Nursing/Postpartum Tuesday: Breastmilk Storage Bags

Welp, we just booked $5k+ worth of tickets to visit my MIL for a week over the holidays, which will involve two plane transfers, three children under 6, me likely having to work to close a deal in January and getting sh*t about it from everyone, a MIL who is constantly critical and only engages with my kids through screen time, a non-childproofed apartment on the beach where the beach is the only option for entertainment for my fair-skinned kids, and lots of FOMO since I really enjoy spending time with my parents and siblings over the holidays. My MIL is not in great health and recently lost my FIL, so I can’t complain too much about this to my husband and need to start framing this positively in my mind. I get silently annoyed that they chose to retire so d*mn far from their family so that we have to spend our precious vacation time on these long hauls and my husband has to spend lots of money and time away from us visiting them for their various health crises. (Although she thought about moving here when my FIL died, an idea which I was even less thrilled about… gah.) I get (even more silently) annoyed that she has taken such poor care of her health and is so sedentary. I also know I sound like a brat complaining out loud that I have to go on vacation to the beach. Thanks, internet strangers, for listening to me whine.

I am interested to hear how others would handle a situation my husband and I have found ourselves in. We live in an old house that needs a new roof as well as new paint and fascia – badly. Our neighbor two doors down just had his roof replaced and was able to get his insurance to cover it because his contractor found hail damage. We called the same contractor out to our house, which told us we also have hail damage. This contractor will not paint and redo fascia though. We had other contractors out, who told us no hail damage, and gave us quotes to redo roof, paint, fascia – the whole shebang. I don’t know if first contractor is totally above-board or not. Maybe not.

Husband called the insurance company to see if someone could come out and check for hail damage, and was told we need to open a claim and an adjuster will come out. Here’s the kicker though – if the adjuster comes out and does not find hail damage, our premium will be increased anyways. I doubt there’s anything we can do about this – it’s in the policy, so we’re probably stuck with it, although it seems very unfair as we are taking on the risk here.

So what would you do? I am not trying to get something I am not entitled to – if there’s no hail damage, fine. But we’re talking about a lot of money here, potentially covered by insurance. Has anyone dealt with this before? Any thoughts? Something I am missing?

Thanks to everyone who helped out over the last month with my 2.5-year-old’s post-potty-training poop issues (withholding and major anxiety). Fingers crossed, they seem to have resolved themselves (we’ve at two weeks with no accidents and no drama). The things that worked, in order: first, we cleaned her out with a combination of miralax and a couple of suppositories. Second, we completely stopped reacting to her drama. I actually think this is what mattered most — she was picking up on our anxiety/hovering (“you seem like you have a poop coming! let’s go sit by the potty! do you want to look at my phone on the potty? should we read a book?” etc etc). So instead when she started crying/complaining/etc we just kept doing whatever we were doing (ie ignored her) and trusted that she would figure it out and get herself to the little potty. It took awhile (and some poops in unfortunate places, including our bed, EW) but eventually it clicked.

I would love to hear experiences about how you chose your child(ren)’s guardians. My husband and I are pretty stuck. We have a toddler together and he has a daughter from his first marriage – we have split custody.

My parents: They live several hours away and would not be happy relocating to our city. We would want our son to see his sister so we want him to stay in City. They are well off and love our kids. They are in good health and in their late 60s. They are also religious and conservative and would not respect our wishes for our children to be raised non-religiously.

His parents: Local, but his dad is much older than our other three parents (but in great health) and his mom is not in good health. They are also still working with their own business and they are less well off financially. I also feel that my parents would be very upset and hurt if we chose his parents, though that’s less of a concern – more about the health and longevity of the arrangement.

My brother: Not local, don’t think it would work for a number of reasons.

His sister: Younger, not terribly responsible, husband said no.

His older half-sister and her wife: They are not kid people and we couldn’t imagine them being happy with this at all.

Son’s godmother: Not local, single and would be an amazing parent, not sure how she would feel about it so it would obviously take a conversation, but again, she’s not local.

No idea who else to even consider. It feels really overwhelming.

I loved Kiinde bags and never looked back. The ziploc styles were not my friend and I was literally crying over spilled milk.

I really like these and use them for my (tiny) freezer stash. I will say that the numbers on the bag aren’t very accurate. I found that 6 ounces in the bag (pre-freezing) was more like 4-5 ounces in the bottle.

Any advice for a person with stinky milk. I understand that it is fine. But taste is so tied to smell that it just seems too nasty to use (esp. Friday milk — if I nurse when I am home Sat and Sunday, then the milk really stinks on Monday). Freezing that thawing doesn’t help. And the scald-and-no-problems solution has led to me just boiling/burning the milk and having large messes to clean up (plus — with that much handling, it seems to be barely human-produced milk anymore, the good fat has likely been destroyed, and I may just completely lose it (like the time I did everything right but then somehow knocked the container over).

I am just going to be a Friday pump-and-dump person. Which is fine. I have a feeling that past the newborn stage, where milk may actually have magical powers, milk is just a nice-to-have if your kid is progressing into actual food and had cut some teeth.

But YIKES it is not good-smelling-milk if it’s not fresh from the tap. Sorry baby! Mommy didn’t luck out in this department.