Milk woes continue...

Took the babies out in stroller despite gray skies and day-long drizzle just to get them out (all of us bored). Today: Tuck smiling and flirting with self in the hall mirror ... Emi hesitantly beginning to reach for book pages.

I'm still trying to reduce the amount of milk I pump, by doing it less often and for fewer minutes each time, plus getting off fenugreek and starting Claritin for my hay fever. Claritin and other antihistamines dry up one's milk supply by a lot. I had officially resolved to "pump and dump" the declining amount of milk that I have, rather than racing off to scald each batch to salvage one more MM meal for the babies. (MM = Mother's Milk on the e-mail list I recently discovered, PumpMoms.org. They have lots of specialized and politically loaded acronyms, such as ABM = Artificial Baby Milk, i.e. formula.)

However, I am having a hard time sticking with this resolve. After treating the pumped milk like liquid white gold for more than four months it seems impossible to pour it away. On the other hand I am really spending a ridiculous amount of time between making formula, pumping, scalding "the milks" as we call them to the babies, mixing in the special thickener for Emi, washing bottles, sterilizing bottles, etc. Tonight I burned my hand in two places while scalding the day's last batch of milks. That was the icing on the cake, or as James said earlier today in one of his Jamesisms, "the gravy on the cake."

I thought I might try feeding Tuck a tiny bit of Emi's applesauce this morning, partly because he seemed interested (OK, amused) while watching me pop mandarin orange segments into my mouth while standing over the crib where he was playing "watch the mobile and grab Emi's sock." And partly to make me feel better about the shift to formula. He got two spoonfuls in several bites each. He was very quiet and looked puzzled by the new sensation of having pureed food in his mouth. Eventually he pushed it to the roof of his mouth and swallowed it. By the second spoonful, he was opening his mouth for the spoon, and at the end of the "meal," he broke into a hesitant smile. I couldn't help but think I was watching someone at the very beginning of a lifetime of enjoying food. Unfortunately a few hours later he developed diarrhea, which the pediatrician has told us is a sign that a new food is not being well tolerated. The dr. says best to wait until closer to 6 months, so now we will wait.

Motherhood is very complicated! I am now feeling guilty three different ways today regarding what I am feeding the babies. 1) Guilty that my milk has gone "off" and is no longer the healthful substance the babies have been thriving on, 2) Guilty for not sticking with my resolve to pump and dump, thus dragging out the process of stopping pumping, and 3) Guilty for feeding Tuck a solid food too early and making him sick! I can't think of a single thing I could have felt guilty about in three different ways in my pre-baby life ...