Mastitis and decreased milk supply...plus the most horrible week ever

Wow.  In regards to posting, March has been absolutely, pitifully dismal.  But I have a great reason.  It all started when my brother and his girlfriend, the uber talented designer Katie Evans, came to visit (and meet!) their nephews.  Katie and John came last year when I was about 5 months pregnant.  I made Katie touch my belly and feel the lumpy creature growing inside of me.  She was disgusted :)

I just had to add this...

Oh my God.  My heart is melting.  Uncle John is so sweet to our little demon.

Des's guts are like 10 times bigger than in this picture. 

This has to be printed and framed.  It's too cute. 

Look at Nico's hand on Desmond's shoulder.  He always does that to Desmond...I love it.

Too close for Des's comfort.

He will put anything in his mouth.  Especially flashy jewelry.  He's like a crow.  Or a sparrow.  Or whatever the birds are that like shiny things.

Then we all went bowling.  I got last place.  My SIL has beautiful form.  And yes, we wore our kids and bowled.

After I didn't gutter the ball for once.

Cutie couple.  

Anyhow, I was feeling sick during their last few days here and felt so horrible (physically and guilt-wise).  I was getting the chills and had to lie down in bed with a winter jacket.  I would sleep for about 2 hours and then wake up drenched in sweat.  I was tired all day, had a sore throat, and a runny nose.  On top of all of that, I had another crack in my nipple (second so far) that I had been trying to "nurse" back to health.  I would get the same sharp pain down my left arm emanating from my breast that I used to get when I first started breastfeeding.  How is this happening to me?  At almost 7 months of nursing, it's almost old hat!  Just goes to show that anything can happen at anytime and I shouldn't be surprised. 

Anyhow, Desmond has been weaning since month 6, when we started feeding him solids.  For the first month, we kept on a pretty good schedule, feeding him every 2 hours: food, breastfeed, food, breastfeed.  So, it was an every-4-hour nursing schedule.  So, the risk of mastitis (an infection of the mammary glands in the breast...usually happens when milk isn't flowing through; i.e. you're not nursing enough or drop drastically; or when bacteria finds its way into your breast) coming on during a schedule that has been going on for a month is pretty low.  But, that weekend when John and Katie were here, my breasts felt really tender, as if I had went hours in between nursings.  I attributed the swelling to getting "off" my schedule.  And I attributed the flu-like symptoms to...well, the flu. 

I kept on nursing and nursing, even though it hurt like hell.  When I couldn't take it anymore, I switched to pumping except at night, when I would nurse des in bed.  I had 3 or 4 plugs in my left breast.  When I would pump, I would get only 1/2 oz at a time.  My right breast, the one that usually produced less milk, came to save the day and increased its output.  Isn't that amazing?!?! 

I was advised by my good friend Sara to call my midwife.  I told her my symptoms and she automatically prescribed me some antibiotics.  I think it was something like dicloxacillin and I had to take it 4 times a day for 14 days.  Lots of pills.  But, I would be remiss if I didn't point out, you should ALWAYS finish your prescription of antibiotics because if not, you run the risk of not killing all those bugs (I think I got the infection from the crack and not my feeding schedule) and the bugs that survive the 7 or 8 days you take the medicine will reproduce and make more bugs that can withstand that amount of antibiotics.  Bad news.

Anyhow, so that took about 1 week and a half to clear.  And then what happens...I get the qualifying exam.  BAM.  It took me about 50 hours to complete.  It was absolutely crazy.  The qualifying exam is something every PhD student does.  We have to take a General Exam (sort of like a glorified final exam).  Once we pass that, we have to write a 25 page proposal of our proposed study.  Once we write that, we hand it in to our committee and they ask you a bunch of questions regarding the proposal and you have to take a week and write great answers to their questions.  I think my exam turned out to be like 24 pages or something.  It really is taxing and I'm just now starting to feel like I can just sit and do nothing and be OK with it. 

My sweet mother came out from Florida to help me take care of Des while I took the exam.  More on that later.  But to leave you, here is another picture of the little demon:

Holy crap this makes me laugh so hard.  hahaha!  I love him!