Breastfeeding: The First Year
Yesterday, I shared a recipe for a delicious stir fry. It’s gone! Mysterious. I’ll resurrect it somehow and post it again soon.
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I never thought I’d make it to more than a year of nursing. Now, we’ve been nursing for 14 months.
I had my baby while standing in my front hallway. I delivered her myself. Afterwards, blood started coming out of me at a fast rate. I didn’t really care at that point. I just didn’t want to slip in it while holding the baby,and I didn’t want to get the furniture messy!
Because of losing so much blood, my body put milk making down on its list of things to do. A month went by until the doctor realized the baby was not gaining very well.
During my last week of maternity leave, I had to pump 4-6 x per day in addition to nursing 8-12 x per day. Basically, I was either pumping or nursing around the clock. And when I wasn’t doing one of those activities, I was trying to eat and drink a lot, so I could make the milk my baby needed.
Unfortunately, I had to supplement with formula. Even the lactation consultant said to supplement, because the weight gain was soooo low. Thank goodness I had the help of a lactation consultant who could teach me how to supplement while proteching my milk supply.
Eventually, I had weeks in which the baby got all breast milk. I was thrilled.
=)
Of course, the fine women in my life helped me, too.
I thought I’ll just get to 6 weeks. And then I’ll get to 3 months. And then I’ll make it just to 6 months and decide. By 6 months, things were great!
At 9 months, we were having a blast.
At a year, we point to body parts while mommy names them while we nurse. We giggle. We let mommy eat our hands. We stop nursing at night. YAY!
At 14 months, we snuggle for an hour each morning and nurse before we
have breakfast. We are loving it.
I am so happy I fought to keep nursing.
Tags: Breastfeeding – Nursing a Toddler – Baby Nursing – Mom Blog – Mommy Blog