Now that I am a mother of three, you would think there isn’t much I have not experienced in terms of my body.  I will admit I have been relatively lucky on that front.  Wait, let me knock on wood first.  I never had hemorrhoids.  I figure that is a good thing.  I only have three stretch marks on my stomach, also a good thing.  The stretch mark thing isn’t really anything to jump for joy about, since my stomach looks like canned biscuit dough when you first peel back that corner and it busts out of the tube.  Bikinis are not in my future.  Nursing two kids left me a lifetime member of the bullet club, so I hate to see what the third round is going to do.

If you aren’t sure what the bullet club is, next time you get out of the shower, take notice when you lean over to dry your feet.  Does anything on your body resemble bullets?  Alrighty then.  Now you know.  We meet on Thursdays.  It’s your turn to bring the wine.

I think breastfeeding is a wonderful thing.  Bonding, inexpensive, easy, blah blah blah.  We have heard the propaganda, right?  I know some women cannot, and I understand.  I was only able to because while I have an underachieving breast, I also have a breast that is bountiful.  If I had two underachievers, well, I’d be shaking the Enfamil too.  I have grown used to having Pamela Anderson on one side and Calista Flockhart on the other.

The past nine months of nursing JD have been fine with the exception of one thing: night sweats.  They never stopped.  We went from postpartum “sweating out the excess fluid” to at least four nights a week of waking up soggy.

It’s horrible.  JD cries for his 3 AM feeding.  I wake up and my pajama top is soaked.  The sheets are damp.  He continues to cry and I have to change my shirt quickly.  Wet shirts are cold, and this is Michigan in the wintertime.  My teeth are practically chattering at this point.  Once JD gets his tank topped off, I have to rustle up a dry blanket to lay over the sheets.  I have tried to pretend they aren’t wet.  It doesn’t work.  I can’t just change the sheets since hubby is still conked out on his side of the bed.  Also, if I did do a complete bedding change, I may as well hang up the idea of going back to sleep.  I am not wired that way.

I have tried sleeping on a towel, but I am too restless.  It just ends up being all balled up around me.  Another side effect is that I am constantly thirsty.  You would think I would be skinny as a rail with all the sweating and lactating, but that isn’t happening.  Nope, just a desire to have my own IV drip so I could go an hour without having to drink a quart of water.

The medical professionals I have spoken with all seem to agree that it will go away when I finally wean JD.  I was shooting for the 12 month mark like I did with Linus.  However, as the nights continue to find me drenched, I am starting to rethink that lofty goal.  Each time those brand new teeth graze me as well, I look at him tell him he might be losing the boobie privileges sooner rather than later.

I hate to be a quitter, but  three more months of this sounds pretty horrific.

Then again, so does weaning!