Fee's World

Before I gave birth to Chops, if you’d have asked me how long I intended breastfeeding my reply would have been, “first birthday or teeth”. Ha! Teeth came, barring a few minor nips and one sleepy falling off the breast occasion when he’d just cut teeth four and five where there was blood, teeth posed no problem to breastfeeding, then came his 1st birthday. By then I was peer supporting and would put myself firmly in the lactivist category, I was totally and utterly clued up on the benefits of both breastfeeding and letting him self-wean, WHENEVER that might be, but really wanting him to have Mummy milk until he was at least 2, the recommended minimum age of normal breastfeeding.

Then I got pregnant. It took 5 years and the help of Clomid to conceive our little man so when we were understandably pretty surprised when we conceived our little lady pretty much straight away!  Now at 35 weeks pregnant I feel I’d like to reflect in how that journey has been, before my experience us skewed by the birth of our daughter .

The simple truth is that it’s been tough. The first trimester was pretty painful but there was still milk. Second trimester was really uncomfortable because my milk pretty much dried up at around 16 weeks. Dry nursing is no fun and topped with extreme agitation every time he nursed I won’t lie it was damn hard to keep going, but I really wanted weaning to be his choice and he was only 18 months old! We were down to sleep time nursing only by then which is just as well. By the end of the second trimester I was nursing from one side only and just twice a day, three times at most and that was manageable. I noticed little drops if milk coming back and started to get excited about the prospect of my milk coming back in. Yes!

Then cane the third trimester. Oh dear. Had I not gone through such emotional turmoil in the second trimester I would be weaning him, but that felt like the months of dry nursing would have been in vain!