Weaned

It seems as though my sweet-itty-bitty-baby is no longer an itty-bitty-baby although he is still sweet. I have been trying to wean him from nursing, and I really thought it would take longer than it has. Last week he was only nursing once in the mornings. And this morning...nothing. We'll see how the day goes, but I think this may be it.

"Wow! That was quick," you say? I know, I think so too, but we needed to kind of hurry it along a little bit (although I didn't think it would hurry this much). I really, really want to have another baby, God willing. And, before that should happen (my plans, right?) I have quite a few medical things that need taken care of that cannot be taken care of while nursing or pregnant. Like having all four wisdom teeth removed. Or getting the cyst on my wrist taken care of. Oh, I know some doctors say that these things are OK during pregnancy or while nursing, as long as care is taken, but I don't want to take any chances with my children's health. And after having my first miscarriage, I don't want to take any chances with my child's life. I'm sure you know what I mean.

The thing is though, I think all this weaning has been wrecking havoc with my hormones. (Uh, you think?) With the Thanksgiving holiday, came a long weekend for my dear husband. One he really deserved. And it went well, really well. Until Saturday night. On our way home from our parishes Christ the King celebration, I got grumpy. Really grumpy, for no real reason. Well, to be fair, in my mind at the time there were plenty of reasons to be grumpy. Like DH being fairly quite all day, and when I asked him what was going on he just told me he was just feeling "calm". But, I just knew there had to be something up, and danggit why wasn't he telling me what was wrong?! Yep, I can be like that.

The evening ended in a humph, and I went to bed feeling rather angry and sorry for myself. Yesterday morning, DH was already up, and must have heard Fritter talking to himself in his room. Instead of waking me up nice and sweet like you see in the movies (I can really be petty), he just said, "I'm going to go get Fritter". Some of the frustration of the night before must have still been hanging on to me, because I ended up spending some of my morning pouting in bed. (I told you, I can be such a child). And, after another round of really bad grumpiness (OK, meanness) in the car, we ended our evening watching a great movie that I will review later when we finish it.

Looking back at the past weekend in all its ugliness, I can see how I allowed myself to become a slave to my hormones and emotions. There are so many changes that we go through as women, from menstrual, pregnancy, postpartum, nursing, weaning, and finally menopause that we have to learn how to control ourselves, especially at these times. Just knowing about it doesn't entirely help, we have to have something concrete to do when we feel ourselves sliding. I'm not really sure what will work for me, yet, but I definitely don't want to put my family through another weekend like this.

So what do you do to control your emotions when you are feeling hormonal?