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Nursing: One Year and Counting

I never thought it would happen, but somehow it did. One year of nursing! One year that I took one day at a time...literally, there were many times where I thought to myself, ok, just see how tomorrow goes. You can always stop then. And we kept on. We probably wouldn't have gone this long if I didn't have a baby who refuses to drink from a bottle. Emma has strenuously resisted my half-hearted attempts to wean this last month, so we are still keeping on. I'm kind of at a loss because my pie in the sky goal was to get to one year, and then we'd be done. I don't know what the road map looks like anymore. William self-weaned at 10 months and never looked back. I'm ready to quit (pumping at work is beyond old at this point), but she's not, so I guess we'll continue to take it day by day. I think nursing a child is kind of a crazy experience, and I wanted to remember it. So here's my month by month journal of what it was like for me and Emma, in honor of World Breastfeeding Week (which ok, might have been last week).

August, Month 1

Everything about nursing is easier with this baby than it was with Will. She latches immediately, feeds on both sides and nurses herself to sleep. My milk came in two days after she was born. I don't have any pain or discomfort and it just feels really natural. She wakes up once or twice a night to eat and goes right back to sleep. During the day she nurses every two hours, like clockwork. I love it, because it forces me to sit down and relax for 20 minutes or half an hour. I'm becoming very good at finding quiet things for Will to do will Emma nurses. It also gives me time to read! Like Will, she is gaining weight very slowly, but steadily. Since I've been through this before (huge babies at birth due to gestational diabetes, then slow gainers), both I and my doctor are calm about it and I don't have to bring her in every three days to be weighed, like with Will. I was constantly worried that I wasn't producing enough milk for him, because he only gained about a pound a month. With Emma, I am relaxed and know that she is getting enough. It is a world of difference, emotionally.

September, Month 2

Oh, how life kicks you in the teeth when you think you have it figured out. My easy nursing experience has turned into clogged ducts and blisters...while on vacation with my family. This is miserable. I call the doctor on call back home (not my doctor) who tells me, "Well, since the problem is with only one breast, why don't you just feed her with the other?" Hmmm...because the clogged one will then explode? I call my friend, a lactation consultant, who tells me the only thing to do is nurse as often as possible on the clogged up side. So I do, through lots of tears and much pain. The duct resolves itself after a few days, but the blistered nipple lasts for three weeks. Horrible. On the plus side, now she refuses to nurse if Will is in the room (too much noise), so I get to escape to a quiet bedroom and read, read, read many times a day. Will is becoming too well acquainted with PBS Kids, but it's the only way I know he will stay out of trouble when I'm not there. 

At six weeks we introduce the bottle to Emma with pretty disastrous results. She will not drink it no matter if it's breast milk or formula. No matter if N., grandma, grandpa, or my sister give it to her. She will not even close her mouth around the nipple, and she stares up at you with hurt and confused eyes...like, what are you trying to do to me? While milk runs down her chin and into the folds of her neck. It is hilarious. but frustrating. She will drink about an ounce and then scream and hit the bottle away. I am going back to work part-time when she is three months old, so this is not good.

Month 3, October

After a month of trying, she still will not take a bottle. N. tries every night when he is home from work, and on the weekends. Every once in awhile she will drink it, but it is always a battle. We've tried different bottles, different nipples, waiting until she's really hungry, feeding her at her regular time, middle of the night...it doesn't matter. She's on to us and is not happy about it. While it is annoying, I secretly admire her stubbornness. I love that she just won't do it if she doesn't want to do it. I think that will get her places in life. However, I'm going back to work in a few weeks and N. will be home with her two full days a week. He is not going to have much fun if she won't eat anything.

Nursing has gotten easier again. She eats like clockwork, literally to the minute, every two hours during the day. I don't need to wear a watch. She's super efficient; latches on, sucks like a madwoman until I let down, shudders and rolls her eyes back in her head and nurses for about five minutes, totally consumed by her task. As soon as she's done I quickly burp her, and then switch her to the other side, hopefully before the screaming begins. When she's done, she's happy and sleepy. I love the rush of endorphins I get as she's eating. It just feels like love, love, love. Finally some pregnancy/childbirth hormones that make me happy!

Month 4, November

Back to work. Only 20 hours a week, and N. is home with the kids the rest of the time, so I can't complain. But I will anyway. I hate pumping at work. I HATE it. It hurts, I don't get very much milk (maybe 3 ounces each time) and sitting at my desk without my shirt on is just ridiculous. I don't even want to think about how I'm going to do this while traveling for my job, which starts next month. This makes me want to stop nursing. And I have it EASY compared to most working moms. I have my own office and refrigerator, a supportive staff and supervisor, and N. brings Emma to me at lunch every day so I can nurse her, which means I only have to pump twice a day. Could I be more of a baby about this? No. But I still hate it. To top it off, I have another clogged duct. Effing ducts.

But we keep on, and nursing is rewarding enough to make pumping bearable. Emma is now much more aware of what is going on, which makes nursing easier in some ways, and harder in others. She absolutely will not nurse if anything distracts her. So, we need a quiet room and I have developed seriously stealthy page turning techniques. She has discovered that she is not the only person involved in the nursing situation. Mom is here too! Every once in awhile she stops, looks up at me, focuses, and is extremely startled to find that I am there looking down at her. The look on her face is fantastic, and makes me laugh every time. Soon it becomes a game. She looks up at me, still nursing, and smiles. So sweet.

Month 5, December

More clogged ducts, but no blisters, thankfully. We've started her on some solids, so she is going a bit longer between nursing sessions, regularly every 2.5 hours now, and once in awhile every 3 hours. She is sleeping through the night, maybe nursing once a night every few days. She is taking a bottle now from N. without too much complaint. This is when nursing really hits it's stride for me. She is incredibly efficient; we are done in 5 to 7 minutes each time. Much faster than making and heating up a bottle, and feeding her that way. The bad news is that I can no longer read while nursing her. And this is bad news indeed. She is too distracted and screams at me when I try. So I sit and compose blog posts in my head that I never type out. Sigh.

Month 6, January

Emma has always been a pretty active nurser, but she is now doing acrobatics. She used to curl up around me and pat my arm or my breast as she drank. That turned into massaging, pulling and pinching whatever exposed flesh of mine that she could access. Now she pulls her top leg basically up to her ear (her foot) and whacks me repeatedly in the chest with it. Sometimes she likes to mix things up by stopping nursing to put her toes in her mouth.

This month we fly to Arizona to visit N.'s family and I spend a lot of time nursing in public. This sucks. Not only am I fairly prudish about exposing my body, Emma doesn't like to nurse under a blanket and also needs dead silence in order to eat. We spend much of vacation sitting in the back seat of the car while everyone else is having fun. This is also when I read Bill Maher's famous words about nursing outside of the home, "public masturbation," as I am breastfeeding Emma on an airplane.

Month 7, February

Emma has bronchitis and a double ear infection, resulting in a nursing strike. I am forced to pump at home for the first time with this baby to relieve the pressure. Annoying, but not nearly annoying as the clogged ducts that occur in BOTH breasts this time due to the sudden lack of nursing. Sigh.

All of the sickness and non eating during the day means that she is up multiple times a night and will only go back to sleep if I nurse her. This is terrible because I had finally been enjoying sleeping through the night. It also sets up a bad cycle for her of waking up three or four times every night for months.

Month 8, March

She is still waking up many times every night, but I am down to nursing only one of those times. I hope to eliminate this soon, but it is just easier and quicker (and a whole lot quieter) at this point to feed her.

Emma has always been easily distracted while nursing, but this is getting ridiculous. N. or Will can not even walk past her room while she's eating (with the door closed) without her stopping suddenly, turning her head toward the door and calling out for them. "Da, da, da!!!" she yells, encouraging them to come in and hang out. However, she quickly changes her mind once they enter the room. She smiles at first and coos, but then gets back to business. Until she remembers they are there...on, off, on, off...it drives me crazy. But makes me laugh, too. Much like parenting in general.

Month 9, April

Speaking of distracted, now that Emma can sit up she likes to practice it often. Like every minute or so while she is breastfeeding. She eats, sits up, waves at the door, or her crib, or out the window, lunges back down to my breast like a starving piranha, and repeats the cycle at least five times.

Month 10, May

Letting babies get their top teeth before they are a year old is a major design flaw, in my opinion. Because teething hurts! And biting makes it feel better! I am so paranoid that she is going to bite me that it takes forever for my milk to let down. Which means that she starts biting me because she is mad that it's taking so long. Screaming from both parties ensues.

Month 11, June

The biting is pretty much over and things are back to normal. I'm finally not nursing her at night. Most of the time (!). I'm down to only pumping once a day at work. She is taking bottles and kind of drinking formula out of a sippy cup the three days a week that she is in day care. I miss not seeing her at lunch on those days, but N. had to go back to work at the end of April. I nurse her in the morning and a couple of times at night on work days, and then pretty exclusively on the days I'm home with her. She's eating a lot of food now, so we only nurse five or six times a day. I'm going to miss this in a lot of ways. I love the physical closeness nursing brings, and the quiet.

Month 12, July

I can't believe that my baby is going to be a year old at the end of this month. It is astonishing to me that I've nursed her this long. I would like to wean her after she turns one, so in preparation I've started to give her half cow's milk/half formula or my milk in her sippy cup a few times a day. She started off ignoring it or trying to dump it out, but now she's drinking it. I'm nursing her a maximum of five times a day, usually four, and it's going ok. I think it's great that some women do extended nursing, but a year is enough for me. I guess I wouldn't mind just nursing before bed and once in the morning for awhile, but it would also be really nice to get my body back to myself. I'm going to wean her slowly, over a period of months, hopefully.

++++++++++++

I am aware that this might not be the most encouraging reading for someone who has not breastfed a baby yet but is thinking about it. I'm not going to lie; it is hard work sometimes. And it can be really painful. I could never do the whole "have the dad give the baby a bottle at night so you can sleep" business, because it took many months before I could go that long without nursing because I would have exploded. So, I did feel like feeding the baby was my sole responsibility for a very long time. And that can be a lot of responsibility, and it can be exhausting. Especially when you have another child to care for at the same time.

So why did I do it for so long? I'm honestly not entirely sure. I don't think formula is poison; Emma had a fair amount of it once N. and I both went back to work and she was in daycare three days a week. I could never pump enough to keep up with her demand. Part of it is due to sheer laziness...aside from the pain from the clogged ducts, nothing is easier than just lifting up your shirt and settling back in the chair to feed your baby. For the most part it was easy for me, and I enjoyed it. If it hadn't been I wouldn't have done it. If for some reason she wouldn't or couldn't have latched, I would NEVER have pumped exclusively for her for a long term. I think the women who do that are superheroes. I just fed my baby in the way that worked best for me and my family, and I hope that all women can do that without feeling guilty about any part of it. Happy mama = happy baby!

A Thrill a Minute

I am suffering from vacation let-down. It was worse last year, when I returned home from a lovely long weekend with my extremely helpful family, to real life with just me spending all day with a crying 3 week old baby and a non-sleeping almost 3 year old. I cried almost the whole way home. My poor husband!

But I am still a little sad. There is just something to be said for being in the same house with grandma and grandpa, not to mention my sister and her husband. The kids loved the attention, I loved the free time and help, and it didn't hurt matters that our rental home had this view from the backyard.

We introduced Emma to the wonders of the beach. She was not impressed. Lake Michigan was far too cold for her, but she did seem to enjoy digging in the sand with both hands, like an eager little puppy. I spent a fair amount of prime tanning time fishing out small pieces of apparently delicious rock from between her cheeks and gum, where she was clearly storing it for later. However, she does remain the undisputed cutest baby in the world.

Will loved every second of vacation. He had a long list of activities that he wished to accomplish while we were "at vacation house," such as: stargazing (I am not making this up), camping, fishing, catching lightening bugs, swimming, eating s'mores, and building a tidal pool. Some achieved, some not so much. He did however, start each day in character, and I have the pictures to prove it.

Meet, scary wolf! It's hard to tell in this picture, but he has construction paper ears paper clipped to his hat, his ever present tail on, and the piece de resistance, construction paper "sharp fangs," brilliantly fashioned by my mom. This was for a hike in the woods. The best part of it was that he didn't want to wreck his teeth, so he didn't speak one word for the entire car ride to the state park, and for a good portion of the hike. It was possibly the longest stretch of quiet we had on the whole trip. Or ever.

Here, he is a robber. What does he steal? Why fish, of course? Why fish? He is a kitty robber. He wore this mask all day long. You can also tell that he is a robber because of his striped shirt. And you'll have to take my word for it, but he had on striped underwear too. Nothing like a complete look. We were on a boat ride in this picture, which Will loved and Emma hated.

Next up, pirate! He wore this costume more than one day in fact. The hat and eye patch are construction paper. The most brilliant part of the costume was alas, not captured in this photo...his peg-leg. He wore one of N.'s tube socks pulled up to about mid thigh and limped around. In public. My parents taught him pirate phrases, such as, "Argh, mateys!" and "Shiver me timbers!" and his favorite of all, "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" Hopefully that one won't make it to daycare. Sadly, we forgot to bring his small stuffed parrot, which he usually makes me tape to his shoulder.

Finally, a standard for most days, SUPERHERO WILLIAM! I made him this cape right before we left on vacation, and he's worn it pretty much everywhere he goes. One side is red, for days when you feel like a superhero, and the other side has pirates all over it. The look is completed by a Superman t-shirt, mask and his Spider man sandals. Did I mention anywhere that he dresses himself? I have VERY little to do with any of this, beyond trying to fulfill requests through the creative use of construction paper and tape. 

Anyway, I think we all had a wonderful time and it's been difficult to adjust back to the real world. I spent every afternoon reading in the sun, or napping in our beautiful bedroom overlooking the lake. I took a bunch of thrillers/crime novels with me and I loved them all. Also, Barbara Pym (A Glass of Blessings--lovely), because you can't go wrong there. 

I read three great thrillers and I highly recommend them. Denise Mina's Still Midnight, Sophie Hannah's Little Face, and Tana French's Faithful Place.

Sophie Hannah was new to me, and probably the weakest of the three books, but still worthwhile. She has quite a few novels and is very popular in England. Little Face was her first book. It's about a woman who gives birth, spends an afternoon away from her home when the baby is about two weeks old, and comes home convinced that the baby at her house is not her own. This was a whirlwind read, with a fascinating plot and interesting character studies. However, everything fell apart at the end. She really had me going, turning every page with anticipation, thinking, "how is she ever going to pull this off?" It's to her credit that I believed that she would do it, but sadly it didn't quite work. But it's one of those books that keeps you thinking about it afterward, and it was very enjoyable. I'm looking forward to reading more from her.

Denise Mina is one of my favorite writers. Her Garnethill trilogy was amazing. Amazing in every way. You just have to read those books. I would read them and come up for air, bewildered that I wasn't in Glasgow. Her other series starring Paddy Meehan is also good, but it doesn't hold the same place in my heart. Her stand alone books are great too. Still Midnight is not as great as some of her other work, but again, still enjoyable. You might actually like it a lot if you haven't read anything else by her. It was too...lighthearted, I guess is the word. What I love about Mina's work is how real and gritty and dysfunctional everything and everyone is. She is funny too, but in a very black humor way. This book had the dysfunction too, but it had disconcerting moments of levity and a bizarrely happy ending. Not really what I'm looking for in crime fiction. 

Finally, Tana French. I think she just keeps getting better and better, and I LOVED In the Woods and The Likeness. Her newest book, Faithful Place, is wonderful. Like Denise Mina, her books and characters are incredibly detailed, believable, dysfunctional and utterly engrossing. Unlike her previous books, this one has an ending where the crime is solved! I couldn't stop reading it. I neglected my children in order to keep reading. I pretended that I was sleeping in order to keep reading. I have to warn you though; it is sad. Both in a bittersweet, melancholy, reminiscing about better days type of sadness, and a sadness that is deep and depressing. It makes you wish that you were Irish, and then extremely glad that you aren't, all at the same time. Beautiful writing.

Happy reading!