How Misdiagnosed Wrist Pain and Torn Tendons Failed a Breastfeeding Mom’s Recovery with Sharon Funk

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The goal with that was to learn how to function
like this since it looks like this is kind of
a long termish long short term thing in my life.
And she gave me a few tools, like these little
grippers so I can open jars by myself. And she
was doing of measure tests like the squeeze and the
grip test, and then the speed of moving little pegs

(00:21):
and all sorts of little things. And as I was
getting measured my progress, it was improving a little bit.
Each time there was measurable improvement.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Before we begin, I want to share something special with
all of you expecting parents out there. As an internationally
board certified lactation consultant, I've seen first hand how a
little planning can go a long way to helping you
achieve your baby feeding goals. That's why I'm offering you
my free ebook. It's called Birth Practices to Support Breastfeeding

(00:53):
and it's a workbook, so check out the link in
the description below, you are having this motion induced inflammation
in the wrists or carpal tunnel, and then you're having
the severe inflammation in your breast creating the clogged ducts,
which those have to be related, you know, the fact
that your body was so inflamed in both places, it

(01:17):
would make sense that you would need to find positions
that allowed her to be completely relaxed without support being
supported by you, And so I can understand why both
sidelining and laid back breastfeeding were a lot easier for you.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, I'm glad I finally got there because I was
trying all along. So I read about them thinking like,
this would be good if it worked.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I know, but it's really hard. It's one of those
things you watch the video and then you think, Okay,
I should be able to do this, and when you try,
because you've never done it, you've never seen it in person,
your first time practicing is when you have this hungry
little baby, it's really hard to get it right. And
that's one of the things I'll do with my clients
is make sure I help them to learn how to

(02:04):
do a few different positions so that they don't have
to rely on just one position all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, because that will overtax your arms so much.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, and your head and your neck and your shoulders.
But you were talking about other providers that you saw
as well. How many total providers do you think you
saw trying to get the inflammation to a point where
it was reasonable.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I don't know, and I don't know that the journey
is over yet, because right it's better. It's a lot
better in a lot of ways now, but I still
get flare ups, especially with the weather fluctuations. And they
mentioned at the osteopath office, they mentioned that it's I'm
now going for frequency specific microcurrent therapy as well, and
they mentioned that, yes, they have seen with the weather

(02:51):
barometric pressure changes, a lot of people are coming into
the office in high pain those weeks. Because when I'm
like I was getting better, now this week it feels
like I'm back to square one and I can't do
anything again. They're like, it's not just you. Everyone is
a humongous pain this week. It's it's the weather. And
I asked, this is always going to be like this
whenever the weather changes, And I said, no, while you're

(03:12):
still healing. Once you're fully healed, it won't be like this.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And what are they saying that you're healing from the
carpol tunnel itself or some other sort of inflammation that
is causing the carple tunnel.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So we do know eventually, I did, I did get
an MRI in November. The pain was just so great.
It was to the point where I couldn't move my
arm at all. Like I woke up one morning and
I couldn't bend my elbow and I couldn't rotate my
wrist at all. It was completely locked up. And I
had already experienced the where my wrist hurts so much

(03:47):
that if I did something, I would have shooting pain
in the arm that came all the way up and
was like blinding white pain. But that's just a quick flash.
This day, I woke up and I was Every time
I took a step, the reverberation through my whole body
would jar my wrist and I would see flashes of
green behind my eyes. Like I already knew, I can't

(04:10):
do things like unsnapped, So it's like her onesies unsnapping them.
That little reverb coming back really hurts, so I could
not change her if she was wearing snaps. I could
only do zippers when driving the directionals clicker on the car,
you know how like when you hit it then it
has a little bounce back that was massively painful. Nursing bras.

(04:34):
I couldn't do the ones that snap open. I could
only do the nighttime nursing bras, which is the pull down,
and even sometimes that was hard with the bad hand.
After that, I went, I pushed for an MRI and
it turns out that there is a longitudinal split tear
in this tendon in the wrist. And I had consulted

(04:55):
the hand doctor again, the orthopedic surgeon, and he said, okay, okay, Well,
at the time, I couldn't even like put my thumb
into my hand like this. I pretty much could do
this much. And he's like, yeah, it's the inflamed tendon.
And they were trying to explain to me how the
inflammation of the tendon is pulling that tear apart. And
he said, what we need to do is just go
in and stip the sheath and let the tendon be

(05:16):
able to pass, because that's what's causing the pain. He's like,
you shouldn't really be able to feel the tear. And
I for months I had been trying to explain to
all my provisors, it feels like there is a shard
in my arm, like a piece, like a needle, a
metal needle in my arm, and every time I rotated it,
it feels like it's shredding apart inside my arm, and

(05:37):
nobody knew what I was saying or understood. And then
the MRI confirmed that. And when they told me which
where the tendon was, I had the longitoural's tear. I said,
is it about here? And they said yeah, that tendon
kind of goes like this and then curls in here.
And I'm like, so basically here with the slight difference
at the end that it curls in the tip at

(05:58):
the tail end there, and they're like, yeah, like.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Okay, yeah, and you're pointing from your your wrist, the
the wrist down that side of the forearm. Yeah. And
I know that you are a musician and you use
your fingers and your tendons and your wrist a lot
in the instrument that you play, so you had probably

(06:24):
had a lot of overuse of your wrists to begin with. Yeah,
So I'm I'm guessing it's the it's the Is it
the left hand that you place your fingers on for
the violin.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, it is. But I I did see a massage therapist,
and you know, I was telling her the background and
then she has so what do you do for profession.
I mentioned violin teach and she goes, oh, well that's why,
and I'm like, well, actually, I took a long maternity
leave after my baby came, and then I haven't like
in getting some of my students back because during the
returning I moved some of my older students on the

(06:59):
audition kids to to other teachers just because they couldn't
be three plus months without a teacher. And the ones
that did come back, I wasn't teaching that much, and
in teaching, I don't have to have to use my
hand too much. I wasn't doing a lot of demonstrating
when it was hurting, So I really because I'd come

(07:20):
down to just I was only teaching three students a week.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
What I was thinking was not that it was as
a result of your current teaching, but perhaps over years,
over youth, over many many years of having played the violin,
So maybe your risks were already primed once the inflammation
began to have a reaction or be torn, because they

(07:44):
had been used so much for what you had done
for so many years.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
I mean, what's interesting is when I was playing, I
was trying to determine does.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
It hurt to play?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Thus when I moved the fingers, it didn't hurt this risk.
It was things that bent the risk or definitely like
the sideways, Like bending the risk up and down or
even sideways was really painful. But actually planning because the
risk stays very stable and doesn't bend. I do do
notice now, like because this hand is down, I have

(08:16):
to prioritize most actions with my right hand a lot.
And when I use this one too much, I feel
it in here too, like this one's starting to go.
So that wouldn't explain years of violin playing for it
to be the right hand, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Because people do you know, this is something that does
occur in the postpartum period, and most of the time,
by a month after weaning, the symptoms resolve. I haven't
heard of a case of somebody having torn their wrists,
you know. It seems like it's more going on than
just inflammation as a result of lactation.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and the hand doctor really wanted to do surgery,
just the snip the sheath, but I had had a
trigger release so before on my thumb on the inside.
It was like ten years ago, and I remember the
recovery on that was awful and I was like, I
can't be eight months to hear and not being able
to care for my baby at all. And I talked
with a friend mine, a doctor, and she said, you know,
while your tendon is painful, it is functional right now.

(09:18):
And then I mentioned I was doing FSM and she goes, actually,
that is the best course for.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
You right now.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
And seeing the ostropath and she said, everything you're doing
is on the right track. So you know, she confirmed
what I thought that the surgery wasn't going to help
because the inflammation is is not just here, it's at
other places in my arm. Here there are locked up tendons.
Because the wrist was down, the other parts of my
arm were compensating. I ended up with adhesions all up
and down the arm. There's several hard locked up spots.

(09:48):
Today at FSM, she was noting that I've had pain
the last couple of days. I mean, of course, it's
been rainy yesterday, so barometric pressure changes. It's both when
the when the weather changes to rain and then rain
changes back to sun.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
I have the pain.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
It's not just when it rains, it's like it's about
to rain. If it stays rainy for a few days,
it'll be status quo, and then once it gets sunny again,
then again the change is what makes the pain. And
they found again the really hard lump in the armpit area,
and they worked on that today and I can move
a hand again. Like earlier this morning, I went to

(10:20):
go wash my hands and just the action of turning
my hands was so painful, and it was making my
wrist click and it like locked up. It almost felt
like my tenons were rolling.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
And is the hard lump that they're feeling. Is that
a swollen lymph that they're feeling in the armpit and
they're needing to clear the lymph out.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
I don't know, that's a big question. And just said
they just had hard lump like they calling them adhesions,
But I don't know. I wonder how much it's connected
to that milk duct Sometimes I wonder how much, like
as my milk ducks are filling up, are they pressing
on things in my body that's preventing flow or blood
flow to the risk to heal it more? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Well. The reason I'm asking that is because inflammation is
the result of increased lymph to an area, So for instance, mastitis,
the reason why we need cold and non steroidal anti
inflammatories is because the milk ducks get narrowed as a

(11:28):
result of extra lymph coming to the breasts. So it's
not the actual milk that is causing the plugged ducks
it is, but the larger areas of milk are because
lymph comes to the breasts, it squeezes the milk ducks
and then that causes a backup of the milk. And

(11:51):
so what we have to do is get the lymph
out of the breasts in order to make space for
the milk to be able to come out. So we
get the lymph out through ice, through anti inflammatories, which
gets the lymph back into the armpits where there are
lymph nodes, and back into the hips where there are

(12:13):
lymph nodes. So the third thing I always add to
that recipe is lymphatic drainage or lymphatic massage, which is
a special type of massage which gets the lymph from
the breast back into the lymph nodes. And then I'm
wondering if the orthopedic was massaging the lymph nodes to

(12:36):
get it back through it flowing through the body to
get it out of the lymphodes themselves.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
That's a good question. I will ask my next appointment
if it is the lymph noodes, and I will look
for someone who does lymphatic drainage massage because that if
that helps, that'd be great.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, and you can do it on yourself as well.
There are if you. YouTube has a great video by
La Lactation of the emphatic drainage massage for the breasts.
But I do think there are other lymphatic drainage massages.
I am most familiar with that one because it's the
one I use with my clients most frequently. But I'm
sure if you google lymphatic massage and didn't focus on

(13:17):
lymphatic breast massage, that you would see other areas of
the body that you could try to remove the limp
the lymph from. Yeah. I find it fascinating that and
so hard. The swelling and tenderness was concurrently with the

(13:37):
swollen breasts. Having the engorged or plug ducts was happening
at the same time that you were getting the engagement
or swelling of the wrists.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, And I do know what's connected because when I
go for my treatments with the Austinpather at FSM therapy.
When they're working on spots, I can feel a little
z in my breast tissue where I feel like a
lump is after she feeds that it doesn't go down,
like there's just a remaining small hard lump. And I
can feel a zing and then I can feel a

(14:11):
release and then let down, and then I can feel
my nursing pad getting wetter, and I'm like, huh, I
think they just cleared a a blocked or inflamed something there.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
I think this is a treatment. It's like low level
electrical currents. Is that what it is?

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Like? I feel little tight spots where they hook up
the little sticky pads on me.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, I feel like this is a treatment that some
providers use to break up recurrent mastitis. But I'm not
sure if it is the same treatment or not. Is
it delivered almost through like an ultra sound.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
They're like these little sticky pads that go on my wrists.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I've seen that and is painful
while it's happening, or it.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Feels sometimes I don't feel at all, And sometimes I
just feel like these little like buzz like zap zap, zap.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
And so you've mentioned flare ups. How regularly is your baseline?
Has your baseline been painful or is there a baseline
that is actually back to normal and then only during
the flare ups it's bad.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, baseline is now back to normal, except for yesterday
and this morning with the where the fluctuation baseline was
pay little five. But baseline now is no pain unless
I'm doing something that twists. It twists my wrists or
move my wrist in a weird way like some things
are unex some things I know I cannot do. Certain

(15:47):
things I cannot lift or they're going to turn my hand,
like I know, opening door knobs are iffy for me
right now. I did not know that closing my car
door by just like at my fingers and just pushing
it closed, that one I did not realize would pull
on that tendon, and that one hurt a lot. I
didn't realize things like just the other day, I didn't
even think about it, but I just tucked my hair

(16:07):
behind my ear on my left side, and I did
not expect that to be a ridiculously shooting pain, like
crazy pain, because I didn't realize that the wrist was
kind of going to go back like sideways like this.
As it was getting better. In the middle of the night,
once I actually picked up a pillow and moved it,

(16:27):
and I was like, hey, I just picked up that
pillow without pain, because like just holding the weight of
a pillow in the hand and the amount of weight
that it would drag down or pull on that tendon,
and I was like, hey, that was I could do that. Like,
as it was getting better, there was things that I
could do when I wasn't thinking about it that I'm like, hey,
that's great. And then I'm at the point now where

(16:48):
I can do most things, accept some things that I'm
not thinking about and I'm like, WHOA, Okay, I did
not realize I cannot do that. But you know, I'm
also at a place where my arm doesn't feel like
it's on fire all the time, which it was like
that for months, so I know I'm on the healing
end of it. And especially when I take the little
quiz at the beginning of my appointments every few check ins,

(17:10):
like it's like a score. Can you lift a bag
of groceries? Can you Does it prevent you from doing
your normal datas? Is it? You know? Like answering all
those questions, my score is improving a little each time.
And then I also went, I've also been doing occupational therapy,
so the goal with that was to learn how to
function like this since it looks like this is kind
of a long termish long short term thing in my life.

(17:33):
And she gave me a few tools, like these little
grippers so I can open jars by myself, and she
was doing sorts of measure tests like the squeeze and
the grip test, and then the speed of moving little
pegs and all sorts of little things. And as I
was getting measured my progress, I was improving a little bit.

(17:54):
Each time there was measurable improvement, so I know I'm
getting better.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
And how have they talked about the association with breastfeeding
at all any of your providers or has it seemed
to them like it's just unknown on set?

Speaker 1 (18:11):
So some of them, I mentioned that prolactin is a
pro inflammatory, but they have no case. I'm like, if
you can show me one case of where somebody has
what I have and it's because of breastfeeding, Like some
of them have encouraged me to stop breastfeeding. But my
goal is to breastfeed the natural term, and my baby
is allergic to dairy, so and I've already tried almond milk,

(18:33):
cashiw milk, coconut milk, pea protein milk, pretty much all
of them we've tried giving her just to see, and
I know they don't have the full nutrition that she needs.
But yeah, like, because my goal is to feed to
natural term, it is the easiest way for me to
comfort my baby. It's just I mean, if I don't

(18:54):
feed her at night, she will then just wake up
fully and we'll never go back to sleep. But if
I feed her on first stir, then she goes right
back down and whenever she's crying or sad or hits
her head or you know, falls or wants a toy
that someone else took, Like, just feeding her is sort
of like a it fixes everything. It's it's easy.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah. I think when providers kind of nonchalantly tell a
breastfeeding mom that she should stop breastfeeding in order to
solve some other difficulty, they aren't recognizing how much of
overall parenting breastfeeding can contribute to. Breastfeeding is about way

(19:41):
more than providing nutrition to your baby. It is how
you comfort them and how you bond with them, and
it's not the only way you can. But if a person.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, like I don't want to cause anxiety in my child.
I know that she comes to nursing whenever she sees
a strange face. If she meets a new person, she's
immediately turning right around and signing milk and running towards me.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah. And of course there are people who do decide
to wean for one reason or another, and they do
find other ways to nurture their babies. But when people
are bringing weaning up as the suggested treatment for any difficulty,

(20:42):
whether it be a physical difficulty or a mental health difficulty,
it needs to be brought up as an option, and
the pros and cons need to be measured in a
thoughtful way and not just a blase statement that weaning
is going to solve their problems.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah. I remember, like because it because I am still
feeding and it is an easy thing for me. I
remember I was hanging out with a mom friend. We
had a playdate and her child fell and he was crying,
and in my mind, I was like, oh my gosh,
what's she going to do? She dried up months ago?
How is she going to comfort him? And my brain
was like, ah, I knew what I would have done
in that moe with my child. And then you know,
she picked up her child and just gave him kisses

(21:22):
and then he was okay, And I was like, Oh,
that's what the mom does, right.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Like moms all over the world are nurturing their babies
and toddlers regardless of how they feed. But that doesn't
mean that the person who wants to nurture their baby
through breastfeeding should have to stop to resolve, you know,
any issue that might come up, whether it's a surgery
or in chronic illness or yeah, and so a medication.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I was being led to think that breastfeeding was the problem,
but then my last appointment a couple of weeks ago,
I so all my pains so far has been on
the left side. My left side has sorts of all
sorts of problems that the left side is the thumb
that I had the trigger Loudey's hand surgery ten years ago.
It's also the side that I have a heel spur

(22:12):
on my left foot, and it's also the side where
FHL Tenonit is in my ball of foot near my toes.
So this breast was always having clogs, hard spots that
weren't clearing and getting too soft again after a feed,
whereas the right side was just behaving normally. And then

(22:33):
one day my right side was having those clogs and
the hard spots and tissue that felt rubbery and no
longer just like a normal breast. And I was like,
oh man. And I went to my ostiopad appointment and
he's like, you know, you have a lot of tightness
and stuckness in your right rib cage and here and
here and here, And I was like, oh my gosh,

(22:55):
because that side has been presenting problems like the left
side has been all this time. And so I'm now
starting to think that continued breastfeeding it gives me the
measure of how my health is doing. It's sort of
like the canary that's telling me what's wrong. Because I'm
still feeding my baby multiple times a day, I get

(23:15):
that feedback of it's full, it's empty, this is what
empty should feel like, whereas on this side it's full.
I don't know, did she get any out of here?
It still feels like a rubber ball, like what's going on?
And when I pump too, like the good side is
getting a lot, and the bad side is getting half

(23:37):
or less than half, like maybe a third of what
the good side is getting. And I do switch sides.
But when I'm doing better and I have low wrist
pain and less flare ups, no clicking in the tendon,
and she's feeding, and this one doesn't end up completely rubbery,
but only a couple of hard spots here, And then
I'm getting very close to equal when I pump, or

(23:59):
some times exactly equal, because I am still pumping once
a week I go into work. I go into the
office one day a week, so I pumped when I'm there.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, it is really common for one side to produce
a lot more than the other. And I think there's
some studies that say, I'm like eighty percent of breastfeeding women,
one side produces more than the other.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh. Interesting, my whole experience I have, they have produced
out equal except when this one has problems. This one
only produces less when it has problems, and when it's
not rubbery, then it's equal output is the other.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, and were you ever sized for falanges?

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yes, one nipple is a little bit smaller than the other,
but you're using the sizes you got, the flanges you
got sized for when you pump.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah. And do you notice that she prefers to nurse
on one side over another?

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Now, no, but in the beginning, we did wonder that
if she had a side preference, and that's why we
did bring her to the chiropractor and the osteopath to
figure out any and what do they call it, torto.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Carlus tortocollis, Yeah, to see if she and did she
was she diagnosed with tortocollis or just kind of worked
on that tension and the neck and shoulders.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Just worked on the tension. I don't think she was
diagnosed with it. They're like, I mean, maybe she feels
a little bit tighter on the side, like, but it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, And so tell me, uh, the time of the
onset of the carpal tunnel in relation to the age
of your baby and then when it started to finally
feel a little bit better.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Carpal tunnel the first time around with both of the
both hands and wrists, it was when she was two
and a half months old up till she was about
five to five and a half months old. And then
the recurring only on the left side wrist was when
she was a little over eight months old, and was.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
There ever, do they think it pore from just from use,
almost like a what are those called, like a hairline
fracture and a bone or do they think there was
a specific time when it tore and you just aren't
able to identify it.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
The thing it's just overuse, be because with inflammation, they said,
an inflamed tendon would just as it swells, then that
could create the tear. At the time when the inflamation
was really bad, my husband was remarking, Hey, it looks
like your wrist is pregnant. Like there was an actual
bump out from my wrist. I mean, the whole wrist

(26:36):
itself was swollen, but then just right at that decory
Vince tena Nini spot, it looked like an actual bump.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Wow, that is a lot. So when you aren't able
to move your wrists, that impacts so much of how
you interact with your baby. And I know you said
you went to pet to get some extra tools, but
and that you know snaps were hard, but I'm thinking
about all the times you needed to hold your baby

(27:05):
or get your baby in and out of the car, seat,
or pick baby up from a nap, or put baby
down during the nap, or even holding baby during breastfeeding.
So tell me about some of the accommodations you had
to make in order to be able to even care
for your baby.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Some of the accommodations I had to make. It was
definitely hard. I couldn't be I couldn't care for my
baby by myself alone. I had to always be around someone.
My husband tried to switch his work to work from
home as much as he could, he did have to
go into the office, so we hired babysitters to come
and help me. It's just tough because that's very expensive

(27:41):
to have someone around for the whole day getting my
baby down to nap. I have eventually figured out that
I can do the sideline. If I just hop onto
the floor bed with her, then I can just open
up let her feet and then when she's done, she
rolls off, and if she's a sleep asleep, I can
sneak away. And if she needs the car to stay asleep,
I stay picking her up getting her into the car seat.

(28:05):
I needed someone to help me getting her out of
the car seat. I need someone to help me. I
couldn't pick her up. She's now in a place where
she can climb, like I'll tell her, hey, climb up.
It was hard for her to accept in the beginning
that Mommy can't pick you up. I would get down
on the floor and offer her a hug, and she
would very like crying, trying to climb up on my
leg and then try to climb on my body and

(28:28):
she would just was It was just really really hard
for her. I did have the helpers that I had.
I would put on the carrier. They would help me
put the carrier. It was like a seated carrier, the
hip seat kind of carrier, and they would put her
on that seat and then help me get my arms
in and then buckle it for me, just so that
she could feel like she was being held. So that

(28:48):
helped a lot. And she was doing a lot of
contact naps that way while she would fall asleep on
me that way, because it was hard for her to
fall asleep when someone else was in the house, like
another person around.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
And my husband was.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Taking on a lot of the cooking and cleaning. We
were also ordering meals to be delivered ready made, like
a feast and feddle, which I think you have used
as well. And cleaning, we just we did what we could.
Anything else that wasn't crucial to this sort of daily survival,
we just let it go. We did a full laundry,

(29:23):
we just lived out of the clean laundry basket, and yeah,
I barely full laundered into two sorts of things. And
like when it got too expensive to hire a babysitter
to be with me all the time, I started networking
with more mom friends and just letting them know, like
my husband goes into work, can we come hang out
with you for the day. And a lot of them

(29:44):
were just happy to have the company, and the kids
liked playing together, so that worked out really well. And
this whole experience has made me realize, you know, we
really need to live in community. Doing this motherhood thing
alone and thinking that we could just be alone in
our homes and retaining our babies, you know, and then
toddlers by ourselves while trying to get the cooking and

(30:05):
cleaning done. Like I will say, from when she was
five months old up to eight months old, when my
wrists were good, I was doing all that stuff and
I was feeling on top of the world. I was like,
look at me caring for my baby by myself. I
can hold her while I'm cooking and cleaning and preparing
food and doing dishes and laundry and sweeping and vacuuming.

(30:26):
And I was like, I felt like super mom, like
I could do it all. And then the wrist went
and I'm like, oh, man, I can't do anything by myself.
I'm having trouble dressing myself, putting on socks. I cannot
clip my own nails. My husband was brushing my hair
and washing my hair, you know, like, but the thing is,

(30:49):
your babies are paying attention. Like now she helps me
put on well, she tries to help me put on
my socks, but she's pretty good at least putting my
slipper on my foot. It's kind of cute. She always
comes over and tries to put my slipper under feet.
You know, she's noticing and she's helping. I ask her
if she can carry things for me. She's a very strong,
tiny child, and it's amazing what.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
She can carry.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Even my husband's like, how did she pick that up?
That is like it weighs as much as her I'm like, well,
I don't know. She's very determines a little kid too,
because she started by moving things that she wanted to
pick up and move places. And now I'm like, she's
very strong. We see if she can carry this for me.
And she loves helping.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, and kids they like doing real help. You know.
They know the difference between getting a pretend task to
keep them busy and actually having a real task that
helps contribute to the family. And you know, I think
when somebody is in a situation in which they need

(31:50):
the help, you're more likely to help build that in
your kids because you don't have as much of a choice.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I will say too, like I've had to defer
tap into other skills because like in the days, when
I struggle with various things, I present to my husband,
what would you have done in this scenario And he's like, well,
I just would have picked her up and moved her.
And I'm like, yeah, I can't do And when I
was trying to manage it alone during the day, without
a sitter and without going somewhere for help, and I

(32:19):
was like, yeah, I can't do that. I rely on
her cooperating and being willing to do the thing I'm
asking her to do. And when she wants to be
a toddler and be like, Nope, I'm going to do
this other thing. I am just trapped. I am stuck.
She wants to start climbing the outside banister of the
stairs because we already have the gate at the actual stairs.

(32:41):
I cannot just get her down. I you know, all
sorts of things that she's trying to get herself into.
I cannot just scoop her up and be like no,
or grab her hand because she will pull hard, or
she'll do that thing where if I try to grab
her hand, then she'll just decide to flop down on
the ground and be like no, like o gate, that's
going to hurt my rest a whole ton. I'm not

(33:01):
going to do that. And so I had to really
figure out how to convince my child to want to cooperate.
And the hardest phase was the diaper changes are like
wrestling an alligator. I could do it if it was
just a p diaper, but when it was a poop
diaper and if it was very messy, it was hard
that if she wanted to kick into it and then kick,

(33:23):
roll and run because I couldn't get her onto the
changing table, I had to bring the changing pad down
to the floor and convince her to come and lay
on it because I couldn't pick her up and put
her on it. And if she decided to kick into
it and then roll and run, I'm just like, oh great.
So that's when I realized I need help. Like at

(33:43):
first it was I need help in case she has
a poop, because that I cannot do with this alligator
fighting you down. Now she's cooperating, I can do any
diaper change if I'm left alone. When we were going
to different momfriend's houses for the day, you know, she'd
be so many days out of the house and then

(34:06):
just exhausted, and she was just having a hard time
adjusting to that. So that I started finding mother's helper
like kids after school, so that I would be at
a friend's house until I could get a mother's helper
at home, and then that way my baby would have
some time to just be at home with her toys
and a little more relaxed atmosphere without other kids. So,

(34:31):
and it was hard for her to nap in other
people's places. She would often fall like I do the carrier,
she would fall asleep on that on me, and then
I would just lay back on the couch somewhere. But
of course that was hard on my back, and so
I was trying. You know, we brought like a little
her pack and play mattress and put her on the
floor in their playroom. When their kid goes down for
a nap. I would try to do a side laying
feed and lay with her there. But of course if

(34:52):
I had to go to the bathroom, I tried to
escape to go to the bathroom. Then she fusses and
turns and looks for me and I'm not there and crying.
We've been through.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
That sounds so hard and just being you know, it's
it's one thing if you're if you're having a hard
time with your baby and you're just by yourself, and
it's another when you're always under the watchful. I have
somebody else, even if they're not judging you, you know,
you feel a little more sad.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
And then sometimes yeah, and then I like I hear her,
I hear her crying, Do I come help, do I
come rescue her? She can be able to get her
back down by herself, like and and I was really
grateful for like a lot of friends, like I don't
want to ask for help with every little thing, like
can you open this container for me? Can you open
this baby gate for me? Can you open this door
for me? Can you lift that bag for me? Can
you get her into the high high chair for me?

(35:42):
Like it's a lot, it's it's I mean, obviously they
know about getting her in a high chair for me, sure,
But like some of them are just really great. They
know that I have the risk problem and they're really like, oh,
do you need help opening that container? And sometimes I
can open the container by myself with great effort, and uh,
you know, but I opened the container by myself. Now
that maybe means that I can't undress myself at night

(36:05):
and I get myself into my PJS because I've used
up what little I have in that day. So like
the ones who are asking me all the time in
what they are afraid is an annoying way. And I'm like,
I really appreciate you asking because I'm afraid to be
annoying you to ask for all these little things that

(36:27):
I need sort of constantly.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
I know that would be hard. And have you encountered
people who see you and think this person is completely
able bodied? Why does she need so much help? Or
are most people pretty understanding the.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Friends that know because I don't present is disabled. And
I was wearing a risk brace for a long time,
and like everywhere I went at the library, lapse, that's
everyone knew I couldn't do anything, so people would be
asking like, oh yeah, and did you need help? Then
I stopped wearing the risk bas because the risk brace
was actually hurting it more the compression, and I needed
the mobility because the risk brace was creating the immobility
which caused the adhesions. And so then like just one problem,

(37:10):
solving that problem leads to more problems. So I had
stopped wearing the risk braces and it was it was
getting better. I needed the mobility, you know, I had
to work within the range that I had, and then
I could push the range a little bit more. Through
going to OT, I was finding how much more I
could push it. When I stopped wearing the risk brace.
Everyone's like, oh, you risk at all better? I'm like not, actually,

(37:31):
I just I've stopped wearing the risk braces because it's
actually hurting more to wear them. And the ones I
see every week because we have a played It with
a regular set played It with them now they know
I still need help. They check in with me, how
is you're having a good week, good day, bad day,
you know, bad week, And I let them know how
it's feeling that day, my progress that week, what I

(37:54):
could do, what I found that I still can't do.
And yeah, when I'm just out, nobody realizes I can't
just pick up my baby. Like I was at the
Discovery Museum with my child and there was, oh, you know,
a playgroup too, like some kid is going to kreen
at her with the tricycle and I can't bend it,
but I could hold my hand out and they could

(38:16):
run into my hand, straight on towards my arm and
with no problem. And if I had to stop, you know,
someone running into my baby, like she was just starting
to walk, like she was taking her first steps there
and I was holding her hand with my good hand
and someone was coming at her, and I was like, well,
I have to prevent her from getting run over. And

(38:39):
I did not know how that would go, but there
wasn't really a choice. And then now I'm just a
little now that she can walk on her own, now
I just use my body to block when I see
someone getting a little close with the tricycle. But then
when she was just starting to take some steps and
she was holding onto my hand and trying to go,
I was like, I got the l good handholding her
in the one bad hand. Here we go, let's see
what happens.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah. Yeah, So you said she's still breastfeeding a few
times a day, yep. And is it on demand or
do you try to do you kind of keep it
to set times now that she's a little older. I
mean it's on demand.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
She pretty much upon waking will do a feed, and
then after breakfast, after like an hour or so after breakfast,
she'll do a feed. And then it's the afternoon that
gets the most variable because that is when I go
to work. I go into the office for a half
day one day a week. So my husband says, when
I'm gone, she doesn't always need milk, which is good.
Is going to overproducing anymore. So I don't always get

(39:38):
the ability to do pump something extra to leave them
with before I go, because she wants to do that
feed before I go, So then I have nothing more
to pump after she feeds. But that's fine because we
have less pump and bottle parts to wash. But then
if she does need milk, well on the way, my
husband does have to go into the freezer bag, which
is fine because the one I pump at work is
the freezer bagtory, you know, for the next next week.

(40:00):
But yeah, the afternoon gets the most variable. When she'll
feed again in the afternoon again, when she's stressed too,
she'll she'll want to nurse, like if someone is taking
toys from her and she just needs to come to mama.
Sometimes she'll nurse several times in an afternoon, and sometimes

(40:21):
she won't for a long time until close to dinner.
We have tried, like my husband said, well, when she
wants milk, just distract her with food or water, and
we've done that. Sometimes that works, but now she's hit
a spot where if she wants milk, we ask her
she wants food, and we try to give her food,
she will just scream and kick and flail in her
high chair until I give her milk first, and then

(40:43):
she will eat her food. So we've tried filling her
up with food first, and it sort of worked in
the one year mark, but now she's just like, no,
when I want milk, I want milk now, and then
once I've had my fill of milk.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I will eat the food.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
And we think that the milk is filling her up,
and she will eat much food, right, But it's completely variable,
Like sometimes she will have a bunch of milk and
a bunch of food. Sometimes she'll have a bunch of
milk and very little food, and we're like, oh, she
filled up on milk. But then sometimes she'll have no
milk and just a little teeny tiny bit of food.
Sometimes she'll have no milk and a whole ton of food,

(41:20):
like three serving, three adult servings worth, and we're like.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Whoa, Yeah, toddler's eating is very variable. And I think
we were talking about this previously that often if a
baby who breastfeeds beyond a year is not eating as
many solids as what a provider might like, they give
advice to have them wean, but it does not Weaning

(41:46):
does not make babies eat more. And breast milk changes
composition to meet the needs of a toddler, and so
it's highly caloric. It has more fat in it and
that helps with the developing brain. And sometimes if babies
who are still breastfeeding frequently are told to wean, they

(42:10):
drop off their curve because now they're still eating the
same amount of solids, but they're getting way less breast milk.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, and there are days that my baby will, my
toddler will have a fixation on one food and my
husbands like she will only eat one food at a time,
or some days only Like if she has a whole
day of only eating strawberries, I know it's okay because
she's still getting breast milk, so she's getting that other nutrition.
And there are other days that she'll have everything on

(42:39):
her plate and more, and like we just keep giving
her everything, and like when it's leftovers, I.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Was just gonna say, I just interviewed a pediatric dietitian,
who registered dietitian who focuses on pediatrics, and she said
exactly that that what we need to be thinking about
in terms of food groups and having very nutrition with
our toddlers and even our children, is how are they

(43:08):
doing in a week or two time with variety and
different food groups, not every single meal of every single day,
because as adults, you know, I might feel like a
salad one day and it might not have any protein
in it, but at breakfast I had eggs, and so
throughout the day, you're getting a variety of nutritious foods,

(43:31):
but it doesn't have to be all the food groups
at every meal. And I think sometimes when we have children,
we feel so responsible for making sure that they get
nutritious foods that we lose sight of it being a
bigger picture situation and not a not a micro situation

(43:51):
of needing to micromanage every meal or snack.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, and I can't force or need any think she
doesn't want to eat, she'll close her exactly no, right like,
And of course, yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Kids are in charge of what goes in their bodies
and what goes out. We can't force potty training and
we can't force eating. It's like the two things that
they maintain complete control over, right And if we can
kind of recognize that and say, up, we don't have
control over this, we can help and guide and offer
a lot of us would be a lot less stressed out.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
I Yeah, Like I try to encourage to eat some food.
I'm like, oh, can you finish some of this? And
then and I'll be like, oh, if you don't finish it,
Mommy's gonna eat your food. And then she just grabs
it and shoves it in my mouth and like great here,
like that's strategy.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Backfire, yeah, backfired. Yeah. So as we close out here,
are there any lessons you've learned about breastfeeding or about
your situation that you think it's important to highlight beyond
just the facts of the situation.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
I would say, if you're not getting the support that
you need from a lactation consultant that the hospital assigns you,
to reach out to an IBCLC because the information that
they have is current, Like to just know that warmth
and compression are the old protocol and it's really ice
and anti inflammatories, and you know the compression can cause

(45:23):
more inflammation in that area. Just yeah, reach if it
costs a lot more because your your insurance covers the
one through the hospital, it is worth it. It's you
just learn so much more and the education that they
can provide you with and the support. It definitely felt

(45:45):
more supported when I was working with the IBCLC. And
stick to like what you decide and what you want
for your family. Don't let anyone tell you that this
is not good, this is not right, because they don't
know either. We're all always learning. And I say this,
like when my kid is grown and if when she

(46:06):
decides to have a child at the time, there will
be more research. And I'm not going to be like, well,
back when you were a kid, we did this. I'm
just like, just support whatever it is they're going to do.
And because they will have done the research and or
they will have decided on their parenting preferences or style,
and your only job is to support. Don't be the

(46:27):
one that's like, well, back in my day, we did this,
or oh this is better because and just support the parent,
don't criticize, Just support whatever their goals are and be there.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
And yeah, it's important for both friends and family to
be supportive and people who we have hired to help
us because as experts as an IBCLC, A, I don't
know everything about everything, and b I might have some
bigger picture knowledge that I can present to you to

(47:02):
help somebody understand a cause of their situation or possible
solutions to their situation, but in the end, it is
not me who is living that life. And so anything
I suggest to a client has to be something that
they can work into their life or that they feel
is meeting their own goals. And it's not my job

(47:24):
to put my goals onto a client. It's my job
to say, this is what I'm seeing, this is what
might be impacting you negatively, these are things you might
be able to do to improve your situation, and then
to say, what do you think about this? Is it doable?
It doesn't seem to be resonating with you, because the

(47:45):
fact of the matter is we can talk talk, talk,
and it might not be the thing that the person
is really wanting to do. And so it has to
be a collaborative relationship. Whether it's somebody you've hired, an
expert you've hired, or a friend. We have to really
make sure that the advice we're giving is a wanted

(48:06):
and be actually going to be helpful given the unique
circumstances of the person we're talking with. That is so important. Well,
I thank you so much for sharing this story. It
is such a difficult one. You know, you do. You
can read cases of postpartum carpal tunnel in studies, but

(48:29):
the studies are always really small. You know, thirty women here,
are twenty seven women here, thirty four women here, and
so although this is something that happens, it's really like,
have you met anyone else who has dealt with this
at all. In all of the baby play groups you've
been in and various social gatherings.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
A couple of them had the mommy risks for like
a couple of weeks up to a couple months at
a time. One coworker has had it for like two years,
but she ended up having the underlying rheumatoid arthritis, and
she was the one who told me to reach out
and try to get a rheumatologist, and so that's how
I pushed for that. But it turns out that's not

(49:10):
the shue with my body. And a lot of the
providers when I told them what was happening, they asked
if I had any of these carpal tunnel or tendonninis
in pregnancy, because they said it's very common to see
it in pregnancy, and like, no, never, And it wasn't
immediately postparted. It was like two and a half months
when she was two and a half months old.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah, some of the studies I see say the meantime
of developing it is three and a half weeks, lasting
about six and a half months, and they start to
resolve about fourteen days after weaning. So I would be interested,
but it takes up to a month for it to
really go away, So I'd be interested to see once

(49:49):
you do, wean if it does resolve or if it's
not related to the lactation at all and the timing
has just.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Been yeah, Because then I wonder what about this was
three months when I was perfectly fine, between when it
was both risked and really bad and then the one
risk going and it fit, you know, like, why is
one fine and one bad right now?

Speaker 2 (50:13):
But the fact did your oversupply, Uh, when did your.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Oversupply start to resolve? Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Did that correspond with that timing? When it when you
felt better? It's possible. Let me think about this.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
So the oversupply, it took me two weeks to get
into oversupply, and I remember saying to myself, it's taking
like two months to correct the oversupply. So no, I
think my oversupply was correction was let's say two weeks
plus two months, I guess right around that time. I
guess the timing worked out that as my risks were bad,
I wasn't pumping as much anymore.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Because that would have hurt.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
To be I remember there was a time when I
was still pumping a little bit, but I was really
trying to taper off the pumping, like I would only
pump as much as it was still raining out. As
soon as it was like pump drop, pump drop, I
just turned off the pump. But when it because like
my oversupply was so forceful, when I would move remove
the nursing pad, it would be like geyser boob or

(51:16):
niagara falls nipples. Like I would go to lean down
to feed grab my baby to feed her, and it
would just be raining out into her mouth and she'd
be laying in the bass and that like with her
mouth open and just dropping right into her mouth, or
like I'd be trying to latch her and it's just
spraying in her face all over, and her entire head
is slippery and neck and body is all slippering and

(51:37):
trying to get her on. And I would pump just
to I wasn't pumping to empty. I was just pumping
until it stopped, like waterfall.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Right, yeah, spraying. Yeah. So then tell me when did
you notice the oversupply and when did the inflammation of
the rest start.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
I might have to ask my husband to see if
he remembers, because we do you know, like when I
was pumping so much extra, like one to three bags
into the freezer and three to five bottles out and
then the fridge per day extra beyond when I was
feeding her. Then it came down to try to keep
it under five bottles in the fridge just three, and

(52:18):
try to keep it one to two freezer bags in
a day. And then I remember I gave away all
my January bags in last year.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
This year, the first of her first January last year. Okay,
and when did the wind did the wrist pain start
mid January?

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So like in February and March, I gave away all
my January bags because like I was trying to reuse
them up within within six months. I know, free the
deep freezer can go to a year, but and we
did have a separate storage freezer downstairs. But I do
remember as soon as I gave away those bags, we
started going in to the freezer bags. And then my

(53:01):
husband was like, oh, you know, just as you gave
away a bunch, now we're actually going into the freezer
and using the bags. Instead of adding like tons per day,
we're now taking so.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Your milk supply started to reduce around the same time
that the pain began. Yeah, yeah, I just wonder if
there's a connection inflammation, you know, is a result of limp,
and limph get stimulated more with breastfeeding. It's very, very,
very interesting, right.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
But I wasn't an oversupply the whole time, and I
would imagine if I was an over supply the whole
time and still pumping a bunch more, that I would
have more of it. But then again I did. My
clog ducts were coming down, but I think it was
because I was taking the ibuprofen. The anti inflammatory is
so much, and I was pushing past the pain with
the wrists I didn't know I had because I was
already taking anti inflammatories that the wrist probably got so

(54:00):
much worse beyond what I was feeling. And then by
the time I felt it, it was like.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Oh, I just wonder if somebody had helped you with
the oversupply earlier on, would that risk pain have developed?
Bless you. Yeah, it's an interesting question, and we can't
go back and relive it and replay it, but yeah,

(54:28):
I think that's I wonder. I would love to talk
to you again after weaning to see how everything resolves
and to see if that is the case for you,
given that there are so few studies about this situation.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, I mean definitely we can't know, like in hindsight,
but other people's experiences, because it's not like the courses
taught me. I had a very different experience. I was like,
you didn't know and hear from other people, how would
we know? I remember in pregnancy everyone's like, oh, don't
listen to other people's worth stories, it'll just traumatize you.

(55:02):
I'm like, actually, I would like to hear everybody's the
good the bad, because I rather know what could happen.
And they're like, no, it's just going to scare you,
and I'm like, yeah, but I want to hear what
could happen and what happened on the other end, clearly
they're alive and okay, So.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, and it's not People can present their birth story,
even if it's traumatic in a way that traumatizes other people.
You can also prevent that same birst story in a
way that says, this was my experience. In hindsight, this
is what I have learned about what contributed to that experience,
And it doesn't mean that this is going to be

(55:40):
your experience, would you like to hear it? And there's
a way to do that without bombarding people with horror
stories and also having openness about our situation so that
when somebody is experiencing something they didn't expect, they don't
feel alone. And it's the same with breastfeeding.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah, I remember with so after I had my baby,
I was saying to a lot of my friends who
have kids, I was like, why didn't you warn me?
And they're like, oh, we told you about it. And
then I was telling that to some of my other
friends who are, you know, family planning and want to
have kids, and I've been telling about my experience and
I mentioned to them, like, you know, no one told
me this stuff. I've been asking my friends why didn't

(56:20):
you tell Why didn't you warn me? And they said
to me, don't worry, Sharon. We don't feel this that
way about you. We feel that you are adequately preparing us.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
That's so great. Well, thank you so much for taking
so much time to share your story with me today.
I think this is an important one to get out there,
and I really really hope that the pain resolves soon
and that you're not dealing with it for much longer,
or that you at least have more times of pain

(56:53):
free times than you do A flare ups.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Yeah I'm getting there, so there's a lot of hope
at the end of the tunnel.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Great. Thanks, thanks so much, thank you.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Bye,

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