World Breastfeeding Week!

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It is world breastfeeding week! I have been nursing (not consecutively) for 74 months. I thought I’d write a post about my breastfeeding journey.

During my pregnancy with Harrison, I knew I would breastfeed. I wasn’t committed to a certain time frame, but figured I really wouldn’t want to nurse beyond 6 months. I also didn’t know much about it. One of my sisters breastfed, but I was too young to remember. Another one of my sisters tried so hard to breastfeed both of her children and was never able to produce enough milk despite her best efforts. I had no idea where I would fall in the milk supply spectrum. My milk took forever to come in – like over a week. Harrison was born big and hungry. I never had a huge supply with him either. I had to take prescription medication and herbs to produce enough. I hated breastfeeding for at least the first month. I felt like all he did was nurse. I felt like he was always hungry and had a lot of unsupportive people saying he was hungry. (Don’t ever tell a breastfeeding mom that she is starving her baby – especially if you have never actually breastfed). I was about to call it quits and give him bottles and then all of the sudden it got easier. I still had to take herbs and such to keep my milk going, but it wasn’t terrible. I went back to work when he was 9 weeks old. I was determined to keep going. I do not produce much milk for a pump, so I had to pump while at work and all throughout the evenings and weekends to have enough milk for him.  By the time he was about 5 months old, I was only able to pump enough for one bottle, so he was supplemented with formula. We still nursed on demand evenings and weekends. By the time he was 9 months olds, I couldn’t pump more than an ounce all day long. He was given formula bottles and nursed full time for evenings and weekends. Nursing him was such a great bonding time since we were separated for 9ish hours a day. I really enjoyed those special little snuggles. We kept our nursing relationship going for 14 months. He was only night nursing by that time and it was gentle. I felt like I had to wean him because everyone told me that he was a year old and no longer needed it. I’m so glad I stuck with it because it was worth it in the long run.

We knew that I would likely not return to work after Kadie was born. I knew I would breastfeed her. Somewhere between Harrison being born and Kadie’s pregnancy, I became a research queen, especially with parenting & health topics. I knew that I was comfortable with full term nursing even if my friends and family were not supportive. I knew it was the norm for every area, except USA. I knew I might have milk supply issues and I knew that the first month might be able. I was ready to tackle this. My milk came in within 4 days and she was not given any supplements. We co-slept and bed-shared to make it easier. I still suffered with milk supply issues and had to take the same medications.  She was a fussy baby and literally nursed all of the time. I thought about throwing in the towel again because it was hard to take care of Harrison and nurse her constantly. It took a little longer for it to get easy with her. I think it was around 2 months. We also had thrush during that time frame which was awful. She was also a big baby, but didn’t stay huge. She was petite for her first year. She took longer to night wean – it was closer to one year. At 12 months, she showed no signs of weaning and I was completely comfortable nursing her longer. She actually started nursing more around 15 months and started getting really chubby. Nursing a toddler actually makes having a toddler much easier because nursing is an instant comfort for tantrums, boo-boos, etc. I nursed her until she was 26 months old. I was about 6 months pregnant with Sam and my milk was gone and it was painful. I asked her if she would stop nursing because it hurt and she didn’t mind. She would ask occasionally, but I reminded her that it wasn’t comfortable for me and my milk was gone.

With Sam, I just knew I would breastfeed and he would wean sometime before he started college. My milk was in within 2 days. He was such a tiny baby and gained so quickly and well that I never questioned my milk supply. Around 6 months he stopped gaining well and we realized he had a tongue tie. We weren’t able to get it repaired until he was 7 months.  He started gaining well again after we had his tongue tie repaired. He is 34 months -well he will be in 10 days. He generally nurses to sleep every night and every morning when he wakes. He will still nurse in the middle of the might if he wakes. He will sometimes nurse before a nap – although those are rare lately. He never asks for milk unless he is sick or sleepy. At this point, we are both comfortable with nursing.

I am very thankful for the bond that breastfeeding has given me with my children. I have such fond memories of snuggling my little nurslings. I even have fond memories of nursing the crazy toddlers. It was very difficult for me to nurse two of them, but we made it through the hurdles and it was worth it. I was determined and had good support with my lactation consultant. I would advise any new mom to stick with it for 8 weeks before you quit. It always got easier for me by that point. Supply issues can be a beast, but there are a lot of things you can do to help  (as long as it isn’t due to insufficient glandular tissue). Thrush, mastitis, tongue ties…all of those things suck. With proper support and treatment you can get through most of those and keep on trucking along.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

Distracted - #1

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Ok here goes…

Exactly one week ago when I decided I was going to write, I went to bed with thoughts flying through my head. I mean, my head was just swimming with random thoughts. Now most nights I do go to bed with things on my mind, but I tune them out. Do you know how I do that? I pick up my phone and start by opening up Facebook to see what everyone else is doing. If that is boring enough, I will go to sleep. If not, I will move on to Instagram. Then sometimes Pinterest. Then I will look for a game to play until I am propping my eyes open with toothpicks. 

As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I heard a very loud thought. It said,

 “Alicia, STOP! It is okay to just fall asleep. You don’t have to be doing something. God created you to rest. It is okay to rest. That includes resting your mind.”

At that point, I laid my phone down and started praying. Then I heard another loud thought telling me that I needed to focus on getting rid of my distractions and that was going to be my writing venture.

So right then and there I committed to God that I would do this. My intent was to start first thing in the morning. I was going to log my phone usage. My beloved iphone is a huge distraction for me.  Here is the funny thing.  At one point in my life, I was anti smart phone. I was anti texting. I was anti most small electronics. In fact, if you tried to contact me, prior to my iphone, I probably didn’t have a clue where my phone was. We got our first smart phones in fall of 2009. We got blackberries. I didn’t really use mine as it was intended. It was a fancy way to text and I actually started texting a little bit more. I used my blackberry for texting, phone calls, Facebook and emailing. It still wasn’t a really big distraction. Fast forward to Valentines 2011. We upgraded to our iphones. I think Chris and I ignored each other for at least a week while we perfected the apps on our phones, played games, and put our lives on our iphones. We actually joke about it. Thankfully we got them at the same time.

 

Now I don’t think iphones are inherently bad. They are actually pretty nifty little things. I take way more pictures of my children because of it. I mean it is always right there by  my side and they are always being cute.  I rarely forget an appointment now because we have synced all of our information into our lovely color coded calendar – complete with reminders. And let’s be honest - it is nice to have google at your fingertips, especially with Harrison Holbrook as your child. That child is always asking questions that I don’t know how to answer. It does indeed have many good functions. But if I can’t go to sleep at night because I’m aimlessly playing on my phone when I should be trying to fall asleep, we’ve got a problem. A big problem.

Friends, I don’t want my children to have memories of a mother looking at her phone all day long. I don’t want my husband to feel like my phone is more important than what he has to tell me. I don’t want my friends to feel like all of my texts and phone notifications are more important than the time I’m spending with them.  I don’t want my phone replacing real face-to-face memories with the people whom I love the most.

I’ve been trying to keep track of my phone usage over the past week. I’ve also tried to make a point to not use it during meal times and to be more present when I’m spending time with my family.

I will leave you with some questions.

1.  How much time do you spend using your phone each day? (I’m sure there is an  app for it –haha!)

 2. How much of that time that you spend on your phone could you be doing something more fulfilling?

3. How much time do you spend on your phone when you could/should be resting?

Here are some challenges.

1.     Put your phone down at all meal times, even if you are alone.

2.     When you feel tempted to pick up your phone for idle down time, do something else instead.  (play with your child,  pet your dog, knit, crochet, read, journal, sit outside, exercise, etc)

3.     Block out a certain time of your day to respond to emails or to play on your phone. If you are not in that window of time, don’t grab it.

4.     Don’t take your phone to bed with you. (I actually use mine as an alarm, so I will be putting my on my nightstand.)

5.     Utilize the “Do Not Disturb” feature on your iphone. It can be found under settings.

6.     Turn off notifications that are not imperative. (Games, social media, etc).

7.     Put your phone away when you are visiting with another person. Give them your full attention. 

Peace out, friends. May you have a day full of life and memories. 

Distracted - Introduction

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I know that God has called me to write. I’ve been feeling it now for months. I ran from it for a bit, like I tend to do. I’m a runner. It’s okay. I’ll own it. I told Him that I wasn’t qualified. I don’t really write that well. I don’t have the proper credentials to write anything worth reading. My blog is just a hobby. Not that many people read my blog. I’m too busy. There is no way I am going to do more than blog once a month. But He told me to do it anyway. I guess you could say that I am sort of like Moses telling God that I’m not qualified. I’m certainly not saying that what I’m going to write is anything like what God called Moses to do, but you get my point. I am fortunate enough to have two people in my life who really encourage me. They encourage me to take big steps and to do bold things. These two people have helped me ignore my inner voice; who is also my worst critic. My inner voice has been telling me that I’m not capable of this.

I finally told God that I was willing to write. And guess what? Nothing happened! No ideas. None. I would just sit and stare at my computer screen. I would think of a few things, but they didn’t seem right. So I would just sit. And sit. Then one of my awesome encouragers brought me a book about writing. That night after about 6 chapters, I finally went to bed. As I was falling asleep, I had a very loud thought. I knew exactly what I was going to write about. This subject has been on my mind so much lately. It is going to be a huge journey for me. It isn’t an original topic, but that is okay because my journey is different. I am going to share my journey with you because I hope we can do this together. I pray that it helps you too.

Join me (indefinitely) as I blog through my journey of my distracted life and how to re-focus and minimalize my distractions. I absolutely crave a life of simplicity.  A life where I can lay down at night and fall asleep peacefully. A life where I awake in the morning and actually hear the birds sing, smell the coffee brewing, and see shapes in the clouds. I want a simple and fulfilling life. I have too much clutter in every aspect of my life to achieve the life I want. I don’t have the answers to any of these things yet, but I know God will show them to me. He will reveal Himself to me in many marvelous ways. My answers may not be your answers, but we can go through this journey together. You can share your answers with me and we can help each other. I’m really excited!