hello girls,

i rang tresillian, the lady was wonderful and understanding. i told her the whole story from day 1. she understood that i was at crossroads. one option if i really wanted to continue breastfeeding is to go to their residential house but i need to a referral from gp/early childhood centre/lc. but she also understood the pain ive been going thru and said i probably have vasospasm. it's pain that's burning /excrutiating and can be psychosomatic. she said she takes her hat off that i actually stayed bf-ing for 8 weeks. she saod a lot of woment start to wean at 4 mths and im halfway there so it's not so bad. i told her about the pain and depression and not wanting to go out cos it hurts and feeding takes an hr and half.
at the end i guess i wanted some sort of reassurance. you;re right bron, it was nice to know from someone neutral that it was ok to stop.
while i was talking to the lady, i saw steve crying cos of the pain i was.. it broke my heart to see him upset over the pain i was going thru.
so we've decided to stop for now, im still upset to stop so soon but almost 8 weeks of pain is too much. i wish i could have done it for longer but i guess if we had a good start it might have been different.
im going to keep expressing just to keep comfortable to wean, and slowly stop my motilium as you cant stop it immediately, it has to be gradual over the next few weeks.
it also broke my heart when i was warming some ebm and lakshman was crying, i was trying to comfort him and he was trying to get to my breast thru my shirt. he's so beautiful, i dont want my pain and stress to affect him.
part of the decision came from last night. steve's aunt went thru a lot of pain bf as well, but her aunt was a nurse and made her do it. it was comforting to hear her story and that she understood.

well, that's where we are at, right now. maybe the next child, if we have one, it will work out better. i do feel a little better know that i dontr have to go thru excrutiating pain. even as i sit here, my breasts have burning pain.

Thanks so much for all your support and understanding.. it made all this a lot more bearable. i know GPs say that dont do it if it's causing you so much problem pain, they think of the wellbeing of both mother and child.

Shell - sorry to hear of your discomfort too. dont feel guilty.. it was a bad dream but DJ loves you heaps so he;s not going to bite you! I feel the stress of being the sole provider too, that everything's on your shoulders and there's no break. it feels a bit unfair. i suppose if bf was going well for me i wouldnt feel that way.
are you still expressing, you get tons of milk and that helps heaps.

medicare - you will have to pay the actual cost and then when you get his card you can claim it.
we went to put him on our card. steve and i had our own cards and hadnt got ours put together. but then stupid medicare couldnt put lakshman onto our cards cos his name was too long for the system so now he has his own medicare card, lol, 15 years ahead of his time!

thanks for all your wonderful thoughts and support. it means so much that no one's judging my decision... what would i do without you all!