Mommy Is Not A Sippy Cup

Since Levi is now officially weaned, I thought I’d share a little about my adventures in breastfeeding.

Prior to Levi’s arrival, I was more worried about breastfeeding than his birth. Breastfeeding an infant up to eight times a day for a year seemed daunting. So being a good former journalist, I researched the heck out of how to breastfeed and asked my more experienced mama friends to let me in on what worked for them. Here are a handful of the tips that I found to be beneficial:

  • Work with a lactation consultant. All the research in the world didn’t help me nearly as much as having a private lesson with a lactation consultant on my two postpartum days at the hospital. These women helped me learn how to properly latch Levi, pump and answered my seemingly endless questions about this natural, yet surprising complex built-in feeding system. I called a lactation consultant when I was engorged after my milk came in, and Levi wouldn’t latch. Who knew to try a nipple shield? It worked! I also attended a weekly breastfeeding class at the hospital where I delivered; in six weeks I went from struggling and having a ton of questions to being able to give other new moms tips.
  • Do what you feel is best for you and your baby. You will find that advice from lactation consultants and pediatricians will disagree more often than you might expect. One piece of advice I’m glad I followed from the pediatrician was to nurse Levi no more than 10-15 minutes on each side. That was a sanity-saver! Prior to that, Levi would nurse 20-30 minutes per side, which after burping him left me less than an hour before I had a start the process all over again.
  • Count the time in between feedings from start to start. For a newborn who is nursing every two hours, that means you nurse at 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Not two hours after baby finishes the 6 a.m. feeding. I was shocked when a friend told me this, but she was right. Also, the lactation consultants will tell you not to wait two hours in between feedings for the first week or two, as it’s important to nurse baby on demand to stimulate your milk supply.
  • Nurse baby every two hours during the day, so that baby sleeps through the night. Since Levi was so tiny—5 pounds, 11 ounces at birth—he still woke up in the middle of the night to nurse for a few months. However, he did very quickly sleep longer stretches and soon thereafter through the night, which allowed me to also get some much-needed sleep. He, of course, regressed on this skill whenever I had a business trip planned. Funny how that works.
  • Enjoy breastfeeding your baby. While I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, I really do look back fondly on those many times I got to cuddle with Levi while he was nursing, especially after he got really squirmy. When I could, I took nursing as an opportunity to read, call my mom, play on my iPhone or watch a TV show, as these moments seemed to be the only times I really had to relax. I think God designs breastfeeding in such a way that you have to just sit down for a few minutes.
  • Pump once a day while you’re on maternity leave to start building up a freezer supply of milk for when you return to work. Once you’ve established a good breastfeeding relationship with your newborn, I recommend pumping once a day to start your freezer supply. One thing I didn’t expect was to use up my freezer supply so quickly once I went back to work, as Levi drank more milk at daycare than I anticipated. That shouldn’t be a surprise since there’s no fuel gage on my boobs, and I was a first-time parent. I do recommend filling bottles with the same amount of milk each day, so you can better gauge how much your child is drinking. However, you may need to supplement with formula if you’re away from baby all day.
  • Relax during your pumping sessions. It can be difficult to relax at work, but whenever possible leave your laptop on your desk and take a few minutes for yourself while you’re pumping. I often worked on my laptop while I pumped, but I found myself to be a whole lot less stressed if I spent that time reading, checking personal email, ordering our latest baby need on Amazon or calling my husband.
  • Supplementing with formula is not the end of the world. Levi was exclusively breastfed for four months, at which time his doctor was concerned about his lack of weight gain. I personally attribute this to not producing as much milk while pumping at work than when I nursed him at home. Since this news came via letter after Levi’s four-month check-up on the last business day before the Thanksgiving holiday, I freaked out. Thank you to all our dear friends and family who rushed in with advice when we couldn’t reach the doctor, and I had no clue how to mix formula and breastmilk properly. It gets complicated easily because you can store breastmilk longer than formula, and given my limited supply of breastmilk, I didn’t want to waste any. What ended up working for us was starting to supplement by nursing Levi on the normal schedule and offering a 2-ounce bottle after two feedings each day. When we went back to daycare after the long weekend, we sent three 5- to 6-ounce breastmilk bottles (depending on how much I pumped the previous work day) and one 4-ounce formula bottle each day. Levi has since caught up, growing from the 1st percentile to the 25th. He also loves solid food, which we introduced at four months per our doctor’s advice, so I’m sure that helped too.
  • Wean when it’s best for both you and your baby. While I had always planned on weaning Levi around a year old, becoming pregnant with my second child sped up the process. I never wanted to be that mom who was pregnant and nursing, but I ended up breastfeeding Levi for exactly 13 months, which ended up being through the first eight weeks of my second pregnancy. When I started staying home with Levi in June, he was 10 months old. At that point he had become quite squirmy and had trouble focusing on nursing. I found myself saying, “Levi, Mommy is not a sippy cup.” He’d pop off to say hi to dad or check out his surroundings. I found this to be quite frustrating and took it as a sign that he was ready to start weaning. It became apparent that he was ready, and it was probably just me wanting to savor that one-on-one time with him a little longer.
  • Wean gradually. As you lengthen the time in between nursing sessions, you are essentially already weaning, as you are reducing the number of times your baby nurses throughout the day. I started by cutting out the inconvenient 6 p.m. nursing session, then gradually cut out other nursing sessions during the day until we were down to three times a day—just after waking up, before nap time and before bedtime—by his first birthday. I knew that all was going well when Levi would sleep through the night and was generally content and happy during the day. Cutting out those last few nursing session were, frankly, a little terrifying to me. Levi seemed content with fewer nursing sessions as long as he still had opportunities to nurse. He did still ask to nurse (“milk” in sign language or later “more” in sign language followed by pointing at mommy’s chest and/or pulling at my shirt) frequently, but if it wasn’t the appropriate time to nurse, I’d offer him a sippy cup of milk (formula before his first birthday, whole milk or a mix of the two after his first birthday). To cut out the pre-nap nursing, I started implementing his bedtime routine (reading, singing to Levi while cuddling in his room as we walked back and forth in front of his crib, then turning on about 5 minutes of bedtime music before leaving his room) mid-day. After a week or two of that going well, I cut out the morning nursing session by immediately feeding him breakfast, which includes a sippy cup of milk, when we wakes up. Well, after changing his diaper, of course. At that time I started shortening the length of time he nursed down to 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes and finally 1 minute on each side. It must have weaned my milk supply appropriately because Levi somehow knew to pop off after less time each session. I ended up having no adverse side effects, so we must have weaned correctly. Woo hoo!

 

Thank you so much to my awesome friends and family who helped me figure out to feed my baby! And a shout out to God for answering my husband’s and my prayer that everything would go as He designed. Here’s to starting the process all over again in late March!

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