Sometimes You Get What You Need.

I think these Rolling Stones lyrics sum up the last six weeks perfectly! Yesterday while driving with my arm stretched around the seat with my finger in Zoe's mouth to calm her cries. I was pondering the thought that the Lord doesn't give us more than we can handle and that He gives us what we need, which can stretch us as farther than we think we can be stretched!

Zoe is attached to me, she needs me to hold her and comfort her and often no one else will do. This is not always what I want, because I need to do things like shower, eat, go to the bathroom! It's what she needs at this moment, so my needs fall to the back burner. I tell Jon not to worry, with the Dad she has, she is soon bound to be a Daddy's girl for the rest of her life and she will forget about me!

Zoe has changed how we do things, we are still trying to learn what her routine is, but it changes everyday. So, I make plans and she changes them! I want to go out for a walk and she just wants to stay in and eat, all day! My milk supply is still not enough for her needs, but that doesn't matter to her she still needs the comfort of nursing, this is how she falls asleep. This is what I find amazing, and such a gift. She could reject nursing and stick to the bottle, but she prefers nursing and whatever milk I give her. I wish I could give her all the milk she could ever ask for her. We can't always get what we want, but we have been given all that we need.

Last month I was worried we were going to have to give her formula, because the donated breast milk we had was always running low, we needed more mom who could donate. I was referred to a couple of forums for donating milk one is a Facebook group called "Eats and Feets" and the other is a website called MilkShare. I had posted requests for milk donations, but didn't have any responses. I kept checking and praying for milk to start pouring down. One day while I was nursing my friend Amiee texted and asked us if we wanted a mini freezer. She needed to get rid of for her move. I said yes without hesitation and they delivered it a few days later. Then about couple days later while nursing I checked the forums again. There were three new posts from Mom's looking to donate milk. I emailed all of them and two of them emailed back saying I could have their freezer full of milk. I got a couple of coolers, we fed Zoe a lot before getting into the car and heading off for a little road trip. We went to the first house and the mom took me into her garage and opened a freezer and said I could have whatever I wanted. It was the mother load of milk! She said she didn't have enough milk for her daughter the first week and started pumping and hasn't stopped for fear her supply would run out. I was in awe of what we were being given. I loaded up both coolers with all of the milk that would fit and gave her a hug and thanked her. Jon and I were totally in shock with how much milk we had just been given. We still had to go to the second house to collect a freezer full. We stopped by Target and bought a couple of coolers to take whatever they had for us. We got there and she had a box ready to hand us. It was a normal refrigerator size freezer full, which was less than I thought, but still a huge blessing. We took it all and when we got back home our new freezer was full to the brim and so was our refrigerator freezer! The milk had poured down on us and we were taken care of. So much stress had been lifted off of my shoulders and Zoe still hasn't had formula, thanks to many generous mom's out there.

To put what we had been given to perspective. There are some mom's who try and sell their milk for $2-3 dollars an ounce on Craigslist. If we had to buy the milk we have used so far since that day it rained milk, we would have paid $600-$900 for it and we still have a freezer full! What a blessing.