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The life of an at-home mom with a very busy nursing toddler.
November 30, 1999
The Past
My husband Derek and I got married in March of 2000 and we thought we had our whole future planned out. I was going to finish one more year of undergraduate school and four years of optometry school, and then with 5 years of marriage under our belts and 2 incomes, we were going to start a family.
But by that August, already burnt out before even beginning my last year of undergrad work, I started to think that maybe I didn't want to go to optometry school in a year. Or ever. I started to wonder why I was going to wait so long to start a family when being a mom was the only thing I really wanted to do in my life. I thought maybe if we just added another pet to our household the baby urge would go away. "I want to get a pet rat," I announced to Derek. "I'd rather have a baby than get a rat," he replied. Famous last words.
Fast forward to May of 2001, when me and my 7-months-pregnant belly walked across the graduation stage. Sitting at a stoplight on the way home, I looked at my belly and wondered if my child would think it was cool that it graduated with me. I had no job lined up and no grad school to go to, only a baby to birth and raise. My future had never been so open and uncertain. I had never been so happy.
Aden was born at 12:11 a.m. on July 20, 2001, two weeks late but well worth waiting for. He was strong, alert, and beautiful, with a head of dark hair and an immediate desire to nurse.
A Rocky Road
I had never questioned that I would breastfeed my baby for at least a year. Luckily my MIL is a lactation consultant, though, because nothing seemed to go by the book.
I felt like I had too much breast to position and not enough hands to hold it and the baby all at once. Thank goodness for a Boppy pillow I got when he was 6 weeks old! It kept him in position and freed up my hands. Then I had sore nipples for months, and nothing seemed to help. It got better and worse and better again until Aden was 5 or 6 months old and it finally got better for good--except for those occasional bouts of teething that make him change his latch temporarily. And then there was the fact that from several weeks of age Aden was an on-and-off nurser. That was the hardest problem to overcome, because he would latch for a few seconds, come off and scream inconsolably, and finally latch again, only to repeat the cycle over and over.
I know now that I probably had an oversupply and a strong let-down that freaked him out, and that all the on-and-off actvity probably gave me the sore nipples. Thank goodness for my supporters who have helped me through it all: my husband who grew up with an outspoken lactation consultant mom, my own mom who breastfed me and whom I'm still very close to, the aforementioned MIL, old friends, and new friends I've met around town, at LLL meetings, and at the local attachment parenting group.
The Present and Future
Aden and I breastfed past his first birthday in July with no thoughts toward ending our nursing relationship. He is a wonderful, strong, funny, walking, talking, independent little guy and I credit a lot of our closeness to his continued nursing. It makes me a little sad that he gradually seems to be weaning himself, but then again he is a busy toddler with places to go, people to see, and havoc to wreak! I hope he'll choose to keep nursing at least until his next birthday, and if he weans after that, well...hopefully we'll be working on a sibling by then anyway, and I'll have a new nursing relationship to share with everyone.
Stay tuned!
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