We are nearing our the end of our third week post op and HMae is doing great. She has been eating solid foods and has moved on from the Medela Special Needs bottle and on to a regular one. She is eating and sleeping and playing just like her regular little self. Happy as can be.
Mom on the other hand is a little out of sorts. Finding the time to pump every four hours is interesting. Playing with two cute babies is much more fun than being hooked up to a machine while it sucks the life out of you for 20 minutes at a time. As a mom, I often find myself struggling with inner battles. Fearing failure and defeat. As a mom, you want to be able to do it all and look good doing it. But today I think my white flag is raised. It will wave proudly because I am surrendering in peace.
I started pumping about a month before the surgery. I had a very good supply stocked in our freezer or at least I thought I did. It lasted two weeks. One very hungry baby. The day I went to that freezer and grabbed the last of the pumped milk I could have cried. I don't know how it happened. It was all gone. I then was only a feeding ahead. So I pumped while she slept or played next to me and had a fresh bottle to offer. This was the routine for a few days. My supply was rapidly decreasing. Getting less and less each time was very daunting. I hadn't changed anything. My body was just not responding well to exclusively pumping. Factor in a whole lot of stress and soon I was lucky to get an ounce at each pumping session.
Today I had one last shot! I had called to make an appointment with the Lactation Consultant over two weeks ago and she finally got me in. This was my last chance at continuing to offer breast milk to HMae. We chatted about the things I had already tried and she quickly came to the conclusion that I should focus on solid food. Seriously...WTFreak! The one person I could count on to encourage me and guide me through this just told me to pop a bottle of formula and introduce solid food! Even she was exhausted just thinking about my life... Ha! I understand that HMae is almost 10 months old and that is a good amount of time to have survived solely on breast milk. In my head I was hoping we could at least make it to one year. I am brainwashed! The world has me thinking that she can't possibly survive on anything else. Wasn't there a lady just on the cover of a magazine breastfeeding her 4 year old. And we can't even make it a year.
Right now I know I have to do what is best for HMae. My only other option is to call up the OB and see if he can prescribe a med that happens to have a side effect of increasing milk supply. While such a thing does exist I am starting to think that wandering through Saturday's farmer's market finding organic whole foods and letting HMae chomp on those, sounds a little more promising than lacing Momma's milk with drugs.
When I do find myself in situations like these I revert to these words from a book that was being written by my Daddy almost as one would turn to their bible for help. And even though this little life event isn't a major change it is a change I don't take to lightly.
Why Recalibrate?
How did we ever find our way without GPS? We used to always get there. Maybe it took a little longer and we drove a
few too many miles but we always got there.
There are a couple of reasons I can’t do without GPS. The most important of which it has completely
eliminated that discussion that sounded like, “You’re lost! Why don’t you stop and ask for
directions?” “No way! It must be just up ahead.” It must have been a woman, who as a passenger
endured hours and hours of ‘just up ahead,’ and decided to invent GPS. Did you notice the voice is always a
woman? Yes, we men get the point.
When your GPS is engaged it knows
exactly how to get you there. You can
even tell it, “No freeways, shortest time, shortest route, no tolls, etc.” Even given these parameters it has the
amazing power to make adjustments and still provide you with accurate
directions. One thing I find annoying
about this amazing device is when she yells, “Recalculating route!” “Wait a minute, I thought you knew where we
were going.” I think if truth be told
recalculating route in the virtual world really means, stopping to ask for
directions. The important thing to
remember is, after it recalculates the route you are always better off and your
journey will be better.
One of the longest journeys we take
is the journey of life and we are asked to do it without GPS. How on earth do they expect us to take the
longest journey without any route guidance?
On top of that as we hit bumps in the road or forks in the road, how do
we know the best way to proceed? Most of
the time we are so busy trying to figure out what to do, we forget about how
to do it. The result is we ignore
the potent saying:
Enjoy the journey. Life is not measured by the number of breaths
we take,
but by the number of moments that
take our breath away.
My dream for this book is that it
will serve as your GPS during those major forks in the road. At each of these major events in life it will
serve as your GPS to help you recalculate the route. I hope this book is not a one-time read but
will ride along with you for the journey of life and always be there for
you. It’s goal is to shorten the miles
driven, eliminate some wrong turns and give you some much needed time to enjoy
the journey. Rather than missing the
moment I hope your breath is taken away.
An excerpt from an unfinished book written by David Lauffer titled Recalibrating LIFE
As a Mom it's time to throw in the towel on this battle and move on to our next adventure because too much time has been wasted worrying and not enough enjoying!
