Let’s say that you’ve just cooked me a delicious, expensive dinner–maybe a little filet mignon with a crab and lobster-stuffed mushroom appetizer, a Caesar salad, a good bottle of perfectly chilled champagne, and for dessert, the lighest, sweetest crème brulee that you could ever imagine.  You’ve spent hours creating this meal and when you serve it to me, I smile sweetly, take my plate, walk into the kitchen and dump the whole thing down the garbage disposal.  That would be a good metaphor for how I’ve felt the last 48 hours.  Pumping and dumping breastmilk feels like the biggest waste of a valuable resource – watching that liquid gold swirl round and round as it goes down the drain makes me want to cry…

 

In the ongoing saga of my suspected brain tumor, I went on Tuesday to have an MRI of my head.&nbzsp; The anticipation of the thing was far worse than the actual event.  By some stroke of good luck, I was able to have an open MRI which made my claustrophobic self a lot more comfortable (like I didn’t run out of the building screaming).  The noises didn’t bother me too much – although, I suspect being almost deaf in one ear probably helped with that.  The whole thing took about 45 minutes, and to tell you the truth that was probably the most uninterrupted waking rest that I’ve had since before Gracie was born.  If you’re a mom, you know what I mean – when’s the last time you sprawled out on the couch for 45 minutes with nothing else to do and no one to ask you a million questions.  The kicker for the whole thing, though, was about 30 minutes into the scan, they had to inject a contrast dye to make any tumor that may or may not be there show up glowing white on the pictures.  Evidently, these types of tumors can be easy to miss on a scan without contrast, particularly if they’re small, so in an abundance of caution, I had to have an injection.  The injection was fun – well, if you like having a vein in your arm blown out and a kind of cold tingly feeling run up to your shoulder.  But it was a necessary evil – the worst aspect is that I can’t nurse for 48 hours – yep that’s right – 2 WHOLE DAYS!  I asked the people at the MRI place, expecting them to say, “oh, wait a couple of hours to nurse” and when I didn’t like their answer, I called a lactation specialist at the hospital and she said to go with what the MRI people told me.  So 48 hours it is.

 

Two things worried me about this – one, I was afraid that two days of pumping was going to seriously effect my milk supply, which is on the decline anyway (suffice it to say, I don’t do the best job of pumping three times at work – I’m lucky if I manage to do it twice a day) and, more importantly, I was worried that Abbie would decide after two days of bottles that returning to the breast wasn’t something she wanted to do.

 

I love breastfeeding Abbie – I love how her little mouth purses up in a perfect little cupid’s bow the second I lift my shirt, her face awash in blissful anticipation.  I love how I feel when I nurse her, like all of the other stresses of the day fall away – so what if I haven’t cleaned the kitchen or finished everything I need to at work or eaten my weight in potato chips – I have single-handedly provided nourishment to my baby.  As much as I love breastfeeding, I hate pumping.  That’s probably pretty universal among breastfeeding moms who pump – I don’t know anyone who actually likes having tender body parts hooked up to a loud and sometimes painful machine.  Really, who wants to spend time sitting around attached to a pump that looks like the thing they use to milk cows in dairy farms.  But I tolerate it – I tolerate it because doing it means that I get to keep nursing Abbie during the hours that I am with her.  I do it because I love to watch those little Dr. Brown bottles that she takes to daycare fill up with a baby’s version of manna from Heaven.  I love counting each and every one of her little fat rolls and realizing that my body helped her get so chubby.  I like to see how much milk I’m getting – I like to watch the stacks of little milk bags pile up in the freezer.  The end results of my pumping keep me going – I know that I have to keep pumping if I want to keep breastfeeding.  Pumping and dumping takes that motivation away, but for the last 48 hours, I’ve managed to do it.

 

And, just a while ago, my purgatory was complete.  I scooped Abigail up in my arms, unhooked my oh-so-sexy nursing bra, and put her to the breast.  Abbie reared her head back, and my heart dropped for a moment.  But then, she looked at me, smiled her little smile, sighed a sigh of relief, and went back to her favorite pastime as if the last two days had never happened.