Six Months of Breastfeeding (and counting)

I haven't talked much about breastfeeding, aside from our bumpy-but-not-so-bumpy beginning.  Since we've just passed the six-month mark and Thumper will soon be trying solids (likely this weekend, as I want the Yeti to be there and last weekend we forgot), I want to document a bit of life-before-other-food before I forget.

As of now, Thumper is six months old and exclusively breastfed.  We do not bedshare, but his crib is in our room, so it's pretty easy for me to get up the two-ish times he wakes at night.  On a regular night, he wakes, I change his diaper, he nurses and is back asleep in 7-10 minutes.  The whole process takes around 15 minutes, and now I'm pretty good at falling back asleep immediately.  I say most nights because last night he woke up every hour for some reason, but thankfully that is mostly an anomaly.

The first few months of nursing felt much harder than it does now.  I could never get comfortable with him on the nursing pillow - at six pounds he was so small, he tended to fall in the gap between my stomach and the pillow.  I solved that problem by making myself sit up straighter with pillows behind me, and stuffing a receiving blanket in the gap.  It was often easier to just cradle him in my arms, even though it wasn't hands-free and made my arms tired.

Some habits from those early days remain: when he feeds in the middle of the night I just cradle him, using a receiving blanket under his head as a little cushion, and during the day, though I use the pillow now, I tend to have one arm under his head.  I guess I never mastered the hands-free thing.  I also just realized how weird it is that I use a blanket as a cushion under his head at night, but not during the day.  Well, he doesn't seem to mind.

Obviously breastfeeding hurt at first - my nipples actually had purple bruises in the hospital that made the nurses wince.  Those went away quickly, and everything seemed fairly smooth for a short time.  I got a manual pump and would pump so the Yeti could feed Thumper during some of those night feeds (this was still in the Long Night of having a newborn).

Then things seemed to get worse around two months.  I was sore, and my nipples seemed irritated all the time.  The color was blanching.  At the same time, Thumper was doing that thing where he fussed whenever I fed him.  I spent forever reading online, trying to self-diagnose and solve all my problems.

I was pretty sure that either Thumper or I had thrush, and a few days later, I actually spotted the telltale white spots on the sides of his cheeks.  He was due the next day for his shots as well, but that day the regular doctor had to cancel at the last minute, and we were seen by a nurse practitioner.  She assured me it was a mild case of thrush and all I had to do was put athlete's foot cream (lotrimin) on my nipples, and it would clear it up for both of us in a few weeks.

I tried that, and I also tried other things I had read on the internet; to avoid reinfection, I washed and dried everything on hot, I avoided pumping, I can't even remember what else.  It didn't go away, and seemed to get worse in Thumper.  I took him back in after a week or so and we were both given meds: Nystatin for him and a yeast infection pill for me.  Thankfully, it cleared the both of us right up.

I was still paranoid about nursing, though.  I thought every bit of soreness was a sign of cracks or blisters or clogged ducts or whatever else.  After another month or so of nursing, I came to realize: most of the time it doesn't hurt, but occasionally, due to a lazy habit or extra feeding due to a growth spurt or, for all I know, the magic of the full moon, I will get sore.  And then it will go away.

I never did get back in the habit of pumping regularly - it was just such a pain and once nursing itself seemed easier, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.  I have a few times, for times when I knew I'd be out of the house for more than a few hours, but those times are few and far between, since most everything is in walking distance (I even got to walk to a spa for a massage as a Mother's Day gift) and that saves on time away. Luckily, the Yeti doesn't seem to care; again, most of the time Thumper wasn't really a drink-and-stare-adoringly kind of baby, so that wasn't the way they bonded anyway.  I am glad he got that experience in those early days anyway.

milk drunk at around 2 months old

By four months, just like almost everything else, breastfeeding really got much easier.  Other than the doctor's office after shots, I still have only had to nurse in public once; it just hasn't worked out that I've needed to, since we're often close to home.  I do get the feeling that Thumper would not be subtle in public nowadays, but I'll roll with that when it happens.

If I think there's a chance I might need to feed him while we're out, I'll make sure I'm wearing a stretchy Old Navy tank (their Tami, I could write an ode to those things and probably will) under whatever shirt I'm wearing.  That way, I can pull the shirt up, and the top of the tank down, and not feel like I'm getting naked in public.  I haven't had to, but I consider it as equivalent to taking the diaper bag; I know I'll inevitably regret it if I don't.

I'm reasonably sure Thumper gets adequate amounts of milk, but I've never been especially copious in production.  I don't feel my milk "letdown," and I don't typically leak (the few times I have, have been a shock).  I've never been able to manually express, unless I was super-super engorged, like if Thumper literally slept through the night.  I've only had one scare where I thought I wasn't producing enough, but it was enough to make me thankful that things have been going as smoothly as they have for so long.

Thus, I have bought formula, to mix in with his cereal when we try that.  The general rule of thumb I've heard from our doctor is "food before one is just for fun."  So, in theory, I'll feed Thumper as normal first, and then whatever little bites of food he consumes are extra.  I've read I should use "formula or breastmilk" to mix in with his food.  Personally, I feel my breastmilk is too precious and limited to waste time pumping, to mix into food, only to have most of it thrown out.  I'm not a faucet and I'd rather it go where it can do the most good.

I'll admit, it's kind of weird thinking about giving him formula.  Not because there's anything wrong with it, but for so long the general mantra is "only breastmilk" for all those health benefits you hear about.  I can count on one hand the number of other liquids he's ingested (like, for example, Tylenol).  I have to remind myself that he'll be consuming all sorts of food now; a bit of formula mixed in is certainly no worse than anything else.

So we've made through those first six months of breastfeeding, the ones that are cited as the most beneficial time to be exclusively breastfeeding.  When I think of it that way, I know some would say I should feel proud, but I still feel like it's mostly the luck of the draw - I'm just lucky that I was able to do something that was important to me.  I don't feel like I did anything in particular.  I feel relief that it's worked out so far.

My next goal was one year, mostly just because I was told that was how long I was nursed and it's just an idea I latched on to sometime in my teens.  My mother clarified the other day that it was actually fourteen months.  Funny, because I just read a study on women who had gestational diabetes; the study claimed that women who'd breastfed up to fourteen months lowered their chances of then getting Type II diabetes.  Since my skinny, active father has Type II, and I had gestational, I have a feeling I'm at risk for II myself and fourteen months doesn't seem that much different from twelve - so I'm thinking I'm extending the goal to fourteen.

Still, though, I'll mostly carry on the way I have thus far; just glad I can contribute something extra that's beneficial, and fairly easily to boot.

Less drunk, more snooze