The Nursing Mama

Note:  This is a post about breast feeding so if you are a man this may be TMI, however if you are a man with a wife who is now or will soon be breast feeding you might want to stick this out to gain a little insight.  On the flip side of this coin if you are a lady who has never experienced breast feeding, but you want to, I would skip reading this post.  Let your experience be uniquely yours and if while your in it you need help or a laugh or a cry come back to this...

Without a doubt nursing has been the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life, ever (and I gave birth without any drugs, once).  The toll that it takes on your body, your spirit and mind is incomprehensible until you are experiencing it.  I am about to wean my third baby, she will be turning one this month and I am ready to have my body back.  I have been pregnant or nursing since October of 2006 and I am tired, not to mention that since J and I still want one more baby, I will probably be prego again sometime this fall.  That being said this summer, the summer of 2011, is my one shot in the next two years to just be Amber, not Amber + Baby.  
Now in my quest to begin weaning Iz, I have been compelled to re-live some of my "greatest hits" as it were. I would like to write them down now, so that I can remember them when one of my sisters has a baby or when Iz is becoming a mother, to be more understanding and helpful. And perhaps, in the meantime, some of my stories will help the moms that read this blog.

DJ, my first born.  I was terrified, I had heard all the stories from my mom friends and I knew what was coming down the pike, or at least I thought I knew.  There was bleeding and blistering, and the special contractions that no one ever tells you about.  That is the first 2 weeks, always just 2 weeks, and then the skies clear a rainbow appears and the pain is but a memory.  So, if you have yet to experience nursing a baby, and you disregarded the warning at the beginning of this post, just know the pain only lasts 2 weeks.  You carried a baby inside you for 9 months, pushed that baby out of you, and you are a strong and amazing woman that can do ANYTHING for 2 weeks.  After the physical pain came everything emotional, I suffered from a mild postpartum depression.  I felt like nursing DJ was equivalent to being trapped inside a prison.  I was in no way discrete (in fact it took several weeks before I didn't actually need the help of another person) so if company was over I was locked away in a separate room.  I was the only one to get up with DJ in the middle of the night, all hours of the night, and as this small person sucked the nutrients from me I would stare at my snoring hubby and curse.  There were times I completely lost it, like when I spilled the entire first bottle I ever pumped.  I collapsed on the floor and my sweet mom just rocked me saying "I know baby, you worked so hard for that," and my husband looked at us both like we were from another planet.  I fell into a terrible habit of nursing DJ to sleep, I had a need to make sure he ate as much as humanly possible before bed.  One night in particular, I had yet to eat dinner and DJ was taking forever to fall asleep.  When he finally did fall asleep and I was able to go eat, lightning struck, and made the cheapo monitor in his room shriek, waking my baby boy.  I ran upstairs, smashed the monitor, and let some 4 letter words fly before J rushed in and sent me back to my sandwich.  However, when I arrived back to the sandwich I found my dog, standing on the coffee table, helping himself.  I curled into the fetal position and sobbed!!  These are just a few of the many stories I could tell, where the end result was me in a puddle sobbing on the floor.  I finally admitted that I needed help and I got the book, The Secrets of a Baby Whisperer, AMAZING!  It changed the way that I was parenting and brought me out of the slumps.  Nursing DJ still felt like a job at times, but there was a method to my madness and I felt more in control.  DJ was weaned at 9 months because I got pregnant with his brother and my milk changed so he was no longer interested.

Asher, my second boy.  Asher was different than DJ, in that he would take a pacifier and he took a bottle right away.  When there is something you can give to your baby for comfort, besides yourself, it is a very freeing feeling.  It also happened to be absolutely necessary in this case since Asher had colic.  If you have a baby with colic here is my advice, just hold on!  Asher cried every day, 22 hours a day, for the first 12 weeks of his life.  There was little to no sleeping for either of us, and on the rare occasion there was sleep it was only if we were attached, literally (Asher slept latched on and in my bed for the first 12 weeks of his life).  Because of Asher's incessant crying I was sure that anyone but his Mama would loose their cool and shake him, so I cared for him and bore this burden alone.  I even worried when leaving him with J for too long, but this was a mistake, had a let more people help I think that I would have been a better Mama and I would have realized the strength and love in the people around me.  Like the time my sister, Danielle, came to visit and insisted that she would keep Asher from 9-midnight every night of her visit.  On the second night I came out to check on her and found Danielle crying on the couch bouncing Asher on her knee. She had been bouncing him like that for hours because he had fallen asleep and she could not bear the thought of waking him up.  So she sat and bounced and cried, because she love me, because she loved him, and all she wanted was to give us peace.  What a precious sacrifice and gift that was, it still brings tears to my eyes.  I decided to take my crazy train of a family back to my Mom's house (really I just needed MY Mommy) toward the end of those three months because J had to leave for 6 weeks of training.  I knew that all three of us would never survive 6 weeks without at least one of us becoming wards of the state.  During that time in CO, I went to the movies and dinner with friends (mostly bringing Asher with me, but leaving DJ with family) and I was recharged.  Then it happened, at 12 weeks exactly, the crying went from 22 hours to 20 hours, it was incredible.  I remember sitting at dinner with my mom and her husband and no one even dared to speak, we just watched as Asher played sweetly in his bouncer, we were in shock.  Every day from then on got better and soon the colic was just a very fuzzy memory.  If there is anything positive to say about colic it is that because of colic Asher and I will share a special bond for life.  We fought in a war together and we came out on the other side a little bruised and a lot battered, but together.  The colic also made nursing a side bar topic in our lives, no real big deal, and Asher also weaned himself at 9 months when I got pregnant with his sister, Iz.

My Izzy, the baby.  Is still nursing at (nearly) one year old, and she has NEVER taken a bottle of any kind.  "What?!" you say, "How can that be?!"  Let me tell you, things are very very different the third time around.  With DJ and Asher I could not wait to let someone else give them a bottle.  With Izzy the thought of getting out the pump, sanitizing everything, and spending the time to actually pump just seemed like way more hassle then it was possibly worth.  I had a 2 and a 1 year old to chase after, and I had become quite the acrobat when it comes to nursing and discretion, I could latch Izzy on while getting DJ dressed and still not flash anyone in the room.  Finally at around 4 months I decided to give Iz a bottle so that I could have a real date with my husband, it was a massive failure.  She literally screamed until she was purple and had made herself sick, so I gave in and nursed her, we tried a few more times but never really succeeded, and truthfully I didn't care.  I loved nursing Iz in the quiet of her nursery while chaos raged outside her door.  I didn't feel shut away, or like I was missing out on life, I drank up the peace and the quiet.  Now things are a little different, Iz will not sit still and be rocked she wants in on all the action, but she wants the comfort too.  We are in a stage I have never been a part of before, I have a baby who knows what I have, knows that she wants it, and knows where to go to get it.  It feels a bit unsettling to have a wee one crawl into your lap and demand you lift your shirt.  I feel like it is certainly time she moves on to big girl milk, but truthfully I am scared.  How do you deny your baby and make her understand?  Iz has never known anything different.  I know moms who have had their babies chase them around the house looking for their morning feeding, I feel like that is coming.  I guess I just have to leap into this unknown the way I have leaped into every unknown and when I come out on the other side I will let you know.  Wish me luck on this, my first real adventure in baby weaning...