So that’s the bad. The three good takeaways from this weekend are:

1) I had my stitches removed on Friday which also removed all of the uncomfortable itchiness I was experiencing. Apparently the stitches the pinch hitter doc used to sew me up after labor were quite wirey and probably would not have dissolved for a long time which causes me to wonder WHY AND THE HELL THEY WERE USED but whatever, it’s over.

2) We have still been able to spend a lot of time with Chrissy and Andy’s family which has been a lot of fun.

3) Any uncomfortableness around discussing boobs with any member of Andy’s family is now gone and it has been fully exonerated from the list of awkward conversation topics. Then again, with his family I am not sure that there are many things left on that list.

5. PUMP WHEN YOUR MILK COMES IN UNTIL BABY’S THREE WEEK GROWTH SPURT

This final tip is something I figured out on my own this past month. It is not something I have discussed with my doctor or with a lactation consultant so take this as Alecia’s breastfeeding tip and not something that other people would necessarily recommend. It is probably most applicable to working mom’s who generate a lot of milk when their milk first comes in.

When my milk came in, I for one had ginormous knockers which my husband quickly named stripper boobs. They were SO HUGE and SO FULL OF MILK, it was often very uncomfortable. The same thing happened with I had Belén and I just lived through it and decided not to pump any of the milk out in fear that I would be training my boobs they needed to make THAT much milk and perpetuating the problem.

This time around, knowing somewhere down the line, Eloise would go through a growth spurt that would cause my boobs to not be producing enough milk for her needs, I decided to try and start putting some milk away early. I didn’t want to pump too much and trick my boobs into thinking they were feeding twins so I decided to pump up to 4-6 ounces in the morning after a full night of milk production and and night to try and get my boobs more comfortable before bed. Both times I would feed Eloise and then pump some of the excess milk out. On only one day, I allowed myself a noon pumping as well for comfort.

As Andy knew it would, it all worked out well and I soon found myself in a wheelchair holding Eloise in her carseat being wheeled to the hospital exit. Even though I was thrilled to be leaving the confines of a hospital room and bed, I am sure as any new parent can relate, I felt a lot of anxiety about leaving the hospital responsible for the welfare of such a tiny baby. I remember feeling almost exactly the same with Belén.

The safety net of everything is going to be okay is removed as soon as the glass doors swing open and the wheels of the chair roll over the threshold to the hospital bump…bump. A wave of panic came over me like, “I cannot believe they trust me to take this little human home and take care of her.” She is still not pooping and peeing. She spits up all of the time. What if I don’t know the right thing to do? What if she chokes on her spit up? And then there is this other adorable two-year-old to take care of. Not to mention the wacky post-delivery pregnancy hormones an actor in the scene as well.

It all added up to a major wave of self doubt and anxiety that nearly brought me to tears.

Miss Belén came to visit us in the hospital again yesterday. It was so good to see her it literally brought tears to my eyes. We are missing her! She has been a trooper staying in different homes, knocked off of her routine and without mom and dad around.

It’s been an interesting morning and we have learned a lot about expectations for baby’s weight loss and the number of dirty diapers in the days after birth and what happens when you are not falling within the bell curve norms. Probably a story for when I have a keyboard but in short I made friends with the lactation consultant and made her our advocate and things are definitely looking up.

I have spent a lot of time thinking and analyzing this entire hospital experience. If I wasn’t such a contingency planner knowing what I know now, something like a birth center is really appealing. Eloise’s birth would likely have ended up in a hospital regardless of where we started though so it’s kind of a moot point. My kids apparently like being born in hospitals. As the OB who delivered Eloise proclaimed, “It’s a good thing you were not a settler because you would have been left behind.”

Yesterday afternoon, Eloise started coughing up what the nurses and doctor think is amniotic fluid in her stomach ingested during labor. It’s always so freaky when something goes wrong with such a tiny human being, especially when you are their parent. The coughing seems to have mostly subsided which is a huge relief. Hopefully she has coughed all of it up.

We had her sleep in the nursery last night and just be brought to us for feedings as we didn’t trust ourselves in our overly tired state to take care of her if she was choking and we didn’t hear it or something. Then again, I consistently woke up about 10 minutes before they brought her to me so I think my motherly instinct would make sure she was okay despite any level of fatigue.

It turns out they mean business when they say the child has to pee in the first 24 hours. She hadn’t and the doctor wanted to give her formula. I fought the issue as I really don’t want to introduce a bottle or formula at this stage and they agreed to Pedialyte in a syringe to ensure she is not dehydrated. As we finished the first syringe, she presented her first very wet diaper.

Anyway, as always, I would love it others have more data/details on this abstract concept. I finally get what 15 year-old boys knew from the get go…boobs really are so fascinating.

Apparently this parenting strategy was not going to pan out. I went for another learning opportunity and told her that when people get into the shower, they do so naked and that we needed to take her clothes off. I took them off and washed her off a bit, to at least get a bath for her out of the “learning experience.”

I cannot believe I am going to do this, but I am going to talk about milk, ONE MORE TIME. That’s it. Other than making a mention of when Belén is 100% on cow milk, I promise not to talk about milk again for the rest of the year. Do you ever find yourself in a conversation about something and take a moment to view the conversation from the outside rather than simply participate in it? While doing that, do you ever hear yourself talking and get annoyed with yourself? That is TOTALLY how I feel about writing another milk most, the third in one week, in fact. If I am annoying myself, I must be annoying all of you. But…I know there are a couple of soon-to-be weaners (what a great name!) so alas, despite my annoyance, I forge ahead…but it will be short.

Being the overachiever I am, we are working hard on all six vectors. I used to strive to do things like get my MBA and become a project manager and run a 50K. Now I strive to drink from sippy cups full time. Funny how that is.

Belén likes the Nuby sippy cups we have been using for awhile now, but she doesn’t love them and they most often end up on the floor fairly quickly. This weekend while grocery shopping, I bought two new types of sippy cups at the grocery store, a taller version of the Nuby and a Dora sippy cup with a straw (Amalah and others recommend the straw kind for oral development.)

NOW THE TIME, THE TIME IS NOW! I am weaning Miss Belén. She is almost 13-months old. She is working on six additional teeth to add to her existing six. She really didn’t seem all that interested anymore, at least not any more interested to be drinking from my boob than a bottle. She actually makes this cute little noise every time she sees milk or a food she really likes. She used to just make that sound for me when I would walk into the room, tit(s) exposed, but now she makes it for a lot of different things. She is over me, or my breastmilk at least.

I am mostly over it too. I thought I was going to have a really hard time with it emotionally, but it honestly really feels like NOW THE TIME, THE TIME IS NOW!

Have you ever walked into a store with really empty shelves? It is kind of strange really. It is like, I am serious enough about this business to rent some retail space, but I am not serious enough about it that I want to fill my shelves with product you might be interested in. If you think about it, those teenagers who work at the grocery store bringing all of the products to the front of the aisle every night have a really important job because it makes their store look serious about selling you what you need.