I reg­u­larly vol­un­teer in our church nurs­ery and take care of the 0–2 year olds dur­ing the ser­vices. Lately, I’ve noticed that there seem to be more kids than usual who grab on to the neck­line of my shirt, seemly for comfort.

Last Sun­day, I was telling a friend who was in the nurs­ery with me that I was notic­ing this hap­pen­ing more often, and she said, “They know what’s in there. They remem­ber.” My son has never been one for grab­bing my shirt or putting his hand in my shirt. I sup­pose that’s prob­a­bly because my hus­band and I have been show­ing him the baby sign for milk since he was three or four months old. We just did it to avoid hav­ing him cry with­out us know­ing why he was upset. Looks like that sign serves more than just one purpose.

Well, since I’m 23 weeks preg­nant right now, a lot of my breast­feed­ing expe­ri­ences now include talk­ing to peo­ple about breast­feed­ing while preg­nant. I get a lot of ques­tions from peo­ple like “Is that safe?” I have to bite my tongue when they ask that. If it wasn’t safe, I hope I wouldn’t still be doing it 19 weeks after I found out I was pregnant.

Another ques­tion is, “How do you have the patience for that?” or “Aren’t you exhausted?” When I first got preg­nant, I thought that breast­feed­ing dur­ing the first trimester espe­cially would make being preg­nant even harder, but I found the oppo­site to be true. I found that breast­feed­ing my ds made get­ting through the day a lit­tle eas­ier. I got to sit down and rest for 20 min­utes first thing in the morn­ing when we woke up. Then, mid-morning, I got another chance to take a load off for my son’s next feed­ing. Again, at around 1:30 and 4ish, we sat down and I relaxed with my eyes closed as he ate.

I really believe that breast­feed­ing my son actu­ally allowed me an extra hour and a half or so every day to sit and rest.

Can I breast­feed while preg­nant? Well, I can. Can you? Chances are you may have been told no. Chances are good that the answer is actu­ally yes. Many women are told by well mean­ing friends, fam­ily, or doc­tors that when they get preg­nant, they must wean their nursling imme­di­ately or risk hav­ing the unborn baby lack essen­tial nutri­ents. This is not the case. If there are risks, they gen­er­ally come when a preg­nant mother is nurs­ing a baby who is younger than 9 (or so) months. This is because the mother’s milk often changes fla­vor due to hor­mones. It can also change to colostrum or mom’s sup­ply can drop. If you are nurs­ing a young baby while preg­nant, be sure you’re pay­ing close atten­tion to dia­per out­put. Your baby should be wet­ting at least 4–5 dia­pers a day. If your baby is older than 6 weeks, he should be poop­ing on a reg­u­lar basis. For some babies, reg­u­lar is once every three days. For oth­ers, it’s once every 4 hours. Dia­per out­put is a quick and easy way to deter­mine how your baby is doing.

Cur­rently, I have a 16 month old son who is nurs­ing 2–3 times a day, and I am 22 weeks preg­nant with our sec­ond child. Before my hus­band and I started try­ing to con­ceive our sec­ond child, I did a fair amount of research on the sub­ject of tan­dem nurs­ing and nurs­ing while preg­nant. Kellymom.com, the La Leche League, Dr. Sears, and Dr. Greene all have great infor­ma­tion for moms who are look­ing for infor­ma­tion and answers to their ques­tions about nurs­ing a tod­dler while pregnant.

Dur­ing my preg­nancy with my son, I suf­fered almost no morn­ing sick­ness, so when I started hav­ing some mild to mod­er­ate morn­ing sick­ness with this preg­nancy, I wor­ried a lit­tle bit that Baby wouldn’t be get­ting what he or she needed and that my milk sup­ply would drop due to a lack of calo­ries and fluid intake. Because of this, I made an appoint­ment with a reg­is­tered dieti­cian at my clinic to dis­cuss what would be nec­es­sary to make sure all three of us got what we needed dur­ing the pregnancy.

How­ever, as much as I want to encour­age you to keep breast­feed­ing if that’s what you want, there are a cou­ple sit­u­a­tions in which you should talk to your doc­tor and may have to wean. If you have had preterm labor (going into labor prior to 37 weeks), you should talk to your doc­tor and a lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant about your choices. Also, if you have had mul­ti­ple mis­car­riages, it’s also a good idea to talk to your doc­tor when mak­ing this decision.

The other sit­u­a­tion is that it’s pos­si­ble some women want to wean at the begin­ning of their preg­nancy to have a bit of a break before start­ing to breast­feed again when their babies are born. That’s fine, and in my opin­ion you should not feel guilty about mak­ing that choice either. The most impor­tant thing a mom can do for her chil­dren is to take care of her­self. If she doesn’t take care of her­self, she will not have as much energy to take care of them. If breast­feed­ing is no longer the best choice for you, check out the wean­ing ideas and strate­gies to help you get started on that track.