Now I Know

Warning: If you don't want to read about breastfeeding and some in depth details of it, you might want to skip this post.

June has been transitioning incredibly well to the formula. I realized last Tuesday that June was actually do way better on formula than the breast at this point, and that maybe breastfeeding wasn't working anymore. After a lot of thought and discussion with Jason, I decided that I would stop breastfeeding. It seemed to be hurting more than helping at this point. What came next I was not prepared for. O.M.G. Pain! Why is it that no one ever discusses how to stop breastfeeding or what your body will go through when you stop? My mom had just had knee surgery, so I didn't want to bother her with my questions, so I started googling it and really there wasn't much out there. There wasn't a specific, easy solution. It was the same thing: wean your baby off the breast, don't let your breast get overly engorged or you can end up with an infection, if you express any milk be careful not to express too much or you will continue to produce, etc. I had already only been breastfeeding one time in the morning and right before June went to sleep, so I thought I was "weaning" enough. But I guess I was wrong. I couldn't feed June breast milk anymore because I knew it was not working with her tummy, so feeding her wasn't an option for me, and I was so over pumping, it was exhausting by that point. I was so engorged that I seriously looked like a Playboy model, sans the flat tummy. How the heck was I suppose to make sure that I wasn't letting too much milk out? I was so confused and since I had started this process there wasn't any turning back now. I couldn't even sleep, lift my arms higher than my shoulders, carry June in front of me, lay flat on my back. I was in so much pain. And I kept thinking, "now I know why no one talks about giving up breastfeeding. Because it hurts!" Oh and now I know why some women continue to breastfeed until their children are way too old, because it hurts to stop. Ok, so not really, but man I was weighing the pros and cons of stopping.

This is what I did and what I am still doing:
I am wearing a super tight sportsbra 24 hours a day. I have some that are 1 size too small and thats what I am wearing, with disposable breast pads in them (for the leaking). My breasts were rock solid, even under my arm pits, so I took cloth breast pads, dipped them in cold water and froze them. Now this may sound crazy, but I have been putting the frozen pads in my bra as well, to relieve the swelling and the pain. The cold doesn't hurt at all and stops the milk ducts from producing. Hot water causes the milk ducts to produce, so when I couldn't handle the pain and seriously thought I might burst from all the pressure, I would take a hot shower and express some of the milk myself. But not too much! Just a little so that I could tell that the pressure wasn't as bad/hard. So far so good. The swelling is going down and the pain definitely has decreased. I figure I will have to do this for about 2 weeks total.
So for all you out there who will eventually give breastfeeding up, have kids, etc. now you know. You have been warned. And though I was so happy to be able to share those special feeding moments, the bonding and the closeness that breastfeeding gave to June and me, I am happy its over. I feel as though I am beginnning to get a bit of my life back, but that now my life is better than ever because I get to experience it all with my Junebug.

Today's the Day

Well, I've never been into the blog thing but a friend of mine suggested, after a shoutout on facebook titled "Ladies with Babies", that it would make a great title for a blog. I figured this could serve as a mini-forum to all those mothers out there for questions/concerns or an opportunity to vent or even bragging time. A no judgement and all acceptance sort of thing. The actual forums online seem to have too many followers for me, so its hard to keep up and I only go on them to see answers to my questions. I never actually write on them. But I think that this will be a little more intimate and hey, if no one else follows it, at least its an opportunity for me to document June's life and all the things that I am going through.
I don't have too many friends with babies who live close by, but luckily my gal pals on facebook (and of course my mom and mother-in-law) have been a huge help to me, but I am pretty sure that not ALL my friends on facebook want to see my constant updates on June and my crazy questions about formula, crying, the color of her poop, etc.
The shoutout I mentioned had to do with what baby formula would work best for my daughter June. She was born September 20, 2010 and since then I had been breastfeeding. But June has had issues with constant crying, discomfort, constipation, acid reflux (which makes for a baby who spits up CONSTANTLY), and to top it all off a cold with 2 ear infections! Last Saturday, as we were trying arriving to our baptism class for June, she just started to wail. I mean kicking, screaming, loud shrieks. I hate when she cries like this because I know she is in some sort of pain. Besides my feeling so bad for her, I was also so embarrassed. Here I am, in a room filled with other parents and their sleeping babies, and mine is so loud that even in the very back of the building, locked in a bathroom, they can still hear her. I was on the verge of tears myself, so I left. I went to the car and sat with her for the next hour and a half. I fed her again and she fell asleep, and no one could have paid me a million dollars to move her out of my arms. The day prior, I had pumped and realized that I was not producing enough milk, so I began realizing that the reason her cries had gotten so much worse in the past few weeks was because she was hungry. Now I started feeling sooo guilty. I had been starving June. Once Jason got out of the class I told him that we needed to try formula. I put the post on facebook as I was walking into Babies R' Us and the response was so awesome. We tried June on the Enfamil with Soy and she continued to cry, it made her so constipated that when she actually went potty it was a huge mess. I then tried the Enfamil A.R. and so far sooooo good. Yesterday was really the day that I noticed her temperment changing. She slept through the night (which she had done prior to formula, but stopped in the past few weeks), she slept in her crib (a FIRST!), and she was oh so happy for the majority of the day. We went to Gymboree and ran errands and she did wonderfully! When she did cry, I knew that she was crying because she was sleepy. I felt so proud of her, as I always do, but I was able to feel proud without the fear that within 5 minutes something would change and her tears would begin again. Ahhhh I'm in heaven. I just love my little punkin pie!