A New Adventure In Breastfeding

I ate my words from my last post, mamas. I said something last time we met about my son's lack of interest in giving up nursing and how our breastfeeding relationship was going strong with no end in sight. I was right in the fact that he had no desire to stop but we ended up having to stop pretty abruptly. Shortly after my last post, I found out we are expecting Baby #2!!!

Now, it has always been my dream to be that mom nursing her newborn and toddler in the hospital bed just hours after giving birth. The first few weeks of my pregnancy, I was mourning the loss of that dream. A lot of ladies can nurse through pregnancy with no problems but unfortunately, I'm not one one of them. I have a history of low progesterone that has caused multiple miscarriages in the past, including while nursing. Progesterone and the breastfeeding hormone Prolactin have an inverse relationship so that the more progesterone you have, the less prolactin you have and vice versa. My issue was that if I continued to nurse, my prolactin would remain high, causing my progesterone levels to remain below the threshold needed to sustain a healthy pregnancy and I'd have a greater chance of miscarrying again.  I had to make a decision and I chose to stop nursing at 16 months and start supplementing progesterone to help the odds and keep this baby.

I really don't know who it was harder on - me, C, my husband? My sweet little angel just wanted to nurse and I'd have to push him away from something we both loved so much. I'd have to distract him, redirect him, have my husband rock him to sleep, all to potentially save this little baby I've never met. Last weekend, I tried to relatch him so that we could participate in the Big Latch On for a second year but he wanted nothing to do with it. I cried. I cried when I saw pictures of my friends and their toddler nurslings celebrating this awesome event for the second year in a row. I didn't fully realize until then just how much I missed what we had.

So now, I embark on a new Adventure in Breastfeeding. I get to experience breastfeeding a newborn again. Another first latch. Another look at a newborn that is sustained and growing every hair on it's tiny and lovely smelling head because of what I make for her to eat. Maybe I'll experience a toddler who wants to have what his sister is having for lunch. Who knows?! We will see in a few months and I'll be taking you all on the adventure with me.

Til Next Time, Mamas.
Keep Calm and Nurse On

Hang In There, Mama

As I nursed my 16-month-old son to sleep tonight, I thought about what I wanted to write. I could provide useful tips for recognizing low supply, or share my experience with tongue ties, or recommend light and fashionable summer nursing outfits, but I find myself thinking of all the new mothers I know. These are women with fresh and screaming newborns, women with the undisguised tone of desperation and terror in their voices and online posts. I do what I can to help, but repeatedly, I find myself falling back on the most vapid of encouragement:

Hang in there, Mama.

I HATED hearing that when I was living through the horror of new motherhood. Did my more experienced mommy friends really have NOTHING more to offer me than that? No magic bullet solution, no sage advice, no eternal wisdom, or even a trendy mothering "hack" with its own catchphrase and a few blogs devoted to it? That's all you've got for me? "Hang in there????"

But when you've checked and rechecked that newborn's diaper, when you've swaddled him 18 different ways with at least as many blankets, nursed through the excruciating pain and STILL offered the breast after an hour of continuous latching, and tried any number of expensive gadgets that promise to calm your baby, there's only one thing left to do, and that's to hang in there.

One day, you'll be here.

The day will come when your toddler blows kisses to Daddy when it's time for bed. He'll latch onto your no-longer-painful nipple and do an odd planking motion before settling in and draping an arm over your breast as though it's a pillow. After a few minutes, he'll be out and you'll wait to put him in the crib just so you can enjoy a few more moments of precious snuggles.

When he bumps his head on the playground, your breast will calm him, and you won't feel any self-consciousness about nursing him like that out in the open. In fact, you'll see another mother smile at you, and you'll smile back.

One day, you'll put away that stupid pump for the last time, and just feed your toddler when he signs for milk, asks to nurse aloud, or reaches for your shirt. Your supply will adjust perfectly fine and the thought of not having enough milk won't even occur to you.

When your child's unique personality begins to emerge, when he runs and dances and makes faces and blows raspberries and shows you his belly button, you'll marvel that you grew this little person with your body. That as biologically mundane and culturally sensationalized as breasts are, yours were almost solely responsible for the life, growth, and development of another human.

And the memory of that first week and first month will be a distant battle scar, one you share any time your new-mommy friends cry "Is it really this hard?!" Even though you'll be forced to answer "Yes," you can also say,

".... but it gets better."

"Hang in there, Mama."

World Breastfeeding Week GIVEAWAY

In honor of World BreastFeeding Week, 

 Adventures in Breastfeeding 

along with our partners 

Beads of Charity

Sling it On

Gonegreek.com

will be giving away 4 awesome prizes!

1.) Customized Nursing Cover & Matching Nursing/Teething Necklace made by TASTEFULLY TIFF

**Samples you will customize your order**

2.) Customized Bangle Bracelet made by BEADS OF CHARITY

**Samples you will customize your order**

3.) Earthy rainbow wrap scrap teether made by SLING IT ON


4.) $25 egiftcard to GONEGREEK.COM

Winners will be chosen at random. No purchase necessary. Available to US residents ONLY. To enter complete rafflecopter below!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wordless Wednesday: A Forceful Letdown

A diagram to assist moms in positioning babies to combat the sputtering and coughing that comes with a forceful letdown or oversupply.

Impeccable illustrating, I know.

The Other Breastfeeding Essentials

Today we have a guest post from blogger Kary of Always Painted Usually Chipped, with her recommendations for products that helped her along her breastfeeding journey.

My breastfeeding journey was a long but good 14 months. It started with an extremely anxious pregnant woman and ended with a happy & healthy toddler (and mama!) I’d love to come back to share more details with you, but today I want to share with you my non-traditional list of breastfeeding essentials. Sure, you need your Boppy (LOVE that thing), some burp cloths and of course an iphone to pass the time, but these were my other go to items for the past year (plus!).

1 – Forever 21 $10.81 Jeans – These jeans saved me from a mini breakdown in the mall. After giving birth to my son I was elated to fit back in my prepregnancy jeans pretty quickly. It was so awesome…for about a week. Then I just kept losing more and more and more weight. My body could not keep up with the milk production. I didn’t want to buy all new clothes, but I HAVE to have jeans in my wardrobe. For a self-proclaimed jeans snob, I was shocked when these F21 jeans saved me. They are dirt cheap and fit perfectly. I am just about to outgrow them and get back to my regular jeans, thank goodness, but they were the perfect temporary jeans.

2 - Snacks!! -  In addition to new jeans I also had to buy and eat a TON of food. I like snacks, but the amount I had to eat to keep up with my son eating every two hours was ridiculous. I ate more while breastfeeding than while pregnant, times three. I went through bags of nuts and boxes of these Special K sandwiches, in addition to a ton of oatmeal, guacamole, hummus, string cheese, etc. I felt like I weaned off the snacks as I weaned my son off the breast.

3 – Button-Up Shirts – My personal favorite are from JCrew and JCrew Factory. They are just thick enough so you don’t have to worry about nipple coverage if you just slip on a nursing tank and just thin enough so that you are not sweating (because postpartum hot flashes are no joke!).

4 – Coobie Bras – I wore these bras while pregnant and for a solid year after giving birth. I just put on a real bra for the first time and I feel like a pre-teen with the itch factor going on. These bras fit me from my size A to my full C milk boobs, and back to my size A after breastfeeding. I never found a nursing tank that I LOVED. Sure, there were some that I liked, but I didn’t love any of them like I loved these bras.

5 – Perry Mackin Diaper Bag – I tried quite a few diaper bags. If I’m telling the truth, I tried three. Okay, okay, six. I tried six. After all my trials though I can honestly say that this is the bag for me. I love it and haven’t been inclined to switch since I got it.  You may not think of a diaper bag as a breastfeeding essential, but my son nursed every 2 hours until he was about 8 months old and refused a bottle. If I wanted to leave the house, he was coming with me and that meant bringing diapers, a blanket for a cover, an outfit change, snacks and water for me, etc. Definitely an essential in my book.

6 – Gel Pads – I keep wanting to remove these from my list because I really only used them for the first month, but I can still feel the love I had for these gel pads deep in my heart. The relief of getting one out and putting it on during that first, stress-inducing, nipple-hurting, “can I really do this?" month of breastfeeding keeps them on my list. To be fair, these are not the exact ones that I used since our hospital gave us some, but these seem to be the closest.

Kary is a stay at home mom to an energetic toddler and two cats. She is a military wife to an amazing man and she appreciates him very much for doing the cooking! You can find her over at Always Painted, Usually Chipped.

Thanks, Kary!

For more breastfeeding essentials, check out Christa's post, 5 Things You Really Need to Breastfeed.