When I was in col­lege and for the years after before I was preg­nant with K, I was a semi-regular blood dona­tor (is that a word?). In fact, Jason’s cousin tried to con­vince Jason that one time when Jason and I went to donate blood together was actu­ally our first date. It wasn’t by the way. I just didn’t want to go alone.

Any­way, after I had K, I was inter­ested in donat­ing blood again, but I had a hard time find­ing any infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. Most of the infor­ma­tion I found said that it was allowed but it was a mom’s choice whether or not it would work for her. Well, that didn’t help me much. I checked on the La Leche League web­site and the Amer­i­can Red Cross web­site although it seems they have changed their lay­out and that infor­ma­tion is no longer avail­able. I found a few specifics, but I didn’t find a hard yes or no answer.

When I had A, I had a fairly sig­nif­i­cant over­sup­ply of milk after he was born and had to (and still have to) take steps to con­trol my sup­ply to allow him to be able to nurse with­out get­ting over­whelmed by the milk. Because of this, I felt more con­fi­dent in choos­ing to donate. I thought I would wait until he was 6 months old and tak­ing some solids just in case I did have a dip in sup­ply. Well, he’s now almost 8 months and not tak­ing solids. I just couldn’t wait any longer. In my absence from donat­ing, Jason has caught up to my dona­tions and sur­passed me! I need to get donat­ing again.

I made my appoint­ment, and the day I was sup­posed to go was –38 degrees with a –54 degree wind­chill. Need­less to say, I did not go that day. I just couldn’t jus­tify tak­ing my 2 boys out in that weather for any­thing other than an emer­gency. I resched­uled my appoint­ment and went the next week. I really didn’t do much to pre­pare ahead of time. I made sure that I was drink­ing extra water and eat­ing well the days before. My appoint­ment went well. When the woman put the nee­dle in to draw blood, she had a lit­tle trou­ble find­ing the vein. That resulted in me being a bit sore that night and the next day, but it wasn’t any­thing terrible.

I know that one person’s anec­do­tal expe­ri­ence doesn’t replace the advice of a doc­tor or lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant, but I hope it helps at least a lit­tle bit if this is a deci­sion you’ve been try­ing to make for yourself.

Jason, the boys, and I spent yes­ter­day and today at his par­ents’ house. We intended on only spend­ing yes­ter­day with them, but it got late, and the weather wasn’t sup­posed to be all that great, so we spent the night. Today, we went to church, ate out, and after­wards, I took a nap (and it was WONDERFULLLLLL!!!) on the couch. We decided about 3:30 to get mov­ing and get home before dark. Gen­er­ally, it’s a pretty quick 60 mile trip on the inter­state. Well, today, things were a bit different.

Before we even got out of town, I found that dri­ving the speed limit on the roads *in town* was too fast. I could feel myself slip­ping on the ice, and I had to slow down on roads that were only 40 mph. Nor­mally, Jason does all the win­ter dri­ving, and I either read or stare down the road and freak out inter­mit­tently as I feel the car slide a bit. Well, he’s had the flu (not the stom­ach flu, the actual influenza flu) since Thurs­day, so I got the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice my win­ter dri­ving skills. We started out of town, and the first 3 miles were great. I was very relieved until we went around a curve in the road, and all of a sud­den, the road was cov­ered in ice.

The nor­mally 60 mile, hour long drive became a 25–35 mph, 90 minute drive. As bad as it was for us, I was con­cerned about friends of ours who had gone out to west­ern North Dakota for a hockey trip. They had a 5+ hour trip on nor­mal roads. I had Jason call their house while we were dri­ving home and we got no answer. We got home, and I meant to call them again, but I was wor­ried it was too late so I decided to wait until morn­ing. They just returned our call and said that between the turnoff where we live and the one they take, which is about 10 miles, there were 13 cars in the ditch. It was just a quick con­ver­sa­tion so I’m not sure how long their trip lasted, but if it was any­thing like ours and they had to deal with the dark, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it was 8 or more hours.