Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!
It has been an interesting few weeks since my last post. The most boobjuice-relevant item I have to share is that I had some interesting hormonal changes with the transition to less frequent nursing. I think it was about a week after we had really firmly established a twice a day nursing schedule. I started having crazy hormone brain (not as bad as when I was pregnant and weeping about random things like scrambled eggs but that sort of flavor to it) and a couple of nights I just could NOT get warm. It was funny - I was wearing warm jammies, a heavy hooded sweatshirt, in bed, cuddled up to hubby (a.k.a. Furnace Boy) and had pulled an extra, really heavy quilt over myself, and felt cold. Happened for two nights, then went away. Reminded me very much of the post-partum hormone changes, only in the opposite direction.
I also felt so anxious I could barely concentrate and was both acting like an anxious spaz and freaking out that I was acting like an anxious spaz (it's a really helpful cycle...) and finally went home early one afternoon and called a former therapist of mine to see if she thought I was in a bad way. She asked a few questions and then pointed out that, look, you moved to a new home in a totally new state, you got a new job, you're the sole breadwinner for your family, you're worried about your hubby being happy here, AND you made a big change in the breastfeeding. That's really rather a lot. Duh! Of course it is! Funny how something like that is so obvious once someone points it out, eh? So I spent the afternoon alone in the apartment (ahhhh) and cleaned the heck out of it, which really made me feel a lot better (a smidge less out of control, eh?) and felt much better the next day.
During the anxious spaz week, of the many horrible, anxious images that would race through my brain (it was really not a fun week), there were a large fraction that ended in me not being able to nurse my kiddo for some reason. (Like I've been institutionalized and they won't let hubby bring him to see me twice a day or won't accept that I refuse to take any drugs that might be bad for him. Which may very well be accurate about these institutions, I have no idea, but that's rather beside the point.) So it's interesting to note that I was really worried about losing the breastfeeding before we were ready to be done with it (okay, before *I* was ready). I hope, and bet, that most other mamas are a little less freaky of brain than I am, but perhaps it will be reassuring to some other boobjuicer out there to read how much this transition frightened me, even though I chose it. It's a big deal!
Kiddo had his 15 month check up yesterday (healthy kid!) including a whole bunch of vaccines. Poor little dude was screaming until he was bright red in the face. The nurse was very quick and efficient but still. So after all the shots were done, I put him on the boob to make up for it. Worked like a charm and he would not let me stop until he had nursed for a good ten minutes. I think he was hungry too, to be fair, but it was nice to be able to offer him this comfort after the indignity of having three grownups pin him down and stick him with needles. He didn't seem reassured by my comment that it beat hepatitis any day.
Last note on stopping pumping - I've got like 30 oz of breastmilk in the freezer (yay!). So I looked into donating - no go. Milk banks do so much fancy testing and expensive processing that they can't accept a donation of less than 100 oz. No way I'm going to resume pumping for that long. She suggested I just feed it to kiddo in his moo juice or something as it is still good nutrition for him. I might look into a private donation, but the big point is - did you know you can donate breastmilk? I read an article where a guy's wife had so much to spare that he made some of it into cheese (uh, okay, dude, whatever), which sort of broke my heart - I bet she didn't realize she could donate it. If you have a freezer full of breastmilk, please don't let it expire and throw it away, or do weird culinary projects with it! There are lots of ways to donate and you could help some little critter who really needs it.
Okay, off to hang the laundry and go to bed. Motherhood is very glamorous, as you well know.
Much love,
Suzi
