Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter? I Can.
It appears as though my era of a lactating female is drawing slowly to an end. Alex has decided that the quicker food dispersal system is not, in fact, garnered by my breast but by regular food stuff. To say that he is underwhelmed by taking a bottle (which would be the easiest way to use up the approximately 2,308 gallons of frozen breast milk I currently am storing in my freezer) is a gross understatement. He hates the bottle with an intense passion, which I cannot blame him for.
Despite my well-documented conflicting feelings on breast feeding in general (it’s more of a scientific oddity to me. You mean they do THAT? WEIRD!), I had assumed that I would feel more saddened by this inevitability than I am. After all, Alex has kicked my ass so thoroughly with his craptastic sleep patterns that I am not sure if I will ever be strong and/or brave (or stupid enough, really) enough to try and have another one, and three kids seems like a ton of kids (not to mention the fact that I would have to buy another car and grow a couple of extra arms). Even if I do have another one, I am not positive if I would breastfeed again (at least for as long as I have with Alex), as I’m underwhelmed by having to be tethered to a child all day, every day.
Please don’t send the Breastfeeding Mafia after me. I have no problems whatsoever with people who breastfeed for years. It’s just not who I am. And you know what? Being a parent is a lot of not being able to be who I am.
Seriously, if I were alone in the house, I can all but assure you that I would not watch either Elmo’s World on repeat OR PBS Kids all day. Nor would I opt to listen to Raffi, have to remove all swear words from my vocabulary, or take 30 second showers while feverishly praying that my children are not eating each other.
Am I bitching about making these personal sacrifices for my children? No, not at all. It comes with the territory of being a parent, and I am accustomed to it, and rarely get on the cross about it. But to me, breastfeeding is just another one of those things that strips me of all of my me-ness, and aside from doing it for the first couple of months, which is a sacrifice I would probably make again for the health benefits, I’m not sure I’d be willing to do it all over again.
Sure, there are health benefits to the mother (apparently) like losing those pesky baby pounds that I was just positive I was going to melt away along with my milk, but oops! psych! not so much. Hell, without eating supplemental junk food, I find it next to impossible to eat all of the extra calories that are required for my metabolism not to shut down.
Some people are overweight because they eat too much, but I am overweight (currently) because I didn’t eat enough. I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM, PEOPLE! (That always sends me into gales of laughter when I use this phrase. Maybe I should have shirts made that proclaim this. Then I’d be truly cool).
Until I stop breastfeeding, I have embarked on a new diet, one that doesn’t have me counting Points (but is still Weight Watchers), because I have no idea how many freaking calories I need anymore. It’s essentially a low fat, low sugar, low flour diet, and I’m finding it pretty easy to follow, thankfully. But it, of course, has one side effect that I’d never planned for: extreme flatulence.
That’s right, folks, I have now surpassed my husband, the former reigning King of All Farts, and have rightly claimed the Queen of The Rank Ass as my new title. Now I am the member of the family who can, in a single emission, clear an entire room with my suffocating farts. My new-found power is exhilarating, I am heady in my own strength, drunk on my own force…
Hey, where’d everyone go?
I am the breastfeeding mafia coming after you.
Not really. I am jealous because I am still nursing at least three, yes THREE, times a night. It’s getting really old.
And yes three is a lot of kids. I am always so amazed every time they come tumbling out of my overstuffed car. We’re like clown people now.
Ya know, mine never would cut off. I could squeeze and get some until my son was almost 9. Thank goodness, he never was all that interested!
For me it was a tough chapter to close, even though it never would! You always start wondering about additional children and having ’em used again.
I think with those farts, you are making a wise choice to keep it at two.
There is a dirty little secret out there that no one likes to talk about because they fear it will scare women off of breastfeeding. But, because I am a big-mouth, I have no problem sharing it: Many women who breastfeed — some for a rather long time — don’t like to do it. They do it for the reasons you list (health benefits), but the process of being fat, tugged at, sore, and sour-milk smelly all the time sort of turns them off.
I was not one of those women, but I sympatize with those who are. We should talk more openly about it because I think MORE women would stick with breastfeeding if they had your attitude: it is not fun, I will do it for the benefit of my kid, and I will be happy when it is over.
Sort of like changing poopy diapers. Yes, I just compared breastfeeding to changing poopy diapers.
So, if the breastfeeding mafia comes after you, they may decide to target me, as well.
MAFIA! Except not. I never breastfed. It freaked me out HARDCORE! I knew that if I were to try with it freaking me out so badly that Alex would know that I was freaked out and then HE would get freaked out and then there would be this ginormous freaked out mommy and her equally ginormous (although not fat, simply long) freaked out baby and that would be far too much of a freak out.
I think I like to say freak out today. o_O
And I had to read that fart paragraph to Greg. That was simply awesome. I even cried a little with laughter. 🙂
Andria, not so much. I’m still up nursing with you at least three times a night, at this point it’s mainly comfort for him rather than a ravenous hunger. It’s slowly sucking my will to live, I’ll say that.
Emily, you’re right. If we breastfeed, it’s expected that we turn into Earth Mothers, blissful in our beauty and naturalness, well, unless we’re in public, and then we better put those hooters away lest we offend people with them.
And if we do it only begrudgingly, we’re assholes who obviously don’t care about our children.
And GOD FORBID, we use formula (as I ended up doing with my firstborn, after a long battle with him), we shouldn’t have even bothered HAVING children at all. It’s absolutely no wonder that parents who formula feed their kids avoid the hell out the breastfeeding mothers. Shit, I did when it was I had Ben. I just got sick of having to hear about what I was doing “wrong.”
The whole debate is so much like The Butter Battle Book, each of us on our respective Butter Side Up and Butter Side Down camps, warring loudly over something very trivial.
It’s a pile of crap. Seriously. There’s enough to stress about as being parents that the last thing we need is to worry about having to constantly defend our choices to each other (which is absolutely what happens).
I never thought I’d be a breastfeeding advocate, but I kinda am. I am, however, in favor of stopping when you and your kid are both tired of it. I only nursed because *shrug* the milk was going to come in ANYWAY, and it was basically free, plus didn’t involve boiling anything. I was surprised by my own disappointment when my daughter weaned herself at nine months.
One of my friends is a breastfeeding Nazi (I would not say that to her face, however) and she has a great comeback for people who say breastfeeding is sexual: “So then, bottlefeeding is like, what, whipping out a dildo, right?”
I did with The MAN (however briefly due to a flurry of complications arising from his delivery), and then decided not to with Bean. Worse for me, I *know* breastfeeding was better, but I just couldn’t do it again (for more reasons than just the function of it) – I’m sort of regretful that I didn’t, but I ain’t about to start it now! I do NOT talk breastfeeding IRL (I stick it up their with religion and politics) ’cause it can get you killed in some circles!
Glad you get to reclaim the boobies, but sorry the chapter is ending (not the no sleep part though).
The absolute worst parts of breastfeeding were at the beginning, when his metabolism (which is a gift of genetics from his father) was going so fast that he nursed literally at least every hour. I genuinely thought that my milk supply was poor until he began solids and I could see with my own two eyes that he was inhaling vast amounts of food. More than most children his age. And it was only then when I realized that the problem wasn’t with me, but with his amazingly enviable metabolism.
I’d never call myself a breastfeeding mafia member, as I understand that it’s just not for everyone (by choice or not).
Hilarious as usual. I remember a friend of mine who had just had a wee one. We were all at lunch and everyone was waxing on of the virtues of breastfeeding. She looks at her kid and said, “You leeched off of me for almost 10 months kid. You have your body, I have mine. Get used to it.”
Cracked me up.
Hey, do you read mimi smartypants? She’s from Chicago and hi-fricking-larious.
http://www.mimismartypants.diaryland.com