Dry Nipples and Cream

I am very bad at doing all these girly things like putting lotion on after a shower -- or ever. When I'm pregnant I make a bigger effort with my cocoa butter lotion in order to prevent stretch marks. I know, I know, there's no guarantee-- but I didn't get stretch marks last time. Of course, last time I didn't get nearly as big as I am this time. To give you an idea of how little I use ceram, I've had the same bottle of Palmers since we got married and now we're on our second kid. Do the math yourself. I bought another bottle when I was pregnant last time but it's still sitting new in my cupboard. And I don't only use it during pregnancy. I used it on my face in the winter when the heaters and the breastfeeding were making me so dry that I felt like my face was cracking off.
Back to my nipples. The point is, they're dry and cracked. I don't think it's thrush but I don't want to take the chance. But I also don't feel like putting lotion on. Truth is, I just plain forget all about it. Who thinks about dry nipples until they take their shirt off. And if I'm taking my shirt off, I'm probably on my way to bed and I don't have the energy for nipple rubbing, or else it's morning and I have better things to do, like chase after my DS to get him dressed for kindergarten. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this clears itself up like it did last time. Actually, maybe I was a little more diligent about it last time. I recall using baby oil or something. Or was that on my itchy scalp?

Pump it Up: Frozen Breastmilk

I have three or four little baggies of frozen breastmilk sitting in my freezer. They've been there for... ho hum... maybe a year. Who knows why they didn't get used. At some point we switched to formula for those rare occasions that I wasn't around to breastfeed him on demand. In fact, I don't know if I ever pumped for the purposes of feeding after about 6 months when he started on solids. I know I pumped a couple of times out of paranoia after I popped a milk blister on my nipple and was afraid that the backlogged milk in the duct may have gotten infected or something (there may be no basis for thinking this, but we all have our neuroses-- I'm just choosing to share mine here).

A milk blister, by the way, is what happens when for some very strange reason, you get skin growing over a milk duct. The milk wants to escape but it cant, thereby forming a blister. Any CYA post you read about it on line will tell you to go to a doctor to get it popped but I just had DH do it for me the first time b/c I hate going to my doctor and I ended up just doing it myself whenever they popped up after that. Then you have to clear the duct of milk, which may or may not have semi-solidified and might come out like toothpaste. Gorgeous.

Later on I developed what may or may not have been thrush. I think not. Thrush is basically a yeast infection that the mother and baby keep passing back and forth to each other when breastfeeding. The mom shows signs of it on her nipple and baby shows signs of it in his mouth. But DS didn't have any signs of it as far as I could tell. I think it was just misdiagnosed dryness that I'm prone to.

Back to the freezer milk. So I don't know what to do with it. Obviously, I'm not going to feed it to my kid at this point. Most people would just tell me to throw it out but that seems so... wrong somehow. Maybe I can donate it to science. The local university might find use for it. They can do a study what happens to breast milk after you keep it in the freezer for a year. Or on something else. Like if my baggie leaches chemicals into the mik. Gosh, I hope not. Though once they start teething, you never know what you'll find them sucking on.