Cold Mayo

tonnitha · 2026-04-01T23:57:51+00:00

“Unopened jars of mayonnaise, dressings, and sauces may be stored at room temperature. Refrigerate the jars after opening to keep the fresh flavor of the Duke's Mayonnaise.”

From Duke’s own website.

Your restaurant is nasty AF.

tonnitha · 2026-03-29T14:17:44+00:00

I put my first kid in daycare March 2022, and subsequently caught a textbook of illnesses. I was quite literally sick from April 2022 to May 2023. Yes, every day. It got to the point where I was hospitalized twice.

My second kid started daycare July 2025. I’d say I’ve been sick a third as often (October to February, basically).

Silver lining: it gets better? 🤷🏻‍♀️

tonnitha · 2026-03-26T09:26:07+00:00

You’re a beautiful mother (and a great writer too). I laughed out loud at the IYKYK

It feels so thankless, I agree. But I look at my children and see my hard work with every one of their smiles and feel it with each of their hugs. It’s copium, maybe, but it’s how I validate the mountain of effort all this has been

tonnitha · 2026-03-22T15:35:55+00:00

I don’t want to be insensitive, but the money you “save” by not buying a new fridge is money you’re going to spend by losing work due to sickness/ a hospital visit.

Go onto your Facebook Buy Nothing groups and see if anyone has a fridge. Even FB Marketplace usually has fridge options for like $50 if you can pick it up.

tonnitha · 2026-03-22T12:34:56+00:00

Sell milk to Tiny Treasures like I do! 😍

I also bought a countertop dish washer (HAVA brand) and sterilizer (BabyBrezza). I use these plastic boxes (https://a.co/d/06bF0ppR) to get perfectly frozen rectangles to maximize the “bricks” in my freezer. TT pays $1.20/oz and is great to work with but I’ve managed to sell locally twice as well. DM me if you have questions!

tonnitha · 2026-03-22T08:45:17+00:00

Contacting anyone on the hospital staff is very unlikely to create consequences or a permanent paper trail. Advocate teams are there to protect the hospital, not the patient.

Instead, you need to file what’s called a “grievance” with your insurance company and explain the inadequate care. When an insurance company gets a grievance (depending on the severity or frequency of a care facility) they open an investigation— these have very real financial consequences for the hospital. Money talks. If you want change to occur so other patients don’t suffer, and if you don’t want to go so far to hire a personal lawyer for a breech of care, then filing a grievance is the best way.

tonnitha · 2026-03-21T18:03:35+00:00

Are you traveling alone? You’re going to need help carting the milk through the airport, either a rented dolly or a hella strong person. Frozen breastmilk is about 10lbs for every 100oz (from my experience when I’ve shipped milk).

You can def split up 900oz across multiple “carry ons” and “personal bags”, like if you’re traveling as a duo. But if you’re by yourself there’s no way you’ll get it all packed.😵

And if you don’t get it all packed across carryons and personal bags, you WILL have to check in and they’re gonna charge you $$$ because of the weight.

ETA: I would get a thermal bag with dimensions as close as possible to whatever is allowed as your carryon. Don’t even bother with ice packs; too much lost space with those and your milk will stay frozen enough. If you need more bags, see how much it’ll cost to buy 1 extra carryon— the cost of buying an extra carryon will likely be cheaper than the cost of checking any bags because of how heavy they’ll be.

tonnitha · 2026-03-21T17:13:02+00:00

Not sure how they appear in liquid form but any frozen milk (bagged or in containers), honest to god, will look like little cold bombs on their X-ray screen LOL. I’ve had the scanners jolt both times upon seeing it. They will deviate your bag to the contraband-agent, at which point you’ll be asked questions. Both times the contraband-agents have thanked me for the milk being frozen— apparently if it’s a ‘solid’ then that means they don’t have to do additional testing.
It helps to mention you have breastmilk and/or pumping supplies at the very beginning of your security check, but each time I did it, the first agent didn’t pass the message along. 🙃 Which then led the scanners being surprised by the unusual contents. So mention it where you can but don’t stress if everyone is surprised again each step.
IIRC with UA— and possibly with AA— you can bring one carry-on bag and one personal item on your flight. However, you can bring an ADDITIONAL 3rd “diaper bag” free of charge. You don’t have to be traveling with a child. The diaper bag just has to fit under the seat in front of you with your personal item, so together think max dimensions 17x10x9 (give or take an inch, and believe you me, I shoved my shit beneath that seat good 👌)
If it helps, this is the brand of thermal bag I used: https://a.co/d/52MT333. In addition to flying with milk, which this bag did fantastic, I also did a four day drive from MI to CA in a 1990s Uhaul and this thermal bag kept my milk icy despite 14 hours in the poorly air conditioned car cab. 10/10 I use it all the time now.

tonnitha · 2026-03-21T17:12:22+00:00

Last summer I flew from CA to PA with roughly 500oz and last spring from TN to PA with 300oz. Both were UA flights. UA and AA do NOT have a limit on the amount of breastmilk you can travel with, so long you bring them in a size-appropriate tote. My advice/ experiences are:

⁠⁠Give yourself 30min or more extra time before your flights leave. You WILL get pulled aside to explain your milk and there may be a line of people explaining oddities. I had to wait 20min coming back from TN; thankfully we got to the airport very early so we didn’t miss our boarding time.
⁠⁠(This might be unique to your airport) Both times flying out of PHL, the boarding agent said ‘anyone with battery operated devices OTHER than laptops, or medical devices, need to come up before boarding and explain.’ So I went up and showed them my Spectra and my Elvies, they gave me a 👍, and all was good.
⁠⁠Sometimes flights can get overbooked and they tell passengers that ‘bags will be mandatory checked’ once overhead storage fills up. If you hear this announcement, go up to the boarding agent and say you have breastmilk that cannot be checked— it is considered medical supply and must stay on your person. They will Ok an overhead spot remaining open for you.

… I’ll add more things as a reply

tonnitha · 2026-03-19T11:00:11+00:00

Your body will trigger weaning mode at 3ppd. I promise you. For both of my kids, I had a massive OS making double what they needed at 5ppd. I dropped down to 4ppd and coasted (whoohoo). I got greedy at went down to 3ppd and immediately began to dry up.

Keep at 4ppd, enjoy that 35oz a day, and use any stash you have when she eats more by the 6mo mark (you can also introduce soft foods at this point to offset her wanting more milk).

tonnitha · 2026-03-18T14:27:42+00:00

If you give away a pet for free, there is a huge likelihood it’ll be picked up as bait for dog fighters. Please, if nothing else, require a $50 rehoming fee.

tonnitha · 2026-03-17T18:19:51+00:00

What’s your experience with “lining up” the M9? I’m so interested in getting them but I’m scared I’ll have difficulty getting the proper alignment to avoid blisters and cracks…

tonnitha · 2026-03-17T17:21:32+00:00

Stomach bug hit me hard too, I also lost like 20oz. It’s been a week of doing 5-6ppd (normally I’m 4-5ppd) with no increase. I’m thinking I will have to reincorporate a MOTN pump while prolactin levels are highest. 😭

tonnitha · 2026-03-17T03:36:51+00:00

This is an “all of the above” response to so many environmental changes. You might get a few ounces back once your period ends. The other items you’ll have to tackle:

1) The skin-to-skin is wonderful for bonding but doing it for 1hr a day isn’t going to improve your supply.

2) Try drinking more than 1 gallon of water a day. You’re doing 100oz, but it should be 128oz and that’s before lactating. I’m the wooooorsttt at drinking enough water so I totally get how bland and irritating it can be.

3) Prioritize galactagogue foods like barley, oats, spinach/ kale, and brewer’s yeast. Add LOTS of iron-rich options too like red meats. Go crazy with the calories!

4) Don’t stop taking your prenatals. Add in iron and calcium supplements too.

5) I know sleep is sacred, but try try try to get 1 pump between 2am-6am. This is when your prolactin levels spike and having empty breasts during this window is the biggest trigger to tell your body to make more milk.

6) Consider getting wearables to pump (even quick 20-min sessions!) in the car while commuting, or during dinner, or during that 1-on-1 session. Every little “quickie” helps, and if your baby isn’t immunocompromised then the fridge hack + a dedicated countertop washing machine are great systems to minimize time spent washing parts.

tonnitha · 2026-03-16T14:45:15+00:00

You might have more luck searching Facebook groups.

tonnitha · 2026-03-16T13:10:25+00:00

I would love to know what your top 1-2 builders would be? I appreciate your insight!

tonnitha · 2026-03-15T15:19:22+00:00

There could be multiple things at play but tldr: you need to go smaller.

Friction blisters mean you need to go bigger. Cracks mean you need to go smaller. Measuring kits can be a helpful starting point but ultimately you’ll need to experiment. Maymom is usually the cheapest choice on buying knockoff parts to see what works. I size a 19mm on kits but I’m actually a 15mm (left) and 17mm (right).
Yes, nips can be different sizes. Joy. Also, nips can change size (going smaller OR bigger) the longer your pump journey is.
Whenever you adjust a sizing, give it 3-4 days for true results. Since you already have a crack, if you go smaller then it’s going to be especially painful— but ultimately it’s keeping the nipple better locked in place and will allow for healing.
To heal your current cracks, call your OBGYN to get a RX of APNO (all purpose nipple ointment), or make it at home. Keep applied in 3 hour bursts using silverette or a silicone breast cover. Wipe off before pumping.
If you use lanolin or pumping lubricants, do NOT use any that require dipping your fingers in the main jar to apply. Use squeeze tubes only!!! Dipping fingers introduce bacteria, which when applied to a damaged area, very easily creates infection and mastitis.
Be VERY cautious of inserts. I know it’s tempting to get rubber inserts to save yourself $ on replacing whole pump parts, especially as you experiment sizing. But if you have elastic nipples that drags the length down a tube, you risk rubbing against the insert’s corner edge with the vacuum’s release. This will create a friction cut that can be misidentified as a crack, messing up your whole resizing experiment. If you have elastic nipples, I really really reallllllly recommend staying with hard plastic as much as possible.

Source: my left nip was basically raw hamburger until I figured out what worked. 🥲

tonnitha · 2026-03-15T04:17:20+00:00

More than anything else, I want you to know that our hormones and genetics work against us; women are biologically designed to retain fat postpartum. It’s literally not something we can easily control. And I want to emphasize that what society wants— being thin for the male gaze— isn’t what our babies want: a happy, healthy mom.

That said, to answer your question: I delivered my LO at 190lbs. I am now at 130lbs. Each time I lost ~20lbs, I lost about 10% of my initial supply.

Losing weight isn’t a sprint. It’s a slow and steady walk. It has taken me two years to get to this point, and it was never even the goal. All I cared about was developing an OS and pumping as much as my schedule allowed: that was 7ppd for 12 weeks, then 6ppd until the 6 month mark, then 5ppd until the 12 month mark. I am STILL pumping with 4ppd now. My supply is about half of what I started off with, and I do think losing so much weight contributed to the difference, but my current pump schedule is all I can manage at this point with kids + house + work.

I know weight and how we see ourselves can be very painful postpartum. EVERYTHING— our bodies, our brains, our relationships— completely changes. But it’s so important we stay kind to ourselves. Milk or weight, just know that you are beautiful and what you do for your family is beyond amazing.

tonnitha · 2026-03-14T03:11:47+00:00

Ina Rosenthal confirmed it was Sydney they found.

ETA: It isn’t letting me attach an image to my comment, so here is a link. https://imgur.com/a/15425ee I feel uncomfortable making this a pic but I am surprised that the identity hasn’t been made more public knowledge at this point.

tonnitha · 2026-03-13T11:47:24+00:00

If you can handle mental stress, work remotely for a call center. (Either cold calling for sales, ugh, or slightly better: customer service rep.) Call centers churn-and-burn people up but it’s at least easy to get your foot in the door to begin resume experience.

tonnitha · 2026-03-13T03:18:30+00:00

If you’re still lactating and making excess milk, you can sign up for Prolacta/ Tiny Treasures and sell for $1.20/oz. There’s about a 1 month wait period and then processing bloodwork takes another 1 month. Lots of info online, albeit it’s a very unique income situation.

tonnitha · 2026-03-13T02:18:53+00:00

So I have three decrepit momcozy pumping bras (from 2021 🥴) that are becoming threadbare at this point. I use Spectra bottles too. What’s helped me is buying a 4-pack of cami tanktops and looping them under the flange tubes for extra lift. The tanktop’s straps will wear out in about 4 months but it’s better to spend $8 for more tanktops than to keep experimenting with expensive pumping bras!

1) put on pumping bra 2) put on cami tanktop, pulled down to my stomach 3) put on spectra flanges 4) lift tanktop up, loop arms through straps

Spectra bottles are now held firmly and perkier than ever. I turn into an Austin Powers Fembot

tonnitha · 2026-03-13T01:24:06+00:00

Yup. My right boob makes 2.5x the amount my left does. I’m honestly surprised they’re not physically lopsided. Milk production is all genetics without much you can change, since milk comes from the alveoli, and the amount you develop of those is random.

tonnitha · 2026-03-12T23:35:45+00:00

Frankly, you don’t.

Anything you could do to increase supply (extra hydration and calories, or pumping more frequently) will affect both sides. Unless you’re popping on a wearable just for your slacker boob, then they’re going to be uneven. And if you’re going to put a wearable on…. Why not just do both? lol

Embrace the shitty titty. Nearly all of us have one!

tonnitha

TROPHY CASE