Tag Archives: nursing

friends-only on lj isn’t *exactly* public…

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I have been internally struggling with how much I want to write about the kids. Privacy and all. I've set my privacy bar at a very non-standard place. It's not transitive. So it's awkward.

I was watching a movie on Netflix about a beauty school in Afghanistan. It's kind of interesting. Then Calli woke up. I could hear her knocking softly on the door and saying, "Mama." When I got there and opened the door (carefully so I didn't hit her in the dark) the first thing she did was sign "milk". Yeah.

We settled in on the rocking chair. She nursed on both sides and then fell asleep on my chest. From start to finish of picking her up until I laid her back down in her bed was twenty five minutes. I saw the clock as I left and returned to the garage.

It felt like a lifetime. I think that a lot of my physical nursing discomfort with Calli has been anxiety around the pot. I feel bad that I smoke pot and nurse. I have done a lot of medical research and I have consulted with a number of medical professionals on this topic. It's not great but it's better than any of the other drugs I could be on, honestly. There is still this miasma of shame and guilt. It makes me tense. At this point I don't have a lot of milk left anyway. She's nearly two.

It is going to be hard to finish weaning. She's not ready. She only nurses once or twice a day but it is very important to her. If she doesn't get to nurse at those crucial times she feels really bad. She cries and cries. It breaks her heart. Nursing is a very complex experience on both sides. It still provides enormous health benefits to both of us. (My risks for various cancers and diabetes goes down by the year.) It is very good for both of us to do this.

And when I sit down and nurse her I focus on her in a way I don't the rest of the time. When I sit down and nurse and trace her face with my finger I see how much she has gotten from me.

Shanna feels like a mini-me in a variety of ways that bring me great joy. I feel like if I got to go down a list of traits that describe me and pick which ones to give to my kids Shanna got the things I would pick to give away. Shanna makes me very happy. Seeing her move around the world convinces me that there is good to come and I have to be here to see it.

Calli is a different experience. Calli is a lot like me, don't get me wrong, but if I had to pick the traits to pass on I probably wouldn't have selected quite the list Calli got. Calli is like a lot of the parts of me I struggle to accept. But this morning as I nursed her I found peace with that.

Instead of feeling bad I felt joy that she was there to remind me that even the parts of me I struggle with are good and worthy of emulation.For better or worse this tiny person sees me and sees someone good and wonderful. Someone she wants to be just like. So she picks things to pattern off of. If I don't like the patterns she is picking up, maybe I'd best watch my behavior-hey?

They are so different. Calli's birthday is next month. I asked her if she wanted to have a party for her birthday. She said yes, adamantly. I asked her if she wanted a big party or a little party. That took a little negotiation and explanation. Shanna campaigned hard for a huge party. She started listing off names of people to invite. Calli vetoed almost everyone.

Calli wants the woman who comes to our house every two weeks, her Godmamas whom she sees every month, and the family that has provided the most care taking for her since birth. She strongly vetoed every other name we could come up with.

Shanna invites every person she talks to on the bus and the train to her birthday party. It's hilarious. I'm starting to think I should reserve a spot at Lake Elizabeth and start letting her hand out business cards. If she wants that, she can have it. Calli doesn't want that.

Calli likes quiet small groups. She's overwhelmed by sound and too many people. She doesn't enjoy it. She likes having the few people she is comfortable around visit and that's it.

They mirror very different parts of me. I like it. I like watching them. I feel really good about the ways in which they are different. I feel like they embody the extreme ends of my personality. I feel like a constant peace keeper. "Shanna, don't pressure Calli to do things. If she says no you have to respect her wishes." They are both persistent. It's really wonderful.

I thought about all the things I love about Calli while I was nursing her. Including the fact that she continues to need me so intensely and viscerally. I thank anything that will listen for my children. To my children I am the most important and wonderful person in the world. They are probably going to be the only people I ever feel really comfortable around. They are the extent of my clan.

I haven't weaned Calli and I don't know when I will. It's one day at a time. Some day she will no longer need this from me. I hope I can continue to meet her needs for a while longer.

Nursing manners

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With kid #1 I was willing to nurse however long, wherever, in whatever position, whenever she wants. With kid #2 I say, be polite to my nipples or starve. You do not get to hurt me. 😛 (For the record, once she gets to the stage where she is hurting me she is full. No starving will occur. But much less comfort nursing.)

I guess things do change over time. 🙂

Thoughts on tandem nursing

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It’s… interesting. There are distinct advantages to it–I never have to worry about being painfully full, I can nurse them at the same time and Shanna doesn’t feel left out or fussy. I have a hard time sometimes with how pushy Shanna is getting. Her verbal abilities mean that she sounds super demanding in asking to nurse and I feel twitchy about that. I’m putting a lot of limits on how she gets to nurse. She has to sit very very still–no moving her head. She is not allowed to stroke, squeeze, pinch, or otherwise manipulate my breasts. She’s having an increasingly hard time keeping her teeth off my nipples and I think it is because the shape of her mouth is changing. She’s not biting her teeth are just pressing harder than I am thrilled about. I’ve read that at some point the mouth changes shape and it is harder for kids to latch properly. I’m wondering if we are already getting into that but I doubt it. I think it usually happens at a much older age.

I usually like it a lot when they are nursing together. Having them both nursing means that they are triggering let-down for one another and the milk comes out really fast and they are done quickly. They are starting to kind of cuddle together while nursing and I think that is likely to increase given how affectionate they are together. (Ok, mostly it is Shanna being affectionate at this point but Calli responds to her really well.) I think it has been a really good thing to nurse them together because Shanna is not showing any jealousy at all. She is completely thrilled by her baby sister. The closest she gets is telling Noah to hand Calli back to me so he can play rough with her when I am off doing something.

Shanna is approaching the supposed window of natural weaning. This is, of course, theoretical. Hypothetically children who are allowed to nurse at will for as long as they want/need will wean themselves sometime between 2.5ish and 4. Next month we hit 2.5. I can’t imagine Shanna wanting to wean soon. She nurses a lot still. It is, thankfully, down from what it was two months ago–I think she is only nursing 5ish times/day now as opposed to 6-10 times/day. It helps that each nursing session now results in a freakton of milk.

I’ve started pumping occasionally and I get 3 oz in as little as six minutes if a kid is nursing on the other side. If I’m pumping without kid assistance it takes almost fifteen minutes. I’m limiting my pumping to 3 oz at a time because I have to nurslings. 🙂 I have no interest in pushing my milk production much higher than it is. It’s hard to pump with both of them and I think my hopes of pumping enough to donate are evaporating. It’s just ‘one more thing’ and I can’t handle that. Pumping requires dedicated time to sit down and focus on something completely non-kid and it requires my hands and that doesn’t work well.

So yeah. I’m not sure how long I will handle this. I have so far been fairly committed to child lead weaning but I’m going to have to figure out how to talk Shanna into being more polite about it if I want to continue nursing without hating it. Right now she sometimes feels like she is seriously violating my personal space and that’s not ok. I’m not going to just ‘suck it up’ and deal with feeling violated while nursing. Not with a kid this old. It is still beneficial for her to get the milk but it is in no way mandatory for health. This has to work for both of us or it has to change. I’m going to work on changing it because she loves it so much and it does help my parenting a lot. It’s dramatic how quickly she can calm down, recenter, and generally get back to a good space with nursing. No matter how bad our day has been, no matter how upset, no matter how awful the tantrum… nursing can fix it. I think I am too lazy to want to give up that tool. So I need to work on making this work. 🙂

Activism (specifically: lactivism)

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When you tell someone else they should feel guilty, you are no longer dealing with guilt. You are dealing with shame. I believe that shaming people is wrong. Do I feel that every infant deserves a full-term breastfeeding experience because that is what is best for children? Yes. But I also feel that nursing is a dyad relationship. If the mother feels that her ability to adequately parent her child will be compromised because she will feel ill will, pain, hostility, resentment, etc towards her child then I am not sure it is actually in the best interests of the dyad to nurse. I feel it is sad when mothers don’t want to nurse, when they don’t even try. But a lot of why I feel that way is because I had a very easy experience breastfeeding.

I 100% believe that women should be encouraged with great vigor to give it a shot because even a couple of days of colustrum is better than nothing at all. But if a woman decides not to nurse… you know, I can’t see how me climbing on a bully pulpit and telling her that she sucks is helping anyone or anything.

People make me sad. Today, lactivists are at the top of the list of reasons I’m sad. Stop being such sanctimonious assholes.

A good day

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I spend most of my time on lj posting about being unhappy or talking about Shanna. That is totally not representative of my every day so uhm, here’s a post that is less depressing.

Today is a good day. I got a little bit of yard work done out front. It’s been bugging me so I’m glad I’ve gotten around to it. I scheduled house cleaning stuff for the next several months so that I can stop feeling bad about how little cleaning I do. (Noah [whom I do not spend nearly enough time talking up–he’s so fabulous] does most of the ‘picking up’ so our house isn’t too bad, but he doesn’t really like doing the deeper cleaning.) Currently it sucks for me to bend over and do it so we decided that three or four months of someone else cleaning our house was a Good Idea. The vast majority of this additional spending right now is coming out of the much larger than anticipated tax refund, so I am thanking my lucky stars that we got it. I really and truly see the financial privilege I have these days and I feel so grateful that I have it. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure can do a lot of work towards making life easier so that you have less stress. That leads to increased happiness. So I thank anyone upstairs who is listening that my life is so easy at this point.

For all that I’m not a great pregnant person I am deeply grateful that this pregnancy is easier than Shanna’s. I’m super tired. I have a lot of random body discomfort. I’m cranky. But I haven’t puked once! I am not so completely listless that I am not functioning! I do manage to take Shanna out to play at least once a week and I’m arranging for her to have more opportunities than that with other people. I’m cranky with her, but she’s spectacular about telling me, “It’s not nice to yell at me.” Which really puts a fast halt to my temper tantrums. Having a two year old call me on my behavior is incredibly humbling in a good for me way. I really love having her.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the sexual assault stuff and I am feeling… better isn’t quite the word but less disturbed. I’m feeling more like I really have handled things in a way that is ultimately good for me. Of course I have done things poorly at times. Of course I have not always been in the best place right that minute. But overall I don’t feel like I am a terrible non-functioning crazy person. And sometimes good enough is good enough. 🙂

Mostly I had a really good weekend. I really love my family. I have a wonderful, supportive, amazing husband. I feel like I had the most perfect-for-me little girl possible. I like her so much. I’m rather excited about meeting kid 2.0. If Noah and I combined to make one kid this awesome, what will 2.0 be like? I strongly suspect that next kid will be very very different from Shanna. I base this on the differences in the pregnancy. This kid is active in a way that Shanna wasn’t. This makes me slightly nervous because of the potential differences in sleeping habits. Shanna has been an awesome sleeper since birth. But we’ll roll with it. Whatever happens is what is meant to happen. I think that I am nervous about having expectations this time. Before Shanna I had almost zero exposure to babies. I had no idea what to expect and then she was so easy. (Maybe my memory is already getting fuzzy… who knows.) Now I’ve had a kid so I have a bit more of the ‘I know about kids’ attitude. I’d be better off assuming that I know nothing again. 🙂

So, yeah. Life is plugging along. I have 6ish weeks to go. I’m nervous but looking forward to the birth. It will be a rather different experience this time. Shanna has expressed rather strongly that she wants to be at the birth so that’s going to be interesting. Luckily nipple stimulation is a big help because there is no way I will be able to keep her from nursing during labor. 😀 I’m really looking forward to tandem nursing for some weird, masochistic reason. Something about it just seems really… I don’t know… motherly? Like even if I feel like psychologically I am not always the best at mothering my body is doing GREAT at the physical parts! I can’t quite figure out why I am looking forward to it so much. Too many years on MDC. They have infected my brain. 😀

So yeah. It’s a good day after having a couple of other good days in a row. 🙂

Consider the needs of the child you have

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That’s a phrase bandied about in full-term breastfeeding circles. Full-term meaning at least until two years old. Two years is the minimum recommended time for nursing as stated by the WHO. Ok, so I’m not exactly one to follow all the guidelines as set down by the WHO so why do I pay attention to this one? If you look at biological studies comparing brain size/development humans should nurse for 2-7 years if compared to our nearest primate relatives. That’s a long time. Milk is necessary for the development of most mammals and no other mammal in nature weans in order to give the milk of another species.

At this point Shanna is physically developed enough to be able to digest milk from other species and I’m certainly not opposed to dairy (mmmm ice cream) but nursing is different. My milk not only is the absolute perfect blend of nutrients for my species, my milk is specifically calibrated for my child. That cannot be duplicated by a bottle of cow milk.

Why am I talking about this? Because when you are pregnant most women lose their milk. There are some women (I’ve seen this as 30%) who maintain supply all the way through a pregnancy. It is also possible to dry nurse through a pregnancy and then move on to tandem nursing. The reason behind dry nursing is that nursing is not just about physical/dietary needs, it also fulfills important bonding/psychological needs. I already have a hard time with unnecessary nipple stimulation. It will be much worse when I am pregnant. I’m nervous about dry nursing. I’m also worried about Shanna losing out on having milk solidly until she is two. That is the biological minimum humans should have. I’m not sure I’m willing to compromise on giving her the minimum.

But that means spacing our kids out more than I really wanted to. That means probably waiting at least another seven months. I have mixed feelings about that. The Meniere’s has been progressing quite a bit just lately and that makes me nervous. It looks like we definitely won’t be trying for three kids so spacing out Shanna and Little TBD is less of a problem than it otherwise could be. I’m not sure how I feel about spacing between kids in terms of potential future getting along/competitive stuff. All of that is guesswork anyway.

So yeah. It looks like the mature, responsible decision is to wait. It’s only seven months. The problem is that I don’t wanna.