💾 Archived View for alioop.flounder.online › gemlog › 2023-12-10.gmi captured on 2024-05-26 at 14:51:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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the baby wants me to hold her for this nap so i am obliging.
i freaking spilled a pouch of breast milk that took me half an hour to pump. i hate pumping so much. but if i want to do things away from the baby for more than 2-3 hours, then i have to have milk to give her in case she gets hungry while i’m away.
i knew i wanted to breastfeed, but before i started i did not realize just how much it physically tied you to your baby. i remember being pregnant and thinking “i’m looking forward to having my body back to myself.” but it’s been 5.5 months since i gave birth, and it’s still not over yet because i’m breastfeeding. she still very much relies on my body even though she is outside of it. i still have to be conscientious of my caffeine and alcohol intake too. that part is probably good for me.
don’t get me wrong, i really love breastfeeding itself. i’m really proud of myself for sticking with it. for me, it’s so much easier than preparing a bottle and washing parts all the time. always perfectly heated, perfect amount, never spoiled, free of charge, tailored specifically to her health needs. it’s such a lovely bonding time between us too. i’ll be sad when i’m done, but relieved too.
i’ll wean her when she’s 1-year-old and can drink normal whole milk. she would need formula if we stopped before then, and that’s expensive and seems like a whole thing i would have to learn how to deal with that i don’t want to learn, lol. (nothing wrong with formula at all, just that breastfeeding makes more sense for us at this point.) i always thought that breastfeeding could stop once babies started solid foods, but turns out solid foods are more just for funsies and exploration rather than nutrition, so they still primarily rely on milk until 12 months.
i’m burning crazy calories from breastfeeding. i’m hungry all the time, but i weigh less than i did before i was pregnant. bodies are wild. so weird how these things affect people so drastically differently and it’s something you can’t control at all.
i still feel icked out because a co-worker said i “had a perfect pregnancy” because my bump was small and i “looked great the whole time and after too.” i need to work out why it made me feel so icky…
she definitely meant it as a compliment but it had the opposite effect. what if my symptoms were the same, and the baby came out just as healthy, but i had gained more weight? would it not have been a perfect pregnancy then? what if my next pregnancy i’m a lot bigger? would it then not be a “perfect pregnancy”? i hate that she said it in front of other women who are already mothers (and women who one day want to be mothers), too. that kind of comment insults their pregnancy experiences and appearance if it was/would be any different than mine. who is she to deem any other person’s pregnancy as “perfect”? what if someone felt good about their experience, and then heard that comment and felt bad about having gained weight? just such a thoughtless thing to have said.
(side note: honestly, i wish i had been bigger because people couldn’t even tell i was pregnant and would make comments about how small my bump was all the time. it made me [and my husband!] worry about the baby’s development. i was jealous of people who were clearly pregnant at 5 or 6 months. made me feel like i didn’t “earn” my pregnancy. which is wild, because i definitely was pregnant and gave birth and my size did not determine whether that was earned. no person should feel like they have an imperfect pregnancy because of size and weight!!)
the same kind of thing happened when my delivery doctor complimented the fact that i didn’t have stretch marks and said how bad she felt for women who did have them. um??? why are you commenting on your patients’ bodies??? no one can help if they get stretch marks—it’s genetic. why invite comparison? why imply that it’s such a negative? women are trying so hard to break the stigma of stretch marks. they are completely normal and women are still beautiful with or without them. ugh. another icky “compliment.”
comments about appearance at all always invite comparison. even comparison to our past or future selves, which can be tough. and no one ever needs more comparison!!!!! goes to show that commenting on anyone’s appearance, whether “positive” or negative, is always not good!!!! only exceptions are things people can easily change or have control over, like their hair or clothes or makeup. i think that, most of all, is why i felt icked out over those “compliments”—because i had no control over those things (weight, stretch marks), and i very well could have gone the other way and then had been on the receiving end of their judgement.
this turned into an unexpected tangent. glad i sorted out those feelings though.