(Part 1 of this journey can be found HERE.)

On with the story…

Chapter 5

I was now pregnant with my 5th child; this being the second time I had become pregnant while practicing ecological breastfeeding (breastfeeding on demand, co-sleeping, etc).  I nursed through the pregnancy until my 5th month when my father died.  With preparations and time spent at his bedside, I found myself spending long stretches of time away from my 4th child.  When we were reunited, he no longer wanted to nurse.  Emotionally run down and physically exhausted, I allowed him to wean. He was 13 months old.  4 months later, his little sister Emily was born.

Chapter 6

My nursing relationship with Emily was publicly chronicled in my award-winning post entitled Breastfeeding:  The Memory of Emily.  You will have to excuse me if I do not recount that story here.  This chapter is painfully short, as was my precious daughter’s life.

Chapter 7

As with my other babies, I had already been cycling regularly while nursing Emily.  6 weeks after her death, I found out I was pregnant with who would become our New Year’s baby, little Micah.  However, his birth did not go as I had expected, and a tramatic emergency c-section put wrenches in our breastfeeding relationship from the get-go.  I was too weak and tired to nurse him in a way that would boost my milk production for my “little” 10# 6 ounce baby boy.  He required supplementation, which led to nipple confusion, which led to frustration.  A month later, after I was finally healed from the surgery,  I took him to bed with me for the day and walked away from the bottles forever.

Chapter 8

For the first time EVER, my cycles did not return until my newest baby was 9 months old!  I was overjoyed!  What was different?  The only thing I can even remotely attribute this to was the fact that our diet now consisted of entirely organic meat.  It’s my theory and I’m stickin’ to it.

The day Micah turned 1, I got a positive pregnancy test.  He was weaned shortly thereafter…for personal reasons.

Chapter 9

In case you are counting, that is now 5 babies in just at 6 years, with Garin being born 19 days after my 3rd child’s 6th birthday.  Of my 7 children, ONLY the ones born less than 2 years apart were conceived while I was breastfeeding. Sometimes you do everything “right” and God still bless!

Garin is nearly 4 months old, is exclusively breastfed, and nurses whenever he pleases.  By his own choice, he does not take a pacifier and has yet to figure out that his thumb can be peeled away from the rest of his fist so as to make only his thumb sopping wet, rather than his entire body.

He was not an easy baby to nurse in the beginning.  Let’s just say the word PIRANHA is what comes to mind when I think of those early weeks.  In addition to that, he was colicky until about a month ago.  Add to that postpartum depression for the first time ever and you get a little bit of a nightmare, but we stayed the course.  He nurses fantastically now, he’s a happy little guy most days, and my hormones are beginning to level.

The rest of this chapter has yet to be written.  I don’t have a breastfeeding philosophy because I’ve never managed to have two children exactly alike. All I know is breastfeeding has been a wonderful experience, but not always an easy one.  I cherish these years, and I am sure when I am an old woman, I will dearly miss having a nursling in my arms.

Several of you have asked about our breastfeeding and weaning practices.  While I know how volatile this subject can be, I’ve decided to go ahead and give you our story in the hopes you might see yourself among my words and possibly learn something new about yourself and/or others.

Chapter 1

Baby #1 is born.  I am 21 and know no one who has breastfed with any success.  While I have heard of La Leche League, what I have heard has been coated in a tone of disdain.  However, I am determined to breastfeed my son for at least 2 weeks.

He is born via C-section and weighs in at 8# 15 oz.  I am told he needs formula.  So, we supplement.  He does well nursing and supplementing, but I am in pain.  Cracked and bleeding, I turn to breast shells to get me through.  {Oh, and did I tell you my husband kept saying I had promised to give it 2 weeks and I couldn’t go back on my promise?  He’s pretty much the only reason I kept going.}

However, I was in college and I figured the only way to get my son to sleep through the night so I could function during the day was to give him formula.  Plus, I was going to be driving a combine {yes, the kind you cut wheat with} for my dad in a few months and thought I would need to have him completely weaned by then anyway.

At 2½ months, my first child was fully weaned.

Chapter 2

It is nearly 3 years later, and I have made friends with a few people who have breastfed successfully past 2 weeks.  In fact, one mother lasted 9 months and also attends La Leche League.  She assures me they are not lunatics.  I am encouraged to try again, this time setting my goal at 1 year.

But baby is jaundice.  And she nurses poorly.  We use a SNS (Supplemental Nursing System…something I am told is no longer used) and after weeks of hard work, she nurses like a champ.  I treasure my nights nursing her in a chair in her room with soft music in the background.  When she is old enough for a cup, I supplement with formula here and there.

At 1 year, she is weaned.

Here is where I reveal something not so pleasant.  I weaned my daughter because I wanted another baby.  You see, rather than fully enjoying the blessings I had been given, I was getting ahead of myself.  I figured breastfeeding my daughter was holding me back from another pregnancy, and when I became sick with the flu right around the time she turned 1 year old, I found my excuse to quit nursing.

Was she traumatized?  No…but I learned a valuable lesson during the next 3 years.

Chapter 3

Weaning my daughter did not afford me the blessing of another baby.  It was nearly 4 years and many hard lessons later, when I finally gave birth to my 3rd child.  During those years, I grieved weaning my 2nd born.

But this new little one nursed beautifully from the beginning.  This time I set no end date.

I had learned more.  I wanted more.  I nursed “on-demand,” I co-slept, when she got bigger, I side-carred the crib to our bed.  She was my first baby to be worn.  We lived together in a perfect rhythm.  She rarely cried.  And I felt like maybe this time I was doing it “right.”

But when she was 3 months old, my cycles came back.

Because I had always supplemented, I was sure that when I practiced ecological breastfeeding, my cycles would stay away.  I had heard of a year or better of amenorrhea, so I was shocked and saddened when this did not prove to be the case for me.

And then I became pregnant.

My little one was just 7 months old.

And then came the accusations. I must have done something “wrong.”  Surely I didn’t really co-sleep or nurse on demand.  I was probably slipping a bottle in there every now and then or putting her on a schedule.  The truth was she was exclusively breastfed (meaning she’d was not eating solids yet), she did not take a pacifier or suck her thumb (which would naturally space her feedings) and she nursed whenever and wherever she pleased.  We were a walking “exception to the rule.”

Determined to do my best with the circumstances I had been handed, I nursed through the pregnancy and tandem nursed for months after the new baby’s birth.

And then it happened again.

Despite the fact that I was tandem nursing two children born 16 months apart, I started cycling almost immediately.

Chapter 4

I weaned my 3rd child at 22 months because I could no longer handle the demands of a nursing infant and a nursing toddler.  I continued to co-sleep and nurse my newest little one on demand, but I no longer believed in amenorrhea…at least not for me.  I did my best to field the comments and accusations as to what I might be doing “wrong,” all the while knowing in my heart, I had done everything I knew to do.

And when baby #4 was 8 months old, I became pregnant again.

To be continued…