Tag: husband

End.

This is a lengthy post I wrote in February about breastfeeding. This was just a couple weeks before we completely weaned. It may be TMI, but I wish I had read something this real when we were starting out. It didn’t come easily to me, and if I can help just one other woman decide to give it a little more time, then sharing my story is worth it.

Jealous cat often wanted in on the cuddle action.

We didn’t breastfeed today. She slept in, and I took the opportunity to go straight to breakfast. We had been doing just the one morning feeding for a month or so now, and that was already killing me. I’m so emotional. I’m happy, because I don’t have to plan my day around my boobs, and I can drink all the coffee I want again (finally!) But, this thing I wanted to do for my child, this sacrifice I made for her, is coming to an end. What I used to dread, I’m going to miss.

I didn’t worry too much about breastfeeding when I was pregnant. For one thing, I thought it was weird. I knew it would be best for my child, but a liquid coming from my boob just sounded so strange, and I didn’t really want to think about it. Secondly, it’s a natural thing, so I assumed it would just click.

Having her early threw me for a loop. I had eaten chili the night before my water broke… ya know, you’re not supposed to eat before a c-section… so when I got back into the room after having her, I was so sick from the anesthesia. They gave her to me and I held her, then they told me I needed to try to nurse. Poor [hubby] has the memory forever etched in his brain of me holding [baby girl] on one side, trying to get her to latch, and me puking into a barf bag on the other side. I was so so sick. And I was so so tired. We had barely slept, I had just had a tiny human cut out of of me, and I was exhausted from retching. I felt bad, but I was so selfish, I really did not want to try to nurse. The lactation consultant is telling me to make a sandwich with my breast? What? Can I sleep now please?

The next few days weren’t much better. [Baby girl] had interest in trying to nurse, but we weren’t doing so great. And no one told me how much breastfeeding HURTS. The lactation consultant kept telling me that the latch “looked good”, but also that it shouldn’t hurt if we were doing it right. Bull crap. It hurt so bad. Finally a nurse came in and asked how it was going one day, and I expressed concern about getting blood in the baby’s mouth, because my breasts were so incredibly cracked. She looked so sympathetic, called me honey, and asked if I had any lanolin. Lano-what? No…. she brought me a tiny tube, and at the moment I seriously thought it was the best thing ever invented. I’d read blogs and birth stories, talked to other people vaguely about breastfeeding, seen ads for “nipple cream”, but I was in no way prepared for why it was important to take care of your nipples. Ouch.

I felt so bad at the hospital and later when we got home, I dreaded feeding my poor baby girl so much. I would put it off as long as I possibly could. In the hospital, the nurses would come in and fuss at me for letting her go so long without eating. But, I was sleeping, she was sleeping… do I have to? At home, it wasn’t any better. I would have frequent emotional breakdowns from the guilt of not wanting to feed my child. For at least a couple of months, I really was miserable. It made it worse that she was so little, and the nurse practitioner we were seeing at the time wanted me to feed her even more often than I already was – every two hours. I don’t know how we got through that, neither of us got any sleep. She would take so long to nurse, I’d barely get 30 minutes of rest in before we had to start all over again. I was exhausted. The pain that accompanied those first few months was excruciating. I would get these sharp pains, like hot knives, radiate up my breasts frequently. I felt like I kept heat on them as often as I could, especially at night. Also, after I finished breastfeeding, I would get the worst chills. The first time it happened was at the hospital, and I thought I was coming off some of the strong medicine they had given me or something. I had violent shivers and just felt like I would never be warm again. That continued for a while after I got home, and I still do it from time to time. During this time of pain and dread of feeding my own child, I gave myself a goal of six months. If I could just last that long, that would be good. But, six months came and went, and I felt sort of proud of myself. We had made it that far, and didn’t show any signs of stopping.

Somewhere around 3 months, something happened. I’m not sure if it was because she grew and her mouth got bigger and she could finally latch better, or what, but it got better. We finally got to where we could nurse and I didn’t feel like I wanted to die. However, she still took FOREVER. It’s just been in the last 3-4 months that she really cut back. Our normal feeding sessions were always at least 30 minutes, most of the time more. We were at a funeral, and [hubby’s] cousin had her baby there as well. We both were in the nursery at church nursing, and I kid you not, her daughter ate like 5 minutes on each side and then they left. I was sitting there a little jealous and a lot in disbelief. Why does my kid take at least three times as long?!

Going back to work was kind of pointless because of how long it took her to eat. According to my app, her average was about 4 hours of eating time a day. And that was strictly mouth to nipple time, that didn’t count the burping and distractions in between. I had a full part-time job of just sitting. Isn’t that a ridiculous amount of time? I got literally nothing done. [I had a super distracted baby who would unlatch at the tiniest noise or movement, so multi-tasking was always out of the question.]

Of course, I would so do it all again in a heartbeat, misguided expectations and mental breakdowns included. We figured it out, created a bond that only could have come from breastfeeding, and I truly believe it was what was best for her. It was so hard, and so very painful, but now I’m going to miss it.

After I started writing this, the next day she threw a fit when she woke up until I went to the chair with her and nursed. I don’t think she’s quite ready to give it up yet, and frankly, I’m not either. I never would have thought that we’d still be doing this at 13 months. Pregnant me sure wouldn’t have believed it, because she thought a few months of that weirdness would be good enough. New mother me wouldn’t believe it either with all the pain she went through. But, here we are ❤

As I said, we only went a few more weeks after I wrote this. It’s still weird to me how much breastfeeding consumed my thoughts and my time, and now I never have to give it a second thought. As miserable as I was, and as strange as it sounds, I miss it. Being a woman is so weird sometimes.

Also, in case this needs to be said, I’m not suggesting anything I did or didn’t do is best for anyone else. I realize that I’m super fortunate to have a flexible job I can do mostly from home, and an amazing support system that picks up my slack. I’m simply telling my story in hopes that it encourages someone else!

Um. Wow.

I was perusing my old Livejournal again and came across this gem. Naivety aside, it tells the story of the beginning of my husband and I, and I’m quite fond of it. Get ready for some wisdom from early twenties me:

“Um. Wow. Life is crazy. I have been married to my best friend for almost four months now.. It feels more like four years. I swear I don’t remember life before [hubby] <3.
So the other night I randomly got on to Livejournal and started reading some old entries from when [hubby] and I were dating. I burst into tears and had a breakdown that lasted the whole night. Partly, I blame it on the PMS I was experiencing, but there was also some truth to why I was so upset. As I was reading, I realized that I had fallen into a spiritual and emotional rut. For a while, I was so hopeful, so optimistic, and so in tune with God. Lately, I feel like I am the opposite of all those things. I have decided to fix this, with God’s help of course. I have re-learned recently that when you try to do things without God’s help, and without the help of people around you, you can quickly slide backwards. I talked to [hubby] about this, and told him something about us that I guess he never knew: That I use how our relationship started as my personal testimony. Everything about how we started dating was God-breathed, and it was the most sure I had ever been about anything in my life. I use this when I am telling people about how I became closer to God. He led me to [my husband], he and I both had prayed for (unknowingly) each other, and God made me realize that things really do work out when you surrender all your thoughts and fears to Him. I was so angry and bitter at the ripe old age of 19, because everyone else had, what I thought was, everlasting love. I felt like an old maid, and I hated the world for it. People kept telling me, “give it to God, He knows what is best for you.” And all the while, I kept saying, “I know,” but I never really, truly gave it all to God. One night, in a moment of sheer clarity, I got on my knees, sobbing, and said, “Lord, I don’t want this anymore, take it! Do what You will with it, I am done!” I instantly felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I had no intention of thinking anymore about it. As it happens, however, it was like God said, “FINALLY!” The very next day, [hubby] and I struck up a conversation on the internet, after we had not talked in over a year. We became good friends, and well, you know the rest. How could that obvious display of God’s power not move me? Anyway, this entry is my attempt, once again, to try to focus my thoughts every now and again. I am not going to commit to writing every day, because I know from experience that just won’t happen. My more modest goal is to write as often as I feel like it, perhaps two or three times a week. I will make lists of what I am grateful for, and I will give any concerns straight to God, for he definitely knows best.
So, here goes nothing, My umpteenth attempt at writing in my journal regularly.”

Taken right around when this journal entry was made. Fairfield Glade, TN

For any interested parties, I still didn’t write in my journal regularly after that… there’s a line to that effect in almost every entry on there. And, can you believe we had been married FOUR WHOLE MONTHS? Oh goodness, younger me, you’re cute. Dramatics aside, I am still constantly in awe of how obvious it is that hubby and I were made to be together. God has the best plans. Also, I realize how ridiculous I sound, you don’t have to tell me.

Joy in sickness.

Husband bragging time again! This happened one Saturday in March, and it still makes me smile to think about.

Yesterday, I had a terrible allergy attack. I hadn’t had one like that in a long time. This morning, I woke up with a headache. The longer I was up, the worse I felt. I got baby girl some breakfast, put her in her high chair, and laid down on the couch. I felt so sick to my stomach. I felt bad, but I ended up going in to wake up Hubby to take care of baby girl. He is so sweet. He sat with her while she finished breakfast, then took her to her room to play and shut the door so that I could take a nap. He got her dressed, changed a poopy diaper, and played with her. She was almost out of diapers, so he packed her up, and they went to the store. While they were gone, I ended up getting sick, but after that I was able to lay down and take a good nap. Hubby said he and baby girl had a leisurely stroll around the grocery store, that he was trying to give me as much time as possible to nap. They also came back with cupcakes for me. I have the sweetest husband, and baby girl loved her daddy time. My heart is so full ❤

I get headaches a lot. I’ve never been formally diagnosed by a physician, but I know they are migraines. My mom gets them, and I know I do too. I have the symptoms – sensitivity to light and sound, I see flashes of light usually a few hours before one manifests, and the pain is just awful. The nausea and vomiting thing only started after I got pregnant with baby girl. I’ve never been tested, but after paying attention to when they start, I’ve identified a few predictable triggers: if I eat cured meat with nitrites or nitrates (like a lot of lunch meat, sausage, and hot dogs), what I’m assuming is a hormonal trigger – always around my period and sometimes others times my hormones are out of whack (like after I had baby girl and when I weaned her from breastfeeding), and allergies or sinuses. All of these things are potential triggers, and if left unchecked, can quickly spiral into a migraine for me.

It’s also funny how long I’ve actually dealt with it. As a kid, I thought everyone had headaches. As I said, my mom has them, I did, and I was just always around people who did. By the time I was in elementary school, I had already learned to just live with them. But, one time my friend got a headache while she was sleeping over at my house and I think she thought she was dying. She told me she had never had one before, and that just astounded me. A few years ago, I came across a little diary I had from when I was a preteen [told you I’ve been writing forever!] In it, I talked about one night where I couldn’t finish my dinner because my head was hurting so bad. I said that I went to my room, turned off all the lights, and went to sleep. In another entry, I talked about having a similar headache while on vacation. When I read that, I realized I have had migraines for way longer than I initially realized.

Even with all of my documenting and identifying, I still haven’t come up with any “miracle fix” for migraines. I usually take Excedrin and heat up a sock filled with rice to lay on my head. I still find that sleep is usually the best medicine, if I can get comfortable enough to fall asleep in the first place. But, with a toddler, that’s not always an option anymore. Any fellow migraine sufferers out there? How do you deal?

Change.

So, I promised to let you in on how much I detest change. I came across something I had written at the end of March, and I had entitled it “Change.”, so it seemed pretty obvious that I should share that next.

DISCLAIMER: there is a vague reference to some slightly icky things that happen during childbirth, but it’s pretty mild. Also, if you ever want to have a kid, you need to be prepared for these things. I WAS NOT PREPARED. And… if the word “breast” makes you uncomfortable for some reason, maybe skip this one.

Here’s what I wrote, with a couple of edits here and there:

Avon is getting rid of the perfume I’m using, and if you know me, you know that’s a big deal. The last time they discontinued my perfume (which was not long after hubby and I started dating) mom had bought a ton of it, and I kept using it for a year or two after that. Then, it took me FOREVER to settle on a new one. Now I have to do it all over again, and this time I’m not prepared. I had no idea they were doing away with it until tonight, and I already can’t order anymore. I’m so sad. I also thought I had like half a bottle left, and I have about one spray…

I hate change, so very much. Poor hubby usually just has to drag me through life, me resisting all the way. My mom used to always tell me that dad had to do this with her, and now I completely understand, because I’m exactly the same way. I know that change can be good. The best example of that is baby girl. Our lives are not the same, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But, I still struggled with it. We put off even trying to have a baby for so long, just because I could not wrap my head around it. Even as I was starting to go into labor at the hospital, I literally said I didn’t want to do it anymore, and that’s honestly how I felt at the time. I wanted things to go back to the way they were – comfortable, familiar, easy. I wanted to go home and go to bed. My matter-of-fact husband didn’t sugarcoat what was happening either. When I would express my concerns that having a baby would change our relationship with each other, he agreed that it definitely would, that our relationship would never be the same again. And that scared me. I liked the way things were, we were good.

Now that we’re on the other side, I can truly say without a doubt that having a baby changed our relationship. We’ve experienced being new parents together, he’s seen me completely out of control emotionally, and I’ve seen him look at me with fear in his eyes, not knowing what to do or say. I’ve seen him go buy lanolin and breast pads for his new-mother wife. I’ve seen him study the directions to figure out how to use a breast pump, and then show his wife who is scared to death of it. I’ve seen him reference the nursing guide they sent us home from the hospital about a thousand times, trying to help me be more comfortable and confident. He’s seen me puking while trying to nurse my newborn [if you can help it at all, DO NOT eat before a c-section! My poor, sweet husband, that’s literally his first memory of baby girl and I together]. He’s seen me freaking out on the hospital bed because I’m afraid I’m going to poop while I’m contracting. [Yeah, it’s gross, but it’s legit. Sorry, like I said, you need to be prepared.] He’s seen me so very out of it and so very helpless. I’ve seen him as a caretaker. I’ve seen him as a father. He’s seen me as a mother. We’ve learned so much about each other in the last couple of years (probably some things we could have done without). All these things have made us closer. These things have made me fall even more in love with my husband, and I didn’t think that was possible.

Our love for each other has only changed in that it has gotten stronger, which is a truly amazing thing. The way we got together was definitely a God thing (different post for a different day!), so I couldn’t imagine us being closer than we already were. But, here we are. And I love it.

Christmas in April

I’m not super great at writing on cue. I’m not going to promise to post daily, or even weekly for that matter. This past week, after starting all this craziness, every time I think about writing, I get really nervous. Add to that the fact that I’ve actually had a couple of visitors to my page, and my anxiety takes over; I have no idea what to write about.

In keeping with the “my sweet husband” theme [I’m probably going to talk about him a lot on here, I kind of think he’s great], I thought I would publish the first thing I actually typed out on my phone with the slight intention of doing something with. It was before last Christmas, and I was overwhelmed with all sorts of emotions: baby girl was going to be one soon, we were working on weaning from breastfeeding, the holiday season stresses and obligations, etc. I was laying in the bed and typed this out:

“I’ve been thinking back so much lately to last year, when we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a baby we were actually terrified to meet. I was working SO MUCH, and we had barely moved into this house that was a torn apart wreck. One day, I worked for hours – like a ten hour day on my feet in a nasty house, getting ready for some auction. I was so exhausted driving home that I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or just fall asleep. I pulled around the corner in our subdivision and saw that [hubby] had put up the outside Christmas lights. They were turned on and beautiful, and it instantly made everything better. Inside, he had set up the tree as well, so all we had to do was decorate it. Pregnancy hormones and exhaustion probably took over at that point. He knows exactly what I need ❤

Also thinking back on last year, I just remembered something else. After we decorated the tree we sat the little elf that used to be granny’s in the window. The living room was still a huge mess at that point, tools and paint everywhere, so we moved stuff around a lot. The next day, the elf was moved, but I wasn’t sure when it happened, and I just figured he was doing something and moved it out of the way. The next day, [hubby’s grandmother] had come over at some point, and after that I noticed that the elf had moved again. I just assumed that she had picked it up and put it down somewhere else, I still didn’t think much of it. The next morning, the elf was in a completely different room, and I got suspicious. I texted him and asked if he had been moving the elf. He acted totally surprised and denied having done any such thing. Every day after that, the elf was in a new place when I got up every morning. The fact that he took the time each morning before he left for work to move that elf, just to make me smile, is one of the best examples of how sweet and thoughtful my husband really is. I love him so very much.”

A little backstory for those who don’t know us – we moved into my granny’s old house while I was pregnant with baby girl and have been fixing it up pretty much ever since. It looks a lot different than it used to (thank goodness, because I used to not be able to walk in without crying), but every now and then I still get emotional about an item that used to be hers or a familiar smell. The elf I’m talking about always used to sit in a coffee can that someone had crocheted a stocking for on my granny’s hearth at Christmastime. It was really old when I was a kid, so I have no idea how old it is, but I like to call it the original elf on the shelf. It’s really old.

Anyway, basically, my husband is great and I’m really sentimental. Also, my love of Christmas is present all year and I don’t apologize for it. It’s only almost May and I’m SO ready for cooler weather again. Yeah… how do you end these things again? I’m so awkward.