Breastfeeding 911!!!

So we are three weeks into this journey and although things have been up and down i can honestly say they are mostly up.

Well all is mostly up...just one thing is seemingly still really stressful and frustrating.

BREASTFEEDING!!!!

Now i know it is a process and i think ours has been longer and harder than most lol. First we struggled with his latching correctly. For the first week he had my nipples tore up. After a day or two of pumping my nipples healed and we were back to the breast.

His latch was doing great. Nice big mouth covering all it was suppose to...yadda yadda yadda! Even the lactation consultant said he had a perfect latch! I was thrilled to hear it.

Just when i thought we were doing good week 2 brought us a battle with thrush. So 3 days of treatment with Gentian Violet, 2 purple nipples, and a purple baby mouth later we were thrush and pain free. Back to nursing again!

Now week three and although his latch is perfect about 90% of the time my nipples are back to being tore up after a rough patch of bad latching.

I am frustrated to say the least. After 2 whole days of pain free nursing follwed by one day of struggling with latching i am so sore i cant even put him to the breast without cringing in pain. I am just at a loss for words or even actions.

How long is this going to continue? How long before he has his latch down so well that he quits tearing my nipples up? I know using the bottle on occassion has probably aided in this processes but he seems to know the difference between bottle and breast. Like i said 90% of the time he gets the latch right and it is just that 10% of the time that he doesnt that leaves me frustrated and in pain.

So help me out here! Breastfeeding mothers i call to you to help a fellow feeder!

How long did it take before your nipples were toughened up? How long did it take your baby to perfect their latch? How did you keep your baby awake long enough to make sure they were getting full (he is horrible about falling asleep after 5 mins and then waking up starving 10 mins later)? How long and how often did you feed your baby? What positions did you use? Anyone who had latch problems and torn up nipples; how did you make sure you were completely healed? Did you pump for a few days and then put baby back to breast or did you just grin and bear it?

I really need your help here! Any advice at all even if it isnt for a question i asked. I dont wanna give up trying breastfeeding but i am so frustrated with this back and for cycle. I enjoy this bonding time so much and i just feel defeated sometimes.

Please if you are not a breastfeeding mom but know someone who is, direct them my way. Maybe they can help to answer my questions.

(Yes i have talked to a lactation consultant about all of this but i just want more info from women who are going through it right now or recently went through it. More learning never hurts and i am all about having as much knowledge as possible right now.)

HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!

I need some advice. Today while we were at McDonald's waiting in line there was a very heavy man (probably about 400+) sitting at a table beside us. Phabian started staring and tugging at my shirt. I had no clue what he was talking about til i looked up and he was pointing at this man. I tried to play it cool and told him it was not nice to point at people. Then he did what i dreaded. He announced loud enough for anyone within ear shot to hear, "Mommy that man is really big". Besides dying of embarrassment and wanting to take them and run from the restaurant i told him that it was not nice to talk about people and i made him apologize to the man. The man didn't seemed fazed about it and even laughed. I however wanted to crawl under a table and cry.

I needed time to process so we could talk about it more so i really didn't say much else about it to him (other than pointing out that his dad is also big and so his his favorite aunt). Tonight when i had finished dinner and sat it on the table he yelled at his dad to,"Get your lazy butt off the couch". When i told him that he was not aloud to talk to his dad like that or any other adult he told me, "well daddy is fat too". I know it really hurt Marcus' feelings and it hurt me as well to hear my 4 year old talking like this.

Somewhere he has learned to associate fat people with being lazy. So we talked about it after we said prayer. I ask him where he learned that fat people were lazy and at first he told me his teacher told him (which is his answer for anything anytime i ask him where he "learned" something). So i reworded it and ask him where he heard that. He never did really tell us. Then we ask him if he thought daddy was lazy. He said yes and we explained all that daddy does and how that makes him far from lazy. We talked about how anyone can be lazy, not just heavy people. We also talked about how everyone is different and how the world would be boring if we were all the same.

I am just stunned and a little hurt that he has somehow picked this up. It is not something we ever talk about so i know it had to have come from either TV (but i can not imagine where since they usually only watch educational shows) or somewhere outside the house (school, playground,etc...). I am just not sure if we are handling this the right way. Please help me out here. If this was your child how would you go about handling it? Have you ever had a situation like this? Am i going about this all wrong? I am just so upset!

I come from an obese family and it just breaks my heart that my son would think that they are all lazy. I don't really know what to do here.

HELP!!!!!

They Make It Hard

So my kids have a secret!

Its more of a trick so to speak!

I am not convinced that it is unlike any other trick that kids pull to get out of something they don't want to do but all the same it is a sneaky trick!

My kids, every night, after i lay them down to bed to finish watching a movie get up a million times.

They don't get up to use the bathroom...

They don't get up to ask for a drink...

They don't get up to have mommy kiss a boo boo...

Why then may you ask?!?

My kids get up for a hug!!!

Now this may not be odd to anyone. I am sure there are a million other kids who do this same thing. However, I am struggling with my ways of handling this properly.

Marcus seems to think we should tell them no and to go get in bed. I would go with that if i didn't feel like the worst mommy ever for telling a 3 and 4 year old that they cant have a hug.

At the same time how can i correct this behavior if i cant tell them no. How may hugs are ok before i cut them off?

I really feel tremendous Mommy Guilt (and don't act like you don't know what Mommy Guilt is!) if i tell them that they cant have a hug until the movie goes off or that i already gave them a hug tonight.

This can sometimes go on for hours. A tedious balance between hugs and frustration that they wont stay in bed. Why can't it be simpler with them like the glass of water that i could just say no to? Of course the i suppose i would feel like i was making them thirst to death!

So how would you handle it? Would you say no to these faces?