The Weaning Mama

Hello friends! I know I haven’t been around in a bit. I have been super busy at work and home, you now how it gets. Baby P is one day away from not being a baby anymore! His party is tomorrow and we are all very excited to celebrate him. I will make sure to post our little get together on here when I get the chance (hopefully before his second birthday!).

As P got older, I knew the time would have to come when we weaned him off of the breast milk. I researched information on weaning babies and the best approaches. I read stories on how some babies refused to be weaned and how mamas everywhere were exhausted and out of ideas.

I prepared myself for the worst. My husband and I had a whole plan on how to do it slowly and gently but this boy threw a wrench into the works. He just stopped.

That was the last thing I had expected. Over the course of about a week he slowly started to eat less and less and in turn I was producing less milk. I started to freak out at work because I was pumping an insanely low number per day (stupid me, I didn’t even connect the dots that he was eating less so I wouldn’t have to produce any more!).

Finally, I mentioned it to my husband and he said, “Well maybe it’s time to get him off the breast milk.”

I was ready for the weaning to be a process for him but he just left me high and dry (literally). I also didn’t realize that the whole process would leave me little sad. I mean, my baby wasn’t my baby anymore. Since the day he was born and for almost a whole year after, my son was nourished with something that my body made for him. I got to share this amazing experience of breastfeeding with my son. It was something that he and I had for a really long time and I guess I was expecting a little more time before that time in our journey would be over.  It turns out, I was the one who needed the weaning process, not him.

It’s been a couple of days now and I am feeling a little more regulated when it comes to my emotions and dealing with this short, abrupt process. Looking back, I should have expected this from my little guy. He has always been fiercely independent, so why expect anything different when it came to weaning?

I’m proud to have such a grown up little dude in my house and I hope he continues to have that independence and confidence as he grows up. It’s all I ever hoped for in my children.

The Pumping Mama

It’s been a few weeks since my last blog post and that’s because I started work again! If anyone out there is a fellow teacher, you understand the madness of the back-to-school season. Getting back into a routine is tough and getting back into it after being home with an infant is tougher! 

Before I went back to school I knew that I would need to get a couple of things squared away in order for me to be as successful as I could be as a new mama joining the world of adults once again (sort of, I spend most of my day with 8 year olds). One of those things was pumping. I exclusively breastfeed my son and I was going to continue to do so even after I went back to work. I was nervous though because while other mamas can just lock their office doors and take the needed time to pump I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do that. I wouldn’t be able to leave 30 eight year olds by themselves or expect my teammates to watch two classes multiple times a day all year long. What I did know was that I was going to need to figure something out. What was a mama to do?

I talked to my village and the answer was quite clear: be clear about your needs and do not be ashamed about having those needs. My fears were that I would be compared to the other mothers that I worked with and that I would be made to do what they did; and if they were doing something I wasn’t they wouldn’t be willing to work with me. I decided to send that e-mail stating what would work best for my son and I and I waited. I had so much anxiety about that response! The response came the next day from administration telling me that of course they understood and that of course they would be willing to work with me. Hallelujah! 

A few weeks into it and we are all finding our groove when it comes to people coming in and covering for me while I go do what I feel is the very best for my baby. If I wouldn’t have reached out and expressed my specific needs to my team and administration, who knows how I would be doing right now. I would be having more trouble trying to figure it out by myself, of that I am quite sure. I had to find my voice because it’s not just me I speak for now, I’m the voice for my son as well and if I don’t speak up for him, who will?

5 Things I Felt My First Night After Giving Birth

So, this isn’t my birth story, I need more time to work that out. But I did want to share a few things I experienced the first night I spent with my baby boy.  A few of these I was aware of and others… not so much.

I was itchy.

Like, really itchy. Once I got in my room and we were all settled in I started to feel a tingling sensation on my face. It wasn’t bad at first, it felt like a little itch on my chin. So I scratched. Then I started to feel it all over my face. So I kept scratching. When my nurse came in, she explained to me that itchiness was a side effect of my epidural and it would eventually go away. But I couldn’t stop scratching my face! My husband got me a cool, damp rag to put on my face to try to help but it only felt like it was helping if I squeezed out the cold water on to my face constantly. I ended up scratching my face raw that night. I didn’t know it would be so bad!

I had pain.

DUH. It sounds sort of stupid to write about it but I’m not really talking about my c-section pain. Once I was in my room, my nurse came in periodically to push on my stomach to check how my bleeding was doing and it was pretty painful! I didn’t know that they were going to do that, so that is really why I am sharing this part of my experience.

I was super emotional.

I would look down at my baby and just start crying. I would be sitting in my bed and watch my husband sleep on the couch and I would start crying. I would be thinking about what I had just gone through and I would start crying. I know it was because of all of the hormones and fatigue and I knew to expect it and I thought I would be fine but I was a sobbing mess! It was okay though, it felt good to get it out. It also felt good to just say what had made me cry out loud to my husband. We would talk through it and everything would feel normal again. Until I cried again!

The hunger was REAL.

Oh man, was it real. Especially when I was breastfeeding. As soon as he would start feeding I felt the need to stuff all of the food in the room in my face. It was the weirdest feeling! I can’t tell you how many snacks I downed that night. It felt like nothing satisfied the hunger, either. I probably could have eaten all the food in the cafeteria if I had the chance.

The thirst was also real.

I couldn’t get enough water. It felt so good to drink a big cup of ice water. Again, it was pretty intense during breastfeeding. It felt like I probably drank a couple gallons of it that night.

That night, to say the least, was full of new experiences for me. Full of pain and snacks and ice water and tears and joy. Best night ever.