On a completely different note...

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Jules

Just wanted to take a moment to remember my friend Julie Brusegaard-Bissel, who lost her year-long fight with cancer yesterday. She leaves behind a family who loves her dearly, including her husband Bob, her 19-month old son Blake, and her sister Tammi. Julie, you've touched a lot of people with your joy and love and your baby boy is lucky to have such a wonderful guardian angel watching over him. Rest in peace.

He makes me smile

Apparently I'm a bit behind on the times on this whole thing, but my mom introduced me to "Where the Hell is Matt" on YouTube and I've watched it at least a dozen times already. It makes me happy. Especially the Bollywood segment.

Como say what?

I've been receiving emails from Swedish Medical Center (where Zachary was born and where we took our parenting classes) every week for the past 18 months or so. At first, the subjects were along the lines of "Your pregnancy this week: Pack your bag". Then they changed to "Your baby this week: Bathtime" Today's was "Your toddler: Saying 'no'".

I'm sorry, what? Toddler? MY toddler? When did that happen?

Our own Tom Thumb

I had a strange dream last night. I dreamed that we were at a baby party with Z, and he suddenly started walking. Then he was running around, and Chris and I were trying to keep up with him. The problem was that he was only about 2 inches tall! He ran down a hall and we lost him. The party was in a student house or something, with lots of doors into bedrooms opening off of the hall. It was really dirty, and we were crawling around on our hands and knees trying to find our little 2-inch boy. It was crazy! Chris was angrily yelling, I was quietly panicking, and even Cowboy was helping us look. But I woke up before we found him.

When I woke up to the sound of Z babbling in his crib, my first thought was "Oh thank goodness, he came back!" And then I was relieved that he's too big to lose under a pile of dirty clothes, no matter how fast he runs.

Very odd.

Cowboy hates Halloween

Traveling light

To check:

• 2 suitcases
• 1 set of golf clubs

To carry on/gate check:

• 1 umbrella stroller w/bag
• 1 convertible car seat w/bag
• 1 diaper bag
• 1 backpack
• 1 giant tote bag w/toys, food, baby carrier
  
• 1 baby

My days of traveling every week with my carry-on and laptop bag suddenly seem soooo far away...

The whole fam damily

Couldn't get all of us to look at the camera at the same time, but 3 out of 4 isn't too bad.

Crying over spilled milk

I just threw out 52 bags of frozen breastmilk because it went bad in the freezer. That's 260 ounces = 16 cups = 4 quarts = 1 GALLON of milk. That represents approximately 18 hours of pumping. 18 hours of time spent so that I would have a good stash for Zachary. Down the drain. Literally.

Now I'm working with the Dude to figure out the best way to nourish my little guy since the frozen milk I'd counted on is gone. I got my trusty Pump-In-Style out, but it appears that my magical milk-making power has disappeared. I just want to cry.

The end of an era

Warning: This post is all about breastfeeding. If reading about breastfeeding makes you uncomfortable, well, don't read this. And if you got to this page because you Googled "breast", you need to get out more.

It seems that I am no longer a nursing mother. Which I suppose means that I'm not allowed to eat pints of ice cream for dinner anymore. Or rather, I'm allowed to...but not without weighty consequences.

I've been slowly cutting back on nursing, following Zachary's cues as he's become less interested. We were down to 3-4 times a day when both Zachary and I got sick. He caught a cold (which made nursing difficult for him because he couldn't breathe through his nose) and I got mastitis (which made life difficult for me because OUCH! It hurts! And I have a fever! And I'm sore all over! And I feel like crap!).

Since this is my 10th case of mastitis, my doctor wanted me to come in so she could give me a trophy for breaking the office record for mastitis masochism (apparently, no one else is crazy enough to continue BFing after getting more than one or two cases of mastitis). Either that, or she wanted to see if it's possible that I really have mastitis again. Turns out that yes, I do, and my doc said that I probably got this particular case due to the weaning. Although Zachary and I were on the same page with the whole thing, my body hadn't gotten the memo. My doc prescribed me some meds and warned me that I would probably get at least one more case as we wean completely. Oh good, something to look forward to!

Newly armed with my meds, I continued to try to nurse Zachary. He, however, wanted nothing to do with it. His way of letting me know was very clear and succinct: he bit me. Not a "I'll nurse for a little while and then experiment with my teeth" thing...he was very deliberate. "Boob? Bite!" I've continued to try nursing him at our normal times (4x/day) for four days, and each time he takes a look and then takes a bite. So I think this is the end.

I've been worried about how I would wean him. I didn't want to withhold nursing from him when he wanted it. I wasn't sure how we would manage the mornings without bringing him into bed to nurse while stealing a few more minutes of sleep. I didn't know if it would be hard to put him to sleep without our nightly bath-boob-book-bed routine.

This way, it's much easier. He decided on his own that he's done, so we don't have to soothe him or try to come up with a replacement. He's happy as can be, and I'm dealing with the engorgement and associated potential for clogged ducts and mastitis while I'm already on meds for my existing case of mastitis. I was planning to wean him at around 12 months anyway, and I have enough frozen milk to keep him supplied at least that long. It really couldn't be a better situation.

Even so, this is a strange time for me. Zachary and I had a really hard time getting started with BFing, but we stuck it out and were able to make it over the hurdles. I went through times when I felt resentful of having to nurse him so frequently, of not having the freedom to leave him for more than an hour at a time, of not feeling like my body belonged to me anymore. I couldn't eat dairy for months because he was sensitive to it, and I still haven't touched peanut butter since he had a mild reaction. And of course, I've had 10 cases of mastitis.

But overall, I've enjoyed this special time with him so much. I'm in awe of the fact that this body of mine has nurtured him so well. I cherish the intimacy that we've shared 4-12 times per day every day for almost 11 months. I'm honored that he found such comfort in nursing, that it was a sure-fire way to calm him down when he was upset. And I smile when I think about his desperate attempts to latch on to any part of me (including my nose, my chin, my stomach, my elbow...).

I will miss this.