The Need To Feed

When I'm trying to describe the need to breastfeed at regular interverals, I find that the best way to make people understand the feeling is by describing it as the need to empty a full bladder. I don't always mention that the 'bladder' or in this case the milk ducts don't always wait for an invitation from me to start discharging their contents.

Look At Me Baby

One of my favorite things is when I am absentmindedly nursing. That is, I'll be distracted and she will be suckling away. Then I notice she's no longer at it so I look down only to find her sitting and staring at me with a waiting smile on her lips. She's so cute! Talk about a bonding moment. Once she's caught my eye she'll often snuggle back in for some dessert or else we'll ride the smile's momentum and play for a while. Satisfaction.

Spitting Up No More

Baby's spit-up episodes have all but ceased. In fact, when she does spit up I can almost certainly say it's because she's had too much to eat. She also used to be a champion burper and at about four months either she's eating more effectively or else she's getting rid of her gas more quietly.

Sucking on the dyke: The Leak Is Back

Last night she slept for six hours straight. Then she woke up, had a couple of sips and fell back asleep. Three hours later, I had to wake her up to eat. I haven't that that rock-hard breast feeling since the DS breastfeeding days when I was constantly overfull of breast milk and leaking like a geyser. I thought that I would be able to shatter glass if I aimed my high-pressure nipples at the sliding doors and let the milk rip. It hurt, too. Things hurt a lot worse with my last breastfeeding experience. This time I only really get breast pain when I'm overfull.

Nursing Pads

I bought a package with three sets of reusable, washable, non-disposable nursing pads. I use them, throw them in the wash, and supplement with disposable breast pads if I need to. For the most part they're okay and they do they However, I think that if I had to buy some more, I'd go for a higher quality set because these ones are a little harsh against my skin. I'd like a softer, gentler fabric. Oh, and since I'm padding my bra anyway, I'd like one with a rounder cup. The edges of these, like the edges of the disposable pads, stick out and make a funny shape under my shirt, depending on which shirt/bra combination I'm wearing.

Burps and Spitups

She's doing a lot less of them lately. In the beginning I had to burp her every single feed-- once in the middle and once at the end at least. She used to spit up a few mouthfuls a day as well. Now she'll spit up only once in a while and today was the first time I thought she needed a burp-- and she did-- in a couple of weeks at least. Just before that, I was touting her as a champion burper. She could really let 'em rip.
I don't remember her big brother needing any encouragement to burp. He'd just produce them once in a while unexpectedly. She'd a tad colicky, I guess.

Leakage Continues

When I first started breastfeeding DD, I was a little worried that I wasn't leaking the way I had with my DS. With him, I only had to hear him whimper and I'd turn into a milky geyser. Well, that wasn't happening in the beginning but it is now, though not quite to the same degree. When she starts suckling one side, the other side fills up and starts to spray. I end up switching back and forth several times in one feeding to try and avert a big wet mess.

Fatness

Fatness. My DD's thighs. And all from food she ate out of my body. I remember thinking the same thing about my DS's growth. When it was time to empty the garbage pail of diapers, I'd have to heave it out. All that weight - almost- was defecated breastmilk. He was born so small and skinny-- we were uber-aware of every ounce he gained. And gain he did. He suckled exclusively until a year-- with the occasional formula supplement when I had to be away from him.

The Big Burp

Why do babies need to be burped? Why don't they just burp naturally like the rest of us? I suppose they would burp eventually on their own, but we need them to burp sooner than later so that they get the air out of their tummies and make room for more food so that they're not hungry again in 10 minutes. That's my reason-- not the official one.

I am just learning the importance of burping with this second child. I never burped DS (though in hindsight maybe I should have.) This child seems to need it more.

Public Nursing: Covering Up

I recently discovered that the best way for me to cover up while I'm nursing is to drape one of these cheesecloth diapers over my shoulder and wrap another one around my middle. This is when I'm just wearing a t-shirt over my bra. There are lots of different techniques. I used to have a fancy schmancy nursing apron but it never really solved the issue of my stomach being exposed. Some people like to wear a tube top under their shirt so that you pull one layer down and pull the other layer up, exposing pretty much nothing but whatever baby needs to suck on. This is a great technique but it's waaay too hot for me to be wearing anything but one layer right now. Another idea I saw in some online video was to wrap a pashmina shawl all around you. I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds like a great idea. I even have a very wide, long scarf that is also a very light material that maybe won't make me and baby break out in a sweat every time it's time for her to eat. I'll let my readers know how that goes.

Pain In My Nipple

When I was breastfeeding DS starting nearly two years ago, I remember there being a lot of pain involved. It would hurt when he nursed for the first couple of minutes and then it would be okay. But it really hurt. I remember cringing and trying to explain the sensation to DH. I think it was because DS was such an efficient nurser. I mean, the kid was a sucking machine. When he was done, there was not a spot of milk left in a ten kilometer vicinity. With this new baby, she's a lot more lazy about eating, as far as I can tell. She also doesn't seem to care about it quite as much, though lately she is starting to ask for the nipple as a soother and not just for food. What she'll do is prime the pump and then hang out and catch the resulting spray and swallow that. I can tell when my supply is running low because then she actually has to suck. And back to the title of this post, it never hurt me when she was nursing until recently. And what started the pain was not her but the breast pump. Until I first used it, I had no sensation whatsoever. Now I've got a pain on one side but the other side is OK. It's not the same pain I experienced in the last round of breastfeeding like it was with DS. This is much more mild and tolerable. What's consistent is the feeling that the pain would go away if I would simply give it time to heal. Of course, that's impossible. I need to keep using it. I can handle it, though.

Blogging Is Hard To Do

Blogging Is Hard To Do.... when you're breastfeeding. I realize now why this blog did not go so well last time I was breastfeeding: You can't nurse and type at the same time. Even when I'm not nursing, I'm often holding her because that's what you do with newborns. So progress has been slow on this blog, as my readers will tell you.

The Boob Is Back: Breastfeeding My Second Child

The first few days and maybe the first few weeks of breastfeeding are probably the most interesting in terms of development. I guess that's an obvious thing to say but I'm realizing now how much things have changed in terms of breastfeeding since the day my daughter was born-- and that was just three weeks ago!

Dry Nipples and Cream

I am very bad at doing all these girly things like putting lotion on after a shower -- or ever. When I'm pregnant I make a bigger effort with my cocoa butter lotion in order to prevent stretch marks. I know, I know, there's no guarantee-- but I didn't get stretch marks last time. Of course, last time I didn't get nearly as big as I am this time. To give you an idea of how little I use ceram, I've had the same bottle of Palmers since we got married and now we're on our second kid. Do the math yourself. I bought another bottle when I was pregnant last time but it's still sitting new in my cupboard. And I don't only use it during pregnancy. I used it on my face in the winter when the heaters and the breastfeeding were making me so dry that I felt like my face was cracking off.
Back to my nipples. The point is, they're dry and cracked. I don't think it's thrush but I don't want to take the chance. But I also don't feel like putting lotion on. Truth is, I just plain forget all about it. Who thinks about dry nipples until they take their shirt off. And if I'm taking my shirt off, I'm probably on my way to bed and I don't have the energy for nipple rubbing, or else it's morning and I have better things to do, like chase after my DS to get him dressed for kindergarten. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this clears itself up like it did last time. Actually, maybe I was a little more diligent about it last time. I recall using baby oil or something. Or was that on my itchy scalp?

Nursing Bras

When I was nursing (and I plan on doing it again soon) bras were imperative for keeping the nursing pads in. Otherwise I would have huge wet marks across the fronts of my shirts. http://breastfeedingchronicles.blogspot.com . The problem was that I couldn't actually find a nursing bra that was small enough for me. They don't make them for virtually flat-chested women. Fortunately, the nursing pad helped fill it up.

I bring this up because I just read an articles about going bra-free: http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-I-Go-Bra-Free . The truth is, it took me until age 15 to start wearing bras at all and then it was only because my nipples were poking through my shirts. Some people don't mind that, but it didn't go over well at a religious school-- and anyway I don't like it.

Nursing Pads

I just saw an article that recommends getting the cotton nursing/bra pads instead of the disposable kind because they're softer. Well, I have better reasons than that. A couple of times, after a particularly leaky or sweaty night, DS looked up from my breast into my tired face and breathed out a mouthful of cotton. Those things disintegrate! Especially the cheap ones. Not only that, but the reusable ones are, of course, more environmentally friendly than their disposable counterparts.

I also recommend bringing the nursing/bra pads to the hospital with you. You never know how long you're going to be there and your milk might come in, as mine did, with a vengance. I only had a couple of shirts with me (I snubbed hospital gowns after wearing them for the first couple of days) and they both got real stinky real fast. I had a lot of leakage when I was nursing. He'd be eating from one and the second one would leak like a dyke with a hole in it. Or I'd be just one minute too late getting my nursing bra loose and I'd have two geysers sprouting from my chest. Nursing pads were my saving grace in those first few months. I was never without them.

That Bites!

The biting started sometime around month 9 or 10. He doesn't even breastfeed anymore, but he's still biting me. They say that whe baby bites your nipple (yes, it hurts even worse than it sounds-- think tiny little sharp teeth) it's a sign that they're done eating anyway, so you might as well take them off. You're supposed to reprimand firmly and remove. Well, I would do that but it never helped. Maybe because I have no willpower and as soon as he cried I'd stick him back on-- most of the time. But now it's just random bites. My thighs, my belly, my arm... whatever is in reach. He prefers fleshier places, of which I have plenty lately.

He doesn't bite his father, though, which I think is a sign that the biting is related to breastfeeding. I wonder how he'll react when his new sibling is born. I think he still remembers breastfeeding his enjoyment of it.

Pump it Up: Frozen Breastmilk

I have three or four little baggies of frozen breastmilk sitting in my freezer. They've been there for... ho hum... maybe a year. Who knows why they didn't get used. At some point we switched to formula for those rare occasions that I wasn't around to breastfeed him on demand. In fact, I don't know if I ever pumped for the purposes of feeding after about 6 months when he started on solids. I know I pumped a couple of times out of paranoia after I popped a milk blister on my nipple and was afraid that the backlogged milk in the duct may have gotten infected or something (there may be no basis for thinking this, but we all have our neuroses-- I'm just choosing to share mine here).

A milk blister, by the way, is what happens when for some very strange reason, you get skin growing over a milk duct. The milk wants to escape but it cant, thereby forming a blister. Any CYA post you read about it on line will tell you to go to a doctor to get it popped but I just had DH do it for me the first time b/c I hate going to my doctor and I ended up just doing it myself whenever they popped up after that. Then you have to clear the duct of milk, which may or may not have semi-solidified and might come out like toothpaste. Gorgeous.

Later on I developed what may or may not have been thrush. I think not. Thrush is basically a yeast infection that the mother and baby keep passing back and forth to each other when breastfeeding. The mom shows signs of it on her nipple and baby shows signs of it in his mouth. But DS didn't have any signs of it as far as I could tell. I think it was just misdiagnosed dryness that I'm prone to.

Back to the freezer milk. So I don't know what to do with it. Obviously, I'm not going to feed it to my kid at this point. Most people would just tell me to throw it out but that seems so... wrong somehow. Maybe I can donate it to science. The local university might find use for it. They can do a study what happens to breast milk after you keep it in the freezer for a year. Or on something else. Like if my baggie leaches chemicals into the mik. Gosh, I hope not. Though once they start teething, you never know what you'll find them sucking on.

Senti-mental

Sometimes I get sentimental about my breastfeeding days. And this is at eighteen months! About 4 months after weaning! I really should enjoy my time off now, though. In a few months I'm going to be starting all over again.
Other times, I am really glad that breastfeeding isn't going on anymore. I remember how difficult it could be some nights -- many nights at a stretch, really, when he would wake up and accept nothing but the breast as an incentive to calm down. That's when we realized that it would have to be DH who got up every night with him if we were ever going to get past that stage. It took a few days but eventually it worked.
I don't remember my last breastfeed. The truth is, it probably contained more than a few screams from me because towards the end he made a pretty regular practice of biting me-- hard-- when he was finished eating. Have you ever been bitten on your nipple by little razor-sharp teeth? It is a most unpleasant experience. When DH complained about the noise of my cries, I offered to bite his nipples to see what he would do. He doesn't have a very high threshold for pain. He demurely retreated back to his side of the bed.

New Interest

DS has become newly re-interested in my breasts. Even after he was well weaned, he'd still put lay his head there for comfort, but now he wants to touch them and look at them-- and bite them! all the time. I'm not sure what the appeal is. Maybe with the pregnancy they're much bigger now. Or maybe he's just becoming more aware of bodies and differences. He doesn't seem to want to nurse-- he's just paying some extra attention.

Breast Changes

When I was pregnant last time, my nipples got all dry and cracked. I think I now know why. It was the chlorine in the pool where I swim. It doesn't happen to me when I'm not pregnant, but it happened to me after just one time in the pool now. It doesn't hurt, but it sure looks wierd to me. I solved it last time by putting some baby oil there.

Breast C

Dun da Dun Done

Really, we're done now. I haven't nursed in at least three weeks, I think. I can't remember exactly when the last time was, but I do remember that we were trying to get him down for a nap. At that point, I hadn't nursed in a day or two so it was really a very frustrating experience for the both of us.
I know the process is complete because when he cries at night and I pick him up, he doesn't go straight for my boobs anymore. He just snuggles in to my shoulder. There have been times in the last few weeks that he did aim for that region, or at least that's how it seemed to me, but it was relatively easy to distract him with a book or a snack.
So right now I'm in between. I just weaned one child and I'm on my way to having a second. I'm back to choosing from a selection of all the bras in my drawer and not just from between my four nursing bras or two comfy, non-underwire ones (though I definitely still wear those sometimes too.)
The wierd thing is that what I thought was blocked milk ducts and what the doctor thought was thrush is still there. I have these little white dots all over my nipples. I have yet to try messing with them-- squeezing them and pulling them off-- because I have been cold for the past three months straight and I can't touch any part of my body that's not otherwise exposed because I'm just too damn cold. Also, I'm just very sensitive there, as most people are -- but not pregnant sensitive, just regular everyday sensitive.

Tactics

My new weaning tactic is this: Don't put myself in a position where he's going to demand it. It's so much harder to wean him at this age than it would have been a few months ago because he knows he deserves it and he knows when it's coming to him -- early in the morning and at naptime. So now I have DH go pick him up when he wakes up at 5:30, or if I go take him out of the crib for the day, I don't take him back to my bed and try to get more sleep. I take him to the living room, pour him a bowl of dry cheerios and try to snooze on the couch. As for putting him to bed in the afternoons after school-- a very necessary procedure, it's much harder without nursing. He might take a bottle but he won't fall asleep with it like he does at night (I know, I know, it's a no-no to give a kid a bottle to sleep with but it works and we're sticking with it for now at least). On Friday when DH tried to put him to sleep, he didn't nap at all-- he rested and drank his bottle but was then as active as ever, but cranky as hell towards bedtime. In fact, he kept falling asleep as I was feeding him dinner. It was heartbreaking and hillarious at the same time to see him chewing with his eyes closed and then watch his head drop to his shoulder. I'd give him some water to make sure there was no food left in his mouth and then I was going to take him to bed but the water would wake him up enough to demand the next bite... and that's how it went.
Yesterday he just fell asleep as we came home at around eleven and he had a two hour nap on the couch. That was good, and now I haven't nursed him in at least two days. We'll see if we can keep this up, though I still have no solution to the afternoon nap.
I was good and ready to wean him, but now that it's actually happening (slowly and surely), I know I'm going to kind of miss this special bond.