We decided last week to finally take a family vacation - a very last minute holiday which meant we were quite restricted in terms of availability of family accommodation anywhere in Ireland! But, after a lot of frantic online searching (thank God for the internet!) we finally found a house to rent for a week in Lahinch, Co Clare on the West Coast of Ireland, and off we went!
We had a great week and did lots of fun things with the children. We trudged through the Aillwee Caves, explored Moher Hill Open Farm, made our way around Bunratty Castle (where I caught a ghost in the Dungeon on my camera!) and folkpark, played on the beautiful and blustery Lahinch beach, marvelled at the weird and wonderful sea creatures in Lahinch Seaworld Aquarium and drove through the wild and barren Burren!
We deliberately gave the amazing Cliffs of Moher a miss - neither of us fancied taking three children under the age of eight up there thank you very much!
The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, especially Bunratty Castle which our seven year old cried leaving as she was fascinated by all the little old houses dotted around the grounds and the burning turf fires within!
Although this holiday wasn't quite as wonderful as the holiday we took in Donegal last year, I put that down to the last minute accommodation which was a little bit lacking and the fact that the heavens opened all week moreso than the place itself! Plus Donegal also is in my blood as my maternal grandmother and her father came from that part of the land!
We returned home on Saturday and were all exhausted after the arduous 6 hour journey. Then just to top off our lovely week away, I woke up in the middle of the night with aching knees and the shivers. Within a short time I couldn't move my body at all because every single bone ached and I mean every bone, fingers, toes, everything. I felt like I'd been in a terrible accident and had to spend the entire day in bed!
I think it was the flu which I've never had before because the last few days of our holiday I felt a bit shivery. Now I know that the flu is not just a bad cold! Thankfully the aches didn't happen until we got home though or I can't imagine what we would have done.
Anyway, because I was in such extreme pain I couldn't let Jack breastfeed at all yesterday and as paracetamol was having no real impact on the pain, I was taking co-codamol which I had left over from breaking my ribs a few months back. Co-codamol contains codeine and I was happy to take it and continue breastfeeding when I broke my ribs because apparently it was safe to do so.
However, yesterday I came across this story about codeine and breastfeeding showing that perhaps it's not so safe to take codeine medication and breastfeed after all!
And although I'm not too concerned as I've taken it safely in the past, the fact is that Jack is obviously an older breastfed child so drugs wouldn't have just the same impact on him as on a tiny baby.
But since I've been trying to wean for a while now perhaps this is the answer! I'm in pain, I'm taking medication for it and I've been feeling a bit run down for a while now. Since he is now 25 months old I think the time may be right to finally end breastfeeding as planned. And as Jack isn't really responding to the whole gradual weaning as well as I'd hoped, I think I'll just try to keep distracting him and see how that goes.
Considering we've now been stopped for a whole day and night it may even happen this time around! (Or maybe not?)
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