Move Over Gene Simmons

My 12-week (and counting) war with breastfeeding is approaching a stalemate and although I still haven’t thrown in the spit-up covered towel, I’m getting very close. My quest to leave no stone unturned and no dollar unspent means that in the end I will have tried just about everything including, to name a few…lactation specialists, an MD who specializes in breastfeeding, tongue clipping, physical therapy, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, massage, pumping, bottle-feeding, a galactagogue and even a pharmaceutical to stop vasaspasms (don’t ask).

It’s pretty crazy that I haven’t quit yet, but having an ex-Marine for a father seems to have rubbed off on me. I mean obviously the health benefits were a big factor for me and I was (am still) committed to reducing Finnja’s chance of sharing my allergy woes. We’ve already blown the cost saving argument sky high. So why am I still torturing myself with the endless grind of trying to nurse, bottle-feed and THEN pump at every feed time? To be perfectly honest I am still hanging on to the Boob = Bliss dream for both of us. We’ve actually come a long way from the early days when he was starving and I was screaming. Recently I’ve had a glimpse of what it is supposed to be like and let me tell ya, nothing shuts up the boy like the boob. He is usually pretty easy to calm, but there are some nights when his cries defy any swaddle, shush, bounce, sway, song, pacifier Woody can throw at him and guess what? The boob is the magic bullet. Goodnight moon, goodnight Ninja. I just have to make sure I’m ready when Woody pulls the Heisman and retreats to man cave to drink beer and blog. I think that might be all he does these days.

I’m heading back to work July 7th so it feels like the end is near. It might be time for me to gracefully let go knowing that he was at least partially lining his insides with liquid gold for three months. But if you know me at all, then you are already laughing at the idea of me “gracefully” letting go of anything. Just wait for the future blog on his first drop off at daycare for an example of that.

The kid ain’t hurtin' either way. He will eat anything even if he really does love the boob. The supplementation has paid off and Finnja has climbed back into the 50th percentile for weight and jumped into the 95th percentile for length. Clearly those don’t add up to a Buddha baby, but he does look less like Gollum than in the early days.

At least I can return to drinking tequila knowing that my perseverance in the war with breastfeeding has paid off. With two tongue clippings under his belt, the Finnja can now be a genuine rock star when he grows up. He is pretty impressed with his new tongue capabilities and hopefully I have saved him from future speech, sinus and dental development problems. You wouldn’t believe how many people are telling us that they now realize that their children were tongue-tied after reading the blog. One thing is for certain, the future Finnja will not be writing into the Playboy Advisor (July 08 Issue) complaining about his tongue tie!