nursing (not the profession)

I've been lucky. I've been able to breastfeed Noah for over three months now. To me that's a huge achievement. I was not a breastfed baby and neither were my siblings, so it's never been the most obvious choice in my mind until I was pregnant with Mason (on hospital bedrest mind you) and I read about how beneficial breast milk can be for premature babies.

Well... You all know the story. I didn't get to breastfeed Mason. My milk came in the day after my c-section and he died the day after that...So I dealt with the task of drying up my milk. I don't know if I have mentioned this to anyone before, but I have overactive milk supply. That's where my body is on overdrive and tries to feed a small army. Try shutting down that operation prematurely. Yeah, not so delightful. It took weeks for it to not be absolutely PAINFUL. Our house reeked of cabbage and I was taking sudafed round the clock (frozen cabbage leaves help relieve breast pain and sudafed helps dry everything up, milk included). Anyways, it took months for everything to stop and by the time it did I was pregnant again. So yep, milk production is something that has been easy for me.

Fast forward to dear Noah... Same issue. Hello milk in 24 hours or less. It was a good thing too because Noah was little, jaundiced, tongue tied and very sleepy. He did not have a natural instinct for nursing because of his tongue-tie and had to have it clipped. Once his frenulum was clipped, he still had latching issues and ate in a clamping like fashion no matter how hard I attempted to get him to open his mouth. I read that babies with short frenulums and latching issues had trouble gaining weight and became scared. Sure enough he lost weight (which is completely normal), which freaked me out even more. So I wanted to give him the best chance I could at nursing and tried to nurse him every hour to two hours. Has anyone tried to nurse a sleepy baby before? haha it's not the easiest thing. I had to undress him, redress him, change him, tickle him, wave cold air on him; you name it, I tried it to get this little guy excited about eating. Well, it took a lot of work, but he eventually decided that he enjoyed a full belly and became good at eating. I decided that I would nurse on demand instead of creating an eating schedule. This was harder on me than anything, but it has managed to keep our baby the happiest. Anytime I try to create some type of eating schedule, it completely back fired on me and caused so much drama.

After all the initial hurdles with Noah everything was relatively easy. I had a lot of pain with milk production, but as long as I continued to feed or pump for Noah everything felt better. I had to be careful though because over stimulation or too much pumping would cause my production to go into overdrive which was annoying and painful. It was around month one that I started block feeding Noah. That means feeding on only one side per feeding or an extended amount of time. I did this because VERY early on (I'm talking still in the hospital early on) I notices that Noah was a quick nurser. I mean he would only eat for 5 minutes tops. This scared me that he just wasn't cut out for nursing, but it turned out that I also ha forceful letdown, Which meant everything came out really fast. Noah can still eat 5oz of milk from one breast in 5-10 minutes.

Anyways for a first time breastfeeder, I didn't really know what to do in these sorts of situations, but I will let you in on my own personal secret that I have picked up from all of this. No pun intended, but just Go With The Flow. haha Some of these things are only an issue if you let them be an issue. And something that worked for you yesterday may not be working for you today. Every day has new issues and every day has new successes.

I still nurse pretty much every 2.5 hours, round the clock, but Noah is slowly giving me more breaks during the night and he is sleeping so much better since I let him dictate when he eats. I know I am not overfeeding my kid because he is still just under the normal curve in the growth charts and he is healthy and happy. The biggest issue with a baby that eats very frequently is being in an area where you feel comfortable feeding. I am not one to stay home all day long, every day of the week, so Noah has been nursed in some pretty strange places; in the car, in public restrooms, in the middle of target, walking through the mall, in an office building... I am sure there are more places, but I am drawing some blanks. Before you go all crazy on me for my nursing in public, no I don't just pop open my shirt and let everyone watch me nurse. I have been fortunate enough to master the nursing on the go through the use of a baby sling and a nursing cover. Mainly the use of the baby sling has been AMAZING. It has allowed me to be discrete and not feel completely isolated from the rest of the world.

I am so amazed that we are running into our 4th month of bf-ing. I feel great about this experience and I think it's been great for me and Noah. I think it's been emotionally helpful because I have that same closeness that I felt when I was pregnant and the closeness I really desire after losing Mason. I know Noah relies on me for this and the fact that I can do this for him makes me happy. So for now, breastfeeding has been very successful for us and I am hoping that we can continue until Noah is about a year old.