Bit by bit leaving the baby years behind

This is as close as I will get to a baby for a very long time:

Last year we made a decision to not have anymore babies.  At the time we decided that, Ben was 18 months old and was not yet sleeping through the night.  It was nearly 2011 and I hadn't slept through the night in nearly 4 years.  Dave was particularly done; he said living with Liam and Ben was more stressful than living in Kabul.  Dave was very done.  I knew I wanted another baby but only if it came with a 100% guarantee of no reflux or colic and I knew sleep would be better than it was with either of my boys.

Making the decision to be done changes your outlook as every milestone is a step away from babyhood.  I went through Ben's first year and a half just surviving and not cherishing any moments as I thought we'd be done the babyhood path again.  Since then, I am holding onto eveery moment as I will never again have a little one.



I am mostly happy to say good-bye to the non-stop physical demands.  I still need to dress Liam and often need to feed him to get him to eat.  Ben still wants me to carry him around the house and many place.  It isn't realistic to imagine I could handle a third.  Liam has significant delays and Ben still doesn't say his own name at nearly 2.5 years old.  It is very unlikely to think a 3rd child wouldn't also have developmental delays.  I know it was the right choice for us, and most of the time I am happy but every once in awhile I wish I had a different life.  A life where my husband was only out of the house at work 10-11 hours a day, a life where I lived near family to help, a life where babies slept 8-10 hours at night by 6 months and actually napped, a life without non-stop therapy.

Ben is done nursing.  He only nursed once in August and has changed his bedtime routine so it isn't even something he thinks about.  I will hold onto the memory of nursing him in June and him growing heavy in my arms and falling asleep.  It astounds me to think I will never again nurse another baby so this milestone is bittersweet.  I am sure I'll be much more excited when the milestone is potty training.

Celebrating World Breastfeeding Week: Part II....Why I Choose Child-Led Weaning

Child-led weaning is not the same as baby-led weaning.  So there is no confusion, baby-led weaning is allowing a baby to feed themselves solids and skipping purees and spoon feeding.  We used baby-led weaning with Liam as he refused to be spoon fed and never allowed purees.  He still won't eat anything that doesn't crunch and needs to be chewed (it is part of his sensory issues).  Child-led weaning is allowing a nursling to decide when they are ready to wean from breastfeeding.  Kellymom shows that only 36% of mothers are nursing after 6 months, 17% are still nursing after the 1st birthday, and less than 6 % still nursing after 18 months. Kellymom Source  By contrast, Kathy Dettwyler, an anthropologist who studied nursing across cultures and mammal species, estimates that a natural age of weaning of humans is between 2.5 and 7 years of age.  Kathy Dettwyler

So why did I decide to follow child-led weaning and place myself in a tiny percentage of women nursing past 18 months?  Remember I said when pregnant with Liam that I would wean him no later than 6 months.  Ben nursed until 28 months, so my thinking changed alot somewhere along the way.

Safety note about this photo: I was not sleeping with the sheets since Ben was newborn.  He fell asleep nursing and Dave wanted to capture the co-sleeping but covered me.

 

When Ben was born, I was hoping to nurse until age 2.  I wasn't sure whether I would then gently wean him or follow his lead.  I was not happy with the way Liam weaned suddenly due to a nursing strike.  Thankfully, Ben took right to nursing at the hospital.  Even more surprising, Ben was a fast nurser which meant he wasn't constantly attached to me and he even chose to nurse every 3 hours.  Nursing him was so easy.

At 3 weeks Ben started crying inconsolably.  If I had known then that random crying and screaming would last 2 years, I am not sure I could have survived it.  The first pediatrician said colic, but a few weeks later, a second ped said it was reflux.  We started with Zantac and it made no difference.  His dosage was increased and increased again.  Nothing made a difference.  I eliminated dairy and soy from my diet.  By 4 months, we were all weary.  Ben started spitting up blood.  Blood tests confirmed internal bleeding and we finally got a referral to a pediatric GI.

These photos were taken in January 2011 when Ben was 21 months.



The GI put Ben on Prilosec and it reduced the crying from 6 to 7 hours a day to 3 hours a day.  3 hours of crying a day is alot, and by this time, he was almost 6 months.  His weight was not maintaining on a curve.  He was born around 30th percentile and went up to 50th percentile by 2 months.  Between 2 and 4 months, he fell 42 percentile points to 8th percentile.  He fell even further over the next couple of months to 2nd percentile.  The GI suggested that I formula feed.  I requested a 2nd opinion.

The 2nd GI did not think I should supplement with formula but did make me talk to a nutritionist to ensure that I was consuming enough calories to support a nursling.  The trial of going of milk and soy lasted about 4 months and did nothing to reduce Ben's crying so I started consuming them again.  There were no changes to Ben in amount of crying.  Ben still wasn't gaining weight as expected.  The 2nd GI was convinced that reflux wasn't an issue and tested Ben for every disorder possible that causes growth issues.  Time and again, the tests showed Ben was healthy.  He was still crying hours a day.  Dave was deployed and I was worn out.  Ben wouldn't take a bottle so I didn't leave him at all basically.  I constantly questioned whether I was making the right choice.

We made it to the 1 year milestone and Ben was still nursing.  He was also still spitting up every day, sometimes multiple times, and often solid food rather than breast milk.  The 2nd GI wanted to trial Ben off the Prilosec.  The trial went horribly; Ben stopped sleeping, refused solids, and went back to screaming 6 hours a day.  The GI tried to put him on Zantac and it made no difference.  Ben went back on the Prilosec but was still refusing solids and solely nursing.  His sleep wasn't improving, and he was still crying alot.  But something was going right: he was gaining weight.  At 14-18 months, eating little other than breast milk and kefir, his growth went from the 4 or 5th percentile all the way up to the 20th percentile. 

In the meantime, we had moved so we needed to see a new GI.  This time we had to travel 3000 miles to get there.  This GI tripled Ben's Prilosec dosage and at 19 months he finally started sleeping through the night.  With the Prilosec and Early Intervention OT, he started to eat more.  The crying didn't decrease.  Ben was scoped in January and it showed his esophagus is healthy.  The GI wanted to take him off Prilosec.  I asked for a 2nd opinion again.  I also started taking him to a chiropractor.  Ben was still spitting up weekly at 22 months old and as I mentioned had bouts of unexplained screaming.

The 4th GI agreed to leave him on Prilosec until after his 2nd birthday.  His 2 year well baby showed that his growth was catching up to his peers, especially his height.  Sometime after he turned 2, the uncontrollable crying stopped.  In addition, I met the milestone I set for myself: I nursed Ben until he turned 2.  He only nursed twice a day so I saw no reason to stop.  Over the last few months, Ben went down to nursing once a day to every other day.  By June, he was nursing once or twice a week.  It is August 7th and he has nursed once this month so far, and I don't expect he'll nurse at all in September. 

We are done.  After supporting a baby with my body in pregnancy or nursing continually since December 2006, I am a happy to have my body belong to me again.  But since we are done making babies, I am sad to say good-bye to nursing.  Of all mothering things, it is the one that comes most natural to me.  I struggle getting my boys to sleep close to a normal amount.  Neither of them eat well or much.  I struggle with issues related to discipline and what is typical development.  Nursing is easy.

I am glad that I kept an open mind about length of nursing.

Celebrating World Breastfeeding Week: Part I....Why I don't Cover Up

It is World Breastfeeding Week, which is a bit ironic at this house as it looks like Ben might be weaned at almost 28 months.

Before I ever got pregnant, I wasn't sure that I'd breastfeed children at all.  I didn't even really have a desire to try. Then I got a job that required me to give workshops to military families and part of one workshop was presented by WIC on the benefits of breastfeeding.  So when I got pregnant, I decided I'd try to breastfeed, but when asked for how long I always answered "6 months or until he gets his first teeth."

Then Liam was born on August 20, 2007 at 10:38pm.  It wasn't until the early hours of August 21st that he even knew he was alive and that he was going to survive.  Until about 1am, we had no status and only knew he was rushed out of the room unable to breathe and Dave was not allowed to go with him.  I refused to call family that Liam had arrived because I wasn't even sure what I'd tell them.  I hadn't seen him myself and no one would tell us if he was going to be alright.  Around 1am, we finally got an update that they were trying to stabilize Liam for transfer to a hospital with a NICU. 

About 3 or 4am, the two loves of my life left me all alone.  I remember sitting alone in my hospital bed crying and a nurse came in and quietly said "You really should get some rest, but in the meantime, do you want to try pumping?"  I spent my time in the hospital pumping as much as I could, which in those first days in just small amounts of colustrum.  I felt defeated when Dave came to get the the milk I pumped, but the NICU nurses assured him that I was giving Liam "liquid gold."  I remember thinking Liam would never latch on since I was missing this pivotal first days with him.

Finally, I was released.  This picture was taking when I put him into my arms for the first time, right before I nursed him for the first ever time.

In the photo, you can see the feeding tube they had down his nose.  That is how he started off eating.  I was incredibly blessed and lucky that Liam was a natural at nursing.  While we had some struggles with getting a good latch on my right breast, we really had an easy time.  It took 5 days for my milk to come in and i never had painful engorgement.  Liam was a slow nurser, nursing for 60-90 minutes every 90 to 120 minutes for the first 4 months.  I once calculated that I spent 14-16 hours a day nursing for 4 months.  I loved mostly every second of it.

The fact that Liam nursed so often and the fact that he wouldn't take a bottle meant we HAD to nurse in public.  I never wanted to be someone nursing with my boobs hanging out, so I bought a cover....but like the bottle, Liam hated the cover too.

Liam was nursed everywhere from the Sandringham garden (summer house to British royalty) to all over the military base to airplanes flying between England and Germany and England and the US to train and subway rides to German cafes to English pubs to parks in London....and even once in line at Heathrow, without the people next to me even knowing.  Dave didn't even know; he asked me if Liam was sleeping.

Liam was a high needs baby, but nursing was one thing that settled him.  As it happened, it was also the single parenting/mothering thing that came perfectly natural to me.  Then in July 2008 when Liam was 11 months old, we moved from England to the US.  The day after landing, Liam refused to nurse.  I started pumping....I LOATHE pumping.  I contacted the Le Leche League in our new town.  I consulted with the lactation consultant at the local hospital.  In the meantime, we found out that Liam had a double ear infection.  Before his antibiotic course finished, I took a pregnancy test and found out I was pregnant.  With a new pregnancy and an almost 1 year old refusing to nurse, I made the decision to switch to formula (as Liam wasn't eating much solids yet).  This meant though that I was still pumping when I got pregnant. 

As of today, I have been continually pregnant or breastfeeding since December 1, 2006.  I know people have a longer stretch but for me who never expected to nurse, that is pretty long.  When I tell people, they act shocked and ask me how many children I have and then seem even more shocked that the answer is only 2 children.