(no subject)

Birth control for breastfeeding mothers is tricky. Many women don't ovulate or even get their periods while they breastfeed. Unfortunately for me, I bled for six weeks after the delivery then started my period the day after that stopped. You basically have two options, the minipill or an IUD. Regular birth control messes with milk production. Breast feeding is important to me not because I find it to be some wondrous bonding experience (I don't), but because it's excellent for Dominic's health, burns over 1,000 calories a day so I'm losing weight better than I have in my entire life (30 pounds so far), and is 100% free. Have you priced formula? That stuff is outrageous. On top of all that, Dominic gets horribly gassy if he eats formula. Farts that sound like that shouldn't come out of so small a creature. So I got my prescription for the minipill. With insurance, the pills cost me $10 per month. That's $10 less than the Ortho Tri-Cyclen I was on before I got pregnant. I read the risks and it turns out that if you don't take the pill at the same time every day your chances to get pregnant raise dramatically. I'm horrible at taking the pill. That's how I got into this mess in the first place. So I looked into the IUD some more. It costs $800 for the appliance and the procedure to have it inserted. It didn't take me long to realize that since I'd met my deductible for the year, the IUD would only cost me $80 so long as I got it before the end of the year. That's $80 for up to five years of birth control. I called the office and it turns out that they put in IUDs only while you're on your period. I was just finishing mine. So this post is basically props to my ob/gyn office for pre-qualifying me and getting me an appointment in one day's time. They installed the IUD yesterday in an in-office procedure that hurt less than a pap. In 5 years, I'll consider having another child. Right now it's out of the question. The memory of pregnancy and childbirth is still too fresh.

(no subject)

Before I went on maternity leave I posted a link to a picture of myself 9 months pregnant. I didn't realize that you needed to log on in order to see the picture. Sorry about that. Here it is:



Believe it or not, I got even bigger. In the end, all of my maternity shirts were so tight that the buttons were pulling on all of them. You could see my belly button through my t-shirts. It was obscene.