It does her body good

My milk came in. Like "Pamela Anderson" came in. I'm just so proud of my body!

Not only was the umbilical cord one of the thickest, healthiest ones they've seen, and the cord blood collection kit was fuller than ANY that Dr. W has filled in 21 years. But now my milk is coming in with a vengeance!

And Baby C is loving it. She is filling up after just 15-20 minutes of nursing -- there is suddenly so much creamy milk available to her -- like her own soda fountain of lactational goodness.

It was a disappointment to me that Gigi and I never really got off the ground with good nursing, but Baby C came out determined to make this thing work. She is certainly "barracuda"-ish and I've also decided to let my boobs kind of suffer through these first few weeks -- applying lanolin only seems to increase their sensitivity and prolong the process by which my boobs toughen up.

So it's back to "basic training" for them -- using my own milk as the only lotion and allowing the bloody blisters (sorry folks, but that's the reality) to heal on their own. Yes, of course it's painful, and YES the latch is great and YES we're alternating nursing positions and we know what we're doing around here -- it's just that anyone who tells you that nursing "shouldn't hurt" is a total liar.

After a few weeks, it won't hurt. But now my boobs are doing push-ups at 5am.

And it's so worth it. Look at how satisfied that baby is! As soon as all of this voluminous milk came in, she became a generally satiated, super-sleepy baby. She's had a touch of jaundice, and she's gotten down to 8 lbs. 11 oz. -- all normal. But I'm guessing that once she starts gulping down this massive quantity of mama milk, she'll start porking up quiet substantially!

And the economizing part of me thinks, "Hooray! We're going to save a bundle on formula!"