The first week in August is World Breastfeeding Week. And I believe the entire month of August is Breastfeeding Awareness Month. Since there doesn't seem to be anything happening here in Phoenix, I decided to celebrate in my own way by posting a few experiences I've had with breastfeeding. First of all, I never thought much about nursing until one day, LONG before Brian and I had Hayden. Brian told me he wanted me to breastfeed our children. I said ok, I had no problem with that. When I did get pregnant, we were (and still are) struggling a bit financially. There was no way we could give formula even if I wanted to. In the hospital after I had Hayden, I took advantage of the fact that there was a lactation consultant on staff. I wanted her to make sure that he was latched on correctly. Well she was pretty useless. Everytime I asked for her help she would try putting Hayden in the "football hold" for nursing. This was very uncomfortable for me, and Hayden didn't seem to like it either...he would scream while she was "helping" me position him. She also gave me some bad advice. She told me that I should feed him every 4 hours. This resulted in Hayden not getting enough to eat to get the bilirubin out of his system. Which resulted in a slightly less than 24 hour hospital stay for Hayden to be under the bili-lights because he was jaundiced (this happened the Saturday after he was born, he was just 5 days old). This also resulted in my milk taking 5 days to come in. I couldn't stay at the hospital with Hayden, but I pumped every two hours and the nurses supplemented him with formula. The short time he was in the hospital seemed like forever, and I was extremely sad the entire time (post partum depression) thinking that it was MY fault he was in the hospital. The night he was released Hayden had a bit of nipple confusion from taking the bottles at the hospital. Thank goodness it wasn't bad, and we got the hang of breastfeeding pretty quickly. I made several short term goals. First I wanted to breastfeed until his 2 week appointment, and then see what his weight gain was like, then I wanted to make it to 6 months and then a year. I never thought about when I would wean, although I thought nursing an older baby was weird, and didn't really want to do it. When I went back to work, I would sometimes search the web for breastfeeding info, especially since my mom had trouble giving Hayden bottles, he didn't like them.I stumbled across a site called Kellymom. I read all the information on this website. It talked about "Extended Nursing" (nursing a baby over the age of one) I still thought it was weird, but I asked Brian one day about what he thought about it. He said he had no problem with it. So we decided to let Hayden wean when HE wanted to instead of when we wanted to. So that's where we are today. Hayden is 18 months old and still going strong with nursing. So far there is no end in sight, although he is nursing less at night. When I get home from work, the first thing he wants to do is nurse. And he usually is attached to me (literally) for most of the night until I get him to sleep. I can honestly say that I love it. I struggle sometimes when he wants to nurse and I have other things to do, but I try to remember that he's only a baby for a short time and that I need to enjoy this time in my life, because in a blink of an eye it will be gone.
Tomorrow I will post more reasons why I am STILL breastfeeding ;)
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