The comments to my last entry have led me to another entry. I know — you can’t stand the excitement. But try, for my sake; okay? :grin:

Anyway, with Lenna, I had no choice about breastfeeding. Let me explain. I was living with my mom and my sister at the time. My mom wanted to help out some with feedings. (She loves to feed her grandbabies.) We’d tried everything, and no go. It was like Lenna could smell me from two floors away. So Mom and I decide that maybe me leaving the house while Lenna is really hungry will do the trick.

I decide that this is a great time to take Matt to the movies. He wants to see “Dinosaur,” and I want to sit next to my boy while he does so. We find a showing that’s relatively close to Lenna’s next feeding. So off Matt and I go.

We had a wonderful time. Well, except for the part where I couldn’t focus on the movie at all between worrying that some scenes were too much for Matt and that Lenna was in the hospital due to starvation.

We get home, and my mom and my sister are both in tears. My mother has locked herself in the bathroom to regain her calm. My sister has walked off 15 pounds by pacing around trying to calm Lenna down. The entire time we’ve been gone (four hours, at this point), the girl has screamed but refused to take the bottle.

So, I was stuck breastfeeding her. I felt there was no other option, so that made it easy to breastfeed. Starve my kid or whip out a boob? Not a tough call to make.

Tricia, OTOH, will take a bottle from anyone, including me. It doesn’t change all the reasons I’ve chosen to breastfeed. It doesn’t change what I view as the benefits to breastmilk over formula. But it does change how I view it — it’s now become “optional.” And for whatever reason, that makes it harder.

I’m truly glad my littlest girl is so easygoing about everything. And she really is pretty easygoing about everything. Bottle instead of boob? Okay. Crib instead of parents’ bed? Okay. But I admit — it makes it much harder to “sacrifice” to do the “right” thing by her.

And yes — she’s in a crib now. That’s mostly because I didn’t sleep well since I was always worried about where she was in our bed and where Bill was in relation to her. Also? Since I have to actually get up and nurse her at this point, I figured I might as well have her in her own bed. (She’s still too little to do the whole “whip one out, pop it in and go back to sleep” thing.) And well…someday, my cooper won’t be broken anymore. :X

ANYway, I’ll continue to nurse, at least for a while. Hopefully, Bill taking over some of the feedings will help. I’m sure she’ll wind up back in our bed when she gets old enough that I can just whip one out, pop it in and go back to sleep. But for right now, I’m struggling and second-guessing and working it all out.

Thanks to all of you for listening and for the support. I really, really appreciate it. Truly.