1st: Breastfeeding & Weaning (Updated)

First Breastfeeding

I would like to say breastfeeding came easily or naturally, but it didn't. It required a lot of work and determination. I had moments of doubt and struggled with my baby having a poor latch for the first few weeks. When my first baby was born, we were visited by the lactation consultant in the hospital who helped adjust baby and put her to the breast. It seemed like my daughter was nursing fine. Then we were discharged 24 hours later and something changed. My baby no longer seemed to be nursing fine. Whenever she latched onto the breast it hurt. Sometimes she would do an "angry" cry so much that she wouldn't even latch onto the breast. Other times, she seemed to be nursing fine, but then starting crying as if she wasn't getting enough food. At first we worried this maybe gas or colic. We took her to her pediatrician where we discovered she lost 12% of her weight and the normal amount was up to 10%. (Later I would read articles that talk about more than normal weight loss in full term newborns and some breastfeeding issues maybe a result of having IVs during labor). He suggested what I dreaded as a first time mom who really wanted to breastfeed, supplementing with formula. For 3 days, I kept trying to breastfeed and supplemented with formula. I called the lactation consultant basically in tears with my baby screaming in the background to farther help me in my quest of breastfeeding. This resulted in a few visits, where I was given a nipple shield and able to breastfeed under the lactation consultant's trained eye, but then went home in my every day life where my baby cried at the breast and none of the tricks she showed me worked and were poorly executed by my inexperience. My family said, why not just give her the formula if it would be easier? But still I continued to try to breastfeed her. I had my aunt who is a nurse and a midwife come visit for a week, she had breastfed both of her children. In fact was pumping for her youngest while she was visiting. She made a difference in my experience with breastfeeding. She told me it was not necessary to give the baby formula if we could correct my baby's poor latch. So out went the formula. She showed me how to latch my baby properly, how to unlatch her if she was not on the breast correctly. How to hold the baby in different positions, which were hard to copy and understand in the nursing books. Things drastically improved. I was afraid to let go of the nipple shield and she said, I can learn to breastfeed with the nipple shield only or I can learn to breastfeed without it. Of course I didn't want to be pulling out a nipple shield when my baby was 12 months old still breastfeeding with it. I took the plunge and started breastfeeding with it less at each feeding and found with knowing how to properly latch her, my nipples were becoming less cracked to eventually no pain whatsoever. It took about 4 months before I felt confident in my breastfeeding abilities. I made short and long term breastfeeding goals. My long term goal was to breastfeed for a year and each month my short term goal was to be able to make it through the entire month breastfeeding. Each day, I got better and more confident in my breastfeeding and made it to 12 months of breastfeeding. My goal was to make it 12 months, but I didn't feel like my baby was ready to wean when I got there. When I got to 12 months, I realized how little 12 months still is and continued breastfeeding her. For the first 12-24 months, I nursed on demand. For 12-24 months I also let her eat as much or as little solids that she wanted. After 24 months, I started limiting when and where she could breastfeed. The limiting started at nursing 3x a day when she woke up in the morning, when she went down for a nap and when she nursed to sleep at night. This led us to 2x a day, the nursing for nap and nursing to sleep, then this moved on to 1x a day. Her once a day was actually her night feeding that we carried until I weaned.

First Weaning
I weaned my first at 30 months when I was pregnant with my second at 22 weeks. By that point she was nursing once a day and nursing was hurting. Weaning was hard and emotional on me. I was happy that I was able to get pregnant while breastfeeding, because it didn't feel right to me to take away breastfeeding from her just to get pregnant. I worried about how she would do without breastfeeding, since we had co-slept and breastfeed for 30 months. I replaced breastfeeding to sleep with cuddling to sleep, which we have been doing for 5 months. At first she did ask to nurse, but didn't cry. I would tell her that we would cuddle to sleep and if she still wanted to nurse in a few minutes we would. She almost always fell asleep before asking to nurse again.