All About the Wean

It’s World Breastfeeding Week and I’m thinking about weaning.

Not because I just want to be done with and don’t want to pump. I got over that when I started pumping much less, which made it seem like much less of a burden. And I know why I breastfeed — this is why — it’s because my supply has dwindled. And when I say dwindled I mean in the 20 minutes I pumped at work today I got 3 oz TOTAL. Which is not much. At all. And isn’t exactly the equivalent of the 20 oz Bella probably had today. Oddly enough I wrote a similar post in November 2007 when I was breastfeeding Bear.

Luckily, when I had an abundance of supply I froze a lot of milk so we’ve been working off of frozen for a few weeks now in addition to the little I’m creating. When I’m home I try to always nurse her. And she’s swallowing so she must be getting something, right? She gets bored quickly and tries to move onto better things when I’m feeding her, but I think that’s also in part due to the fact that she’s 10 months old now and always on the go.

My doctor gave us the okay to go to cows milk at 11 months instead of formula if I’m out of milk. I’m just hoping I can even get that far with what I’ve got. I even got my period back. First time since December 2009 Aunt Flo visited me and I was quite unprepared. I was at work in a white skirt at the time. Luckily, I had an emergency tampon so it was okay. What wasn’t okay was the next day when I was at the beach with my family and the Art Teacher in Chicago and I realized that there was a lot of very peach waterly liquid running down my legs. Since I had just gotten out of the water it was quite bleached out and I was able to wrap myself in a towel and make a beeline to the restroom. Not pleasant, but I macguyvered it together.

That was a long tangent away from weaning.

While I may physically be prepared to wean and my body is already creating much less supply Bella has no idea this is coming. How do you start to prepare them? Just give her less and less in her bottles? Give her less bottles? Switch a bottle with whole milk and hope she doesn’t see through my trickery?

You’d think having a 4 year old would mean I knew what I was doing but let me tell you a secret: you forget. Your brain gets filled with preschool facts and you’ve forgotten what in the world to do with an infant. Pretty sure I can’t use a sticker chart with Bella to help her wean. Or promise her a bakugan if she stops nursing.

#bfing and your body

Written for the breastfeeding blog hop:

I’ve been breastfeeding Bella for a little over nine months now and plan to continue until her one year birthday. Though my supply has started to dwindle (as has my desire to pump) so we’ve been cracking into the frozen stash quite a few times and I’m a little worried we won’t make it to the 12 month mark. My pediatrician gave us the okay to supplement with cows milk at 11 months so right now I’m just trying to get to that point.

1. Monthly Visitor: The main changes I’ve noticed is that well I haven’t had a period since December 2009. Yes, I know you’re all extremely jealous. Its really quite amazing. Though I am kind of always wondering when I’m going to get it so it sort of sucks to have that uncertainty.

2. Weight Loss: I haven’t remotely noticed this supposed weight loss that I hear about, apparently that doesn’t work for me. Clearly, I’m consuming enough excess calories to make up the difference for the extra ones I’m burning producing milk.

3. Extra Endowment: I’ve always been proud of what I’ve got up top, but my oh my is that the biggest change. My husband absolutely loves it, too bad he can’t touch them because Bella’s got them on loan! With Ben I went from a B/C to a full D. Now with Bella I was already a C and now I’m just a C/D. Not quite as big as with Bear but I was happy that they didn’t completely go away either. That was always what I was most disappointed about. You get to try out this great rack for awhile and then they take it away!

4. Mental Association: I joke that Bella has them on loan, but mentally that’s where the biggest change is. I associate my breasts in a completely unsexual way. They exists primarily to provide sustenance and nutrition to my daughter. This Babble article pretty much sums up what I think about breastfeeding and a sex life.

Despite all the changes rather physical, mental, imagined or otherwise I will definitely continue to breastfeed when I hopefully have more children. Now I just need to get the H on board with the latter! I’ll lure him in with the promiose of large breasts he can’t touch!

There’s No Daddy Milk #bfing

When Bear was a baby it was super easy to divide up feeding duties with the H because I was exclusively pumping. In fact, I’ll admit I’m lucky enough that I didn’t get up for most of the nighttime feedings. In the beginning I would get up and pump while the H fed Bear just to keep my supply up I would pump whenever he ate. As he grew older I pumped less and less during the night because he slept more and more and then finally I stopped night pumping, but the H would still tend to Bear if he were to wake up and I would blissfully sleep with a pillow over my head.

With Bella its been very different since I’m actually nursing her. In fact its often kind of frustrating because I seem to always be the one to feed her since I’m the one with Mommy’s Milk. Why is there no Daddy’s milk? Whenever she would cry the H would essentially hand over and be like “feed her.” His solution to any problem seemed to be stick a boob in it, but specifically mine. Which was annoying. Especially when we were trying to teach her to sleep through the night and he always wanted me to just feed her because she was crying. Or if he’d want me to feed her and it had been less than 2 hour since she ate — she’s not hungry! Luckily now she’s been sleeping through the night for quite sometime which is wonderful and since she loves to eat her milk consumption has gone way down.

The H has always been extremely supportive of me nursing (or stopping if I had wanted to). In the beginning when I was engorged beyond belief I wanted to quit so many times because of the pain, but I couldn’t because of the guilt and I felt like he really would have supported me and not judged me if I had chosen to stop. I just knew that I would judge myself and I couldn’t give up. So I didn’t, I held on past the two week point when everyone says it will get better and it did. I’m glad that I had him there to support me, though I have to say that I get really irritated nowadays when he makes comments like “this is it?” and “what a poor showing” when I hand him my lately paltry amounts of milk that I pump during the day at work. My pumping has gone way down and I can’t get nearly as much as I used to be able to which is depressing. She seems to be much better at getting it out than my pump and seems satiated whenever I feed her. I’ll be out of town for a weekend without her this weekend so we’ll see how that goes! Hopefully I can get to the pump 3-4 a day so I don’t completely shrivel up while I’m away — I still got three months to go!

This post is a part of the Breastfeeding Blog Hop, hope you take the time to check out the other posts or link yours up!

Milk and Medicine

My husband’s solution to everything seems to be either to medicate or milk. B has a double ear infection (his first) and is obviously miserable. In addition to taking amoxicillin he’s taking Advil. Anytime B wakes up at night and cries if T can’t get him to sleep within the first 10 minutes he’s reaching for one of the bottles; milk or Advil. To me it seems unnecessary to continue to give him the Advil (even if the 8 hours have passed) if he isn’t feverish. Then again I prefer to steer clear of medicine anyways because my mother has always turned her nose up at taking medicine. And the milk issue. a) He remotely doesn’t understand the pain that it is to continuously pump. b) or understand that we have a milk shortage right now c) or understand that we have to somehow wean him within the next 4 months which won’t happen if we constantly placate him with milk or d) that he’ll never sleep through the night if we don’t break him of the eating habit.

I know that I really can’t complain because I’m blessed that my husband wakes up with B at night so I don’t need to. But at the same time, even if I’m not getting up I still want him to learn how to sleep through the night and its not like my husband doesn’t complain incessantly about it or act the martyr because he gets up twice a night.

Then again I’m not a fan of the “Ferber method” or “crying it out” so if the alternative is to continue to feed him milk than I guess I would rather that. We’ve got a bedtime routine down cold and have for over 6 months. B always falls asleep with ease its more so keeping him asleep. He’s really not attaching to any lovey even though I try to force one upon him. He just wants to cuddle and who can blame him? If only he didn’t have to make so much noise about it…

Moral of the story; I wish my husband would just sit it out longer before he feeds or medicates B. Then again, while this is happening i’m usually asleep and completely unaware of it… until I wake up and see that all the milk that I pumped for daycare has suddenly disappeared…

Decreased Milk Supply

So essentially I got cocky with my milk supply and thought that I could pump significantly less often and still get the same amount of milk and that my extensive frozen supply could hold me over.

Well now I can barely pump 3 oz in one sitting and have practically exhausted my entire frozen supply. We’re talking major crisis here. I’m drinking some sort of “Healthy Lactation” Tea in an effort to stimulate it and trying to pump more often, but so far its not really working. I need to pump out approximately 32 oz of milk a day for B to eat. I had been pumping only 3 times; morning, noon and night. I’m trying to add one night time pump (yesterday at 2 am; not fun) and one more day time pump meaning I’m going to have to pump at work twice which I’d really rather not do.

I really thought since B is 4 months away from being a year old I could start to wean him early. Except no because I really don’t want him to have formula ever and he’s not allowed to have a drop of cow’s milk until he’s 12 months according to Danielle. I’m wondering if I could just feed him more food and get him to drop a bottle. The only issue with that is that it would have to be during the day when he’s at daycare. Perhaps I can just tell him to not give him a bottle with lunch? Just make his lunch more substantial?

Than he’d have a morning bottle and cereal. Lunch cereal and vegetables. Then milk around 2ish. Milk again at 5. Dinner at 6. And then of course his two night time bottles at around 12 & 4. That could possibly work. Something to consider.

Questions:

How early have people weaned?

Did you do it without formula?

How to increase supply (except pumping all the time!— And if I do have to pump all the time how long should the intervals be?)