When it’s over …
How do you know when you should stop breastfeeding?
When do the health benefits of breastfeeding stop?
What is a good age to wean your baby?
I have been going Google crazy, people. Those are just a few of the search topics I’ve been pounding out in the last few weeks.
You see, I have learned a lot about breastfeeding in these nearly-ten months.
Mainly that breastfeeding becomes a HUGE part of your life.
Not in a bad way, but just in an all-consuming way.
It’s obsessive.
In the beginning, you go crazy over trying to do it right, get the proper latch, get over the initial pain, adjust to the nonstop feedings — all while feeling so tired that you just can’t stop sobbing.
Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it’s an easy, regular part of your day … but it still defines your day. You get used to feeling always on-call. You get used to the invisible tether that ties your knockers to your baby. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and it becomes so casual that you can play Wii while breastfeeding … uh, for example.
As long as you are breastfeeding, when you go out (with or without your baby), your boobs must be considered — either pumped first, or properly dressed for easy-access. You must always be thinking about the boobs! Almost ten months later, I’m still always thinking about the boobs! (And admiring them, too, if I’m being totally honest.)
Here is the thing: I don’t know when to stop breastfeeding.
I have Googled.
I have discussed.
I have had soul-searching innner dialogues!
I just can’t decide!
Here are the basic facts (and some random background info):
- You are “supposed to” breastfeed for six months, and it is “recommended” to breastfeed until 12 months
- Baby Boy is almost 10 months old. He eats plenty of solids. He crawls and walks. He is not losing interest in nursing AT ALL, the way babies supposedly do at this age. He has not slept more than three hours at a stretch, um, like ever.
- Don’t let the cloth-diapering, and baby-food-making fool you. I am not a hippie — I don’t even recycle. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed breastfeeding.
- Just like I was about disposable diapers, I am super, super stubborn about this, and no one thinks I will/can/should continue breastfeeding — so, of course, that makes me want to continue!
- Darling Husband does not want me to breastfeed past 12 months (I don’t, either), but babies need either breast milk or formula until at least 12 months, so going straight to cows’ milk now is not an option
I am caught between wanting to give my baby the very best and do what’s medically “right” (and I use that term very loosely), wanting to respect my husband’s opinion, wanting my own body back (not to mention my fertility), and wanting to stick to my stubborn “He’s-never-had-formula-EVER” thing.
The way I see it, I have three options:
- Continue exclusive breastfeeding until 12 months.
- Pros: Pride that I breastfed for the full year, as recommended — and got my “golden boobies.” Petty, stubborn pride that Baby Boy never had to have any formula.
- Cons: Continue to be a zombie who never gets more than two or three hours’ sleep at a time. Continue to feel a self-conscious when nursing in public because he’s so big and active.
- Begin gradual weaning to formula by 12 months.
- Pros: By giving some formula at bedtime, he might sleep longer — even if he doesn’t, I will feel more confident letting him cry a bit because I will know his tummy is more “full.” Can possibly hang onto breastfeeding (even 1-2 times a day) until the 12-month mark.
- Cons: Don’t get to say that he never had formula. Possibility that giving him formula weans him before the 12-month mark, and I don’t achieve golden boobies.
- Wean to strictly formula now.
- Pros: Have my body back very soon. Be proud that I breastfed for 10-ish months.
- Cons: No golden boobies. May regret that I didn’t stick it out for these two more months. Formula might be less convenient (more work!) than breastfeeding. May chunk up because breastfeeding won’t be burning calories anymore.
So, of course, the logical solution is to get MORE opinions! …
Guest post: When your baby hates bottles …
I’m so happy to announce that today we have a guest post from my fabulous friend, Lindsey, over at like a hamster on a wheel. Enjoy!
I’ve been reading my friend Heather’s blog since the day she started it. I’m happy to say that we were by each other’s sides from daydreaming about starting our families, to TTC (well, I wasn’t literally there for that part … ha!), to the play-by-plays of pregnancy and motherhood. We’ve each had such unique experiences and learned from each other, A LOT. I’m excited that she invited me to guest post and share a couple of my own stories with you.
There are so many unknowns associated with becoming a new parent — Will my baby be a boy or a girl? Will he or she be born with hair? Will they sleep through the night? Will I ever get my social life back?
Then there were also many things about motherhood that I felt sure about — I would love my baby unconditionally, I would sing to him and rock him to sleep, and I would most certainly change plenty of dirty diapers.
And then there’s that special category … the things-you-thought-you-knew-but-were-so-wrong-about stuff. This is probably where most of your pre-parenthood knowledge will be filed after your bambino comes along.
For us, one of those troublesome subjects is bottle feeding. To avoid any nipple confusion, our doctor recommended waiting six weeks before introducing a soother or bottle to our boy. I was fine with that, and was extremely fortunate to have a positive breast feeding experience.
When they day came to pass the baby to Husband with a bottle of expressed breast milk, I was both excited (for Husband have the experience that I love so much) and relieved (to be able to leave Jacob with his Dad or even with friends or family and regain a bit of my/our freedom).
That moment I was looking so forward to didn’t turn out quite as expected. It was actually pretty discouraging. He would kick up a fuss every time we tried to give him a bottle. And we’re nothing if not persistent. We tried pretty much every brand or bottle on the market. We’ve used slow flow, fast flow, big nipples, little nipples, anti-gas tips, everything you can think of to appeal to his tastes.
Seriously? Isn’t a baby bottle one of the most iconic symbols of new motherhood — they’re on greeting cards, shower decorations and embroidered on onesies. But in our house, they’re the devil.
A few times he decided to take an ounce or two out of a bottle in one sitting. What a little tease. Now we’re prepared to cut our losses and move on. Time for cups.
Every new milestone is exciting. Some don’t necessarily turn out the way we’d expect, but our babies are only little for such a short time. Rather than dwelling on my negative feelings about bottles (or, in our case, lack thereof), I’m choosing to savour the moments we share when I nurse him … and cross my fingers that our next baby will put some of these things to good use.
Have you had parenting experiences that felt so different from other people’s? Share them here!
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon to share another adventure in parenting. Feel free to pop by my blog, www.likeahamsteronawheel.ca, and say hi!
Five little things I do daily to make myself happier
- Make our bed every day, perfectly. Tight blankets smoothed without a wrinkle, neatly arranged throw pillows. Then I open all of the curtains in our bedroom so the sun comes in and makes our bedroom look bright and pretty.
Most daysSome days we have no visitors, and I am getting back into the bed before Darling Husband (or anyone) has even seen it all made, but I still do it. It makes a huge difference in my mood when I walk past the room 9,492 times a day on the way to the laundry room and the bathroom. - Put on makeup. If I know I’m going out later, I put on a bit more (and do it a bit more carefully). But on a daily basis, I always swipe on a bit of concealer under my eyes, some blush, and a smidge of eyeliner or mascara. And a hint of lipcolour, so I don’t have that whole corpse look going on. When I make trips to the bathroom during the day, I’ll touch it up if I’m looking all crappy and pale again. And then at night, I take it off — and often no one’s seen my made-up face except me and Baby Boy.
- Dress Baby Boy in cute, coordinated clothes. I don’t how many times I’ve been picking out an outfit for Baby Boy while someone (Darling Husband, my mom, etc.) exclaimed “He’s just hanging out at home! Who cares?!” I care! He never, ever, ever wears mismatched outfits. It’s just as easy to dress him in a coordinated outfit, and when you take 874 photos of him daily, it helps that he always looks camera-ready.
- Draw the line between clothes and pyjamas. In the early months, I would get dressed later in the day, and sometimes my “clothes” would be so casual that I’d sleep in them. Hot, right? I always felt grungy and just “off,” no matter how often I showered. Now I get dressed first-thing in the morning, immediately after I get Baby Boy changed and dressed. It’s usually just yoga pants or leggings and a stretchy tee, but it’s clothing. And when I wind down at night, I change into pyjamas — like a nightgown or a two-piece set or something. It sounds stupid, but it’s made me wear nicer things during the day, because I know I’ll be in comfy pyjamas at night when I’m relaxing.
- Keep our home tidy. Since it’s usually just me and Baby Boy here, alone, sometimes for days on end, I could definitely get away with sloppy housekeeping. No one would know! But it would make me all twitchy, so I make a point to keep it fairly tidy. Walking into my nice, clean kitchen is like a little shot of Valium, I swear.
What was I thinking?
Do you ever get little flashes of mommy regret, where you ask yourself what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks you were thinking at a certain point in time?
I was thinking back to Baby Boy’s newborn days, and remembering how I used to get up for middle-of-the-night feedings. I would take Baby Boy from his Playard next to our bed, change his diaper in his room, and then go to the living room and watch an episode of America’s Next Top Model while I nursed him. And I’d eat little pre-made snacks of cheese and crackers and pepperoni. I’d be up for almost an hour, from start to finish.
What was I thinking???
At the time I was convinced it was the best thing to do. I had tried changing him and then nursing him in his dark room, like, once. Then I declared the feedings took too long and I got bored. I also had the deluded idea that by keeping him awake for a while — nursing him, holding him for a bit, nursing him again — he would “sleep longer” once we both went back to bed.
Again … what was I thinking???
I would put Baby Boy back in bed, he would fuss, and I would have to sit on the edge of our bed rocking him until he was settled enough to go to sleep. This was in my “pacifiers-are-evil” phase, of course. I would sing and rock and whisper and rock until he was too tired to cry when I put him down. Then I would finally crawl back into bed, and … surprise, surprise … I couldn’t sleep! And he didn’t sleep for long stretches, so by the time I fell back asleep, he’d be waking up again. Aughhh!
Now? I only wish Baby Boy was right next to my bed, so I could reach over and feed him without having to get out of bed. I had a dream set-up back then, and I totally wasted it.
If I knew then what I knew now, things would be very, very different. I would have reached over, picked up Baby Boy, nursed him lying down in bed with me, tucked him back into the Playard, popped a soother in his mouth, and we both would have gone back to sleep.
I would have probably be a totally different person in those early months, because I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN MORE SLEEP!
Preggos, new moms — please learn from my mistake! Tyra Banks is awesome, but she is not worth feeling like a zombie for (for months and months on end).
Not Me Monday Tuesday: Library book edition
- I did not laugh heartily at the last page of Sheep in a Jeep and insist on reading it out loud to Darling Husband. “It says ‘Jeep for sale — cheap.’ Get it? And their Jeep kept breaking down and … hahaha!” I was not annoyed when he didn’t see the humour in Sheeps in a Jeep.
- I was not mystified by Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I was bothered by the fact that his steam shovel was randomly named Mary Anne, or that they stuck her in basement to be a furnace! Who cares about the plots in kids’ books? Not me.
- I was not disappointed with the board book version of Chicka Chicka ABC because it only contained the first HALF of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I would never get all bent out of the shape and just spout the last half of the book by memory. Who memorizes rhyming kids’s books? Not me.
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