Slowly Weaning

I'm managing to slowly wean DD off of breastfeeding -- I think.

One significant improvement is that I don't nurse her all night long anymore. We simply don't take her out of the crib when she wakes up and, though every single pediatrician and dentist out there would recommend against this, we give her a bottle in bed to help her go back to sleep. Usually she just takes a few slurps and is out again.

So when do I still nurse her? Well, during the day if I'm around and she gets hurt-- i.e. pushed over by her brother or trips over my feet or simply not getting enough attention, she'll always want to come over to me for a little nibble. And there's very little I can do to distract her from this. She'll keep crying and moping and fighting for the breast until she gets it. Once she's on, however, she'll pretty easily be distracted by some exciting thing that her brother is doing and she'll forget all about me and my milky appendages.

I also often nurse her in the mornings. Once it gets to be around 6am or later and if she wakes up crying, DH will bring her over to me or else I'll just give up and bring her to bed. Sometimes she'll fall asleep again but often she'll drift in and out until... you guessed it.. her brother does something to distract her and then our day has begun.

Enough

DD, God bless her, recently decided that the only way she will agree to be soothed is to nurse. I think that part of it is that she's been with 2 different caregivers recently besides me, which is a routine we're going to be starting for this school year. Or it might possibly be her new way to stake a claim to mommy. She is highly competitive with her brother over my attention. When they're both playing independently --or together, for that matter --and he gives her a swipe or even if she just has her own little fall, she'll come crying to me to be nursed, and it's very hard to get her to let go of me after that. It's not that I don't love holding her and it's not that I don't feel privileged to be soothing her, it's just that it's not always easy for me to stop whatever I'm doing to sit down and nurse.

I'm considering quitting nursing altogether. In some regards, I think our lives would be easier without it. Then at least my husband could comfort her on some nights instead of the job always falling to me (though he does try, to give him credit.)

Also, I've pretty much sworn off nursing bras for now. The ones I own are terrible-- I should really do a blog post on that alone. I've been wearing my normal ones that actually look presentable under a t-shirt.

The funniest thing is that, as a nursing infant - a suckling-- she wasn't so into it. I mean, she was not nearly as enthusiastic a nurser as DS was. Now all of a sudden she wants it constantly.

The Baby-Backed Flip-Flop

I am mostly nursing at night now. Which basically means that I nurse when DD wakes up and I cant (read: haven't the energy to) coax her back to bed. Which means that I spend a lot of my sleeping hours getting sucked on. Now, usually, or at least this was the case with my DS and in the early days of DD, I'll decide when to switch them from one side to the other. Usually I do the switch when I'm tired of lying on that particular side and I need a change. Or sometimes it's because I feel the pressure in the other breast or else that the milk in breast 1 is running out.
What's cute is that DD now does the switching for me. I don't know what prompts it; whether it's the same reason as me, that she is uncomfortable lying on one side for so long, or if it's also because of a low milk supply on that side. Whatever the reason is, when she decides to go for breast 2, she will abandon the side she was nursing on and climb over me to lay her head on the other breast. She gives me a little head-butt if I'm not paying attention or if I am not getting her message. 'Aah, aah' she says and nudges me a bit to get me going.

Nursing to Sleep No More

I can't really seem to nurse her to sleep anymore. Well, at least it doesn't seem to be working every time like it used to. Now I actually have to work on it.
She's always been kind of a restless nurser. Well, I shouldn't say 'always' because I don't always remember exactly-- that's why I keep this blog. But at least in recent months she'll suck suck suck and then trash and root around a bit until I redirect her. I don't remember DS ever doing that back when he was nursing. Different kid, different style, I guess. Also, just when I think she' asleep, she'll be suck suck sucking and then she'll pop up so we're face to face and give me an ear-to-ear grin with her big trademark 'aaaaahhhh'.
I just put her to sleep now not by nursing her (though that was the prelude) but by just waiting until she was tired enough and then snuggling up with her, forehead to forehead. She'll watch me and sometimes try to catch my eye and smile flirtatiously but eventually she drifted off to dreamy dream land.
Good night, little one.

Formula One

I havent' been giving her a lot of formula at all since she was born. It was mostly once a week in the beginning when I was working. Now that she's eating she just gets fed solids when I'm gone. (she's eating real solids now-- chicken! She loves it. Even though she still has no teeth.)
The thing is that she doesn't sleep really well. That is, unless she's in bed with me. She can usually make it on her own up to about midnight or one a.m. but then she wants to cuddle and nuzzle. We are not good at keeping her in her bed because we don't want her to wake up the other people in the house, especially her big brother. That's just our logistical situation right now. So she ends up with me for at least part of every night. I can't even get her to nap without nursing her or driving her around and even that doesn't necessarily work anymore.
There was one occasion when I put her in her crib with a bottle of formula-- I don't remember why -- and when I checked back on her she'd fallen asleep with her pacifier in her mouth. There happened to be one next to her. I tried that today, hoping to get the same result but it was a no-go. She's still awake but at least she's playing independently behind me. I might try to train her to go to sleep with a bottle, though. It would save me a lot of time lying down with her and trying to get her to sleep that way.
I'm not crazy about the idea of formula. I'm not crazy about feeding her straight chemicals out of a can. But I know I fed DS formula once a day starting around this age-- or maybe a little later. It was a supplement to give me a break and to make sure he was rounding up his nutrients now that he'd begun a more solid routine of solids.

Spit and Suck

When she gets upset in the middle of the night and I bring her to my bed, she often comes still bearing her pacifier in her mouth. I used to have to remove it for her before I could introduce the breast, but lately she just spits it out and waits, open mouthed for her dinner-- or midnight snack, as it were.

I invested (heavily-- those things are pricey) in some all natural rubber pacifiers. She's has never been picky about the shape or size or texture of soother I give her and she took to these well. The only problem is that they are a translucent honey colour, which makes them almost impossible to find when dropped on virtually any surface. The other day we were at the planetarium and she was complaining while the lights were still on before the show started. So I let her start nursing. In the meantime, I dropped this pacifier just as the night sky began appearing overhead. I wanted to keep her satiated so as not to disturb the presentation so I had to hunt all over the ground for the thning-- several times. The show was about half an hour long and I must have spent at least three-quarters of the time feeling around for it.

New Breastfeeding Patterns At 8 Monhs

Whereas baby used to get hungry at about the same time as I would start to feel full, a different nursing pattern seems to be emerging. The above situation still does happen, but nowadays it's rare that I get overfull until a few minutes after she starts suckling. But then --watch out for your eyes, ladies and gentlemen- the geyser erupts at her beckoning and she gets a mouthful-- or I get a shirt full if she gets distracted and raises her head to check out the commotion that her brother and /or cousins are inevitably making in some other part of the room.

Bottle, Baby!

She's had bottles from day 1 but rarely. Now that she's started solids, we haven't increased the bottles but she did have a bottle with water for the first time the other day. It's one of those tiny newborn ones. She took it and fed herself! We didn't hold it at all! Well, at least not until her brother decided to help her out and took over the feeding. She didn't mind. As long as she can suck on something, she's happy.

Nipple Confusion? I'm Confused!

They say that there is such a thing as nipple confusion-- that the baby learns to suck on something other than the nipple such as a pacifier or a bottle which makes it difficult for them to return to the breast. Well, with my baby I think the case is more that she actually prefers to suck on the pacifier over my warm, milky breasts! Sometimes she gets so frustrated with my non-mobile appendages that she starts flailing around until I give her the pacifier. Then she settles down and falls asleep suck suck sucking peacefully.
Am I insulted? Well, I am a little bit hurt, yes. DS would be content to just nurse all the time. The pacifier was only a toy. But she loves the thing so much that she has already learned to put in in her mouth by herself! At six months!

Moving On To Solids II

'Solids' is a scary word when you're breastfeeding. Whether or not you like breastfeeding, there are some things about it that are beneficial. Of course there's the health aspect-- baby gets the right mix of nutrients with a healthy dose of antibodies. There's the sterility of it-- no boiling bottles all the time, unless, of course, if you're pumping. There's also the sweet-smelling poops-- am I the only one who likes the smell of my kids' poops? I'm talking strictly when they're breastfeeding, not once they start to take solids and then it just smells and looks like poop. Until that time, it smells like caramel or buttered popcorn. I guess it's also mind over matter. I say the word 'poop' and you're not exactly picturing the movie theatre... I hope. Of course, then there's also the benefit, though of course there's no guarantee, of natural birth control. At the very least, it puts off your period for a little while.

Often, as the mother, you're the only one who can soothe and settle your child, can make them fall asleep.

Breastfeeding is also a big way of bonding with your child. She looks at you and wraps her whole little hand around your finger or plays with your hair or your face. You're close. You know that you're made of the same stuff. When she's hungry, you feel it. It causes you to seek quiet spaces with her aone. Most of these are things that bottle and solid feeding doesn't provide.

It's not impossible to imagine that starting solids can be a somewhat scary experience. You may feel as though it will put distance in between you and your child. Well, I think that in fact it will change your relationship in that all of a sudden you are freer, whether you like it or not.

Personally, the anticipation of introducing solids was much worse for me than the actual introduction of it the first time around. For one thing, it's really, really gradual. They're not eating solids on any regular basis for at least a couple of months. They still need to nurse. And for the most part, they still want to. I didn't completely wean him for another 8 months after that, and then it was only because I was pregnant and it was just too much demand on my body. (So much for birth control, I guess.)

This time around, I am still a little anxious about it but overall much more relaxed and looking forward to being able to leave her with other people for longer periods of time.

Moving On to Solids I

I remember that the transition to solid foods at six months when I was breastfeeding my DS was very difficult. Imagine-- except for one tiny kick-start of sperm, he's made entirely of me for the nine months of conception and the first half-year outside the womb. Each ounce on his body can trace it's way to me. Now all of a sudden there's this foreign stuff. Food. It's... good. At least, that's the way it was for DS. He took the first spoon of mushy carrots on his half-birthday and there was no looking back.

I was having similar hesitations when it came time today to feed DD her first spoonfuls. I'd gone to the health food store and bought her organic brown rice baby cereal. We chose today for her first solid meal (if you can call baby mush solid) because the whole family was to be together. It didn't go exactly as planned. She took a spoonful of the stuff and spit it out. Same with the next spoonful. I don't think she was so excited for the subsequent spoonfuls. We don't think any of it actually went down. Then I tasted it myself and I can't say that I blamed her. The stuff was downright bitter. I think I'll boil up some of the organic carrots or sweet potato that I bought for her and try that next.

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.

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.