Breastfeeding

We’re suddenly down to just a morning and night feeding over here. 

It kind of happened unexpectedly.  Derek was home on vacation for a week and looked at me early in the week and said “You know they’re ready for 3 feedings right?” Well, I didn’t know, but I trusted his judgment and the next day we gave it a try.  And to my surprise it worked well!  I didn’t replace that feeding, but we did do their dinner earlier and make sure they ate lots of food and drank extra water.

I had expected that dropping the middle of the day feed would take awhile so I added a little coconut milk in anticipation of dropping that feed.  However, last Tuesday there was some crazy drama involving skipping a morning nap, playing at a friends house, and two separate trips to the doctors’ office.  By the time I left the second doctor’s appointment it was 2pm and the babies were exhausted.  When I got home, there was no way I was waking them for a feeding.  I plopped them in their cribs and let them sleep until 4:15.  So I took them straight from their nap to the dinner table and then nursed at bedtime.  It worked.  So I tried it the next day… and have been doing it since.

They’re eating a ton more at each meal and sucking down two 4 oz sippies of an almond/coconut milk cocktail with breakfast and lunch. Occasionally I toss in a banana smoothie with dinner.  I’ll start trialing dairy again this weekend and hopefully we can do cow’s milk or homemade yogurt instead of the expensive alternative milks soon.  But other than that… routine is much the same.  I think the bedtime feed will be the next to be replaced, because they are crazy and all over the pillow, and standing up trying to nurse, and a whole mess of other activity that is either response to them being done with that feed or a response to drop in supply.  I don’t know which?   But I do love my morning nursing the most as well 😉

Emotionally, it’s not as bittersweet as I thought it would be.  Maybe it would be more sad if I just had one child and if these two were my last babies, but since there are two of them and I hope to have one more… I just suddenly feel free. I also feel less like a dairy cow. I mean… I could be out of the house all day and not have to pump (which I hate!) or come home to nurse.  That’s hugely freeing!  I can only imagine how freeing it will be to be able to go on a retreat for a weekend.  Wow. 

However, I did make it to my goal of 1 year 🙂  And I’m actually probably going to make it at least a month beyond.  I feel like I just ran a marathon.  And I’m so proud and so thankful for the support that I was given along the journey.

For us breastfeeding has pretty much been getting easier since the 12-14 mark.

However, there was a really rough patch at about 6 months when they decided they wanted to eat every 2-3 hours in the middle of the night, but we stopped that as soon as we realized they didn’t need the extra intake.

There was also another little rough patch at about 7 months when I realized how exhausted I was from feeding them 6-7 times a day.  Soon after I started offering the breast less often, and today I’m attempting to get them down to 3 feedings (altough that seams impossible most days…)

Right now we’re going through another rough patch that I think is related to teething.  Bronwyn has 2 bottom teeth and Aeralind has 1.  They’re both about to pop another one I think.  However, when they nurse they’re doing this crazy latch on/latch off cycle almost the whole time.  They’re not distracted from nursing because they howl in hunger (or teething pain) while they’re latched off.  Bronwyn started this cycle last week and Aeralind started this week.  I’ve tried disciplining them for it and that just results in more howling.  And I’ve tried holding their heads still so they can’t latch off (or at least not violently…ow), but even that has varied results.  I’m frustrated and sore.  Hopefully, the painful teeth will pop soon! But this is definitely making me feel like a year can’t come soon enough!

On other breastfeeding news, we gave them cow’s milk yogurt.  The results: mommy is now having dairy again after nearly 8 months of going without!  However, my whole dairy perspective has changed: it’s no longer a necessity in my mind and more of a splurge item in the grocery budget.

I truly believe they did have a diary sensitivity in the beginning.  I can remember (even in my sleep deprived state!) how much they changed from fussy reflux-y babies to happy little girls when I quit eating dairy.  I am, however, not sure when they outgrew the sensitivity.  At 4 months when I trialed dairy, it was horrible.  At 7 and 8 months when I trialed it, they were both gassy and fussy but at that point it was hard to tell if it was solids, over tired/stimulated, or milk in my breast milk that caused the reaction.  At 9 months, I decided we’d just put the dairy in their system directly to know for sure.  And neither baby seems to be suffering from it!  Even Bronwyn’s eczema is holding steady.  I’m still hesitant about straight milk (especially the nasty homogenized/ultrapasteurized grocery store variety), but cheese and yogurt are back in all three of our diets!

A month and a half ago I reached a milestone that I never even acknowledged.  Sure, I’d been a mom for half a year and having 6 month olds was a blast!  They’re even more fun now at 7 months 🙂  But I had reached a milestone even more amazing than that: I had supplied every single ounce of their nutrition for 6 solid and sometimes difficult months (except for 3 days supplementing with some formula at the beginning).  We had struggled through c-section recovery, latching difficulties, plugged ducts and mastitis, overactive letdown, oversupply, reflux, a milk protein sensitivity, and the doubts/misinformation supplied by the well-intentioned folks around me.  We had all cried so many times figuring each other out and working to get through it all. 

But that six month milestone went unnoticed. Uncelebrated.

And that makes me sad.  Breastfeeding is indeed beautiful and a very special bond, but it is also difficult and requires so much out of the dyad (or triad) to learn and maintain.  Why don’t we as women celebrate this accomplishment in a noteworthy manner?  Why don’t we take each other out for coffee or show up at someone’s doorstep with a balloon and a cookie and congratulate them on the biggest accomplishment to date?!

Instead, at six months we start hearing things like: when are you going to stop feeding them so often?  When are you going to just pump and put milk in a sippy? You’ve made it to the 6 month mark, why don’t you give yourself a break and just do formula? Now that they’re on solids, you can relax.

Why can’t we just stop and celebrate? Lets take some time to enjoy the accomplishment and the sweet nursing relationship that has evolved from that steep 6 month learning curve.

Oh and, my friends who nurse, expect a chocolate chip muffin and some other little surprise when you get there. You deserve it 🙂

I can’t believe the girls are starting on solid food.  I just can’t process it!  We’ve been doing solids seriously for about 2 weeks now.  Avocado, Peas, Apples, Rice Cereal, Sweet Potato and Mango(just tried it today) are on the menu.

Bronwyn really seems to like just about anything we put in her mouth.  She grabs the spoon to chew on and suck off of and brings her mouth right to the spoon in excitment.  She also screams if I spend too much time feeding her sister in between bites!

Aeralind is starting to like it more. She’s especially drawn to the avocado and peas and generally tolerates plain rice cereal better than her sister.

I feed them solids twice a day. Lunch occurs about 30 minutes after they wake from their first nap and have a good nursing. They also eat dinner with us.  That’s usually an hour after a feeding, but it works for us to keep them awake until about 7:30 without having to eat our dinner with them screaming at us.

For me, this is really an odd period.  They still depend on me for all of their nutrition.  They can’t really sit up in a high chair for very long.  They can’t feed themselves.  I’m almost amused by it.

So the next stage is the introduction of the Sippy Cup.  Any tips on when and how and which cup would be greatly appreciated. For some reason sippy cups scare me 😉