Skip to main content

Oops, I did it again (original post: 04/26/17)

Today is Wednesday, the day of my CT and bone scans and surgical port placement to receive chemo tomorrow.

I weaned Sawyer on Monday morning before my MRI, since I wouldn't be able to nurse for 24 hours due to the contrast dye.

Monday night was brutal for us both.

Tuesday night was better. Sawyer even drank a bottle for me and fell asleep doing so holding on to my finger!

The early morning hours of Wednesday soon snuck up on us, and Sawyer ended up sleeping between
 us in our bed.

I was going to wake up before we had to leave for the hospital to pump the last batch of  'good' milk for my sweet baby. After today, every bit I pump until my supply fades away will be useless to him.

Around the same time Sawyer woke up, when I normally I would have just nursed him, I had woken up with sore, full breasts. They were still on their schedule to feed. Sawyer was still on his schedule to nurse.

Hmm...what to do?

I was about to make him a bottle and then pump. We went through a hard day on Monday. We had already said goodbye to our breastfeeding journey. Then I decided...

We are going to do what we both WANT to do...one more time. While we still can.

So we laid there and nursed, with Pete asleep next to him, and Penny asleep next to me.

In that moment, though, it was just him and I and the early rising sun.

Me and my baby.

We didn't cry. We didn't rush out of the door.

He laid on the right side of my chest, where the port will be surgically placed in a few hours, and we fell back asleep.

It was peaceful. It was beautiful. It was familiar. It was just right. It was...us.

We fell back asleep and slept too late for me to pump a lot of milk like I wanted. I see now that waking up with that sweet boy on my chest before it was bruised and port-filled, with one last tummy full of my warm, delicious milk was a better experience, a better memory, than all of the ounces of bagged breastmilk in the world.

I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes it is better to do what you want to do instead of what you should do.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Old Lady and Yoni Steam Baths

''Hello! May I please have an ounce of marshmallow root, and an ounce of stinging nettle?''. ''Sure, but...you have to tell me first!''. ''Okay...tell you what ?''. '' You know ; Did your period ever come back? I've been dying to find out!''. Now to answer the burning question of both you and the local herbalist's, the answer is yes, my period did come back. And yes, I am such a 'townie' that even the herbalist is keeping track of my sporadic cycles with intense (and surprising) enthusiasm. I went in there right after Christmas, so less than a month ago. I was a regular for years, both there and the other herbal shop the next town ever. Even though I am not religious, I like to blend medicinal teas reminiscent of biblical times, the ''Red Tent'' days and all of that. My love affair with herbs began when I was 24 years old, as I walked past an herbal shop on my way to and from...
Post a Comment
Read more

Twas the night before my mastectomy...

Twas the night before my mastectomy, when all through the lake, not a creature was stirring, not even a snake. The sage was lit around the circle with care, in hopes that a yew tree would be planted there. Ah, the humble yew tree. As anyone who has read a prior post entitled, ''Agony and the Yew Tree'' knows, one of my past chemo meds, Taxol, is derived from a yew tree. Since chemotherapy has played such a significant role in saving my life, I felt it was important to properly thank Mother Earth for creating it. Let me stop right here to add something before we continue; I am not a religious person. In fact, the very thought of begging for my life to an all-knowing, all-powerful God makes me want to cringe. Why? Because why has he put me in this situation in the first place? And it's not because ''everything happens for a reason'', or it's ''God's plan''. It's because sometimes people just get cancer.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

12x9

That's the number in millimeters my lung nodule now is: 12'9. It grew from 5'3 mm in November, nearly tripling in size. I was in tears in the stall of a middle school bathroom as my pulmonologist said the words, ''I'm very concerned''. Another teacher came in and watched my class for twenty minutes so I could pull myself together. And the rest of the day ensued, with students sitting there oblivious to my plight, ignoring my requests to quiet down, to stay on task, one even asking me to walk over and hand back her work because she was ''too tired''. And all I could think, all I could honestly think, was how much I wanted to be with my own baby. How I could be standing there with breast cancer in my lung and die prematurely and should be spending every precious moment with my toddler who was in day care, so maybe, he might have some memory of me. And instead I with my students, working under an administration who replace me in two da...
Post a Comment
Read more