Tag: Parenthood

Because I’m a mom now

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Another F

I had to give myself another F for Mommy for Saturday. The story goes a little something like this…

D’s torso and head were covered with a red, slightly raised rash Saturday morning, so I called her doctor’s after hours care line. Fortunately her doctor was at their clinic taking patients that morning, so we got her last appointment and headed in. Turns out D’s allergic to the antibiotic that was prescribed for her double ear infection last week. Awesome. Her doctor said it was either that or roseola (very similar symptoms – spiking fever followed by a rash in the shape of rose petals once the fever subsides, and apparently D’s just the right age for it), except roseola doesn’t itch. And as R put it, D was itching like a motherfucker. I’ve never seen her rub and scratch at her head like she did all day and night Saturday. Ok, allergic reaction it is, says the doc. And her ears of course weren’t better, so the doctor prescribed a different antibiotic for those and recommended children’s Benadryl to help get rid of the itch. Okey dokey, back to Walmart we went to get the medicine. My favorite place on Earth. (please sense the dripping sarcasm)

Why did we have to put her right away on another antibiotic instead of letting the allergy-causing one get fully out of her system before trying something new, you may ask? Well you see, we’re heading on vacation in less than 2 weeks’ time for a week, wherein we will have no cell phone or internet service, so if we need D to be on medicine to clear all this shit up we have to get her on it with time to spare to see the doctor again before we leave to make sure all the nastiness is finally gone. Whew.

They gave her the first dose of Benadryl at the doctor’s office to help her stop scratching, and by the time we got home from Walmart D was exhausted. So I gave her a bottle (she didn’t want any lunch) and put her down for a nap pretty much right away. R left for the afternoon to go to a WI craft beer festival, so it was just me and D. Little did I know what was in store for us. I thought great, she’s down for a nice long nap, I’ll sit out in the sun for a little bit to catch some rays, then get the house cleaned before R gets home. No sweat. HA! Damn, SM, why do you keep thinking your luck is so good? Let’s just say things didn’t go exactly as I had planned or hoped.

D napped for maybe half an hour the entire rest of the day. And that was from about 5 combined attempts, minimum, before R even got home. I knew from my days on maternity leave that accomplishing stuff around the house is a carefully choreographed art involving a combination of stealth and acute time management during the precious minutes of baby’s slumber. An art, I may add, that I mastered. I could get every chore and all the laundry done while D napped, no problem. So I thought yesterday was going to be a breeze. However, the doctor and pharmacist only mentioned that Benadryl may make D drowsy, not turn her into a demon spawn. I have never seen her so upset and miserable. This rash itched her so badly she clawed at her head constantly, and every time I tried to put her down it was like her crib was a bed of pins and broken glass. So she didn’t want to sleep, she didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to take her medicine, she didn’t want to be put down, and then she’d decide she didn’t want to be held either. Well what the hell?? I couldn’t win – I couldn’t make her stop hurting, I couldn’t make her happy, I couldn’t get anything done, I just felt like a total failure. By the end of the afternoon I had reached my breaking point. I couldn’t take it any longer. She kept screaming harder and harder and nothing I did was working or seemed to be right, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I put her in her crib and walked away. If I couldn’t just have 5 minutes to get 1 thing done, I was afraid I was going to scream at the top of my lungs, and then what would the neighbors think?

I felt horrible. I was so mad, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I wasn’t mad at her, I was mad at it, the sickness that was torturing her. I was so frustrated that I could neither placate her nor get anything accomplished, and it just took me to my boiling point. Of course R came home not 5 minutes after I’d left her crying in her crib, and when I said, “Welcome to hell,” he said, “Oh please, come on.” In case you were wondering, that was not the correct response. Yeah, you’ve been drinking beer out in the beautiful weather for 6 hours while I’ve been battling an inconsolable infant who’s sicker than she’s ever been. Come on? I’ll come on you with a swift kick to the nuts if you’re serious.

And so the evening continued. D alternating screaming with brief interludes of play and seeming relief, yet not going to bed, while R and I took turns trying to comfort her. What happened to the drowsiness of the Benadryl? Was that supposed to be a joke, or were they just flat out lying to me? For it seemed that drowsiness was the last side effect it caused for D. Finally at 11:00, hours after her normal bedtime, I was able to get her to sleep after a bottle. Ahh, fingers crossed. Holy hell! 1 hour later and she was back up crying. It was during this round of trying to get her back to sleep that Ryan said we were going to have to take shifts, I told him to just go back to bed, and he told me not to get mad, as I was holding the sleepless, writhing, monster that had possessed our child. “I CAN’T HELP IT!” I shouted. Seriously! I couldn’t. After that day and that night and my feeling completely inadequate, all I could do was get mad. But again, I wasn’t mad at him, I wasn’t mad at her, I was just mad. Because what else could I do? I had no more nice, patient Mommy left. It ran out hours ago. I know that wasn’t the right answer, but it was the only one I had at that point. And then an hour later, she was back in bed. Only to wake up at 3:50, when R had to take her out to the couch again, like we did earlier in the week.

And I had planned on being the one up early with D yesterday so R could sleep in on Father’s Day, then here he was the one dealing with her in the wee hours of the morning. Plus I didn’t wake up until 8, when he stomped into the bedroom to get his cup of water. Shit. Another F. When I saw what time it was I felt terrible, I’d ruined his Father’s Day morning. So I quickly got up, took over the D patrol, and he instantly climbed into bed. I thought maybe just not being around was what he wanted, so I took D to the store to get milk and diapers, since we’d run out of both during the night in her maelstrom of sickness and itch. I ended up driving around with her for a couple hours since she fell asleep and I knew he would be too, then I stopped at McDonald’s for his favorite breakfast items just before they switched over to lunch, to try to do something right.

I hate those days. Those days where all forces combine to create the perfect storm of my parenting failure, and I just can’t take it. I did what I could and it just wasn’t good enough. What else am I supposed to do?

 

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Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy – #2

I guess I should clarify and say that these posts are more things I didn’t know about pregnancy, not things that no one before me has ever known about it. And I’m sure all of them can actually be found in the multitude of books out there somewhere and you may even know about or have experienced them all yourself, but these are mainly the things that struck me as weird or unusual or just something I never expected to happen. So take them all for what they’re worth, if you will.

But moving right along, this one can be called “Smell-A-Vision”.

I had heard that some women get a ridiculously keen sense of smell when they get pregnant, but that’s not exactly what happened to me. It’s more like my smells got all fucked up. There really just is no better way to put it – my favorite scents all of a sudden made my stomach turn, just like that.

In about week my sixth week of pregnancy I came down with a cold that I then couldn’t shake for approximately the next 6-8 weeks. It was awful. I don’t consider it morning sickness because it wasn’t any of those typical symptoms, it was just a stupid winter cold that then morphed into a hacking, sleep-robbing cough. It was miserable. And of course, being newly pregnant, I couldn’t take any medicine that actually worked to get rid of it. The non-drowsy, pregnancy-friendly version of cough medicine? Worthless.

But it was during this time that my nose went haywire. Every single fragrance in the house became my enemy. My favorite perfumes and candles triggered my gag reflex. I’m not kidding, I had to get rid of each and every bottle of lotion, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, etc., and start completely over with the most unscented ones I could find. This made me especially mad because I had just stocked up on all environmentally-friendly products, and I had to junk them all or give them away. And that shit is expensive! Then even the unscented scent started to make me ill. Even if I smelled someone else using one of those products I would get quasi-nauseous.

And just the thought of the smell of certain foods was enough to make me want to puke, too. Right before I got sick (and before anyone besides me and R knew I was pregnant) we had been down at a holiday cocktail party at my mom’s house, and she sent home bags and bags full of leftover food – mini-egg rolls, meatballs, stuffed mushroom caps, the like, and to this day I still have a hard time eating some of those things because of the memory of that illness and how smelling them made me feel then. Super weird, I know.

There was one episode in particular that about made me die – about the same time as that cocktail party, R had gotten a bag full of various types of meat from a butcher that was going out of business in our area and he stuck the whole thing in the refrigerator. So then each time you opened the fridge this vicious combination of meat and leftover party food wafted out, and I swear to you I could be all the way in our living room and almost pass out from that noxious odor. Of course he thought I was crazy – who doesn’t like the smell of all different types of cured meat marinating together in a bag? Barf!

I have now finally gotten pretty much back to normal smell-wise, but it seriously has taken me almost this long. I just recently started wearing perfume again, finding one I used to wear that I can tolerate and actually like. And there are still some of those body products that I can’t use – there’s one type of lotion in particular that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use again, since the smell of it still makes me batty. Even smelling particular scents in my mom’s house that are the same as when we were down there that holiday season takes me back to that time and are not friendly to my head.

Oh man, I need to go take a deep breath of fresh air after reliving my smell-a-vision horrors.

 

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Validation

Both good and bad, I guess.

Last night I went to a Jockey Person2Person clothing party at one of my good friend’s houses, and it was awesome. I was completely unfamiliar with that line of Jockey, but the clothes are fantastic. High quality, beyond comfortable, stylish and flattering for a woman’s body, and washable/dryable without shrinking or pilling – excellent! I ordered a pair of black modal active bootcut pants and I can’t wait until they arrive. I could seriously live in those things if it was socially acceptable to never change your pants. And what could be more fun than sharing a couple bottles of wine with girlfriends while trying on a bunch of new clothes? Yeah that’s right – nothing.

(side note – if you see anything you like in the catalog in that link above, or if you’d be interested in either hosting one of those parties or becoming a rep yourself, let me know. i’ve got the hookup)

So anyway, as we were tossing around shirts, workout tanks, dresses, and other various articles of Jockey clothing, of course the conversation turned to boobs. Why wouldn’t it in a house full of topless women? Most of us there have swum together for years, so we’ve all seen each other in more stages of undress than just bared to our bras. One girl had just had hers beautifully lifted after having her babies, and can I just say they looked spectacular!! I was of course envious of her gorgeous rack, and was lamenting the current deflated state of my own micro-rack and the fact that none of my bras fit properly anymore. Then one of the other girls said, “Thank you! That’s exactly how I felt!” Sweet – I’m not crazy or the only one who thinks her post-baby boobs have turned into little tiny niddlers! (name the movie that has that description of boobs in it and i’ll give you a cookie) The universe hasn’t singled me out with this punishment, it does happen to others! We both said how now we have to have all these different sections of bras in our collection – pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, nursing, then post-nursing. Bleh. I may as well just be wearing a training bra at this point. Again – who’s got suggestions for comfy, properly-fitting bras out there?

On the flip side, here’s where the bad validation came into play. Well not bad bad like I’m now thinking harmful thoughts or anything, but it totally cemented my notion that these things really have shrunk. This past weekend as I was vomiting out everything that’s been tumbling around in my head to R, of course I landed on how I hate the current state of affairs on my chest. I’m like seriously, there wasn’t much there to start with, but now what little I had has even disappeared in recent days. He said oh yeah right, and I’m like no, really, feel. So he did, and you know what he said? “Well, maybe they are a little smaller.” See! See?! I told you. I told him I need a boob job now when we’re done having kids and he just laughed and said don’t be silly, maybe they’ll come back. What?! Why would they just decide to come back once more tiny mouths have sucked the life out of them? I might have to get the number of my friend’s doctor who did her work, see if she also specializes in miniature versions.

I’ve heard so many women say that their boobs just kept getting bigger and bigger with each successive child they had, and I was so hoping that would be the case for me too. Ha! Yeah right, SM, you should’ve known better. That’s not how your luck works.

Boobs – you didn’t think I could talk about them so much, did you?

 

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Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy – #1

There are approximately 7 bajillion books about pregnancy out there, all filled with oodles of facts, figures, and if you’re lucky, photos (oh, the photos!). I got a couple of them while I was pregnant, and actually did find a lot of useful and helpful information. You can easily experience sensory overload though, trying to plow through everything you’re told you just MUST do or have in preparation for that small human that will soon be coming into your life, or everything you MUST NOT do or have so as to make sure said small human’s entry into this world is just absolutely perfect. (fyi, that entry is rarely “perfect”, whatever that means, so just hang loose. if l&d doesn’t go exactly as you had hoped/planned, don’t fret. as long as that baby gets out here safe and sound, that’s what matters most)

But what I was always more interested in during my pregnancy was everything those books weren’t going to tell me. Like all the really weird, gross stuff that you’ll never find in print, yet is fairly common knowledge to almost every woman who has ever given birth. So that’s what I always asked my friends who had children – what do I really need to know about all this?

With all the new babies right now and my increasing thoughts about when we’ll try to give D a sibling, I find myself looking back on those 38 weeks and 6 days last year more and more frequently. I’ve been trying to remember all the weird, gross stuff I experienced that I was totally unaware would happen going into it. Maybe so I’m better prepared next time, maybe to share with anyone else who’s pregnant right now or trying to get pregnant, or maybe just because. No matter the reason, I’ve decided to start this little section of the blog called “Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy” to house all the weird, gross stuff that I encountered.

These tidbits will be in no particular order, neither chronologically through the stages of pregnancy nor of importance. I’ll just share them as I think of them, which = randomly (kind of like everything else i put on here). So if you’re pregnant, trying to get pregnant, have ever been pregnant and can relate, or have no plans to ever get pregnant and just want to see what crazy shit I’m going to come up with now, hopefully I can give you a little insight into what’s really (might probably?) going to happen to your body. If not, then maybe you can get a few laughs out of hearing what happened to me.

Let’s talk about hair. I have long hair, and shed a fair amount when I wash and brush it. I’m constantly sweeping up hair off the bathroom floor and pulling the wads of hair out of the drain after my showers. So I was blown away by the end of my pregnancy when I wouldn’t lose a single hair no matter how many times I brushed or washed it. NOT ONE! This was completely foreign to me, because I’m not kidding when I say thousands of wigs could have been made with the hair I’ve shed during my lifetime. It was awesome. I never had to clean out the drain, I never had to sweep up the floor, I never had to worry if I had stray hairs on my shoulders or back, and I was no longer finding random pieces of hair on the floor around the house. Long, shiny, thick, luxurious hair was the order of the day. And the prenatal vitamins I’d been taking since months before I was even pregnant helped it grow that much faster, too.

Fast forward to about 3 months after I had D, and the party came to a screeching halt. Not only did I go back to shedding, but hair was falling out like there was an evacuation order atop my head. And at a rapid pace! Handfuls upon handfuls would come out in the shower, and the bathroom floor looked like I was standing on a small rug when I got done brushing. And if I used a hair dryer? Oh forget it. The bathroom was covered in a hair sweater. It was disgusting. I hate stray hair, especially hair on the floor, so this annoyed the crap out of me. Plus, I swear I could feel my hair thinning. It was awful! What happened to my lustrous locks? Am I going to be bald soon?? I had heard other women mention that their hair did start to fall out after pregnancy, but I had no idea it was going to be like this! I just figured it’d go back to my normal shedding amount, since I had more hair than most of the people who told me about this. Surely my regular waterfall of loose hairs would equal what they referred to as “hair falling out”. Nope. My hair fell.out. Anywhere, anytime, and all over the place. I hated it. I even had to warn my stylist that the sink was going to be horribly full of hair after she washed it since I’d just had a baby and I apparently needed Rogaine.

Fortunately, there is a light at the end of this hairy tunnel. It does stop. For me it was around the 6 month mark post-delivery. Finally the clumps of hair got smaller and smaller until the shedding was back to a normal, much more manageable level. But I was really worried there for a bit. My pony tail was thinner, and I swore that my hairline had receded. I am happy to report, however, that it all goes back to normal. Too bad the grays that fell out still grew back gray. Ah well, that’s why I pay my stylist. At least now she has a full head of hair to work with again.

 

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Cabbage patch

So this whole milk drying-up procedure has turned out to be much more painful than I expected. Remember how I thought that since my pumping had slowed down so much recently my risk of exploding boobs was pretty much gone? Yeah, I was wrong. Everything I read said that in order to get your milk supply to end you need to stop pumping/nursing entirely, so even my every-other-day pumping was making my body think I still needed to keep producing. I thought I was just teaching my body to produce less and less until finally it would simply get the hint that I no longer needed any milk. Apparently I was mistaken. So this weekend I decided it was time to stop for good, and I haven’t pumped since Thursday morning.

And I want to rip my boobs right off my chest. Actually just the right one; the left one has been behaving nicely. But righty? My god it’s being a turd. Full, hard, extremely sore, just all around unbearable. I’ve been popping ibuprofen like it’s my job since Saturday because I can finally take it again and it’s the recommended pain reliever for going through this process, but it hasn’t been doing much that I can tell.

What has been helping, though, is cabbage. What? Yes, cabbage. Everywhere I looked for how to go about doing this warned of the engorgement I would experience (they were right!) and recommended putting cabbage leaves on my boobs to relieve the pain of the swelling. Har – yeah I don’t think so. Raw cabbage leaves? In my bra? You’re crazy. Nope, you’re a genius! That shit saved my sanity this weekend. I’m not kidding, from the very first leaf against my skin I wanted to cry with joy and relief. For all the sites I read that suggested this I still can’t tell you what exactly is in the cabbage that helps, but I am now a believer. If Mr. Cabbage told me the world was ending tomorrow night at 6:00, I might actually listen, that’s how much of a cabbage convert I have become. You take raw green cabbage leaves, either slice off the top edge of the big veins in them or smash them down with a rolling pin (i chose the latter), and put them on your boobs for about half an hour or until whenever they’re wilted. I just wore a sports bra so they were easy to put in and remove, and I plowed through almost an entire head of cabbage in two days. The colder they are to start the better, and seriously as soon as you put the leaves on it’s instant relief. They don’t actually reduce the engorgement that much since they don’t do anything to make the milk dry up, but just like ice packs work, the cold compress on your skin does help take a little of the swelling down and provide some pain relief. And I guess women have been using this remedy since the 1800s, so who am I to judge? Bring on the cabbage!

I’ve also read that it may take up to a week or two for the milk to finally be dried up, and if that proves to be true too I may just have to be locked away by the end. I can’t even describe the level of discomfort, for although I’ve felt it before when I would go too long without nursing or pumping, knowing that I can’t relieve the engorgement or else I’ll have to start this cycle all over makes me a little crazy. If the pain gets too awful or I start running a fever I’m supposed to call the doctor at that point, so let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. I did have to express a little by hand last night before the right one exploded, which is such a fun endeavor all in itself. I tell ya, the human body? It’s a crazy machine.

To switch topics to try and take my mind off the boobage pain, let me tell you how my 5k went. I rocked it!! My original goal was to break 30:00, which, after I ran the route earlier last week I knew I’d be able to pull off. So then I had the 27:00 mark in my head. I secretly wanted to break 27:00, but the whole time I was running I kept telling myself I’d be happy with 28:00 something and felt like that’s the pace I was holding. Imagine my surprise when I crossed the finish line and my watch read 26:57!!! (it wasn’t an officially timed race so i used my watch instead of their clock) I mapped out the race route and it actually was 3.24 miles, so that’s an 8:18 pace! Holy shit. The whole time I was running I couldn’t believe my legs were holding in as well as they were, but I had no idea I was going that fast. Well, fast for me, I should say. So I was very happy about that.

Then Saturday night R smoked another scrumptious rack of ribs and we enjoyed 2 bottles of wine. These:

 

Kung Fu Girl Riesling
Leese Fitch Zinfandel

 

Both were quite tasty. The zin was pretty sweet for a red zinfandel, which I love, and the riesling was nice and light, tasting very much of pears. Last night R used his new pizza stone and pizza peel and made 2 homemade pizzas for dinner. They were both on whole wheat crust, and one was topped with his homemade bacon and cheese, and the other was topped with pepperoni and cheese. Need I even say it? Delicious!! Unfortunately he didn’t take pictures of any of the food this weekend, so you’ll just have to imagine the savory delicacies yourselves.

 

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Adventures in babymilking

Seriously, SM, another post about milk and your boobs? Yep, seriously. These things happen to have become a large part of me over these past 9 months and this blog is all about me, so it kind of comes with the territory. So there you go. A different version of my boob talk disclaimer. 🙂

But moving right along… Since we decided to switch D to whole milk sooner rather than later as she was not fond of formula in the slightest, I have been getting anxious about running out of our frozen breast milk reservoir too early. Which is kind of unsettling for me, because I’m really not an anxious person. But I just keep feeling like no, it’s too soon, I didn’t want her to stop breast milk completely this far before 1 year, I’m a horrible mom for not continuing to pump to keep up my supply when I probably could have, is she getting enough nutrition, is she eating enough other foods to compensate for the lack of good stuff she gets from my milk, will her weight be ok without breast milk since she was only in the 25-50% for weight at her 9 month appointment, and on and on and on.

I was talking to one of her daycare teachers about making this switch the other day, and she recommended mixing the breast milk with whole milk to start off, just to make sure she’ll take it and to help get her used to it. DUH! That most obvious of thoughts hadn’t even crossed my mind. I mean not even a tiptoe through the gray matter to clue me in on such an apparent notion. Here I was fretting myself silly about using up the very last drop of our precious breast milk then flat out pouring whole milk into her bottle. How can I bring myself to do that?? How can I possibly cut my baby off from my sweet river of milky goodness in one fell swoop, never to be drunk again?? Um, psst, SM, you don’t have to. Just mix them, and she’ll be fine. Whew!! Praise the lord and hallelujah all in one, I’m not failing my baby after all! That one simple wondrous tidbit of parenting advice just saved this first-timer from a possible nervous breakdown. Sure that may sound utterly ridiculous and unfounded, but such are the worries of a still relatively new mom. It’s not my fault.

And the best part? She loves the milk combo! She had it first at daycare yesterday and they said she had no trouble whatsoever, so I picked up a gallon of whole milk last night on my way home to give it a shot. I even splurged the extra $2 and bought the organic whole milk. R and I can subsist on the paltry contaminated regular milk, but nothing but the best for Queen D! I just pour half a bag of breast milk in her bottle, fill what would have been the other half of the bag’s amount with whole milk, shake it up, then warm it as we normally do. And she doesn’t even blink an eye. Success!

I know it sounds crazy, but this whole milk substitution half-and-half episode has lifted a weight off my shoulders. Not only is it just plain easy, but this should help extend our frozen breast milk stash out for at least another week if not all the way through the end of the month. Before I stopped pumping as often after D stopped nursing, I figured I could continue easily to the beginning of June, when she would be 10 months old. I knew I didn’t want to pump all the way to 1 year in August, but I did want to make it as far as possible with my milk reserves. Then once I realized how quickly that supply was dwindling as my pumping sessions became fewer and farther between, the double digit months became my target. So when I saw that we might not even be able to make it that far, I got nervous and started beating myself up mentally. Whole milk mixing has saved Mommy’s sanity.

As for the whole pumping routine, it’s pretty much finished. I can now go well over 24 hours between pumps. My last time was yesterday morning at 5:30, where I got one bag of 5 oz. and one bag of almost 4 oz., and I’m nowhere near feeling like I need to express any again yet. Plus I’ve noticed it takes longer and longer for my milk to let down, so maybe yesterday’s session was the grand finale of pumping. Gone are the days of rock-hard boobs that could spray milk like fire hydrants (i’m not kidding. on multiple occasions D got a face full of milk after pulling away from me while my milk was letting down). Gone are the days of feeling like my chest was literally going to explode after just a couple hours. Gone are the mornings of waking up with a soaking wet shirt because my boobs had gotten so engorged they leaked overnight. Ah, goodbye sweet full, leaking, perky boobs. It was fun while it lasted.

 

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Milkin’ mama no more (almost)

As you know, D decided to stop nursing a few weeks ago. And since then I’ve kind of been struggling with wanting to keep up my supply to get her to the 1 year mark on my milk vs. dreading pumping. I truly enjoyed nursing her, but I detest that pump. Not that it hurts or anything like that, but I’m just sick of doing it. I am now down to pumping once a day, in the morning before work, and I think even that may be phased out soon. So I’m only producing 2 bags of milk for her each day instead of the 4 I was making right after she stopped nursing, so we’ll see how long I feel like keeping that little bit up. I’m pretty confident that when I decide to stop now it won’t be as big an issue as I had originally feared. My body has learned to gradually produce less, so my nightmare of exploding boobs fortunately won’t be coming true. It’s pretty cool how nature just kind of takes over. Good thing, because you know I’ve been clueless throughout this whole pregnancy/birth/baby process. 🙂

At D’s 9 month appointment last week I tried to get her doctor to relent and say it was fine to switch to cow’s milk right now, but she just started laughing. 1 year is the steadfast guideline, but our pediatrician is so cool she wasn’t overly concerned about it (if anyone is looking for a fantastic ped, let me know. i highly recommend Dr. C). She said it’s definitely not her recommendation, but we can switch her now since she’s pretty close if that’s what works. I told her how I’m so sick of pumping, and she said well then stop. Ok, but I really don’t want to have to switch D to formula for only a month or two if I stop pumping and we use up the rest of the stockpile of frozen milk, and she said she honestly wouldn’t be surprised if D wouldn’t even take formula now. I never even thought about that, but her doctor said oh yeah, it tastes totally different. Ok, so what if I stop pumping and the frozen stash is gone AND D won’t take formula? Then what? Ok fine, then you can switch her to cow’s milk. But make sure you give her vitamins if you do switch, because the lack of iron in cow’s milk is the big reason babies shouldn’t drink it before age 1. Cool, that’s the answer I was looking for in the first place. 😉

She was right about the formula too. Sweet! So now I don’t have to lie to her at D’s 1 year appointment about when we switched to cow’s milk – D really didn’t take the formula. 🙂 She gave us a container of it to try so I didn’t have to buy one, I made D a bottle of it the next morning to test it out, and sure enough, she took one drink and then refused it. Maybe she wasn’t hungry, you say? No, I heated up a bottle of my milk for her right after that, which she promptly gobbled down.

Sooo, long story short, I may soon be a milkin’ mama no more, well before my goal of the 1 year mark. That’s ok. D’s happy and healthy, I will be very happy when I don’t have to pump anymore, and even her doctor said that it was very nice of me to keep pumping this long after she stopped nursing. She said 9 months so far is great, and it’s still continued past that. So I’m not worried. We’ll have about 1-2 weeks’ worth of frozen milk to use once I’m done for good, so D should be able to make it to at least 10 months on the Mommy nectar.

My other reason for writing this post was to guide you current or soon-to-be milkin’ mamas to a great post I found today on another blog I follow. Jenny from What the Blog? (over there —->) opened up a thread today for breastfeeding moms to leave comments with their suggestions/recommendations/tips for others based on their own experiences. I know every woman’s body is different, and one mom’s BFing must-haves may do nothing for someone else, but I thought it was a really good resource for anyone new to the milky boob game. She just has an excellent blog in general, too, so check it out:  http://jennandtonica.com/2011/05/for-to-be-breastfeeding-mothers/