Rant, rant, rant

A mother's baby is hers and hers alone. She is not being selfish when she wants to hold her baby and take care of her baby WHENEVER she wants. It's her right. It's HER baby. Everyone else can have the privilege of holding her baby and taking care of her baby, but ONLY if that is what the mother wishes. 

If a mother doesn't want to take advice that is given to her... guess what? She doesn't have to! No one knows her baby better than her. ALL babies are different. Just because you've had one baby or ten babies, does NOT mean you know that mother's baby and everything there is to know about babies. 

So if you are offended or bothered by the way that I think things should be, go right on ahead.

 That's your choice.  

The Beginning and End of Breast Feeding

Breast feeding is/was hard. Crazy ridiculous hard. No one tells you just how hard it is either.
I have pretty much failed at it. I gave it as much as I could in the beginning. I still feel like I could have given it more, but there's not much that I can do about it now. I definitely feel like women should be more educated about beast feeding before they give birth. I though that I knew a fair amount, but it wasn't enough.

It all started with the fact that I have inverted/flat nipples. Technically this should not be a huge problem if you know how to deal with it properly. For me it was though. It cause intense pain. I dreaded every time I needed to feed my baby. That fact alone made me incredibly sad. A mother should not dread feeding her baby. It's suppose to be a wonderful bonding experience. Of course lots of women go through pain in the beginning and that can be normal.

(While trying to deal with the pain of having inverted/flat nipple I would occasionally give Teagan formula... when the pain was just too much. Big mistake though.)

A few weeks after giving birth I got mastitis. Mastitis was awful.... absolutely AWFUL. I had a fever of 103 and I could barely wear a t-shirt. Then they tell you that it's best to keep nursing... ha... funny. I couldn't do it. The nipple problem combined with Mastitis was too much for me. So I let the breast that had Mastitis dry up... aka, no longer produce milk. One breast is capable of producing enough milk for your baby so I thought that's what I could do.

(Now I've started giving Teagan even more formula, but hoping to get back to strictly breast feeding.)

Since I got Mastitis I had to take antibiotics to help take care of it. By taking antibiotics and taking enough probiotics with them I got thrush. Thrush hurt too. Wearing a bra was quite painful. Thrush was pretty much the last straw for me. I was emotionally drained and just couldn't take anymore pain.

So the plan of breast feeding exclusively died. Formula was it. Which I hated and still hate, but as long as my baby is fed and happy that's all that matters.

Through out all of this I cried and cried and CRIED about not being able to do it the way it's supposed to be done. I have felt like such a quitter and wimp. I feel like I should of been able to do it and that I didn't give it as much as I could have. I know that for the most part this all isn't true, but I just wasn't ever prepared to fail at breast feeding. That's the one thing that I never expected.

Now we just nurse once a day... at night just before bed, but I'm probably going to be stopping that soon too.

I plan to be better prepared with our next child and at least now I kind of know what to expect. Next time I'm going to give it all I've got and hope it's enough.

So... it's been a while since I've had enough time to blog. Life is pretty good. We are currently living in Mesa, AZ. It is ridiculously hot down here... no joke. If you don't like the heat don't ever move here. I feel bad for Devin having to be outside all day every day, but oh well. He only has to do it for four months, then he can quit. I'm really excited for that. I'm done with this job too. I hate the hours. Hate, hate, hate. It'll be worth it in the end though. 

Life with baby Teagan is good. She is starting to have a lot more personality and it's the cutest thing. Her sneezes are adorable and I love it when she will happily talk to herself while lying on the floor. She is probably the best baby ever. Occasionally fussy, but she's a baby... it's gonna happen sometimes. 

I can't believe how much she has change since birth. 

Here she is, 2 days old. 

And here she is 5 weeks and 3 days old. 

This is basically our first family pic. 

Life is good. :)