Motherhood is beautiful?

CAUTION: read at your own risk, it may contain TMI (you'll know after the first sentence)

Since giving birth, I have one boob that is significantly larger than the other. I know this is partially my own doing because I am only nursing from one breast. One breast? Yeah, basically, for certain anatomical reasons, my son was having a hard time "latching on" to my right breast and therefore was sucking less and therefore I was producing less milk on that side. This caused me to have to nurse on that side, then the other side, then he got a bottle and then I pumped both sides. Once my husband went back to work and I didn't have help with the feeds (he would feed the baby the bottle after I nursed), I got too exhausted and I didn't feel like baby was getting much out of it ,except frustration. I thought, "why am I trying so hard to make him nurse on that side, what is the point?" So the boob shrunk and in times when the other boob is full, there is a very definate difference in size.

This situation is accented if I am wearing a shirt that is not a maternity shirt because it is nice and snug around my chest region. Yeah, I am still wearing maternity clothes for the most part because, although I only have 7 pounds left to lose to get to my pre-pregnancy weight, it is all centered in my stomach and hip area which makes me unable to pull regular pants up and my shirts too short and expose my maternity pants. And so I'm here, trying to decide if my body is going to change back enough for me to ever fit in these clothes again or if I should just give them all to Goodwill and go get some new clothes in bigger sizes. But then I have to buy bigger sizes...scary.

Of course, the adorable little bugger is all worth it as you can see from his pictures (he is cuter in person than in his pictures). But if anyone had any illusions that motherhood was beautiful...

Milk

So two of my friends, who do not know each other, both wrote blogs today about breastfeeding. Was there something in the news I missed yesterday? One, I feel, is a realistic account of what it is like to breastfeed, which I appreciate because I feel like people don't really talk about it. They just talk about how great it is for the baby. The other one is a shout out to support breastfeeding and how our culture doesn't really support it. Now, I don't want to into too much detail about breastfeeding, mostly because people like my dad read this and it makes me feel a little awkward. However, I feel like I need to respond.

I intend to breastfeed. I know full well that some women have problems and I think that if it is not possible to breastfeed, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving your baby formula (I don't think anyone's blog was saying there was). But I do feel (and I think this comes from my husband being a pediatrician and seeing this first-hand) that some people make mothers feel bad when they are not able to breastfeed and when it doesn't come easily. It makes them feel like a failure and there are a lot of things to feel like a failure about already with a new baby. Women also don't have the support they used to have when having a baby. I mean, there is a whole generation who were bottle fed because people were saying it was better than breastfeeding. Some of our moms don't know how to breastfeed and it seems like something that should just come naturally. But it doesn't always. That's all I'm saying. I'm all for the better conditions for mothers to make it happen and for people to not be so weird about public feeding. However, there is a perfectly nutitional alternative if it is causing too much stress in an already stressful time.