Overwhelmed

I'm feeling a tad overwhelmed right now. To be honest, I think most of it stems from the pumping. I'm on the damn thing every two hours (when I can fit it in) in the day and at least twice during the night. I don't feel like I can give my best to the Little Lady by doing this for much longer - she's awake more in the day and pumping is not fun for her.

On top of that, the Little Lady has a recurrent skin infection that causes her pain when it flares. And she is starting to teeth. We also have her first round of jabs to look forward. All this means my previously content and happy baby is incredibly fractious.

My house is falling apart because I can't keep up with it being on the pump all day. I'm not being the pet owner I should either (and as you probably know, we have a stray that pretty much lives here now as well) and I barely get to see the Boy any more. He is on the verge of expulsion because he keeps escaping from school and I don't feel I'm helping him enough.

I go to a breastfeeding support group. I started crying in the middle of the meeting because everyone could breastfeed except me. I had to whip out my bottle instead. I'm scared I'll start to get annoyed with my own baby because she just won't latch on. There are some days I think I'm ok with it and can accept that I need to pump if I want her to have breast milk, and then clearly there are days that I am not. Today is a not and I cannot stomach the idea of giving her any formula.

I wanted to cloth nappy. I've managed one, and I've only just washed that. I just can't do much of anything if I want to keep up exclusively pumping. Which I do. I just wanted to cloth nappy as well.

And I go back to work in 8 weeks time. I don't want to, but we've had so many unexpected costs that I have to. We're now short on money as it is. We're not desperate, but we are shorter than we anticipated and so have to watch very carefully exactly what leaves our bank account.