Sunday, June 1, 2008

These Boobs Were Made for Nursing!

No -- there will be NO photos of my boobs -- move along if that's what you're looking for. Actually, this is a post that I've been mulling around in my brain for awhile. It'll probably piss some people off for a variety of reasons and for that I'm sorry. Let me just say now that if you don't want to read about how I nursed my kid click away now.

Anyhoo- probably about 6 weeks ago I was getting out of the shower and caught sight of myself in the mirror. And the thought that went through my head at that moment was the title of the post. And at that moment I teared up thinking that I might not ever get to nurse another baby. You may think I'm kidding about the boobs, but really it's true. About the only thing my body has done well when it comes to baby stuff is making milk. I started pumping about 24 hours after my daughter was born via emergency c-section. Luckily the late start didn't cause any problems for me. Since she was in the NICU for almost 4 weeks and was little enough that she didn't take much milk I pumped ALOT. I really impressed the NICU nurses because I could fill up 2 bags of milk in about 10 minutes. Since I had no prior experience with this, I had no idea that this was at all particularly unusual. I pumped so much milk before my daughter came home that we had to buy a chest (ha ha) freezer for our basement. Even after my daughter came home and started breastfeeding on demand, I still produced more than she needed, so the stockpile grew. In no time the new freezer was FULL! So I was good at producing lots of milk AND I loved nursing my daughter. She was (and still is) a slow eater, our nursing sessions would last sooo long, but that was just fine with me. And there was nothing better than bringing her into my bed when she woke up in the morning and nursing her back to sleep and snuggling for a couple more hours (oh how I loved my maternity leave!). So, these boobs really were made to nurse and I really, really, really, hope I get to do it again.

4 comments:

Geohde said...

It is nice when something about our bodies doesn't fail us and works as supposed to. Good luck with the rest of the dreaded tww.

J

poppy.f.seed said...

I hope you can again, too.
Nursing is one of the things I most hope to be able to do!

Jendeis said...

Thanks so much for sharing your lovely story about breastfeeding. I hope that you get to do so again.

Tanya said...

I'm totally in the opposite camp. I breezed through my pregnancy but when it came to breastfeeding that was another story... we lasted 4 days, only to discover that the bulk of our problem stemmed from the boys' tongue tie(clipped in the delivery room but still caused problems from the feeding standpoint). Some days I wish I'd gone on the drugs to try to build supply once it became clear that was what the problem was... on the other hand I know mentally I wasn't in a place to deal with it not working again. I NEVER want to feel like that again.