I'm a full-time mummy

It's now day 15 for my tandem nursing journey. Yeap, 14 excruciating days has passed and I'd like to think I'm beginning to see a tiny weeny bit of light at the end of my tandem nursing depression tunnel. My battle with the negative emotions and thoughts on tandem nursing a 2.5 year old and a 2 week old newborn.

Now that I'm mostly feeling positive-r (is there such a word?), I'd like to share out what goes on during the 14 days.

Firstly, tandem nursing does not make me tired. I don't tandem nurse the whole day, only about twice daily, prior to Ben's afternoon nap and bedtime. Yes, I do feel like a cow when I nursed both Ben and Alyson together but no, it doesn't make me tired. In fact, I think it is why I'm feeling much better. I don't want any of you guys to get the idea that tandem nursing is a horrible experience and must be avoided at all costs.

Anyway, back to what happened... during the initial days (as in day 2 post delivery) I got home with baby Alyson and when I had to nurse Ben for the first time after the baby comes, it hit me. The feeling of disgust and agitation is unspeakable. I felt like snapping at Ben, I felt angry at him for still wanting to nurse from me.

There are times I find myself withdrawing and avoiding Ben. I get all moody when it's time to nurse him (always before his afternoon nap and bedtime sleep which was the usual practise all the while even during my pregnancy)

Funny to think that before the baby comes, I was all clingy and sad at the thought of losing my 1 to 1 time with Ben and just few days after the baby arrives, I started hating my precious boy. HATE. Yes, I hated saying I hate my boy but it's the truth. I need to write this out to remind myself (when I read back this post from time to time) that it's stupid of me to be thinking this of my boy.

Poor Ben had no idea what happened to mummy and why mummy is acting all weird and moody and snapping at everything he does. Hubby came to my rescue by helping out as much as he can, distracting Ben when he wants to nurse from me (which we also found out later when Ben wants to nurse other than before his sleeping time, he wanted to nurse because he's hungry) and practically just spends more time with us whenever he can.

I searched around the net for tandem nursing reactions like mine and found out that it's a common thing experienced by tandem nursers during the initial stage. Oh my, I am not a weirdo alone, THANK GOD!

Some fellow bloggy friends shared their experiences and what they did to get through this difficult phase and I tried their tips and yeah, I think it's working so far...

So, back to day 14 now... I do feel moody once in a while but not so often anymore. I told myself if I can't make it, at least I tried. At least I gave it a good fight before I surrender. And looks like I'm still hanging in there...

I find that nursing Ben and Alyson both helps me distract myself from thinking of negative stuff. I also use that chance to teach Ben to handle and touch his baby sister gently and to protect and love her and that she's not a threat to him (in terms of my breastmilk) and it's so nice when both of them fell asleep together.

I want to express my deepest thanks to you guys who still drop by my blog and leaving me your sweet support, prayers and virtual hugs.

I want to thank Dionna for sharing her tips and Twittering me, Dulce Chale for sharing her experience, Mama J for sharing her tips and emailing me and Germaine (for referring me to Mama J)

I also want to thank my hubby for his continuous support and help in taking care of Ben, bringing him out for some daddy-son quality time while mummy rests at home with Alyson.

Thank you all again for your continuous support in me, my blog and everything that goes on in our life. I really appreciate it and hope to get over this obstacle soon. One step at a time...

I received a PR pitch on August 31st and immediately replied back with my interest in reviewing the digital scrap book kit as I was tinkering around few weeks back while looking for ideas to revamp my blog header and stumbled upon the world of digital scrapbooking! It took me sometime to download the whole mega collab but it was worth the time taken as I get to play around with scrapbooking DIGITALLY and FOR FREE!

Some info about their products:

"All of our products are digital and are available via computer download only; no physical product will be sent to you.  Our digital scrapbooking products are in the highest quality and resolutions, all 300dpi. Papers are 12 inches x 12 inches and in .jpg format, elements are in .png format, and templates are in .png, .tiff, and .psd formats."

You can also check out their gallery and forum too! Btw, if you take up the challenges highlighted in their forum, you can earn points for free products.  500 points = $5.00 to the store. Good huh?!

I was asked to select one out of the following designs to review: School Time, Tropical Paradise, Berry Delight, There's a Party Going On, or Birthday Bash. After browsing through all of them, I settled on Birthday Bash.

A bit of info about this kit that I downloaded to review:

"The Stuff To Scrap designers have made another huge, fabulous birthday kit!  It  has great colors for both boys and girls and plenty of embellishments to complete any layout!  This kit contains 95 12x12 300 dpi papers, 135 embellishments and 2 full alphas."

And this is what I came up with after playing around for sometime (not pretty I know, I'm a newbie in this and I've got 2 kids to take care of now so time is a precious asset to me now!)

What's good?

* I like the user friendly process to purchase the digital products.

*  There are so many awesome designs in this store!

* I like that they even offer freebies for you to try out! I have in fact downloaded 3 more add-ons for free! Score!!

Room for improvement?

* I would prefer if the sizes of the images are smaller or compressed into smaller versions.

*  Maybe it's my slow connection but it took me days to download the whole collab. I also suspect it might be due to myself using Firefox initially as I don't seem to have download issues when I switched to IE.

*I would prefer to see a higher number of downloads allowed instead of the current 5 counts.

You can find out more great designs at: http://www.stufftoscrap.com/store/

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products by the sponsor in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

Hi all,

Just want to drop a note that I am struggling and coping with tandem nursing. It's more of an emotional issues which I read occurs commonly for tandem nursers and I'm trying to overcome this and praying hard I will get through this obstacle.

I'm currently on day 11 of tandem nursing and again, this is more of an emotional battle for me to fight through (am also suspecting could be due to hormonal changes since my body is trying to revert back to the pre-pregnancy stage)

My dearest hubby has been the greatest source of strength and pillar for me to rely on during this difficult times. What would I do without him?! Every minute he has spared, he spends it with us and helped me take care of Ben during his fussy moments.

Please pray for me, us and that we will get through this.

Any experienced tandem nursing mamas who has been there and done that, appreciate your support and encouragement in any way.

God bless you all.