What are you read­ing? I’m always look­ing for a good book or a good rec­om­men­da­tion. I start lots of books, and I fin­ish a few. I will start any­thing that sounds even remotely inter­est­ing. I’m not lim­ited to a cer­tain genre, author, or sto­ry­line. I read Chris­t­ian authors and non-Christian authors. I read fic­tion and non­fic­tion. I read as much as I can. I have always loved to read. As a child, my mom says that I taught myself to read around the time I was 4. Since then, I have almost always had at least one book in the process of being read.

Right now, I don’t have a night­stand, but I do have a read­ing list. Some of these I just started, and some I have been work­ing on for a while.

The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book — Who doesn’t love a good sev­eral hun­dred page, spi­ral bound, infor­ma­tional book?

Reclaim­ing Nick — I read this review on 5 Min­utes for Books, and I thought I should start at the begin­ning of the series instead of at the end.

Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately — I got this book off freecy­cle. If someone’s giv­ing a book away, it’s worth tak­ing a chance, right?

I’m sure there are a few oth­ers, but these are the ones that get most of my time right now. How about you?

The other day I received an e-mail telling me that my blog was listed along with 99 oth­ers as one of the top 100 women’s health blogs. I haven’t had a chance to look through the entire list yet, but I know that I’m always look­ing for new blogs to read. The list is divided into sev­eral sec­tions: Nutri­tion and Spe­cial Diets, Exer­cise, Infer­til­ity, Preg­nancy, Child­birth and Breast­feed­ing, Weight­loss, Health Chal­lenges, Fit and Healthy Over 40, Phys­i­cal Well­be­ing, and Men­tal Well­be­ing. Thanks for choos­ing me to be on this list!

Whoops! On Thurs­day night, Jason, the boys, and I were on our way home from a potluck to cel­e­brate World Breast­feed­ing Week. As we were in the car, Jason said, “Did you post any­thing on your blog about World Breast­feed­ing Week?” Um, no, whoops! I did not post any­thing about it. When I thought about it, I real­ized the rea­son I didn’t is because it was such a part of my life and my daily blog read­ing that I assumed every­one would know. Who doesn’t know that World Breast­feed­ing Week is August 1–7? Then I real­ized that until 2 years ago I had not heard of it.

So, I guess I need to con­sider this my chance to spread the word. Maybe next year, I will be able to announce it ear­lier and invite a few of you to a world breast­feed­ing week event!

Since A is now one, I guess I am now offi­cially an extended, tan­dem nurser! Woohoo! K is two and will be three in Novem­ber and still nurs­ing. I recently had some­one ask me how I decided to nurse him for so long. Really, it wasn’t a one time deci­sion that I made. It was sev­eral smaller deci­sions made along the way. Many peo­ple decide to stop nurs­ing at twelve months and are sur­prised when I tell them I don’t plan to wean A any time soon. Those same peo­ple are gen­er­ally even more sur­prised to find out that not only will I not wean A soon, K is still nurs­ing, too. :

Since I decided to put a link to my web­site in my Face­book page, I thought now is as good a time as any to answer some of those ques­tions. I don’t feel like I need to defend my deci­sion, and I’m not try­ing to tell any­one else what they should do for their fam­ily. I sim­ply like to talk about breast­feed­ing and other par­ent­ing issues. Thus, I have a blog pretty much ded­i­cated to doing just that!

When K was born, I had my share of strug­gles learn­ing to nurse him. He was early. He needed a shield to latch. He didn’t latch for the first sev­eral days of life. He had jaun­dice. He was a sleepy baby. I am sure there are a cou­ple oth­ers I could list, but luck­ily, those first weeks have faded a lit­tle in my mem­ory and now I remem­ber them mostly with rose col­ored glasses. My first goal was to nurse him for 6 weeks. Once I made that goal, my next goal became three months. Once I made that goal, I decided to go big and made my goal twelve months. Well, by the time K was a year old, I was preg­nant with A. I knew that sta­tis­ti­cally most babies will wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy. I also knew that K still depended on nurs­ing for com­fort and nutri­tion through­out the day and some­times through the night, too. I fig­ured that since 70% of babies wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy, he would too, and I would let him decide when that time was instead of decid­ing for him.

Well, as my preg­nancy pro­gressed, K still seemed to need “mommy milk” in a very real way that wasn’t met in any other man­ner. I can’t say that nurs­ing while preg­nant was the eas­i­est thing I have ever done or the most com­fort­able. How­ever, it was some­thing I did for K because he needed, wanted, and liked it

K was 20.5 months old when A was born. At that point, being able to nurse both K and A was a tremen­dous help in the tran­si­tion from one child to two. K was still very young and still needed a lot of mommy time. Because of that, I decided to allow him to con­tinue nurs­ing on demand. I felt as though choos­ing to have A was a deci­sion that Jason and I made. K had no part in that deci­sion, so I didn’t think that hav­ing A should be the rea­son he was no longer able to nurse. At that point, it became my goal to allow K to choose his own date for wean­ing. I reserve the right to change my mind in the case of any unforseen cir­cum­stances, but at this point, I hope to achieve child-led weaning.

Now, I am cur­rently nurs­ing A who is also past twelve months. Because of the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence I have had with nurs­ing K, I hope to also allow A to make the deci­sion of child-led wean­ing for him­self. Also, with A being sen­si­tive to dairy, we won’t be intro­duc­ing cow’s milk or other dairy prod­ucts to him for a while. Con­tin­u­ing to nurse him helps me to ensure that he’s get­ting fats, pro­teins, calo­ries, and other immuno­log­i­cal ben­e­fits dur­ing his toddlerhood.

What I’ve writ­ten are my per­sonal rea­sons for choos­ing extended and tan­dem nurs­ing for my fam­ily. There are also sev­eral resources that encour­age and sup­port extended nurs­ing. If you are inter­ested, here are a few:

Extended Nurs­ing Fact Sheet

Are there health ben­e­fits to nurs­ing past one year of age?

Breast­feed a Tod­dler– Why on Earth?

Breast­feed­ing Beyond a Year

Breast­feed­ing and the Use of Human Milk (AAP)

Pedi­a­tri­cians and par­ents should be aware that exclu­sive breast­feed­ing is suf­fi­cient to sup­port opti­mal growth and devel­op­ment for approx­i­mately the first 6 months of life and pro­vides con­tin­u­ing pro­tec­tion against diar­rhea and res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tion. Breast­feed­ing should be con­tin­ued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutu­ally desired by mother and child.

The World Health Organization’s infant feed­ing recommendations

As a global pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tion, infants should be exclu­sively breast­fed(1) for the first six months of life to achieve opti­mal growth, devel­op­ment and health(2). There­after, to meet their evolv­ing nutri­tional require­ments, infants should receive nutri­tion­ally ade­quate and safe com­ple­men­tary foods while breast­feed­ing con­tin­ues for up to two years of age or beyond.

Maybe instead of my post being called Word­less Wednes­day, I could call it Wordy Wednes­day.

When I was nurs­ing K, those words were some­times enough to make me stay home. I used a nip­ple shield with him for the first 3 months. He also took for­ever to fin­ish a feed­ing. Maybe it wasn’t really for­ever, but 45 min­utes is a long time when you are sit­ting at the DMV or in Burger King. As I’ve said before, A is a dif­fer­ent nurser com­pletely. He eats a lot more often, but he is much faster. Com­pared to K’s 45 minute nurs­ing ses­sions, A is an olympic sprinter!

With K, I was usu­ally able to plan my out­ings and errands around his rather pre­dictable 3–4 hour eat­ing sched­ule. A has been com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Until he was 8 months old, he was still eat­ing at least every 1–1.5 hours. Since then, he’s spread his day­time feed­ings out to about every 2 or 2.5 hours. Because of that, I’ve had to nurse in pub­lic far more often than I did with K. In fact, just this past Tues­day, I had the oppor­tu­nity to nurse in our local Applebee’s. Many of you who fol­low breast­feed­ing news know that Applebee’s hasn’t had the best pub­lic­ity in regards to nurs­ing moms. I am pleased to say that no one bat­ted an eye. A was nurs­ing when the wait­ress brought our food. Then, when she came back to check on us, he was still nurs­ing. So, while oth­ers have had other expe­ri­ences, I have to say that Applebee’s is one place that is on my list of “thumbs up to nurs­ing” places in our area.

That is how often K has nursed in the past two days. Look­ing back, I can see that there has been a grad­ual decrease in his nurs­ing since win­ter ended and spring started. I think it’s even pos­si­ble that dur­ing the times we were trapped inside due to weather, he nursed for some­thing to do. Now that he’s get­ting older (2 years, 8 months), it wouldn’t be out of the ordi­nary for him to start mov­ing more and more toward wean­ing, I suppose.

I have never had a goal in mind for him as far as age goes, but I think I would like it if he could hang on until he turned 3. That’s a nice round num­ber, right? I’m just not ready to con­sider him a grad­u­ated nursling yet! I know that he could hang onto just these two nurs­ing ses­sions for a long time, and I hope he does, but only TWO in one day?!?!?!? That was a big sur­prise when I real­ized just how lit­tle he has been nurs­ing lately. Def­i­nitely bittersweet.

At least if he weans, I will still be nurs­ing A. A is show­ing no signs of wean­ing, and it looks very pos­si­ble that he could nurse as long or longer than K based on his nurs­ing ses­sions at this point.

When I was in col­lege and for the years after before I was preg­nant with K, I was a semi-regular blood dona­tor (is that a word?). In fact, Jason’s cousin tried to con­vince Jason that one time when Jason and I went to donate blood together was actu­ally our first date. It wasn’t by the way. I just didn’t want to go alone.

Any­way, after I had K, I was inter­ested in donat­ing blood again, but I had a hard time find­ing any infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. Most of the infor­ma­tion I found said that it was allowed but it was a mom’s choice whether or not it would work for her. Well, that didn’t help me much. I checked on the La Leche League web­site and the Amer­i­can Red Cross web­site although it seems they have changed their lay­out and that infor­ma­tion is no longer avail­able. I found a few specifics, but I didn’t find a hard yes or no answer.

When I had A, I had a fairly sig­nif­i­cant over­sup­ply of milk after he was born and had to (and still have to) take steps to con­trol my sup­ply to allow him to be able to nurse with­out get­ting over­whelmed by the milk. Because of this, I felt more con­fi­dent in choos­ing to donate. I thought I would wait until he was 6 months old and tak­ing some solids just in case I did have a dip in sup­ply. Well, he’s now almost 8 months and not tak­ing solids. I just couldn’t wait any longer. In my absence from donat­ing, Jason has caught up to my dona­tions and sur­passed me! I need to get donat­ing again.

I made my appoint­ment, and the day I was sup­posed to go was –38 degrees with a –54 degree wind­chill. Need­less to say, I did not go that day. I just couldn’t jus­tify tak­ing my 2 boys out in that weather for any­thing other than an emer­gency. I resched­uled my appoint­ment and went the next week. I really didn’t do much to pre­pare ahead of time. I made sure that I was drink­ing extra water and eat­ing well the days before. My appoint­ment went well. When the woman put the nee­dle in to draw blood, she had a lit­tle trou­ble find­ing the vein. That resulted in me being a bit sore that night and the next day, but it wasn’t any­thing terrible.

I know that one person’s anec­do­tal expe­ri­ence doesn’t replace the advice of a doc­tor or lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant, but I hope it helps at least a lit­tle bit if this is a deci­sion you’ve been try­ing to make for yourself.

This morn­ing, at my MOPS group, our speak­ers were a local cou­ple, and they talked about inti­macy in mar­riage. I know that when many peo­ple think of inti­macy, they think of sex. How­ever, this cou­ple talked about inti­macy out­side of sex. They talked about being open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble with each other. They talked about spend­ing time together as friends and just being. It was great to see a cou­ple mar­ried 31+ years dis­cuss these issues. They also dis­cussed their ear­li­est mem­o­ries of inti­macy as being with their par­ents (her with her mom, and him with his dad).

The more I thought about inti­macy in rela­tion­ships, the more I thought about nurs­ing and breast­feed­ing. It’s a very pri­vate, inti­mate, and open rela­tion­ship that a child and a mom have while nurs­ing. Look­ing at my rela­tion­ships with both K and A, I can say that I really see a close­ness in my rela­tion­ship with K that I don’t have yet with A. Hav­ing spent at least a cou­ple hours a day nurs­ing him almost every day for the past 2 years has def­i­nitely devel­oped that rela­tion­ship. I also see an inti­macy in my rela­tion­ship with A that I didn’t have with K. Because A has been such a high-needs baby, I have so much time with him. It’s also been pretty intense time over the past seven months.

After hear­ing the cou­ple speak today, I began to think about my boys’ future rela­tion­ships, and I hope that in some way, hav­ing this rela­tion­ship with me will be the begin­ning of a life­time of expe­ri­ences that allow them to expe­ri­ence inti­macy (in many ways) with those in their futures.

It’s been just over 6 months since A was born! Time goes so fast. Six months of tan­dem nurs­ing. Six months of being a mom of two. Six months of night feed­ings. Six months of lov­ing another lit­tle per­son more than I ever thought possible.

Lov­ing his Jumperoo and his sun­glasses that he is wear­ing at K’s insistence

Jason snapped this pic­ture of me and A at Tar­get one day

When I started NaBloPoMo, I was a spo­radic blog­ger at best. At worst, I some­times let my blog go for *cough* months *cough cough* with­out writ­ing any­thing. After NaBloPoMo, I was pretty ener­gized as far as blog­ging goes. I saw how quickly and eas­ily I could put some­thing up. I liked the feed­back I got from com­ments and friends and fam­ily. What could stop me from blog­ging 20+ times a month, right?

My son.

I’m not try­ing to say that in a mean way. He is sim­ply a high needs baby, and he takes a lot of time and energy to par­ent. If you’ve read my pre­vi­ous blogs, you know that I’ve been deal­ing with a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and some sleep issues. Well, we are still deal­ing with the dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and sleep issues. I have tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet with the same results each time. A cries and screams while arch­ing his back for 30–45 min­utes. Not worth it. The sleep issues have changed a bit though. When A was younger, I was often up with him for 30, 45, 60, or 90 min­utes while he was fig­ur­ing out that night just isn’t the time to be up and play. Thank­fully he seems to have real­ized that night isn’t a good time to play and be up. He has, how­ever, gone from wak­ing 2–4 times a night to wak­ing 7 times or more.

In talk­ing with some other mom friends of mine, they sug­gested that since he has a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, he may also have other sen­si­tiv­i­ties that affect his sleep. For a few months now, I’ve con­sid­ered this and ignored the pos­si­bil­ity. I finally decided to do some­thing about it. Unfor­tu­nately for me, that some­thing is the Elim­i­na­tion Diet. So, for the past 2 days, I’ve eaten noth­ing but chicken and jas­mine rice. I’ve had noth­ing but water to drink. My mom friends told me that if this was going to be some­thing that worked for A, I would notice results in 1–3 days. Well, last night, we did not notice any results. I’m hop­ing for some sort of change tonight.

In all the infor­ma­tion that I read about the elim­i­na­tion diet, I have read that it takes up to two weeks for it to work. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I can do chicken and rice only for two weeks. I don’t love chicken, and I’m start­ing to hate rice (well, not hate). I am not really sure what to do, though. I can’t keep get­ting up with him five or more times a night (Jason usu­ally gets up the other 2–3) and par­ent­ing both him and K dur­ing the day, but I also don’t know if I can sur­vive while tan­dem nurs­ing if all I’m eat­ing is rice and chicken. It doesn’t seem healthy for long term nutrition.

So, that’s mostly why I haven’t been all that active on my blog. Hope­fully, I will be able to increase my post­ing fre­quency as A gets older, starts solids in the next month or two, and gives me some cute funny sto­ries to post.