I am in a place where dealing with a lot of the abuse shit isn’t optional. It’s going to be a while before I am ready for it to be a book but I am feeling increasing urgency in that direction. I am the kind of writer who needs an audience or I don’t write. But I don’t want all the book stuff on livejournal. Mostly because I want to choose what I reveal in it because the audience is different. I’m admitting things in front of people I never would have spoken to about these things now. My lj is a weird space at this point. I know that there aren’t very many readers left but when I friends-lock something here I feel completely comfortable that this is a secure space for me. It’s a different kind of disclosure. I need to have the scary disclosure for a while. I have to say this to people who aren’t obviously safe for me because I have to learn who is actually safe and where there are more safe people.
So I don’t know how much will be new information for people who have been reading this journal for years, but it’s really intense for me. Oh man. www.soggyinmilk.blogspot.com If’n I haven’t pointed you there already.
Wow… you know how brave that is, putting stuff out there?
I get the dealing with this shit isn’t optional, and you’re doing some incredible stuff without overextending (which is no mean feat).
Other than that, not much more to say, but have lots of hugs and good feelings for you. ((hugs))
My biological family has been pointed at the journal, the extended relatives that is. Obviously not my immediate family. It really is terrifying.
Today is a harder day than normal. Thank you for the encouragement. I really need it today.
out of left field
I wish today/now wasn’t so hard, I’ve got more hugs and maybe a little humor.
Over the weekend E and I were getting silly (not that that’s unusual) and the odd thing that kept us silly were ‘gang names’.
So throughout the weekend when we would think of people we would immediately come up with a gang name for them, and what tattoo they would have.
You were Lil Mama and you had “Take No Prisoners”
Re: out of left field
Nice. 🙂
Regarding your blog, are you interested in normalcy checks? That is, if you’ve shared something that you feel is weird/bad about yourself would you like to know if people who haven’t been abused have the same feelings?
For instance, when sugar’s made my skin start to crawl and Lina’s nursing, I want to stand up and just drop her on the ground and walk away. Like you, I instead fake a huge (fixed) smile and try to concentrate on my sweet baby getting her nursings isn’t she cute (OMG kill the universe!!! FUCK!!!!) look at her little nosey I love you baby (WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL NURSING?????) Mommy loves you yes I do, other side? Okay here you go (I.want.to.peel.my.skin.off) all done? How about you go to Daddy.
I lurve normalcy checks. I really don’t know what goes on in other peoples’ brains. It’s very confusing to me.
I’m sorry you go through it too.
Thank goodness for me it’s directly tied to sugar intake. (and yet I still eat sugar go figure) I was getting similar feelings when dealing with thrush as well, but not as bad.
Obvious question time, you’ve checked the usual suspects on ouchie nursing right? Thrush, plugged duct, and so forth? Callie’s still pretty new, but she should be getting a decent latch by now.
Her latch just is terrible, I think. She doesn’t like to open her mouth wide and her upper lip likes to curl under. I pull it back out, but then she yanks off painfully and relatches with the crummy latch again.
For the first few weeks of Lina’s nursing career, I’d tell her “Big Mouth sweetie, BIG MOUTH” every time she went to latch on. I’d also break her latch with a finger and have her try again and again until either the latch was good or she was indicating a lack of interest in trying. So most nursing sessions (after our initial frustrations with latching at all) would involve adjusting the latch 5 or 6 times (or more!)
I’d also check her lips and use my finger to flare them out. And stroking her chin seemed to encourage a wider latch.
Especially with bedsharing, I really wanted to get to where she could get a good latch consistently on her own. During that learning period I’d wake for night nursing just long enough to adjust things. (Ariel says that he watched me adjust things without seeming to wake up at all a couple times.)
I think it was easiest to do when I was able to catch the preliminary hunger cues. If you’re in pain while nursing, are you delaying nursing a bit? Not deliberately, and not any sort of huge delay, just not getting her to the breast ASAP. If so, that could contribute to the bad latch as well as reducing your window for working on it.
Anyway, sorry to blather on, it’s just that while I admire how you stick with the nursing Callie needs, you’ve had enough character-building struggles in your life and it’d be fantastic if nursing could be easy-peasy.
And if you’ve already tried all of the above, maybe having yet another person suggest them will make them magically start working! =D
Wasn’t feeling pissy. 🙂 Calli woke up for her hourly nurse and it took 20 minutes to get her back to sleep. I’m frustrated.
Lol we cross posted. I added the bit about “if you’d already tried it” before you clarified about Callie’s nursing.
I know a number of people who started using nursing covers around 8-12 months just because it was the only way to keep the baby’s interest.
I hope that nursing’s going better during the night then, when things are boring and she doesn’t have quite as much of a chance to exercise herself into super-hungry baby mode!
Nursing was easy with Shanna till ~ 2.5. Now her mouth has shifted and it feels yicky.
Calli did better before she hit this really distractible phase. Now she doesn’t want to pay attention and latch properly. She likes doing this Cobra striking thing where she rears back and pounces on my nipple over and over. It’s really pissing me off. It hurts like a motherfucker.
As long as I have managed to properly fend her off all day she actually does well at night.
Although now that you mention it… I wonder if it is connected to her being over hungry. Hm. Part of what is going on is that she recently started crawling. And she isn’t crawling a little. She is crawling a lot all over the house at great speed trying to keep up with Shanna. She is f’in starving. And I’m having a really hard time with her needing to nurse hourly around the clock. 🙁
Ah, you already answered the question about how nursing is going at night.
With Lina, we didn’t have much of the cobra strike nursing, but we’d also only nurse for 30 seconds or so a few times a day and then somewhat more nursing before naps. She did the vast majority of her nursing at night. (Which is why I am highly suspicious of any non-cosleeping baby who “self weans” between 9 and 12 months old)