Six Ten AM

If you’ve been around here for a while, then you already know just how much I hated breastfeeding—and how desperate I was to stop. Well, guess what? After 13 months… I did it. Insert dramatic round of applause. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now let me tell you what I’ve been going through. It hasn’t been cute. And before I dive in, let me emphasize this: this is my personal experience. Not a universal truth. Not a guideline. Just me, myself, and I. Cue dramatic exhale. If I had known how painful it would be to stop nursing, trust and believe: my baby would’ve been on formula from the jump. Fresh out the womb to a freshly warmed bottle. Let me give you the short version: Mastitis. Fainting. Dizziness. Nausea. A crushing sense of dread. All because I stopped breastfeeding. And mentally? I was going through it. Yhu.  My boobs were so full I looked like I had a botched boob job that reached all the way up to my collarbones—and they were as hard as granite. The hormonal crash made me ...

  There was a time in history when keeping your word meant something. Now we’re surrounded by disappointments and unreliable people. Unfortunately, I am a very literal person. I didn’t even realize how literally I take things until it became a whole diagnosis. That being said, I never quite understood the deep frustration and, for lack of a better word, the  displeasure  I feel when someone says they’ll do something… and then they just don’t. My cousin once told me to expect disappointment because that’s all people are going to offer. But I didn’t think it would be  this  bad. And you know what sucks about people who are often unreliable? They ask those annoying questions like,  Am I unreliable? Am I a disappointment? They’ll go on, talking so negatively about themselves, fishing for you to step in and tell them what they want to hear. Basically begging you to lie to their face. I think, to some extent, we all know what we’re capable of. Whether you think y...

I don’t know if this post requires a trigger warning, but it’s a heavy read. Writing it was heavy. If you feel the need to stop reading, please do. I’m choosing to call this  my  first trimester because my pregnancy journey wasn’t what most people would call “normal.” It was my own, and it was anything but common. I had been wanting a baby for a while but had started to feel like I couldn’t get pregnant. So imagine my shock when the test came back positive.  I’ll start from the beginning. Grab some tea or something because we’re going to be here for a minute.  It was just a regular day in the Botswana heat. My partner and I were lounging in bed, but I remember feeling sluggish. I figured it was my period on its way—thanks to Flo—so the cramps weren’t a surprise. I felt so down in the dumps that I went to lie on the couch alone. By the time my partner left for Zimbabwe, I was about three days late. It didn’t alarm me, since I’m usually a few days early or late.  ...