Sugar highs and a little low

The birthday party was a hit and I’m still reeling from my sugar hangover. I had lost three pounds in the weeks leading up to the party but I’m pretty sure I gained it all back in frosting consumption. Mmmmmmm… frosting…… Most of the adults were drinking and since I never know when Grace is going to want the boob I abstained from the booze but I turned to my second vice- frosting. Both result in a euphoric buzz but the frosting is breastfeeding safe so I went with number two. Grace seemed a little unsure of all the party goers at first but soon found her groove and was able to enjoy herself. She inherited her mama’s love of all things sugary, powdered, and hydrogenated and dove right into her smash cake. Of course, in the case of Grace’s smash cake, it should be called an eat cake because girl put a serious dent in her cake. She put her little hand into a scoop shape and shoveled the cake in her mouth with incredible speed and accuracy. Fearing another blowout to beat all blowouts (and thus, another change in my profile pic), I took the cake away from her much to her disappointment. When she is older and nursing and unable to indulge in alcohol, she can eat all the cake and icing she wants. Until then… tough titties.

I met with Gavin’s psychologist yesterday to go over the results of Gavin’s evaluation in depth. The psychologist strongly believes that Gavin is NOT autistic. He does exhibit autistic-like behaviors but as Gavin is extremely social, initiates and maintains eye contact, engages in appropriate- albeit delayed- communication, and participated in all facets of the eval, there is no way he is autistic or even on the spectrum. We are to continue with his speech therapy to address his severe expressive and receptive language delays and he doesn’t need to be seen again until he is four unless his progress lags or we have any other concerns. The psychologist predicts that as Gavin’s speech improves, so will his behaviors.

Basically the boy is weird and has speech problems.

Hmmmm, sound like anyone else you know?

After revealing Gavin’s new habit of taking all of his matchbox cars and lining them up neatly and in perfect order from one end of his room to the other, I confided in the psychologist (stuttering all along the way), that I’m not sure who found his obsession with lines and order more comforting: me or him? The boy. He may look like his daddy but he is all mama.

Last night Grace and I went to La Leche League and I’m afraid that if one of the new pregnant moms is a member of Babycenter, I see a LLL vent in our near future. This one mama was about 8 months pregnant, as country as country gets, spoke through her own mother who came with her, and revealed (again, by whispering to her mom) that she was scared to death to breastfeed and wasn’t even sure if she wanted to. My LLL group as a whole is not very crunchy but last night, only the crunchiest of the crunchy were in attendance. The woman looked at all the no bra, no make-up, Birkenstock-wearing, Dr Sears lovin’, LLLers with wide eyes and I could just see the wheels in her brain turn as she looked for an escape hatch under her seat. I attempted to engage her in conversation. I blinked my mascara-laden eyes, retouched my lipstick coated lips, and crossed and uncrossed my wedge-heel covered feet. I told her that I had to formula feed my son and it was totally ok to be confused and scared. She asked me why I still came to the meetings if I was already breastfeeding and I told her for support. She asked why I needed support with breastfeeding. What do you say to that?

Unfortunately my one-on-one with her was cut short by the start of the meeting which immediately took an extended breastfeeding turn as there were three of us there who were nursing 11+1 month year olds. I tried to direct the meeting to the needs of this new mama but next thing you know people are talking about how they nursed until the were four years old and they planned on nursing their children for years and years and years and I swear, I could feel the new mama shudder from two seats away. Then the conversation turned to the recent NY Time article, Breastfeed, or Else and the pulled ad council commercials to promote breastfeeding by comparing formula feeding to being as risky as log rolling or riding a mechanical bull. For the first time in my 16 month membership with LLL, a meeting has been devoted to the evils of formula and all the new mama could do was mutter “but I was formula fed”. I had to leave early but I told her to get my number from the leader and she could call me if she needed anything. She probably won’t some back to LLL and I don’t blame her.

Promoting and supporting breastfeeding by demonizing formula makes no sense to me. It doesn’t work. I saw that first hand.

What does work, however, is that after 43 long weeks, see that countdown clock up there? I AM DONE PUMPING TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And this is how GOOD it feels to be done: