Breastfeeding

I may have mentioned before, I was 21 years old when I had my first daughter. Just prior to getting pregnant, I had lost about 10 pounds with a low carb diet. That weight loss probably helped it happen. After having her, my main concern was this new baby and I didn’t focus on myself right away.

I went through a lot of ups and downs in the next few years, relationship issues, insecurity, depression. The tightness of my pants fluctuated constantly.

I’ve always been a big fan of food. I plan vacations around restaurants for pete’s sake. Before having children, my fitness routine was to go the gym a couple times a week and eat whatever I wanted… it worked well for a few years until it finally caught up with me.

Continue reading “My Physical Progress After Babies”

My mother weaned me off at 13 months. This came after an incident at a law office where I walked over to her, said “Mama chi-che!!” and proceeded to pull her buttoned blouse open for all to see. The next day she put peanut butter on her nipple and convinced me it was “caca“, I never nursed again.

Apparently, weaning my sister was not as easy. I guess she was just more astute as an infant than I. When my mom did the peanut butter bit she looked at it confused, wiped it off with her hand and proceeded to latch on. It would take the bitter taste of mustard to convince her that the “chi-che” was no longer in service.

When I gave birth to my daughter, I knew I would be breastfeeding. Little did I know how hard the beginning would be. First, the whole process of nurses man-handling my breasts was uncomfortable to say the least. Then they hooked me up to a medical grade breast pump and I thought my nipples were going to fall off. The next two weeks were not any better. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing and the bad latch was doing terrible things to my skin.
I reached out for help, I visited the lactation consultant and sought advice from a close friend who had breastfed. The thing that stuck with me was “IT WILL GET BETTER”.

Continue reading “Encouragement for Breastfeeding Moms (who want to give up)”