(no subject)

[annissamazing]

Birth control for breastfeeding mothers is tricky. Many women don't ovulate or even get their periods while they breastfeed. Unfortunately for me, I bled for six weeks after the delivery then started my period the day after that stopped. You basically have two options, the minipill or an IUD. Regular birth control messes with milk production. Breast feeding is important to me not because I find it to be some wondrous bonding experience (I don't), but because it's excellent for Dominic's health, burns over 1,000 calories a day so I'm losing weight better than I have in my entire life (30 pounds so far), and is 100% free. Have you priced formula? That stuff is outrageous. On top of all that, Dominic gets horribly gassy if he eats formula. Farts that sound like that shouldn't come out of so small a creature. So I got my prescription for the minipill. With insurance, the pills cost me $10 per month. That's $10 less than the Ortho Tri-Cyclen I was on before I got pregnant. I read the risks and it turns out that if you don't take the pill at the same time every day your chances to get pregnant raise dramatically. I'm horrible at taking the pill. That's how I got into this mess in the first place. So I looked into the IUD some more. It costs $800 for the appliance and the procedure to have it inserted. It didn't take me long to realize that since I'd met my deductible for the year, the IUD would only cost me $80 so long as I got it before the end of the year. That's $80 for up to five years of birth control. I called the office and it turns out that they put in IUDs only while you're on your period. I was just finishing mine. So this post is basically props to my ob/gyn office for pre-qualifying me and getting me an appointment in one day's time. They installed the IUD yesterday in an in-office procedure that hurt less than a pap. In 5 years, I'll consider having another child. Right now it's out of the question. The memory of pregnancy and childbirth is still too fresh.

Comments

[insatia.livejournal.com]

Wow. Your docotor really does rock for the speedy turnaround.

Of course you could have waited a month, but condoms are a pain in the ass to use once you've stopped using them. Let's hope that the IUD holds up.

[annissamazing]

If I'd waited a month it would have cost me $720 more than it cost me this month. My $1,500 deductible starts over again every January 1. I figure, if I get pregnant with the IUD, it was meant to be.

[garillama.livejournal.com]

Congrats on taking care of your body in a responsible fashion! And it really sounds like everything fell right into place for you, yay helpful doctors :D

[annissamazing]

Your icon makes me giggle. :)

[sorrowballad.livejournal.com]

I've considered an IUD also, 5 years of not thinking of birth control sounds great! Plus they have a non-horomone one that i am interested in.

Thanks for the update. I was riveted by the childbirth entry. No joking either!

[annissamazing]

Even if I have it for 8 months it will have paid for itself. They're expensive, but in the long run they're less expensive than the pill. Plus, a lot of women have lighter periods or stop having them altogether. I'm hoping I'm one of them. :) I'm glad you liked the childbirth entry. There were some things I left out because I got tired of typing. Maybe I'll make another entry to talk about those things.

breastfeeding

[sprgtime.livejournal.com]

Your comment about Dominic's farts made me giggle crazily for some reason. :)

The free and ready anytime sounds so much more convenient than formula to me. When my brother was visiting with his wife and baby, I was shocked at how much they spent on formula just in their week of visiting.
Wayyy expensive! How do people afford that? Why pay so much more for inferior nutrition for your child?

Plus, don't forget that it is also healthier for you. Breastfeeding women have a much lower percentage of breast cancer, and it helps your body heal faster from the birth.

Re: breastfeeding

[insatia.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that there is some correlation of reduced ear infections and passing along a mother's immunities to her child.

Re: breastfeeding

[annissamazing]

Breastfeeding is definitely more convenient. I take the first nighttime feeding and Justin takes the second (if Dominic wakes up). The difference between me getting up, changing Dom's diaper, then feeding him and Justin getting up, changing Dom's diaper, warming the water, then waiting to while the bottle warms is something like 15 minutes. And, of course, Dominic wakes up and is furious by the time he actually gets to eat. So Justin gets back to sleep in about 90 minutes, I get back to sleep in 30.

I think a lot of people can't afford baby formula. That's why it's the most stolen legal item anyone sells.

I didn't know that there is a lower percentage of breast cancer among mothers who breastfed their babies. I did hear (and felt) that your body heals much faster. The action of the baby suckling causes your uterus to contract which gets it back into shape much faster than it would otherwise. I was wearing my pre-pregnancy clothes two weeks after I gave birth. Unfortunately, the cramps it causes are excruciating.

The immunities are mostly passed through the colostrum, but breastfed babies are less likely to become ill and when they do become ill they get better faster than bottle-fed babies. The correlation between bottle-fed babies and ear infections is all in how the baby is held while he's being fed. When they're flat on their backs, the formula has a tendency to run into the inner ear and cause an infection. If the baby is held more like a breast-fed baby is held, he shouldn't be as prone to get an infection (I read about this in Dr. Spock's book).

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Many people buy formula is that the mother just can't produce enough milk--as you might be ready to expect with twins, but it's also true for singletons.
I understand from links some time ago on twistedchick that the ovulation timing on the current pills are entirely arbitrary. The original point was to make them seem "more natural" at their original introduction, back in the day, so that perhaps the Catholic Church would regard them as an acceptable natural method. So the doctor who came up with them assumed that a one month cycle is normal for women, since infertile women tend to run about that timing.
Well, it didn't succeed in being accepted anyway, but it's been set that way ever since.
(I *think* there might have been an article in Scientific American some time this year on it as well, if you're interested in tracking it down via an index.)
And now they're just starting to offer pills with ovulation periods longer than a month to patients who want it.
Studies on things like the unusual Western world's rates of breast cancer and ovarian cancers and etc. blame the over-frequency of years of one-month periods.
Seems that studies in the Third World where women have no birth control (because they have 9 to 18 pregnancies--just imagine *that* one) all of them spend more of their time NOT ovulating than they do actually having periods. The demands of all those pregnancies themselves are pretty hard on your system in other ways, of course.
The anthropologists suggest that since this is what we evolved with, maybe we shouldn't be ovulating so often. They think we're artificially jacking our bodies to a faster ovulation rate, accelerating various cancer rates associated with the hormones of ovulation.
Hence the long time frame pills.
And I'm thinking, hey, the convenience? Not so often??
I could really *use* that...

[annissamazing]

It's also quite likely that the reason many women don't produce enough breastmilk is because they started out supplementing with formula. The body is really fantastic about producing enough milk for a baby. All the mother needs to do is put her baby to her breast more frequently and her body will compensate. I started giving Dominic formula in the hospital because I wasn't yet producing milk and he needed help flushing the bilirubin out of his system (he was jaundiced). I swore up and down that I needed to continue supplementing because I wasn't producing enough milk. When I stopped giving him formula, my body started producing more milk. Neat. Now, I'm not saying that no mother ever needs to supplement. I just think too many people fall into feeding formula because it's so convenient (and pain-free!). Plus, the nurses make it available to you in the hospital in ready-to-feed bottles and sends you home with a canister of the powdered variety. It's very easy to give a bottle a day and mess with your milk supply.

I've noticed during the day that Dominic eats more than I produce. I can make 12 ounces and he eats 16. But at night, he only eats 2 ounces at a feeding before he can't stay awake any longer. So I put him to one breast and pump and store the other and it all evens out.