Monday, August 11, 2008

So Tired

I've been really, really tired the last few days. I'm the mother of a 16 month old who has yet to sleep through the night- I know tired. This has been an especially tired few days. At first I figured I was just recovering from the effects of the stealth UTI I had last week. But those symptoms cleared up quickly, once I got on antibiotics, so my suspicions turned elsewhere... to the antibiotics. It turns out "excessive tiredness" is one of the possible side effects. Today, I called my doctor, and got permission to stop taking the pills. I am hoping to be back to my only moderately tired usual self soon.

One of the other things that may be due to either the UTI or the antibiotics is the drop in milk supply I'm experiencing. I'm pumping 2 ounces less per day right now (in my sole pumping), and have now gone through all of my frozen reserves. This would have bothered me a lot more earlier. Now I just think "hmm, I was wondering what I was going to do with those reserves, anyway." I'm almost done pumping. We will keep nursing, but Pumpkin only nurses one time during the "work day" hours when I'm home on the weekends, anyway.

I had been trying to decide when I'd quit pumping, and had finally settled on stopping when Pumpkin is about 17 months old. The deciding factor was day care. This didn't really surprise me, since day care determined when we switched from a bottle to a sippy cup. On the note telling us about the rate hikes for the new "school year", the assistant director had written that our rates would drop a bit when Pumpkin was 18 months old and moved up to the next room. I learned my lesson from the great sippy cup campaign , and wanted to have a lot of lead time to make any adjustments required for Pumpkin's advancement. It turns out that the main differences between her current toddler room and the 18 month old room are that they all eat the same lunch (provided by day care) and that they drink from regular cups instead of sippy cups.

Pumpkin is not the greatest eater, so I'm happy to abdicate responsibility for making her lunch. If the fine folks at day care can get her to eat whatever they cook for lunch, more power to them. The assistant director told me that they handle the switch to regular cups, and I didn't have to worry about it. I actually wasn't too worried, because Pumpkin loves to drink from a regular cup- she's just not very good at it. She tends to spill half of whatever she's drinking all over herself. I got an image in my head of Pumpkin doing this with a cup of my hard earned breastmilk, and I knew that I finally had my answer of when I'd stop pumping.

2 comments:

  1. Sorry that you are so tired. That just can't be good on top of the lack of solid sleep you normally get!

    They drink from a cup at 18 months? Our little one is 17 months now, and she's still a mess with the cup, although she really does enjoy it! Maybe I should give her opportunities to try more...

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  2. Anonymous6:09 AM

    18 months???!!! My prince is still drinking his milk from a bottle at 15 1/2 months! Eeek! Does that make me a failure as a mother? (He does drink his water from a sippy cup...)

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