My constant companion

Did you expect to see a picture of one of my children based on the title? Ah well, lately this pump has been my constant companion and I think I'm finally ready to talk about how I came to pumping full time.

From the very first time Thomas latched on to nurse it wasn't right. I knew exactly what he was doing wrong but it was a strange problem I didn't know how to solve. I've nursed two other kids for a year, read so much about breastfeeding, and help other women get a good start with nursing. I kept thinking, 'I should be able to do this. Why isn't this working?' I had troubles in the beginning with Noah because he liked to suck on his tongue (which he still does to this day when he's tired!), but that doesn't work so well when you need him to be sucking on something else! But with him I was able to work through it. So for the first few days with Thomas I thought I would just work through it. Even though I came to be in constant pain I think I had a pretty good mindset throughout and kept thinking I just had to tough it out.

When he was a week old I got to the height of the pain. I cried any time I thought about nursing him. Ian kept saying I should just pump or we could do formula. That was actually pretty comforting to me because I realized that this crazy desire to breastfeed was only on my part and that he would be OK if I didn't. That got me to thinking. Why did I get so upset at the thought of not nursing?? I think that it's because of mom-world. You know, that crazy place that is mostly online where you judge every other mom for not doing things the exact same way you do? That's mom-world. I've come a long way in my judgmental ways since I had Mary. I used to be president of mom-world (didn't you know?), but now...I don't give a rip how other people feed their kids, sleep train (or not), give birth, and all the other things that can be so controversial in mom world. But as it turns out, I still cared a lot about how I did those things. So during that time God did a lot of work on me. He showed me how much hope I put into being able to nurse Thomas. It was eye opening to me because I want my hope to be in God alone! And I want Thomas' hope to be in God as well, so I better get to modeling that!

Anyway, back to the story. So I came to realize my hope was in the wrong place, I saw two different lactation consultants and my OB, and I talked to some incredibly encouraging mom friends. And I decided I needed to switch to full time pumping. At first all I pumped was blood (sorry if that's too graphic...it's just the truth). I didn't have much milk. But over time I started to make more milk and heal physically. Thomas started to gain weight instead of losing it. I actually started to enjoy being his mother!

I have so many more reflections from this I will post them separately!