to you. Be glad it's saving you the L&D dreams, at least for now.... And I was also a sprayer. I remember standing in the shower one late afternoon and glancing down and the milk was shooting straight out about 12" and then arcing down to hit the shower floor about 24" away from my feet. My whole existence reeked of funk-i-fying milk: clothes, couches, living room, car, baby... Yuck. soaking your entire life in milk in June and July in St Louis heat is not a great smell come August through forever.

Now, all that said, I nursed her until she was 18 mos and it was totally worth it and I really enjoyed it after the first 5 weeks of getting the kinks worked out. But the kinks were plentiful at our house.

The poop...just, LOL!

[wavybrains]

I won't torture you with my own weird BF dreams. But, yeah, I had them. I think it's how our psyche tries to reason with this huge shift that our body is about to undergo. I tried to make sense of my dreams, but really they went away as soon as she actually arrived. I think it (like birth) is something that you can't really grasp until you actually do it. All the classes, books, advice, etc. Your mind has all these strange fears and hang ups b/c you just can't picture it completely. I suppose in a way, it's like a virgin trying to conjure up an orgy. I think I worried needlessly over some of my dreams. Once your kiddo arrives, you'll do great!

[FDChief]

Our little guy was tremendously excited at his first poop in the grown-up potty. He called us in to see, and we all marvelled apropriately at the - as you have discovered - ginormous sinker.

"Well," announced the Peeper, "that's sure bigger than a chicken's belly."

The term has passed into family folklore.

[julie]

My sweet, darling little Chinese daughter poops like that! And in record time, too! She seems to barely have had enough time to get onto the toilet before she is shouting that she is done. There we see, giant poop the diameter of a soup can. It's remarkable enough to have been mentioned by the preschool teachers. Then, my daughter mixes her metaphors and tells us that she poops like a drunken sailor!

[kristylynne]

That poop story is too funny. What I wouldn't give for my kid to have a huge poop right now. We are in week four of severe constipation over here.

On the breastfeeding dream ... sounds like you have been studying up, which I suspect is both a good thing and the root cause of the weird dreams. Your brain is processing everything you have learned about breastfeeding and mixing it up with your undercurrent of new-mom/birth anxiety and cooking you up some mental weirdness during sleep. Just my 2 cents.

[Mandy]

During my pregnancy with my son, I kept dreaming about breastfeeding a little boy who would look up, smile and have a mouth full of milk. Over and over I had similar dreams. We didn't find out we were having a boy, and since then there have been many times that scene has played out. This boy is an eater (who often forgets to swallow before smiling) LOL!

With my daughter, I had a dream where a nurse was reassuring me that my milk was fine and I had plenty of it. (which of course made me worry the opposite would be true) We had brief supply issues when she was a newborn but all worked out great!

You might just be getting a bit of reassurance (about supply) tucked in with normal dreaming about what you've been reading with a dash of pg jitters mixed in.

If it makes you feel better, during my son's pregnancy I also had a dream that I had twins, went home almost right away - so early that it was discovered that I had left before birthing the placenta (they totally don't let you do that ;) LOL) and I went back in pains only to discover it wasn't the placenta but a third baby. A monkey baby to be precise.

the brain is messed up sometimes.

[sarah]

The thing about the boob turning into a pyscho sprinkler and squirting milk into your baby's face enough to drown her? It's not just a dream. The boob, it can really do that. It was the shock of my life, what my boobs were doing after I'd given birth. I'd be taking a shower, my milk would "let down", and literally, I could spray milk like a fire hose. It's slightly traumatic. Be prepared. :)

[JessicaAPISS]

I am so so glad you are back!!! I just found you again on Surrender Dorothy. I was too busy starting my own blog to realize you were back on the scene.

I was/am a HUGE fan of the old site and I cried and celebrated when MP arrived. I loved your post about referral day and waiting in lurky land those months and months til you received her picture.

I am so excited that she is getting a baby sister!

Your writing saved me through miscarriages and bad patches of wearing sensible shoes. Happy to say I am mom to a 4 year old boy, 2 year old girl and my own local resource blog.

But my main reason for commenting is to say VIVA LA NAKED O! You are a mom to the most gorgeous gal on the planet. You are pregnant. I am so freaking stoked for you.

[victoria]

Funniest story I ever heard: Guy goes to visit his college roommate in New York. Stays in his pal's apartment. Ex-roommate has a cat and is very worried about it, since he hasn't seen any poo in the litterbox for days. Ex-roommate takes cat to vet, buys & administers kitty laxatives. Each day, while the cat owner is at work, houseguest removes and disposes of cat poo from litter box. Cat owner becomes increasingly distressed. Then, after about a week, houseguest leaves his own huge, man-sized poo in the litter box. Cat owner becomes apoplectic with alarm when he see it.