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Monday, April 13

The battle in my head

To wean or not to wean, that is the question.
With the starting of solids, I find myself actually nursing less and less. I find myself pumping the same amount of time, however. This is not fun for me. So, this leads to the battle in my head. Do I give it up? I'm thinking pros and cons for this one (not all are realistic or serious, but it's what's in my head, okay?):

Pros to continue:
  • Immunity
  • Continued, however limited, bonding
  • It's working
  • Baby hasn't rejected it/me yet
  • Keeping my weight down where it's never been
  • Can still eat ice cream, cake, cookies...
  • If I forget to pack a bottle, I got backup
  • It's free food
  • If we're stranded on a desert island, baby's got food
ConsReasons that tempt me to quit:
  • Pumping sucks
  • Gaining back 30-60 minutes I lose daily with pumping alone, not including nursing
  • Can go to bed when I want to go to bed, not.."I have to pump first"
  • Get my body back
  • Get my bras back
  • Not watching the clock at work or otherwise calculating hours until next pumping session
  • Instead of blogging about should I quit or not, I'd be relaxing and watching TV, and not pumping and debating to quit or not
So yeah. I can think of 1000 reasons why I should just give up. My first goal was to give nursing a try. When it worked, I thought 3 months, let's see how it goes. As two to three months approached, I said let's me make it to six months. Now, facing eight months, do I say let's go the extra four months and make it a full year as the AAP advises?
The busier life gets, I just find myself actually nursing 'Lil D once, maybe twice per day. Usually we have good session before I leave for work in the morning. This works for scheduling because I'm usually a bit sore from sleeping all night, (in order to maximize sleep, D gets a bottle in the middle of the night if he wakes up hungry, and I don't nurse him). The con to this is, depending on how quickly I was able to get ready and get him dressed, I may be looking at the clock the whole time he's feeding and just trying to just get out the door and beat traffic, which is not very relaxing (and a bottle would take a fraction of the time to make and for him to drink). We may get another nursing session in when we get home from work/daycare. However, today when I picked him up, D was still drinking his last bottle. That threw off my game. I was bummed we wouldn't get those special few minutes to ourselves when we got home. Typically, he's eaten a good couple hours before I pick him up so the timing just works; we go home, he nurses. Today it didn't, and it had me bummed out. Really, I think I'm actually looking for any excuse to quit, but I don't want to make the decision myself. I feel like it would be a mean and selfish decision to quit. In reality, it is not. I know this. I think I'm scared of stopping one of the things I have consistently done every single day of 'Lil D's life, so far.

Ugh. Thoughts? Comments? I just needed to vent and blog it out. G'night!

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