I remember going in to work to introduce my daughter to my coworkers and many people commented on how thin I looked and how quickly I’d lost a lot of the baby weight. Perhaps that was part of the reason that I felt like I could eat more, but I think the real reason is that I’d felt cheated that I couldn’t eat what I wanted when I was pregnant, and now that I no longer had the gestational diabetes I was making up for lost time. I think breast feeding kept me from gaining weight too quickly, but soon the inexorable weight gain began again. I also felt completely overwhelmed once I started back at work. We had hired a live-in nanny who would watch my daughter while we were at work, but whenever I was home I felt as if I couldn’t push my responsibility off on a nanny even if I was exhausted.
When my daughter was about a month old she went in for a check up and the Doctor’s face when she weighed my daughter made me really worried. She had gained weight initially and suddenly her weight was lower again. The Doctor told me that the new rules were that I would breast feed every two hours both sides, and then give my daughter formula until she refused it. And I wasn’t to let her sleep for more than four hours a night without waking her up to feed her again. Then I was to bring her back in to see the Doctor in three days to be weighed again. The Doctor kept dodging my questions, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was concerned. Three days later my daughter’s weight was up and the Doctor said she was satisfied, but I was to continue with this regimen. It was kind of bizarre because I was so worried about teaching my daughter bad eating habits since I’d had so many problems with food, yet here I was in a position where I had to keep trying to get her to eat all the time.
So, even if I was working early morning shifts or late shifts I had to get up and breast feed in the middle of the night. I was pumping my breast milk and sometimes my husband would get up and do the middle of the night feeding, but pumping was already lowering my milk production so I needed to do the actual feeding as much as possible to keep it up. I remember very little about that time except constant exhaustion and worry. I was so worried that I was doing something wrong that I would often take my daughter to the mall with me when we were home alone together just so I could be around people. I felt better knowing that if something went wrong I would have lots of people around to call on for help.
I did discover about a month after my daughter was born that I was not breast feeding properly and that was probably why I was in tears every time I fed her due to the pain involved. Also, I think that because of my incorrect techniques I was not producing enough milk initially and that’s why she wasn’t gaining weight. Once a co-worker helped me figure it out though, I enjoyed breast feeding time more than most other times. And I soon started producing enough milk that when my daughter first latched on in the middle of the night feeding the milk would come out so fast she would actually choke on it a bit. I began to relax a bit about her health, but I was not doing anything to care for myself other than continuing to take lots of vitamins, but that was more for my daughter’s sake than my own.
My stress levels were pretty high with working full time and the constant night feedings and worrying about being the “perfect” mom. I remember once I was cutting my daughter’s fingernails in her bedroom while she was lying on the changing table. Just as I cut she jerked her hand and I ended up nipping the top of her finger and it bled. I was horrified and going on and on about how terrible I was to have done that to her. Finally, my husband, who was lying in bed down in our room and could hear me over the baby monitor yelled, “Sheesh Isabel, you made a mistake, give yourself a break already!” But I was wrapped pretty tight about not making mistakes and I felt like I was making a lot of them.
Just as my daughter was turning a year old my husband’s current billet in Seattle ended and he told me that he wanted to put in for a remote billet for a year because then he would have first choice to come back to Seattle for another four year hitch. I was terrified, but agreed that it made logical sense. Then we got word that he was being sent to Dutch Harbor, Alaska for a year and he would only come home once at the six month mark. I was terrified. He kept telling me that it was just as hard on him because he would be away from his daughter, but all I could think about was how I would have to take care of everything myself. I would be working a high stress job, with horrible hours and taking care of my daughter and the household and three big dogs and three cats and the closer the day got to him leaving the more stressed I got, and the angrier I got, and the more I ate.
Our original nanny had left and our new nanny was not really working out. She was not very careful with my daughter, not very hygienic, and she had a habit of stealing things. My older brother had been living in Puerto Vallarta with his wife and they had decided to move back home. He made the suggestion that they move in with me and they would have a place to stay where they could save some money, and I would have someone to help with my daughter. I jumped at the chance. I knew I could trust them to take good care of Alex and I would have an easy excuse for firing the new nanny. So, after the nanny left, and my brother moved in, I relaxed a bit, but my journey back to morbid obesity and horrible eating habits was well on its way.