Let’s Talk About Boobs, Baby!

They are a wondrous and complicated thing, the mammary glands.

I recently told my husband that I want my boobs back. (I’m pretty sure he wants them back too.) I am blessed with the biology of one of my aunts, which puts me at about 38C/D … just enough to get some attention and to not be able to fit clothes off the rack. My pregnancy sent me up to the land of double Ds, and breastfeeding has shot me straight to an E.

Hubba hubba.

Really, maternity clothes made fitting the girls okay. It’s all proportional. And now that Max is eating real food three times a day, I’ve given up the horror of the pump, a.k.a., the mama milking machine. All in all, I should be grateful to the boobs; they’re balancing out my extra twenty pounds! Although, it would be nice to fit into some of my pre-pregnancy tops without looking like a porn star.

Nursing itself is something I’m still totally in love with … it contains a level of intimacy that is almost indescribable. For me, it has to do with sustenance. It’s a word in my overly-food-i-fied life that I treasure; I love to cook and I love creating nourishment and happiness for those at my table.

But nursing; nursing is sustenance in action. It’s in the complexity of noises Max makes, a cooing, contented, sighing thing. It’s the way he kicks his leg or waves his arms with satisfaction, or how he can still smile and stay latched on when I tickle him behind the knee. It’s stroking his little head as his eyelids slowly gain the weight of sleep. It is about being part of helping my son grow, still, now that he has left the safety of my body.

So in the end, I’m cool with the tatas. They’re for a good cause. Really, I should have said, “I want my bras back.” I’m so over wearing a bra 24 hours a day! I’m over constantly re-stuffing my breasts into the bra cups, because when I was five months pregnant I let the sales girl at Motherhood Maternity talk me into buying a size “up” from what I needed. I’m over lying on my side and everything just falling out. (If I could figure out a way to just stick the nursing pads to my skin, and chuck the bra, I would.) I’m over leaving my dresser drawer, dedicated to all things Victoria’s Secret, untouched. And I’m definitely over the same three choices: Beige. Black. White. Woohoo.

When our year of breastfeeding is over, I may ceremoniously torch my nursing bras, and make it a part of this journey through the fourth trimester. It will bring me one step closer to re-capturing the “me” I was before pregnancy. Hopefully that’s a me that back in a 38C.

Read Full Post »

Hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids.

Hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids. I have hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids, hemorrhoids, hemorrhoids.

There is a theory that if you confront an uncomfortable situation, it becomes less scary. This is my theory in accepting the fact that I have been dealing with hemorrhoids, pretty much since the birth of my son.

See, and all of my readers thought I’d never shut up about being fat. J

I technically have only one hemorrhoid. My other issue is a tear, something a bit scarier than my fear of having hemorrhoids. If that doesn’t heal, it means the worst of the worst. The fear of the fear. I’m talking about the Ass Man. The proctologist, not Cosmo Kramer.

I won’t go into any further details (click here for that), but I share this information because it is an issue that I have let go on and on for almost eight months. I supposed it is easier to write about it now that I have finally seen my doctor and know how life will proceed.

Mostly, this has felt embarrassing, and slightly painful. There were few moments of panic. And certainly, a pretty constant feeling that seemed not normal, uncomfortable and completely unsexy. And really, with the exception of small story at the end of “Belly Laughs,” and a good friend of mine recommending I pick up some Colace before the baby was born, no one I know talks about this.

The worst thing about it really, is the not knowing, and then, not sharing. I cried when I told my mom, and she was the only person I told. Her reaction was, “You have to get that checked out.” I hid it from Ned … and didn’t tell him until after I went to the doctor. His reaction was, “Are you going to be okay?”

So had I addressed the issue earlier, I would have had all the support in the world that I needed. Who knew?

And now that I’m getting treatment, and adjusting my diet, it makes me wonder how long this will go on, and why it started to begin with; is it just a casualty of being a mom? Do our insides just get so mashed up and scooted around that they’ll never operate the same way again? And most importantly, do I have to drink 64 ounces of water a day from now until the end of time?

That reminds me … I need to pee.

Read Full Post »

Happy Mother’s Day

I’m days late, I know. It’s the curse of the new mom; I’m still on the hunt to finish buying Mother’s Day presents for my mother and mother-in-law. But I guess that makes me a bad daughter, not a bad mom.

My first-ever Mother’s Day was started with French toast, which I’m still thinking about (thanks, Ned), turned into a couple of naps and finished with chocolate. What more could a mom want?

I’ve been thinking about why it is that I love motherhood, because I am, I admit, one of those annoying women that really enjoy being a mom, about 99.9 percent of the time.

But some days there’s a living room to pick up and a kitchen floor to mop, but that has to wait until a manuscript is finished, and then I’m interrupted to answer the phone and in the spirit of multi-tasking I begin to make baby food that I’ve been meaning to get to for three days, and before I know it, there’s half a blender full of green beans on the counter, still steaming, which are abandoned to feed a hungry baby, who, it turns out, really rather just play in the high chair than eat, so I pluck him out to change a diaper instead, and immediately after getting naked he’s doing barrel rolls on the changing pad (someone must invent a diaper you can put on upside-down, or backwards), and I’m thinking, “Oh. My. God. When is my husband getting home?”

Yet once he arrives, I take one look at his face and see the headache all over it, and realize that the break I was hoping for to finish cleaning/mopping/editing/cooking isn’t going to happen.

But that’s only .01 percent of the days. The rest of the time, I’m completely in love. I love that Max has taught me that babies do indeed say, “Goo goo, ga ga.” I love the way he studies something, poking at it with his left index finger like he’s a microscopic probe, either a manufacturer’s tag on a stuffed animal, or your eyeball.

I love the way his entire body lights up when he sees Ned. It starts in his eyes and his smile, but then his little arms and legs start going a million miles a minute and I think he’s just gonna fly up to his daddy like a ‘lil airplane.

But my favorite part is putting him to bed. Not because he’s sleeping (and sometimes, he’s not), but because of the way he feels with his head on my shoulder; safe. And how I can feel, physically, how he’s slowly growing into a little boy as his limbs hang further and further down my torso and over my shoulder. And sometimes I feel sadness, putting him to bed, because I won’t get to see him again until morning.

Of course, then 6:01 a.m. comes like a bullet, and I wonder how long it will be until we can teach him the art of sleeping in.

Read Full Post »