So I got an infection...

...in my left breast. And it has been incredibly unpleasant. I didn't feel well Friday and Saturday, but chalked it up to having lots of company over those two days and my being upset over my Dad's departure, but by Saturday night I was sure I had a fever which meant something else was wrong. By Sunday morning I felt like I had the flu- exhausted and achy all over, temp of a little over 101 and the right side of aforementioned left breast was red and swollen and very painful. All textbook symptoms of mastitis, as it turns out. Fortunately, my in-laws were in town and came right over to keep Frazier while we went to the urgent care clinic not far from our house. I'm on an anti-biotic and feeling much better now. It was amazing to me how quickly it escalated and how badly one little infection could make my entire body feel. A hazard of breastfeeding, I suppose. I saw my lactation nurse, Paula, again yesterday and she identified some "nipple damage" through which bacteria (either from Frazier's mouth or my skin) must have entered my breast and colonized around a milk duct. I'd noticed some bleeding while expressing the milk from that breast Saturday night- which freaked me out- and the nipple damage explained that. It resulted in pink milk...which I promptly poured out...and it hasn't happened again, thank God. I suppose it's healed up now...at least enough not to bleed. The interesting thing is that the infection isn't actually in the milk duct so feeding him the milk from that breast is perfectly fine...and Paula says breastmilk comes with antibodies that kill bacteria on contact anyway- and that it is extremely difficult to get any bacteria to grow in it at all. It also seems it's very important to continue draining the infected breast even though it's painful...so I'm pressing on through the pain. :) In addition to my antibiotic (which I take two capsules of FOUR times a day...that's right, that's EIGHT pills a day) Paula also has me on a regimen of probiotics because, Paula informed me, antibiotics are not picky and will destroy the good bacteria, too, which could leave Frazier and I susceptible to yeast infections. And no one wants that. :P Perhaps you found this to be a case of TMI, but I found it very interesting and as I was uninformed until this week on the subject of mastitis- I felt compelled to pass on the info.

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In other news, Paula seemed pleased with his nursing progress though we're still hopelessly attached to the breast shield (our goal, according to Paula, is to be nursing without it by three weeks- so we've a little over a week to get this down). Also, Frazier was almost back to his birthweight yesterday- he was at 9 lbs 8.6 oz and he weighed 9lbs 8.8 oz at birth- so he's a few days ahead of the game! And as of this morning (after urinating and before breakfast which is the only time I like to weigh myself) I weighed one pound less than I weighed at my first OB visit at which I was six weeks pregnant. So I figure I may still be somewhere around 5 lbs away from my actual prepregnancy weight...which I wasn't particularly happy with at the time. I gained less than 30 lbs altogether and almost ten came off immediately once Frazier was out! My plan all along was to come off this whole baby thing better than I went in and it seems (now that my body has siphoned off most of this excess fluid) that I'm well on my way. I'm anxious to get back into a workout routine...but the body isn't quite up to it yet. It just gave birth 12 days ago, afterall. So I'm cutting it some slack. And really, I'm pretty impressed with the way it's bounced back. I did not expect to ever be the same- I have reasonable expectations in most situations. And it still appears this may be the case. Though it's almost back to its original flatness...which was never perfectly flat...and when I flex I can actually see a silhouette of my abs in there (I do still have muscles in my tummy after all!) my stomach still looks deflated and when I touch it it sort of waves...think waterbed movement. Then there are the stretchmarks. I made it to nine full months without stretchmarks...and then the last two weeks these little ones appeared at the very bottom of my tummy and now it looks like that material that if you pull it out too far it gets all scrunchy and never really goes back to the way it was. The literature says they'll fade some...and I suppose if they don't it isn't such a big deal. It isn't like I ever showed my stomach in any public capacity anyway- and they're sort of a badge of honor aren't they? I grew and birthed a perfect, 9 and a half pound baby. I'm proud of that. And really, these webby little stretchmarks...and even this bout of mastitis...are an awfully tiny price to pay.