NMA: Newsletter 5 Article 2

When my son and husband began using various parts of my breastpump as golf tees and other sporting equipment, I knew that we had become a “Breastfeeding Family.” The nature and accessories of breastfeeding had become so ingrained in our lives that we were finding alternate uses for these items much the way you’d find a new use for baby powder. I was proud of the metamorphosis that my husband, son, and I had completed, especially considering my rocky start and early neuroses with breastfeeding. I will admit that I kept track of the time, duration and side of each feeding until my son was 5 1/2 months old. My family accepted this “habit” of mine while still treating me like I had a strange mental affliction. The truth was that I was a new mom trying to get a grip on my life and do the best I could for my child.

Like most first time moms I hadn’t planned on nursing a toddler, it just happened. I was not well prepared nor informed about breastfeeding before the birth of my son , JP, and I hoped that I would “be able to do it” for at least six months. As I read up on breastfeeding and answered more queries about my breastfeeding plans, I thought I would follow what seemed to be the norm and nurse for a year. I started attending local nursing moms meetings and I became better informed about breastfeeding. I got over the hurdles. I sought out other nursing moms. I relaxed. I started to enjoy breastfeeding my son. We introduced solids and my son started teething. Around 9 1/2 months my son started biting and went on a three-day nursing strike. I cried: yes, my son could drink from a sippy cup and he wouldn’t starve, but I wasn’t ready to stop breastfeeding – I had gone from obsessing over it, to enjoying it. I cried because he had stopped nursing and I hadn’t gotten to savor “the last time”. I pumped for each of those three days and kept offering the breast. I didn’t force it if he bit me and started crying, but sometime around the end of day three he stopped biting and we both seemed relieved to be back to part of a comfortable routine. Middle of the night feedings began to have a sweetness to them that I didn’t dare want to take for granted anymore. Not only was it perfect to watch a dreamy and completely content baby fall back to sleep at my breast, but I began to realize how much the breastfeeding relaxed me too.

As JP’s first birthday approached, I remembered that my plan had been to nurse for a year. Everyone started to ask how weaning was going. I didn’t want to wean him and there was no evidence he wanted to stop or that he felt we had a time-table to watch. The moms and counselors from the nursing moms group had gone from being “the other moms in the group with me” to being my friends, and I sought out comfort and support from them. My son and I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding and I felt strengthened to go on despite opposition. The only opinion I wanted to consider was my husband’s. Without having a support group for himself he was, at that point, more biased by “public opinion” than I was. His only comment on the subject was that he thought it might be weird if our son was still breastfeeding when he began talking. So we kept going.

At this point, I was very conscious of JP’s language development milestones. My husband didn’t seem to have any new objections to breastfeeding. He even started saying that he just wanted what was best for our son. We were all comforted when JP would get hurt and mom could just “whip it out” and calm everyone down. When we started talking about baby #2 I thought I would wean JP before we started trying. That idea came and went and my husband eventually asked “Why are we waiting?”

By now, I was now breastfeeding a 19 month old and leaving the chance of pregnancy in Higher hands. About this point I sought out the book “Mothering Your Nursing Toddler.” Our breastfeeding frequency was on a downward slope and I was trying the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” method for any feeding my son seemed to easily forget about. Funny enough, it was from breastfeeding that I started to suspect I was pregnant. At first, I thought the nipple soreness was the beginning of a breast infection or from my son’s tugging, but when I started feeling exhausted and got that weird type of indigestion, it all came together.

I made a personal decision that if I could easily wean my son from his remaining 1-2 feedings per day that I would, but otherwise, we would keep going. I thanked my lucky stars that I was aware that each feeding could be the last.

My son was breastfed until he was 21 months old. His last feeding was on the morning of my 36th birthday and I was 7 1/2 weeks pregnant with his sister.

As it write this article, I am days away from the birth of my daughter and I can not wait to breastfeed a new baby. My son knows that his sister is coming. She is even bringing him a new bike. My husband and I don't know how JP is going to react when he sees the new baby nurse. Just in case, I’ve borrowed a book on tandem nursing.