In The Hospital

For the first few days in the hospital (he was there for five days and I stayed with him, fighting tooth and nail for a bed so that I could be nearby), I wasn't at all sure that something was coming out of my boobs when he sucked on them. I went to the lactation classes they offered and talked to a lady teaching a group of lactating experts-to-be, exposing and manipulating parts of me I would have considered very private only a few days earlier-- and in front of ten people at a time, nonetheless. The very nice expert teaching the soon-to-be-experts showed me how I could express colostrum by hand on to a plastic spoon to feed the baby manually. the problem here was twofold: one-- that I didn't then and still today don't like to mess with my breasts. I don't like to squeeze them. Right now they're less sensitive than they used to be, but I only give them a squeeze if I have to. Like the couple of times my duct got clogged -- but that's another story for another time.
The second problem was that I didn't have a spoon. I had been needing one, actually, to eat the leftover yogurts that I'd saved from the breakfast tray. There were none on the ward and, indeed, none in the whole hospital. Ilana eventually sent one for me with Yaaron. I found it on the chair by my bed when I woke up one morning.
Anyway, on day ... was it three or four? I know it happened in my new room but I moved in to my new room on a Friday... well, it must have been Shabbat morning, which was the fourth morning after the baby was born. I woke up to the smell of something rotting and the feeling of something heavy sitting on my chest. "Where is that smell coming from?" I thought. "And what is sitting on my chest?" Turns out it was my breasts. This is what they call the milk 'coming in.' And come down it did. I had rivers running down the front of my shirt. I had no nursing pads. I had no spare shirts left. I think I ended up walking around the ward like that for a while. Ilana sent me some nursing pads. Ilan brought me some appropriate bras. Ima brought nursing bras for me when she got here from Toronto a few days later. That's also another story for another time. I should remember this one and tell it. My boobs were rock-hard. I felt like a porn star, and offended a couple of people by telling them so. I later re-evaluated this comparison and said that I looked like a department store dummy. Except that a store dummy doesn't have a fountain of milk coming out of each nipple.

Never gonna give it up?

I think that today was the first time that I ever looked forward to him being a year so that I could stop breastfeeding. I am determined to go at least that long and for the most part, it's no trouble. It's just that lately he wants to breastfeed all the time. Especially today when he was tired, he kept grabbing for my boobs. I may start him on a bottle for overnight feedings. He used to sleep through the night but that all changed when we went to Canada. It's not that I mind breastfeeding, but I don't like doing it when I feel like my breasts are empty. He always seems to get milk out of it, though. And my non-sucked-on breast starts leaking in sympathy still so I guess he knows what he's doing.

Seven Months

So Baby is now about seven and a half months old. We started him on solids at six months and he's been happily munching ever since. (We actually found him sucking on the dirty side of my flip-flop the other day, though we didn't consider it a proper meal.) At first, I was having my typical separation anxiety about my milk drying up, but he's been nursing just as furiously as ever, despite the increase in meals and calories in the last few days. I took offense at the suggestion that maybe my milk was not enough for him, but now I realize that there is something to that. I guess that nursing at this point for him is a comforting activity and not so much about the food. He still loves it, though. He especially loves to nurse when he's tired and wants to go to sleep.