Just a Little More...

Warning: This will be a rambling post... thanks in advance for your patience!

Many thanks to everyone who responded to the last post with advice on how to increase breast milk production! Sadly, nothing seems to be working and I'm sitting here fuming over it. Not at you lovely people, dear Internets, but my lactiferous ducts. Stupid ducts! I'm taking 5 capsules of Fenugreek 3 times a day. I'm eating. I'm drinking. I'm meditating, doing relaxation and visualization techniques. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle. I'm saving all the milk to use in his rice cereal (yes, Bee has started solids! Well, very runny rice mush), because once I tried mixing it with formula and gave me a look that I read as: Woman, what do you think you are doing?! Do you realize you are putting that in my mouth? He loves it mixed with breat milk, so that's what we do.

Here's my milking diary: I get up at 6 am and pump. The Bee gets up about 8 am; I nurse him, then feed him rice cereal. After he gets cleaned up, he gets some formula and/or diluted pear juice. I go to work, then pump every 2.5 to 3 hours. I nurse him again in the evening, feed him some more cereal, then nurse him/give him some formula/and maybe some more juice before putting him to bed between 8 - 9:30 pm.

Problems arrise when I'm working and I'm furiously trying to meet a deadline - pumping gets put off, 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there. We're short an illustrator, so I'm doing a lot more work. Our new illustrator starts Monday (also my 36th birthday - yay me), so I'm happy to have some one to pick up more of the work - this is also a busy time for us. As you can tell since I haven't updated in a MONTH.

Speaking of months, I also got my period yesterday. HAPPY JOY! Wow, I haven't missed this. And I haven't had my period since July 5th of 2005. I'm not on the pill, so I'm bloated and crampy. And I have no idea how long this will last. And, I understand milk supply drops during your period. So that's a big help.

Frankly, I blame Boston. Everything was great with my supply until I left for Boston. I was getting 8 to 12 oz. at my 6 am pumping session, now I'm incredibly lucky if I get 6 oz. This morning I got just shy of 5 oz. At the Boston seminar, I was running upstairs in the hotel to nurse Ben in between the sessions. So I wasn't pumping at all - this was for 5 days. It was a busy meeting; our 5th wedding anniversary came and went. Mr. R was working on a presentation he was giving at one of the sessions so we postponed celebrating. We haven't designated a date to celebrate it, but we figure it will be sometime... before our 6th anniversary.

So. Just wigging about my milk production. It just seems to be getting worse, and I'm not ready to give it up. I'm not sure what els I can do, but thanks for reading me vent and ramble.

My brother seems to be in the home stretch. My mother called in the morning on September 1st to tell me that the doctors didn't expect him to last the weekend. I drove out 2.5 hours to visit with him at his nursing home, and was just shocked when I got there. He had aspriation pneumonia and the rattling in his chest was so pronounced. I didn't think he'd last the night. I said what I wanted to say to him (another post for another day), told him not to be afraid. I told him I was happy for him to be going home. It was so sad to see him that way. He's still plugging along; he's lost his sight, but he's on mophine and resting comfortably. I just hope he goes soon; I can't imagine many things worse than being trapped in a body that doesn't work. I'll update as the situation evolves.

One of the worst things was being around my mother. For the first time in only God knows how long, my mother, father, brother & I were in the same room. It wasn't good. My mother just seems to bring out the worst in everyone. My parents argued, and my mother was so angry and bitter towards my dad. It was sooooooo uncomfortable. I actually forgot how miserable I used to be living at home. I forgot how unhappy life was. I've been so happy, living on my own, and sharing my life with Mr. Right and now with the Bee that I just forgot. I tell Mr. R all the time that I never dreamt I could ever be this happy, but I forgot how much I truly mean that.

My mother is still insisting that I've said things I never did, and I realize that no matter what I say or do to try to convince her otherwise, her edited reality it firmly entrenched in her mind. So that relationship is another losing battle. All I want is to be civil. I'll take that.

I hear the Bee on the monitor crying awake from his nap, so now is the time to feed my sticky little wicket more rice cereal and have a little playtime before bedtime.