Breast Feeding

Breast Feeding...what a wonderful way to give your baby the best that you can. God given ability to feed your child and bond at the same time. I have nursed all three of my children and am still nursing Blake. My plan is to nurse him for a year like I did my girls. When Katie was born my milk had not come in yet. So from day one I started pumping to help my milk. When Katie was taken to the nursery after she was born the nurses gave her a bottle, despite the fact I had asked them not to since I planned to nurse. When she was 2 days old she was admitted to the NICU and they continued to feed her from a bottle. I still pumped and still attempted to get her to latch, she still refused to latch and my milk was slow to come in. It was heartbreaking to see her attached to all those wires and monitors and to not be able to breastfeed her like I had wanted added insult to injury. She came home 5 days later, I was still pumping 2-5 times a day in attempts to get my milk to come in. The day after she came home my milk finally cooperated! Although my nipples hurt so bad from trying to nurse her and pumping I could not bear to breastfeed. So we tried cup feeding, tube feeding, finger feeding...anything we could that would help with her nipple confusion and let my nipples take a break from the poor latch she had at first. I went to a lactation consultant, breast feeding support group and read anything online and in book and pamphlets I could on the subject. Finally we got her latch corrected, my nipples we not as tender(but it still hurt!) and we were good to go =] It was just a few weeks later that I started back to work. Thankfully my office was close to my parents house and my mom was watching her for me. I was able to go there once a day to nurse her and pumped her a bottle the other feeding I missed. I weaned her with ease at 13 months(I figured I owed her an extra month for all the trouble we went through in the beginning.) Ally did not latch well in the beginning either. My milk did not come in until she was 5-6 days old, similar to when I had Katie. Although this time there was no pumping, no NICU, she was able to get the Colostrum...the liquid gold....I had felt so badly about Katie not getting. Although due to my milk not coming in for several days she ended up getting a fairly bad case of Jaundice. We had to take her to TC Thompson’s once a day for a few days to get her heel pricked so they could test her billirubin(sp?) levels. We took her out in the sun for a few minutes a day here and there, supplemented formula with a tube(finger fed her) and nursed her more often. Thankfully she got better in a matter of days. I weaned her at 12 months. I had eye surgery when she was 11 months and planned to wean her then, but could not bear to do it yet. I felt I owed her one more month at least! So after her 1st birthday she was nursing only in the mornings and one morning I just forgot to nurse her after breakfast...she didn’t care, so she was weaned at that point on =] Blake latched from the moment he was born. No trouble there. No jaundice, no supplementing, my milk came in in just a couple days and we have been good to go since! He was gone a 1 or 2 very short nursing strikes(or at least that’s what i call them) and some days he will go hours without nursing now but the next day nurse normally and when we are out in public he gets distracted and is hard to nurse so I pump him bottles sometimes now....but other then that....he has been a wonderful nurser! =] I never pumped a bottle and let Katie feed Ally...I pumped so much with Katie I did not want to have to pump unless i HAD to with Ally. But with Blake like I said above, I pump him bottles now and have a nice stock pile in the freezer....so the other night Joe let Katie feed Blake =] Ally did not care too much about it. I may try and see if they would like to feed him again sometime just so I can get a picture.