MRI and Its Effects, plus some Motherhood Stuff

Had the MRI of my brain today. Whew that machine is scary and I only had to go in about half way. It is really frightening to go into that slim white tube! Fortunately, the tech who was in charge of getting me in there was very nice. He was patient with my fear. I was able to gert past the panting and sweaty palms because I realized that if I had to, I could wiggle out of the tube pretty quickly, and that made me feel better and relaxed and I was able to be inside it with no worries.

So, the bad news is that the dye injection they gave me for the MRI is incompatible with breast feeding. For 48 hours after the injection (at approximately 10:30 this morning) I cannot nurse my son at all. I have to pump and dump. And of course my poor sweet darling has to deal with not being able to have his middle of the day nursing. Both of us cried today; him more than me, but it was not a great day for either of us. Of course, this is following the schedule I planned out for 4 weeks to a weaned baby, but damn it is hard.

I actually did get him to sleep today without a walk. I sat in my nursing chair (a wonderful glider with a gliding ottoman) with the baby and rocked and sang and stroked his back softly and gently. He seemed to get into the tired baby trance, but was desperately searching for something to suck on all over my chest. He was biting/sucking on the edge of the vee-neck of my shirt. I decided to dig out one of those pacifiers he rejected when he was a couple of weeks old (good thing I sterilized them and put them in a bag before tossing them in the cupboard). He was very interested in the one I gave him, and stuck various parts of it in his mouth as I continued to rock and sing. Eventually he got the nipple part in there and fell asleep almost immediately. I was sooooo thankful. I shed a few tears at the realization that our situation has come to this--using a pacifier (which we were so pleased that our son rejected) to replace the natural solution. Or maybe I wasn't crying about the pacifier but about the fact that I have to wean my beautiful baby boy because of cancer.

Anyway, he did have a good dinner. He had yogurt, broccoli, a few whole wheat crackers, and some chicken that my husband grilled. He drank several ounces of diluted papaya juice.

He just went to bed in about half an hour for my husband. He drank about 3 or 3.5 ounces of expressed breast milk to get to sleep. I pumped and stored a hundred ounces to prepare for my lung surgery and because the babe drank mostly the milk I pumped while I was in the hospital, my stash of frozen EBM (Expressed Breast Milk) got to up over a hundred ounces. Awfully glad I have it now, of course.

I cannot sleep with my family tonight (as I usually do) because the baby will want to nurse during the night and that will be very very hard to say "no" to--especially because he will ask to nurse about 3 times during the night. So, I will be in the sewing room on the futon.

PET CT scan tomorrow morning. No nursing for 24 hours after the radioactive glucose! But, worse, no holding the babe (or even being in a small room--or a car) with the babe for those 24 hours...wish me luck! It is going to be hard for me.

One bit of good news: the CT scanner is not half as scary as the MRI scanner. You still have to go inside a machine, but the CT machine is more like a donut and is slightly bigger inside than the MRI machine. The MRI is deep enough that my entire body--head to toe--would fit inside. The CT machine is only about 2 feet deep (or thereabouts). Not claustrophobic at all! My husband is staying home from work tomorrow to care for the baby since I will not be able to do so at all, and my sweet mother-in-law is meeting me at the hospital and will stay with me during the entire test.

Motherhood (Not Cancer) Stuff:
AP stands for Attachment Parenting. Never heard of this parenting philosophy? WHAT ATTACHMENT PARENTING IS �THE 7 BABY B'S
Baby Wearing is putting the baby in some sort of carrier, like a sling or a mei tai that keeps the baby close to your body. Check out The Baby Wearer for more information. (I found a pattern online and sewed my own mei tais but there are several web sites that sell beautiful ones.)
Co-sleeping means sleeping with the baby in your bed. We've co-slept with our son since he was a about a week old. This has made night-time breast feeding much easier for mama and baby and there is nothing so wonderful as waking up to a smiling baby at your side! See Dr. Sears' article called CO-SLEEPING: YES, NO, SOMETIMES? for more information.