Mums the Word

There are two topics that I generally don't discuss at my Tuesday mommy group because if I did, I would look like a total biyatch.

The first is my weight loss. I gained only 26.5 pounds during my 40 week pregnancy (which makes it all the more shocking that I had a baby that weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces!). And except for 4-5 pounds, all of that extra weight came off dramatically and without effort about 3 weeks after Ian was born. As of this morning, 7 weeks after Ian's birth, I weighed 144.5 pounds, which means I have only 2 more pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. (That being said, I would love to get down to 135 pounds, which would really be ideal for me.) Today, I wore a pair of my old jeans and I was actually comfortable in them. They are just a bit tight in the stomach area, but otherwise fit quite well. And I have a sneaky feeling that even after I lose the last 2 pounds, my stomach still won't look the way it did before I got pregnant. I can just tell that the muscles in my abdomen are stretched and I'm going to need to work hard to tighten them and pull everything back in.

The second topic that I don't discuss is my supply of breast milk. All the other mothers in the group have started supplementing their child with formula because they don't make enough milk. They ask the nurse what they can do to produce more milk and pride themselves on pumping 3-4 extra ounces of milk to keep in the fridge or freezer. I pumped 20 ounces yesterday, in addition to breast feeding my child. The milk pours out of my breasts. At this time, I have roughly 175 ounces of breast milk frozen in our freezer. We even went out and bought an additional fridge/freezer for the basement so that we have room to store all of my milk and not take-over the freezer in the kitchen. Needless to say, my problem is that I have an overabundance of breast milk. Now I'm certainly not complaining about having enough milk to feed my child. It really feels great to know that my child is exclusively breastfed and thriving on it. But I really do wish I made only enough to feed him. My breasts get so unbelievably full of milk during the course of the night that I have woken up from the pain. The discomfort I feel has even worked its way into my dreams. And my poor baby often gags, chokes and sputters when he first starts feeding from one of my overly full breasts. I know that breast milk will only last 3-4 months in the freezer and so we have been using the older breast milk in the 1 bottle that my husband feeds Ian in the morning. But still, I am pumping more than we use each day. At this point, I think I may actually look into donating my extra milk. I don't want it to go to waste and I think it would be absolutely fantastic if someone else could benefit. For now, I'm happy to feed my child and continue pumping. But I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm already anxious about the time when I have to wean my child. It is going to really hurt.