This isn’t the way it was supposed to end.

Originally, I had set my goal to be done or, at least, down to one nursing a day by the end of the year. And I planned to be totally finished come March. (Various health reasons.) We were on track w/that, mainly due to a change in the taste of my milk and some supply issues. Four days ago, we nursed fine at nap. Bedtime rolls around and I have *no* milk. E was trying hard to get a letdown & I was in pain. So I pulled her off. And we both cried. I let her try again a couple more times but there just wasn’t any milk. I’ve tried several things to up my supply but nothing is working.

We have both shed many, many tears over it. Out of sadness. Out of frustration for sleep. Out of frustration that my body has let us down. Mostly out of sadness though. Nursing my babe has been such an important part of our lives. All told, we spent probably 1/4 of her first year. Those sessions forced me to slow down, forget about the house, forget about my husband’s location in a war zone, forget about my family being 2300 miles away and focus solely on the little babe who needed me. During the second year, her nursings gave us time to just sit & connect amongst the very active days of a toddler. As on-the-go as she was, there was always time for nursing. And that year had me doing something I never thought I would–nursing inantimate objects. I’ve nursed all her babies, books, characters IN books, Legos, trains, cars, crayons…anything she loved so much that she wanted it to experience her first love!!

So many tears have been comforted by a nursing session, both her’s & mine. I know we’ll figure out other ways to soothe the sadness of life but, in the meantime, its been pretty tough.

I barely remember the first time she nursed. I wasn’t yet fully awake after my c-section (I had to be completly under since it was an emergency one & I hadn’t had any pain meds). As I opened my eyes for the first time, I saw my doula sitting beside me on my bed and Jim was cleaning E. I watched him swaddle her and then place her safely in her mama’s arms. After a few minutes of staring at her (and going in & out of sleep! LOL), Kristine (my doula), unsnapped my hospital gown and helped E get latched on. It was such an odd sensation but one that felt oh-so-right. I went back to sleep while she finished nursing. And now her last time. I barely remember that as well, something I now regret. I was busy thinking about what I wanted to accomplish while she napped. But I remember us being curled up together on her bed, snuggled tight, a blanket draped over us.
Two nights ago we were laying in bed and she turned my head so I was looking down at my breasts. And then said ‘ry n’ (try one [time]) with the most pathetic, sad voice. I had to tell her no because it is so painful for her to even try. She clung to me and we both just cried & cried.

I had some frozen BM that I thawed for her but she wants nothing to do with it.

DH was talking to her about it and, from what he gathered, she thought she wouldn’t get to sit on my lap & cuddle anymore if she wasn’t nursing. We both reassured her that we’d still cuddle plenty.

I had come to terms with *me* being the one to cut it off, if she hadn’t weaned herself by then. I knew I would feel sadness over that part of our relationship no longer existing but I was okay with that. But now I feel like my body has let me down, us down. And that has caused me tremendous sadness. Having to tell her that mama’s milk went bye-bye breaks my heart every time.

It always amazes me how I find so much patience with a sick babe.  Last week she had a cold and, at 3 am today, woke up with a stomach bug.  lovely.  I’ve changed my clothes seven times today.   I considered going naked but then I don’t have any clothes to help catch any vomit as we run to the bathroom.  LOL  And cleaning my clothes is a lot easier than the carpet.  As we only have a couple towels & a couple blankets here, I’ve ran the washer all day today as I cycle through them.  She’s still so little to get to the bathroom before she starts.  Luckily, she caughs or lets out a pitiful little cry before it starts and then I can see her little tummy convulsing, so I’m getting pretty good at picking her up and running to the bathroom.  I just hate it.  And I don’t know how to help her.  She throws up anything I give her.  She’s holding breastmilk down the longest (15-20 minutes), so I’m letting her nurse on demand.  And giving her any solids she wants.  She curled up into my lap this afternoon and fell asleep in about two minutes.  Without nursiing even!  She was exhausted.  She’s looking tired again, so maybe she’ll go down for a nap soon.  I hate to let her nap this late in the day but I’m guessing we’ll have a long night, so it probably doesn’t matter.
I am entirely frustrated with my blogroll.  I want the links to be alphabetized according to site name.  But I can’t get them to go into that order.  I’ve tried getting them organized by site name.  No luck.  I’ve deleted & re-entered them a dozen times.  Grrr.  I know it doesn’t make any real difference but I’m a bit fantical about ABC order.

(This was an entry I meant to write a couple weeks ago.  I was going to skip it now but decided I wnted it for posterity.)

Elizabeth is back on the growth charts, finally!!  We had her initial speech eval done a couple weeks ago and the peds agreed that there seems to be a delay/issue of some sort.  The first doctor was just starting his rotation in peds (major teaching hospital), so we took a basic overview of Elizabeth, asked some questions about BFing past one as she decided she needed to nurse while we were there (he didn’t have any training on that so I got to educate him! He called me a couple weeks later and thanked me for the books & websites I recommended to him–yea!), etc and then went to talk to a couple of docs on the peds team.  The doc who came back asked me lots of questions about her speech (or lack thereof) and decided to get us further evaluated.  So she has an appointment with a speech pathologist this week and an appointment with an audiologist next week.  If there truly is enough of a delay to cause concern, we’ll go from there. 

I was somewhat hesitant to go for the evaluation since she is still so young.  But that was also the reason I wanted to get it checked out.  If there IS a problem, I’d like to help her now while her mind is still so young.  If she didn’t have so much frustration surrounding it, I would likely hold off.  But I’ve been holding off for months now and things aren’t improving much.  My intuition has told me there was a problem for about 9 months now and I’ve played the wait-and-see game.  The other part that made me want to go ahead is the appearant
difference in her receptive language & expressive language skills. 
She has great receptive language (somewhat ahead of her age from what
I’ve read) while her expressive language is more like that of a
12-month old (from what I’ve read).  A 9-month difference is quite a
bit at this age.

So, we’ll see what happens!  I am very pleased that a) we found out she was back on the growth charts….16 months after she dropped off! and b) the doctors actually took me seriously and agreed that we should further evaluate. 

This morning E was carrying around Mr. Dangles (her monkey). She had him over her shoulder and was patting his back. I asked her if Mr. Dangles was crying and she looked at me funny. She pulled him away from her shoulder, looked at him with the same look she had just given me. She then toddled over to me and handed Mr. Dangles to me. She started signing for ‘nurse’ (her first sign! she just really started doing it last week). I picked her up so she could nurse and she (loudly) protested. She handed me Mr. Dangles again & signed for ‘nurse’ again. I was totally perplexed. She started signing ‘up’ so I put her on the couch next to me. Again w/the Mr. Dangles & sign. She was growing increasingly frustrated. She put him back over her shoulder, patted his back and then handed him to me again. She must have decided to give up trying to get her message across because the next thing I know…she puts Mr. Dangles to my breast (over the shirt)!!! I tried to remove him but that produced an even larger upset. So I sat there, feeling quite freakish, “nursing” Mr. Dangles. Luckily he didn’t need to nurse long! She removed him, hopped off the couch and they toddled away.

I’ve read about nurslings doing this but I didn’t think it *really* happened!! Or, at least, that it wouldn’t happen to ME! LOL
Amy–Too cute. I can honestly say none of my three never tried that with me but I have cuddled and fed some babies some bottles.

Vicki–Oh, that is so cute!!! Although I think I might have felt freakish about it, but the thing is, a lot of little girls want to feed their babies… a bottle, nursing, my guess is that they use what they know. I am surprised that she didn’t try to nurse Mr. Dangles herself though. She really loves her mommy.

One more pediatrician on my “never-see-again” list was added today. Elizabeth’s already erratic sleep schedule has gotten worse over the last two weeks and she is now up appx. every hour. Over the weekend it got worse, she was crabby and pulled on her ear. I decided to go get it checked just to be sure that we weren’t dealing with an ear infection. Her ears are fine. The doctor then asked if I wanted help with her sleep. I said “Sure, as long as you aren’t going to tell me to let her cry.” She proceeded to ask several questions about when I nurse her, how I put her down, etc. She began to lecture me for letting E fall asleep at the breast. I asked her if she ever BF. Nope. That explains why she thinks it’s easy to NOT let them fall asleep at the breast. She tried to tell me to let her cry saying that my only options were, and I quote, “let her cry or be an all-night dairy barn.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Under normal circumstances I probably would have thanked her and made a quick exit. But she had a med student in with her. A male one at that. He’ll NEVER understand fully about BFing. So I spoke my mind and quickly left. (I grabbed a comment card on the way out!!) Now I have so many more things I wish I had said to her.

Grain of truth to it or not, that is NOT an appropriate comment to say to a mother, especially one who was as obviously sleep-deprived & emotional as I was. I’ve been quite lucky with the peds I’ve seen but I do have a few who, as long as I can help it, will NOT see my daughter again.

Amy–Sorry you had such a miserable experience with the pediatrician. I honestly can say I have never been called an all night dairy barn by mine and would be just as mad as you if I did. Glad Elizabeth does not have an ear infection. Personally I would guess that her sleeping habits are out of wack due to your husband’s recent visit. (Did she bother to ask if there have been any changes in your life recently? Doesn’t she work on a military base?!?!? Sorry I am mad at her too.) I hope that there are restful nights in your future. Hang in there!