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.

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.

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.