Lynse Leanne

Are you happy?

Yesterday I had quite the experience. I am still slightly in shock and not really sure how to process everything.

I work at a church. Most times a church is the last place someone will go if they are destitute. Yesterday a man was there.

I was leaving work to go pick up Print so Chad could go to work. I walked out of our office doors into the lobby and a man was standing there. I was surprised so I said hello and asked how I could help him. At that point I knew something was wrong. He started sobbing. He couldn’t talk. My heart broke. To see a man in his 40′s break down kills me. This economy has been tough on those that are in the community our church is in. Through his tears he told me he had no where else to go. He then reached in his pocket and pulled out a bullet.

One single bullet.

I saw it momentarily and then he closed his hand. I reached out with my open hand to take it from him. He started sobbing again and said “I don’t want this to be my only out.” He held the bullet for another minute and with hesitation handed it to me.

I was the only one at the office so I stepped away to call a pastor to come back from lunch since I wasn’t sure how to deal with this.

He went on to tell me why he was at his bottom. Why God hated him.

He shared that he loaded the gun as he left the room he was renting from a stranger and didn’t intend on ever going back there. He was at his bottom. As he was driving around he had remembered that we were a church since he worked a job while it was being built. It was his last ditch effort before ending his life.

24 hours later as I am remembering the weight of the bullet dropping into my hand and reassuring him that he made the right decision to come in and to give me the bullet I am burdened.

I am heavier today than I was yesterday. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. The weight of the bullet was like the weight of the intense grief he felt in his life. He thought a bullet was the only way out. It wasn’t for him.

But I am now left with not only the memory of the weight of the bullet but also carrying a weight of the grief he was carrying. I am heavy. I am burdened.

I don’t know where to file what happened. How thankful I am that for a moment I was able to keep someone from altering the course of their life by an action as simple as holding out my hand to receive the bullet and a portion of the weight he was carrying.

Today I am reminded that people have a lot to carry. Me included. Be graceful. Be loving.

I’ve always struggled with fear at some level.  And not the typical fear of the dark or “normal” fears…but really crazy ones.  And extremely vivid images that play in my head to intensify them.

One I have had my entire adult life is each time I am driving or in a car on the interstate and am going around a curve I envision the car losing control and flipping out of control.  Therefore I have a fear of a car accident or dying while driving.  I still drive because I refuse to be someone that is confined to the house and on A&E shows.

After Print was born some more fears came up.  One major one was that while driving over train tracks with him in the car that the signals to let me know there was a train coming wouldn’t work and a perfect day would be ruined by being hit by a train.  So to combat this fear I didn’t drive over train tracks.  Normally this would be fine.  But to get to work or church (they’re the same place) I have to drive over train tracks…or go the long way around.  So I would go the long way around with him in the car.

Today, while driving to do a little Saturday work I faced my fear…I drove over train tracks.  With Print in the car.  And you know what…it wasn’t actually that scary.

I think the thought can play in your mind like a broken record and intensify the fear.  It can start as a passing thought and then over time it can become something so big and so overwhelming that it becomes gripping that you can’t do anything about it.

But like I did today, I took a step and faced my fear.

I faced one of my many fears.  Tomorrow maybe I will tackle another…maybe.

I had a baby. We have established this. He’s cute. I like to feed him.  I wanted to breastfeed him. I don’t get to.

I am still grieving this “loss” as it were, but I wanted to share the alternative.  But first, why I am not breastfeeding him in the defined sense of the word.

When he came out ready to take on the world at 8lbs 5oz he was rocking.  We had a rough start as he couldn’t get a wonderful latch.  But he’s new, I was new, we would work on it later in the day…not at 3:02am.  Mama and baby were tired from all that pushing.

Later that day we worked on it and it was getting better…but he still couldn’t get it.  I’ll spare you all the details, since Chad asked if he could “unfollow” me in real life since all I talk about is breasfeeding and breast milk.

We get home and he is loosing weight.  Too much weight.  He wouldn’t latch at all.  He would just thrush his head around, get frustrated, scream, cry…which in turn made me cry since he wasn’t happy and wasn’t eating.  We went to the dr and they weighed him…he had lost more weight than is ok and he was jaundiced.  The only way to gain weight and to get rid of jaundice is to consume milk.  But he couldn’t get mine…I couldn’t pump enough.  The next option was formula.

You see, I went into this thinking he will come out, he will latch and we will have this wonderful breastfeeding relationship…not the case.  By day 4 I had to supplement formula.  It wasn’t so much that it was formula and all you hear is “breast is best” it was the fact that I wasn’t able to meet that basic need for my baby.  It was devastating.  I spent each feeding crying, and thinking about it am crying again.  If I couldn’t meet that need how would I ever meet any of his needs.

My doula tried to help.  She then referred me to a Lactation Consultant, of which I saw 3 hoping someone could help us.  But no.  Each one had the same thing to say.  “He has a perfect breastfeeding mouth.”  Meaning it wasn’t tongue tie or something that is easily remedied.  They went on to say, “He simply can’t or won’t open his mouth to get a latch.” And with that there is nothing they could do to help.  They can’t make the baby open its mouth.  They suggested to keep trying and maybe he would get it.

So I kept trying.  This meant each feeding time, every 2.5 hours, or as he was crying to eat, I would try for 10 minutes to get him to latch.  At that point if he couldn’t or wouldn’t I would have a bottle of the breast milk I could pump and then the rest in formula.  And then would pump to have milk for the next go around. Making our feeding routine close to an hour and a half to two hours depending on if he would nod off mid feed.  After a while it was exhausting.  Cause you start feeding again not by when they finish eating, but by when they started.  So my hour and a half to two hour routine meant again in and hour or even 30 minutes we would start again.

Through some time my supply started to increase and I no longer had to supplement formula.  I didn’t know this had a specific name, but it does…it’s Exclusively pumping.  And that is what I do.  I am able to pump enough through the day to feed him tomorrow.  That means for 2 (ish) hours a day I pump so I can feed Print tomorrow.  He is growing and thriving on my milk which makes me very happy.  I still grieve the loss of the breastfeeding relationship, but knowing that I was going back to work and he would be on bottles then it made the sting a little less…there, but less.

It was a fight to get there, but I am, for all intensive purposes, “breastfeeding” my child.  Just not in the traditional sense of the word.  ;)

When we found out I was pregnant, on 11.5 weeks into the pregnancy, I told Chad that I really wanted to cloth diaper.  When I made this profession and he told me that would be fine, but I would have to do some research and I googled “cloth diaper options” I became very overwhelmed and was questioning my decision.

I found out a few weeks later that there was a local cloth diaper store and they had cloth diaper classes.  Yes!!  But, being a “type A” personality I had to go in to check the store out before I was going to sit in a class.  So on a Saturday, Chad and I headed over to the store and when we got there we were so amazed.  There were so many options.  There were also amazing sales people who were actually interested in helping us.  The one lady that helped us had her 2 year old daughter in an ergo carrier as she was explaining to us the systems that she used for her first and is currently using for her second.

Once we went into the store and saw all of our options and how easy it actually was even Chad agreed we could totally rock this.  And let’s be honest…they are adorable.  More so than the white pampers…just sayin.

So let me break it down with the systems that we use.  We use 2 different kinds. And to be honest, we both love each…and would recommend either.

The first:

Econobum Prefolds with Econobum, Flip (which is the cover he is wearing in this picture) or Thirsties covers. With this system we have a prefold (a big rectangle piece of fabric) that is folded differently to fit from infant size to potty training size.  Once that is folded in thirds, either length wise or other depending on the width needed, it lays in the covers and the covers snap around it.  The covers are all lined so they don’t leak out.  WONDERFUL!!  And, for traveling they have disposable inserts that can go in any of the covers that are a little more convenient for flying but are much more biodegradable than normal disposable diapers.

The second system we have is the FuzziBunz.

They are a “pocket” diaper.  That means there is a microfiber insert that looks like (sorry guys) a sanitary napkin…meaning it is long and narrow ish.  It slides into the pocket that is between the fleece that is on his bottom and the PUR lining so it won’t leak.  The insert is the most absorbent. This one is the cutest of them all and works most like a normal diaper.  I stuff them in the mornings and then we use them as normal.

Once the soiled diaper is removed we have a garbage pail that is lined with a PUR lined liner that they get dropped in until they are washed.  Using both systems together we only do diaper laundry every other day and then they hang to dry.  It’s wonderful.

So, that is our diaper system.  Yes, we LOVE that it saves us money in the long run as all of our diaper systems will go from newborn to potty training and can last for multiple children.  It’s an upfront investment, but long term saves boat loads of dollars!

Questions…?