the joy of excess

I have serious over-supply issues with breastfeeding. This theoretically eases up by 3 months. Not. My daughter is nearly 6 months old and I can still hose down a fire some days. Now, in all honestly, I try not to complain about this because I have friends with the opposite problem, and I truly feel for them…and I’d far rather have too much than too little. So, I see it as a blessing and move on. I pump when I just need a few hours of relief from the never-ending inflation of the boobs, and have learned to cope the rest of the time.

Today, though, I’d like to file an official complaint.

With oversupply, it is absolutely a given that leaking occurs. Usually, a lot of leaking. In my case, it’s incredibly frequent . . . when too full, when letting down, when nursing the other side, or sometimes just for the heck of it, I guess. Yup. Every single day. But, woman cannot live by nursing pads alone, my friend. I simply need a break at times.

During said ‘breaks’, or at times when I think I’ll be safe, or hey, even go braless (this takes bravery, and is exclusive to home life during breastfeeding). A hazard of this is leaking onto my shirts. It most often happens while I’m nursing on ‘the other side’ and am sans-nursing pad/burp cloth (she rarely spits up, so I easily forget, whereas my son was a serious spitter).

Breast milk stains. How could I have forgotten??? It took a very, very long time to de-stain some of my sleeping shirts after breastfeeding my son years ago (repeated washing eventually get it out . . . eventually” is the key word). Other shirts were given up on. Now? Well, now I have some new shirts I recently bought and lo and behold . . . the other day I noticed that horrible grease-like stain running all down the front of one in particular. I can’t actually recall when it happened. Probably a series of times added together.

So, the stain remover is in action this week. It will take more than one round to get them right (yeah, others had small spots, usually where I was unable to stem the flow in time), but at least they’re looking a bit more wearable now.