How far I've come

I started off as a mom knowing what I thought I could handle and just trying to provide the best I could for my child. Of course that got sidelined by hyperemsis gravidarum and me throwing everything to the wind. I was puking every hour on the hour, hospitalized nonstop for months at a time and at one point was so sick I had a raging kidney infection but had no clue because I hadnt peed in 24 hours. That was probably the first moment of me as a parent just throwing my hands up and surviving.

Then I became a parent, I was given this amazingly perfect little being who solely trusted in me and I soon found myself identifying to AP and 'crunchy' ways. I breastfed, despite the hyperlaction and the 4 month long bout of mastitis where numerous doctors told me to wean her to formula. But I couldn't, my dd would NOT take a bottle and my will kept reminding me that breast is best.

So tonight I happened across this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-srRNG3ZOM&feature=share on facebook and it made me giggle. Oh how far I have become. Originally with my dd I thought I would breastfeed because that was all I knew. My mom breastfed my younger sisters until I was 7, and then my oldest sister (9 years older than I) became a parent when I was 11 and began breastfeeding. So all of my combined childhood years I was exposed to breastfeed except for 3 years, breastfeeding was normal and the only way you fed a baby. I had no clue that formula existed. So I breastfed. And when the pain and engorgement hit I was beyond pissed off that none of them warned me. And then whey the hyperlactation hit and I had a baby who couldn't latch on for fear of being drowned in my own milk and my engorgement was so bad i would spend hours upon hours in the shower, I cried to myself thinking I must be a faulty woman because my family never let on to any of these issues. And then mastitis hit, it wasn't just a one time thing either. It hit and i immediately went into my OB and she prescribed me antibiotics . . . but the infection lasted (or more accurately continued to hit me) for 4 months straight. And on my final appointment with her she told me to wean my DD to formula and give up on breastfeeding.

By this time I had found a parenting movement that resonated with me (AP) and to think of doing anything less than breastfeeding your child until a year if not 2 was blasphemy and so i continued. But tonight . . . 7.5 years past that stage i watched this youtube clip and laughed.

Life has taught me so very much.