An episode you won’t want to miss:
I was breastfed by my five month old step sister.
Yeah.
I should start saving for Lova’s therapy now.
And probably Poppy’s, too.
breast milk ice cream
March 8, 2011
Yes. Yes, I really did.
Although I didn’t at first intend to!
The other day, I followed through on a plan I’d had for a long time: To make my first batch of raw milk butter. So, I did. (Let me know if you want me to blog about that, and I sure can!) It is delicious butter. Yum.
I Tweeted and Facebooked a picture of the raw milk jugs and some of the cream I skimmed off the tops of them. “What am I making?” I asked. Hardly anyone guessed butter, but lots of you thought I was maybe making breast milk ice cream. Probably because a) a shop selling breast milk ice cream has been in the news and b) you thought that was something I would do.
Well, if you thought that, you were right! I hadn’t been planning to make ice cream with my own milk, but a girl can always change her mind, right?
Right!
So once I was done with the butter, I called our MSC over and we created homemade ice cream. They used raw cow’s milk for theirs. I wanted to make some with my mama milk for Flurry. I would have no had problem at all letting the bigger kids use breast milk for their ice cream, too, if they’d wanted. Except for one thing: I wasn’t going to waste it on them! That sounds terrible, maybe, but my freezer supply of milk is significantly lower now than when I left for Africa, as I wasn’t able to bring home as much as Flurry drank while I was away. The milk in there is for him and him alone. One way or another! Well, I mean, of course a few other people did have a taste of the breast milk ice cream, though we didn’t go as hog wild as Stellan did with his cow’s milk dessert.
Want to know how to make ice cream using any kind of milk at your own house? Here’s how!
First, skim the cream off the tops of containers, bags, bottles or cups of milk. You can use store bought heavy whipping cream if you don’t have raw milk or breast milk at home.
With the half gallon glass milk jugs we buy, a few inches of good cream rises to the top. If you look carefully at the above photograph, you can probably see it!
Put the cream in a bowl. Add some sugar and a drop or two of vanilla extract. Stir well. Pour into zipped baggies. I used snack size because I didn’t have enough bigger size options, but I think bigger would be better. Seal the bag very well, squeezing out as much air as you can. Bag again for safety if you want.
Crush some ice. Mix it with some salt. Fill a larger zipped bag halfway full with ice. Add one of the bags of cream in its sealed bag to the ice. Pour more ice around the sides and top of the cream bag. Seal tightly, getting out as much air as you can.
Give a bag to each of your children.
Cover the bags with towels if your kiddos’ hands get too cold (Ours did!).
For about eight minutes, shake the bags as much as you can. Have the kids knead the cream bag from the outside of the ice bag. Shake, jive, jostle, massage, quake and pound.
In under ten minutes, the cream will have frozen to a lovely consistency. I seriously did not think it would work. But it did!!!
Enjoy! We all did.
Made In Africa
February 28, 2011
If these bags of breastmilk had labels on their undersides, they might read Made In Africa.
Indeed, this is the milk I was able to pump, freeze and transport back to the Frozen Tundra. None of the process–from finding time, energy and places to pump, to freezing the milk, to finding hotel kitchens and juice stands in airports willing to keep bags of milk in their freezer for a few hours, to working with flight attendants to keep the milk on ice over the Atlantic Ocean–was easy. But few things worth doing are. And this was worth it. When my husband picked me up at the airport yesterday with our MSC, there was one bag of breastmilk in the cooler he had brought along. “Believe it or not, this is the very last bag of milk.”
Yes, the milk I was able to pump for Flurry throughout the first six months of his life was good to the last drop. He finished almost all of it while I was gone. And he took to nursing again like old times as soon as I had him in my arms yesterday. Having him at my breast after more than two weeks of wondering if he’d take me back, should I be able to keep my supply up while I was gone, was a mountaintop experience, to be sure. I would say that feeding him at 3 am this morning was even more emotional than the first time I nursed him ever, fresh from my womb.
I’m guessing the milk that made it all the way home with me yesterday was probably over half of what I pumped in the two+ weeks I was gone. Much of it I pumped–and dumped–in villages or bathrooms. Twice I had the opportunity to offer my milk to African babies. And more times than I can count, the common bond of breastfeeding connected me to women with beautiful dark skin and native tongues different from my own.
In Garmaam on a few occasions, I distanced myself from the rest of my travel companions and joined groups of women sitting under trees, nursing babies and talking.
Even when there wasn’t too much we could talk about, plenty was still communicated. Me with the photograph of my babies and my hand pump, the village women with their infants and toddlers (this little guy was walking around, splashing in the stream in between nursing sessions with his mama), gourd water jugs and giant smiles.
Rarely have I felt such a raw bond with other women. Never had I read many volumes as I glanced into another’s eyes. I can hardly remember a time when I heard such moving stories of motherhood whilst not understanding most of the words spoken. It was rare. And beautiful.
Yes, so much was Made In Africa. These women. Their babies. Our milk. A renewed thankfulness for being able to breastfeed my own baby. And new friendships.
I’m giving away FOUR MORE double electric breast pumps!
February 4, 2011
What a day it’s been! It was mostly good, but it had hormonal and weepy moments. The real kicker though, was when I pulled (tried pulling) out of the garage today before the garage door was all the way open and I backed into it! And broke it! In the up position!
Sigh.
On a positive note, the kids and I had a great day with an even wilder one in store tomorrow. I got lots done on my to-do list and am finished with my Florida pictures. Tonight, I made a bunch of food for tomorrow and worked on the envelopes of goodies and notes I’m leaving the kids for each day I’ll be gone. And also, we have a winner!
Yes, the winner of the three briar.claire headbands is Danna! And, speaking of winners, four more of you are about to become one. Remember the other day when over 1,000 of you commented to try to win the Lansinoh breast pump I bought to give away to one of you? Ahh, yes. It was so fun to give away something so practical as well as something very close to my heart (Uh, literally!).
As I mentioned yesterday, the kind folks at Lansinoh have offered me four more double electric breast pumps to give away! I am so…pumped!
And yes, call me crazy, but I came up with what I figured would be a great way to determine who gets their hands on these four! You know those marble guessing games? Where there’s a huge jar of marbles and you have to guess how many are in there and the closest guesser wins a giant stuffed teddy bear? Well, this is kind of like that.
Guess the number of bags of milk shown in the photo below and win one of the four double breast pumps shown above!
Yes, the four people who guess closest to the correct number of bags I had in my freezer the other day when I took this photograph (I label my bags with different colored stars and put them in different brands of bags, so I knew which ones I’d put in there since the other day) will each win a Lansinoh Affinity double electric breast pump (retails for around $150)!! Just for your ease in guessing, know that they are in a freezer pull-out drawer maybe 8 inches deep.
If more than four people guess the exact same number of bags then it will be the first four people who guess it who will win. That’s a lot of comment tallying for me and my friends who help me with comments, but it’ll be worth it.
Right?
One guess per person, please. I’ll announce the four winners on Monday! (And I’ll be mailing them myself from here once they arrive, so I’m guessing that probably won’t happen until after Africa.) I’d announce sooner, but as you’ll know later when I blog about it, we’re about to have a really, really, really busy weekend. It’s my last hurrah with my family for a while, so I’m going to go out with a bang.
And I’d love to share a really neat story. As you know, I’ve been a mad pumping fool since Flurry was born. This is the very first baby with which I’ve not had milk supply issues by the time said babe reached six months. I didn’t start pumping in order to save milk; that has just been a bonus. I still pump many times a day, including in the middle of the night. Well, tonight when I was counting the bags of milk in our freezer, it occurred to me that I should see how much I have in terms of ounces and then add up how many ounces I expect Flurry to drink per day while I’m gone, and see where that leaves us. I’ll be gone as long as I’ll be gone, and I will still pump as much more as I can before Friday, so it’s not like there was much I could do either way. But I figured since I was counting, I’d do it. Well, of course I had to estimate how much he’d drink, but I have a very fair idea since he takes a bottle of pumped milk rather often. And there was a little, though not much, estimation needed as I counted up the ounces I have stored. And once I got both numbers, I was dumfounded! I currently have almost the exact (to within 6 ounces!) amount stored as I estimate Flurry will drink while I’m gone.
I totally got goosebumps.
Of course, that could have been because the freezer was open, who knows. But still, it was really, really neat to see how God provided for Flurry’s needs during my trip to Africa by using me…before I even had any idea I’d be going. I love that Guy.
Happy guessing!
Double electric breast pump giveaway!
February 1, 2011
COMMENTS CLOSED! Winner will be announced yet this evening!
I didn’t really pump that much when I was breastfeeding our first two children. Certainly, even if I would have, the point would have been moot as neither Big Mac nor Nuggey ever took a bottle. Not even once. Not even a teeny tiny swig, even though we tried to feed both of them the few fractions of an ounce I was able to get out somehow. Big Mac nursed until he was one and a half and Nuggey to about a year. When Small Fry came along, nursing was going swimmingly until about four months, when I got pregnant with Stellan. My milk supply took a nose dive. I became a pumper at that point for the first time, although I wasn’t able to get much. It was too little too late, and we ended up supplementing her with donated breast milk from a milk bank.
With Stellan, his medically involved first year of life and the many, many weeks he (and therefore I) spent in the ICU at Children’s Hospitals here and in Boston made pumping regularly neither practical nor necessary. Once Flurry came along, I was determined to do everything I could to bolster my milk supply from the very beginning. I did not want to dry up halfway through his first year, nor supplement him if I could help it. So I began to pump. And pump. And pump. I pumped after every feeding early on and still do on most days. Sometimes, I don’t get anything, but I want to send my body the signal that it ought not start to make less milk. Looking back, I can clearly see that I had milk issues with the other boys, too, but didn’t recognize it as such at the time. I have been determined to make sure I have enough milk for my baby this time, for as long as he wants it.
On most days, I pump about eight ounces more than Flurry eats. And he eats a lot. This is the first time ever I’ve had a stockpile (of my own creation, that is) of breastmilk in our freezer. I really had no idea what we’d use it for, except maybe mixing in with babyfood and feeding it to him once I did eventually stop making milk, which will hopefully be well past the time Flurry is one.
Little did I know when I started pumping that I’d be going to Africa for two weeks while Flurry was still nursing. So the saving up of milk I did is ending up to be very much needed! Flurry has the large freezer drawer full of milk pictured above for Daddy to feed him while I’m away. If everything goes as I hope it will, Flurry and I will renew our breastfeeding relationship as soon as I return. Oh how thankful I am for pumping. And for my MSBP*.
*Many Small Breast Pumps
I have had a few pumps. Some loaned, some purchased, some dead, some going strong. I’m passionate about breastfeeding, and now, I’m passionate about pumping. Not that I love the act of doing it, per se, but I love whoever invented breastpumps. Or I just kind of like and respect him, if it was a guy. Or I, nevermind.
I have a brand new, still in the box, purple Lansinoh double electric breast pump, which sells for around $150, to give away to one of you today.
Use it to create your own stockpile, pump to give to a friend whose baby needs it, or give the purple pump and accessories as a baby shower gift to your expectant cousin. Or something.
To enter, just leave a comment, any old comment, on this post. Whenever I get our kids to bed tonight, I’ll open my computer again, shut off the comments and, without delay, post the winner’s name! My giveaway (not supported or paid for or endorsed or even known about by Lansinoh or anyone for that matter) is open to anyone, regardless of where in the world you live. I’ll ship anywhere! Good luck!
COMMENTS CLOSED! Winner will be announced yet this evening!
stream of consciousness
December 20, 2010
The view from here.
Flurry is definitely not on a nursing strike anymore. To be honest, it freaked me out. He just like basically refused to nurse. At all. Which meant he got very little, if any, milk. It was crazy. But we hung in there. I kept offering, he kept refusing, and then he gave up the whole strike idea and things have been freely flowing since then.
I’m booking shoots for my Tampa shoots next month. My nursling and I will be in the Sunshine State smack dab in the middle of January. If you already emailed me wanting a spot, you can expect to hear back from me later tonight or tomorrow!
Congratulations to Chelsie Shay Pait and Sarah Snowden (will you email me?) who both win $100 gift cards from GHNI!! I’m just so thankful to know about this amazing organization. Yes, right here you can still get some Hope Dollars (as few as $10 worth or much more!), print out the gift cards and stuff them in some stockings on Christmas Day.
I have Christmas cards. But haven’t sent a single one. I plan to, but we’ll see! I love getting real Christmas cards in the mail. Love the stash I have at our house. Love my friends! I’m feeling tons and tons better today. I’m so thankful for your kind comments and for the love of my real life friends and family. Our family had a great day together today, and I’m so thankful for all six of them!
And now, back to catching up on Survivor (We don’t know who won…we’re a few weeks behind! Usually I end up accidentally finding out who won, but so far so good!) with my husband and editing Seattle and Fort Worth photographs. Goodnight!
the view from here
October 20, 2010
This full post contains photographs of my baby breastfeeding. And with MSCH* (*Many Small Choking Hazards) stuck to his face. Should any of that threaten to disrupt your sensibilities, please feel free to stop, drop and roll. Or, well, you know what I mean. I just wanted to make sure you were duly warned before clicking continue reading…
