Tag Archives: breastfeeding

Can I call in sick on maternity leave?

There is nothing worse than having a cold or flu while pregnant or nursing. You can’t take any medication because it will pass on to the baby, if pregnant, or will dry up your milk, if nursing.

Now add insult to injury and make it a cold during summer. Aw, crap. And I live in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, the sweaty underboob of region — nice most of the year, but uncomfortably sweaty during the summer. I was able to do one night without the fan, thinking it was exacerbating my sore throat/congestion, but screw that. I turned it on the next night, alongside the humidifier.

This is totally not how I wanted to spend one of my last three weeks of maternity leave.

Shutting off the spigot

This topic is going to make some people uncomfortable. But it’s a pivotal part of writing about motherhood. So if you don’t want to read about breastfeeding, move along, nothing for you here.

Chris, for all intents and purposes, is now a formula-fed toddler, with no problems drinking whole milk and eating regular food (that kid can eat — tonight he had a tub of baby food, most of my chicken noodle soup from Panera, some of the bread that came with my meal, maybe 4 ounces of a 6-ounce formula bottle and some of my chocolate chip muffin). Problem is, he is still waking up most nights at least once, wanting to nurse. Granted, he doesn’t nurse a long time, but he still does it.

Basically, I’ve been preparing for this for a few weeks now. I stopped pumping at work last week. I’ve been drinking regularly caffeinated coffee. And I’m about to switch from the mini pill that allows me to breastfeed, to regular hormone birth control pills that will no longer make breastfeeding possible.

I’m a tad conflicted still. I am mostly on board with my plan to abruptly wean Chris. And he’s at that point where it should be relatively painless — he’s drinking less from his bottles, he has no problem drinking milk from a sippy cup. I’m back to wearing regular bras, and thank God almighty, regular dresses (because when you’re nursing, you need easy access).

It’s the nighttime wakings I dread. I haven’t been able to wean him from dead-of-night nursing sessions because when you’re exhausted, last thing you want to do is try to dance your kid to sleep in the middle of a dark, cluttered room. Plus, when you’re as exhausted as I’ve been, there’s no cognizant thoughts. There’s no thinking to yourself, “OK, we’re night weaning, so just hang in there and let him cry a little bit.” You just lay him down next to you and let him have at it. Truth be told, I blame my husband because he’s been reluctant to move the boys into the same room because he thinks they’ll wake each other up.

Hey, better them than me. What?

But there’s still that thought that, if say tonight, which is supposed to be my last night, goes badly, I may have to call for one more prescription of mini pills and delay full weaning one more month. I really don’t want to do that.

Here’s hoping that all that food tonight will make him sleep through the night and I can go through with weaning. For good.

My youngest hit 11 months on Sunday, so you know what that means…

My youngest hit 11 months on Sunday, so you know what that means — the end of breastfeeding is in sight! Oh, happy day. As much as I love nursing my little cuddlebug, I look forward to fully-caffeinated coffee, wearing clothes that don’t need an easy access option and most of all — SLEEP. Weaning will be a much slower, painstaking process with this kid, though, so I am of course going to be taking it slow. In the meantime, I did want to offer a couple of breastpump-related hacks.

First, the accessories can be expensive. Hoses for the Medela Pump In Style cost an average of $10, while those itty bitty white membranes that go inside the yellow valve? A six pack goes for $6 or more. Here’s my hack — and to be honest I didn’t learn this until I had a second child — hoard everything the hospital gives you when you first give birth. Each time I’ve had a baby, the hospital in question bombarded me with breast pump bottles, shields, hoses, bottle caps so I could use them with the hospital-grade pumps you use at the hospital. They let you take ALL THAT HOME. So whatever you might need, try to get extras from the hospital. The hoses for a medical-grade pump, by the way, do look different and you might be tempted to just throw them away. (I’ve already done this once.)  However, all you have to do is simply cut the tips off and then you can stick those bad boys on your own regular double pump. I also managed to get replacement membranes when I ended up in the emergency room to get my gall bladder removed — I happened to have my pump with me, and I needed to pump, so they sent some replacement membranes up, easy peasy.

Second, my AC adapter is pretty much kaput, so I didn’t want to buy another one a month before I finish pumping. So the other night, I went into my box of surplus cords and cables — what, you don’t have one? — and found another AC adapter that fit. I was so glad I didn’t have to buy another one.

The year began with a blowout

I haven’t blogged in 20 days. Sorry! But, for good reason. I’ll get to that in a minute.

But, yes, literally, the year began with a blowout. We were on the way to church, when the front passenger-side tire (the one right under me; Trinity was driving) of my car blew out on New Year’s Day, Mikey’s 2nd birthday. It was a bit terrifying at the time — I did freeze up a bit, but we were able to get a AAA tow out there to get a donut on, and we continued on to church. Trinity took the car to Wal-Mart, where he got me four new tires (we knew they needed replacing and had been stalling until we had more money…).

Oh, but that wasn’t it. It was Mikey’s birthday of course, so we had plans to take him to Chuck E. Cheese. He was so excited to play, we could barely get him to eat anything. After not having any nap and a full day of hard playing, he looked like this:

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