Yesterday, I stayed home sick with a stomach something. I felt nauseous most of the day, and spent a lot of time sitting on the porcelain throne. I worried about Genny nursing, but figure she'll need the antibodies regardless. Someone else at work as the same kind of thing, so apparently, it's going around.

And anyway, today, I'm better.

I'm starting to waver on this nursing thing. I love my daughter and I love nursing, but it's so limiting sometimes. I can't really leave her much of anywhere without a lot of forethought and on Monday, she had her first taste of formula. I was a little short on breastmilk at daycare and when I went to pump some extra Sunday night, I discovered that I'd left some of the pump parts at work. In a panic, I located a small can of Similac that I'd gotten either from the hospital or one of these promotion things and I brought it with me to the daycare.

Boy, did I feel guilty. She only had a couple ounces of formula total mixed in with the breast milk and the rest of the week, there's actually been enough milk pumped for her, so we haven't had to go back to it, but I feel so anxious about it.

I'm just having a hard time justifying nearly an hour and a half a day at work spent pumping my boobs, but at the same time I love this girl to death and I don't want to NOT nurse her. After all of the health problems that Russell had, nursing seems like a really terrific thing to do. I'm just very ambivalent about it at the moment.

I mean. I love nursing with this baby. I know it's something she likes to do because it's something only she and I can do and that's kind of cool. She likes Daddy, but given her preference, she'd rather fall asleep in my arms with a big breast in her mouth. Most men would, too, I realize, but nursing is almost ritualistic in the intimacy that we both get out of it. When Mike's grandfather got sick, the first thing I did was bring her into bed with us. Mike put his hand on the back of her head and I nursed her. The whole thing was incredibly comforting. We gather our loved ones to us when things are shaky and nursing is certainly a gathering experience.

I do love coming home and having the first thing I do be to sit down in my comfy chair, get out the boppy and nurse my baby, while I talk to Russell about what he did at school for the day. In that context, nursing makes absolute sense.

The drawback is that my sex life with my husband is very difficult to arrange, particularly in a spontaneous manner. It's frequently after several days of mauling each other in the kitchen while we're getting the table set, the dishes washed and dinner made or after several days of false starts. For example, we get the kids in bed and we get the dishes washed and we start to get naked and the baby cries or Russell decides something is preventing him from falling asleep.

I guess it's not just my sex life either. It's my whole life. If I need to go shopping for more than an hour, I have to take her with me. While I adore my daughter, I don't want to have to take her shopping for several years yet. I want to be able to get what I need and browse around and not feel like a harried freaked out mommy-person. I'm buying so much online nowadays and I long heartily for the cha-ching of a cash register at the mall.

I'm also physically exhausted most of the time. I am constantly having to take iron to keep up with the demands of nursing and trying to manage to get enough calcium so that I don't eat too much has been a total bitch. I've got supplements, but I remember being this tired with Russell and it sucked then, too. I hate to have the best parts of my diet in pill form. Call me crazy. Call me a recovering diet maniac of the 70's.

And no, we won't talk about the fact that I'd have to give up my 2000 calorie/day food plan for a 1200-1400 calorie/day one and we won't talk about the appalling expense of using formula exclusively, as well as the potential health issues as we head into the autumnal allergy season full blast.

I haven't drawn any conclusions. I'm just observing how I feel about nursing. Truthfully, I think Genny wouldn't let the nursing go without a fight, so while I may reduce pumping to just 3 times a day and we'll use a little formula to supplement, I think I'd feel too awful to give it up altogether on her.