Well, like I said last month, I don’t have a night­stand. There’s one on Jason’s side of the bed, but we don’t have books on that one either. I just have my books all over the house. There are a cou­ple in our room, a cou­ple on the back of the couch, one behind the couch, one in my purse, one on my end table, and tons down­stairs on our bookshelves.

Last month, I was read­ing The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book, Reclaim­ing Nick, and Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. I have made some good progress in the Breast­feed­ing Answer Book. I read Reclaim­ing Nick and the two other books in the series, Tam­ing Rafe and Find­ing Stephanie. I did not fin­ish Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. It fell behind our couch, and I sort of for­got about it. Whoops. I did start it, though, and it’s pretty good from what I remember.

In the last month, I also dis­cov­ered Paper­Back­Swap and Book­Mooch. I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed with them, but they are so fun! I put 20 of my books on the sites (10 on each) and so far, I’ve received 4 books with a 5th on the way. I also thought I would try a swap with any­one on here who wants a book that I’ve read, but so far no one has taken me up on my offer. Since I wrote the post, I have decided, I will just give those books away, so if you want one, let me know. If you have any you’d like to swap, I’m open to offers, but I guess it’s now a giveaway!

I have a trip com­ing up in about 1 1/2 weeks, so my read­ing list is a bit more ambi­tious this month. I have some high hopes that I will be able to read a lot on my trip. So, here is my list for October:

See­ing and Savor­ing Jesus Christ by John Piper (from Paper­Back­Swap)- I was look­ing through avail­able books on Paper­Back­Swap, and I saw this one. I hadn’t heard any­thing about it, but if it’s John Piper, I fig­ured there’s a pretty good chance it’s got qual­ity content.

Break­ing Free by Beth Moore (from Paper­Back­Swap)- My friend from col­lege pur­chased this study, and she has done it sev­eral times. I love Beth Moore, so I fig­ured if my friend can do the study 5+ times and find it valu­able, I would prob­a­bly enjoy the book.

Mid­wives by Chris Boh­jalian (from Book­Mooch)- This is a book I had heard about, but I’m not quite sure what I will think of it. It’s a sub­ject I have pretty strong feel­ings on (mid­wives and home­births). I sup­pose it could really go either way.

The Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards (from Book­Mooch)- I was in Tar­get wan­der­ing around one night after a stress­ful evening try­ing to put A to sleep. I picked up this book and read the back of it. I had actu­ally for­got­ten about it for quite a while, but when I was trad­ing away my books, I decided to look it up.

Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son (received from Monica’s give­away on her site Paper Bridges)- I actu­ally found this give­away last month when check­ing out oth­ers’ lists.

Water for Ele­phants by Sara Gruen (bor­row­ing it from the library)- After hear­ing about this one for so long, I decided to find out what all the talk is about.

A Tree Grows in Brook­lyn by Betty Smith (don’t have it yet, but will be get­ting it from the library and hope to be a part of Octo­ber Book Club on 5minutesforbooks.com)- I have heard about this book, but I don’t know any­thing about it. Maybe it’s time I start learn­ing what the clas­sics are all about!

The Prob­lem with Breast­feed­ing by James Akre (bor­rowed from a friend)- She said this book is a must read. I guess I’ll find out.

Don’t for­get to check out www.5minutesforbooks.com for a list of peo­ple who have shared what they are read­ing this month!

Wel­come to the Sep­tem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val! Thanks for vis­it­ing, and be sure to read all the way to the end of my post so you can visit oth­ers who have shared their thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed.

When I was preg­nant with my first child, I knew I wanted to breast­feed. I did some read­ing. I searched the inter­net for what I felt were infor­ma­tive arti­cles. By the time my breast­feed­ing class at the hos­pi­tal rolled around I felt pretty con­fi­dent. My con­fi­dence increased when I went to the class. She didn’t tell me one thing in an almost two hour class that I didn’t already know! I knew I was going to be able to do it. As a sort of insur­ance, I found a breast­feed­ing forum/message board and asked if there was any­thing else I should do to be pre­pared or informed. The answers were pretty run-of-the-mill. “Just keep on going!” “Don’t let any­one talk you into quit­ting.” “You can do it!” I knew that I was set.

When K was born, I had a bit of a sur­prise. Maybe shock is a bet­ter word. He was born nearly 4 weeks early and he wouldn’t latch. He looked at my breast. He half-heartedly opened his mouth. Then, he fell asleep. What?!? This wasn’t the plan. He was sup­posed to know what to do, because I had done my part to get informed about breast­feed­ing. Well, after three days in the hos­pi­tal, we were dis­charged. I had a nip­ple shield and a baby who ate for 45–60 min­utes every 3 hours. Not exactly fit­ting my plan.

For­tu­nately, my mom had breast­fed both myself (for around 18 months) and my brother (for nearly 3 years). She was an amaz­ing sup­port. She kept telling me, “Trust your­self. You know best. You know what is right for you and your baby.” She got up with me for the mid­dle of the night feed­ings and held K after­wards until he had his burp and could fall back asleep. She vis­ited with me when I thought I was too tired to do another feed­ing. She was won­der­ful, and that was a major com­po­nent for my suc­cess. I am sure of it.

When she left and I was home alone with my baby, I began to doubt myself, so I went back to the mes­sage board where I had asked for help so many weeks prior. I began post­ing ques­tion after ques­tion after ques­tion. I got won­der­ful sup­port, and I got great infor­ma­tion. There was one per­son in par­tic­u­lar on that mes­sage board who I still feel a debt of grat­i­tude toward. Her name was Joan, and she was a mod­er­a­tor of the breast­feed­ing forum. Sure, other peo­ple would answer my ques­tion, but I didn’t feel like I had the real answer until I heard from Joan. Over the weeks and months, I gained con­fi­dence, and I also gained a friend­ship. Joan is still one of my close on-line friends. She and I have kept in touch over the past few years, and when a friend of mine had a baby who had nurs­ing trou­bles (over­sup­ply and over­ac­tive let­down, some­thing I knew very lit­tle about) Joan was avail­able over the phone to help her out, too. I also began read­ing www.kellymom.com dur­ing any spare moment I had. I loved that web­site. It was so easy to nav­i­gate and so easy to read and under­stand. It is where I got the bulk of my early breast­feed­ing knowledge.

Almost two years later, when I had my sec­ond son, I was pretty con­fi­dent again. I had been through so much with K that I thought I should have it under con­trol. But, as almost any­one who has breast­fed knows, every baby is dif­fer­ent. With A, I had dif­fer­ent issues, and again I turned to www.kellymom.com and a sup­port­ive on-line com­mu­nity to help me get through the first weeks that were tough.

Now, I’ve been nurs­ing K for almost 35 months, and I’ve been tan­dem nurs­ing K and A for 14 months. I feel like each day I can learn some­thing about breast­feed­ing whether it be from a book, a web­site, a friend, another nurs­ing momma, or one of my kids. I think it’s one of those things where you can keep learn­ing more and more, but I’m not sure that you can ever say that you have “learned to breast­feed.” To me, it’s a jour­ney more than a destination.

Check out these blogs for more thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed (updated through­out the day):

• BreastfeedingMums.com
• Breastfeeding123.com
• Hobomama.blogspot.com
• Breastfeeding.blog.motherwear.com
• KateWicker.com
• Babyfingers.blogspot.com
• StopDropandBlog.com
• NurturingNotes.blogspot.com

Many times on blogs and forums, I’ve read peo­ple share their birth sto­ries, but I rarely read anyone’s nurs­ing story. As much as my kids’ birth sto­ries are amaz­ing and won­der­ful and excit­ing, to me, so are their nurs­ing sto­ries. Many mamas want to breast­feed, but they don’t have either the knowl­edge or the sup­port to do it. When things start to become harder, some­times those who should be the most sup­port­ive end up say­ing things like, “Maybe you should stop nurs­ing.” “Maybe you should try a bot­tle of for­mula so you can get some sleep.” “Are you sure he/she is get­ting enough?” Unfor­tu­nately, in an attempt to help, state­ments like that can dis­cour­age a new, emo­tional mom even more. Nei­ther of my nurs­ing expe­ri­ences have been easy or with­out strug­gle, so I thought maybe if I share mine they will encour­age other moms out there to share theirs and sup­port the new moms who are just try­ing to survive.

So, if you’re a fam­ily mem­ber or friend and you don’t really want to read about 2 years of nurs­ing, this is your cue to stop. Every­one else, onward and upward.

Through­out my preg­nancy, I had a few peo­ple ask me if I was plan­ning to nurse my new baby. As most new moms who plan to nurse say, I also answered, “As long as I can, I plan to.” I read a few books on par­ent­ing, and in one book, I read that you should com­mit to nurs­ing for at least six weeks before mak­ing a deci­sion on whether or not to con­tinue. I decided that I could make that com­mit­ment. After all, how hard could it be to nurse for six weeks, right?

I knew that if I was able to have a nat­ural birth with no pain med­ica­tions and no inter­ven­tions, I had a bet­ter chance of hav­ing an awake and respon­sive baby. While I was pretty deter­mined not to have an epidural, besides the fear of the nee­dle in my back, my pri­mary rea­son was that I was afraid it would inter­fere with nurs­ing the baby. I also knew that it was impor­tant to nurse as soon as pos­si­ble after birth, because some babies have a period of very heavy sleepi­ness that can last for quite a while.

When K was born, I had the nat­ural birth I desired. He was born with the cord around his neck, but after the doc­tor did a lit­tle maneu­ver­ing, he was free and doing just fine. The nurses cleaned him up a lit­tle and brought him back to me. They asked if I wanted to nurse him and I said yes, so I tried to get him to latch on. In my mind, the process was about two steps long. One, I would offer my breast. Two, he would latch and nurse. Well, that didn’t hap­pen quite that way. I offered, and he looked at me. With the nurse’s help, I tried for another 15–20 min­utes to get him to latch, but he didn’t. The nurse told me that it wasn’t unusual for a baby not to latch right away, and so she said that I should try again in 3 hours. Since I was tired and needed a shower, I agreed. Jason held K as he slept, and I show­ered and moved to my new room.

Three hours later, we tried again. Still noth­ing. The nurse sug­gested I try a dif­fer­ent posi­tion. I tried the foot­ball hold, the cra­dle hold, and side lying. None of those worked. At this point, I was start­ing to worry a lit­tle. I asked for a visit from the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant, but I was told she was unavail­able. The nurses told me again that it wasn’t unusual for a baby not to eat much the first day, so I shouldn’t worry. I could just try again in three hours.

Again and again, we tried to nurse, but K was hav­ing none of it. He would open his mouth, but then he wouldn’t latch. He just didn’t seem inter­ested. He would attempt to nurse for 15–20 min­utes or as long as I could keep him awake, and then he would sleep until I woke him 3 hours later.

After a day and a half of this, one nurse felt that he was get­ting to a point where he needed to eat some­thing soon. I began to pump after attempt­ing to feed him each time, and I got some colostrum. Colostrum is what your body pro­duces before your milk actu­ally comes in. It’s yel­low, thick, and full of anti­bod­ies. It’s won­der­ful for your baby. Because K wasn’t latch­ing, we started giv­ing the colostrum through a med­i­cine drop­per. I was get­ting about 10 ccs every 3 hours. After doing this a cou­ple times, the nurse came back and told me that I really should give K some for­mula so he didn’t get dehy­drated, because he needed more than what I was pro­vid­ing him. Both Jason and I were very frus­trated, anx­ious, and upset. We had asked to see the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant a few more times on day two, and were told that she would come when she wasn’t so busy. She was also a NICU nurse and work­ing on a mother preg­nant with twins (31 weeks) to try to keep her from going into preterm labor.

So, with no idea what to do and no real help, we agreed to give some for­mula. The nurse offered K a bot­tle, and he latched on right away and sucked down about 2–3 ounces of for­mula. I cried for most of the feed­ing. We con­tin­ued all night offer­ing the breast every 3 hours and then I would pump and we would give what­ever I pumped through a med­i­cine drop­per. Then, we’d give some for­mula from the drop­per. Feed­ings were tak­ing at least one and a half or two hours. So, after almost two hours, we’d go back to sleep for an hour and start all over with lit­tle or no success.

Finally, on the third day, the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant was able to come see me. She brought a nip­ple shield and a sup­ple­men­tal nurs­ing sys­tem. A nip­ple shield is a small, thin, sil­i­cone shield that goes over the nip­ple so a baby can latch when he wouldn’t be able to oth­er­wise. A sup­ple­men­tal nurs­ing sys­tem is a con­trap­tion that goes around a mother’s neck, and then a tube goes down to the breast and the baby sucks on this lit­tle tube at the same time as the nip­ple. When she watched K attempt to latch, she told me that I had flat nip­ples and that was what was pre­vent­ing him from latch­ing. She showed me how to use the nip­ple shield, and FINALLY K latched. I was so happy. I couldn’t believe it.

Because he hadn’t been eat­ing well, the pedi­a­tri­cian decided to admit K into peds, and Jason and I were able to stay in his room with him for another day to make sure he was still eat­ing well. K was now latch­ing, but we were still strug­gling a lit­tle bit. He was eat­ing for 45 min­utes or more on each side, and it was nearly impos­si­ble to keep him awake. After wak­ing him, we had to change his dia­per and take of his clothes to wake him up. Then, I fed him for about 1 1/2 hours before pump­ing for 15 min­utes. Again, by the time I fin­ished this process, there was less than an hour left before I had to wake him again for the next feed­ing. The good news though was that he wasn’t lost­ing any more weight. He was finally eat­ing, pee­ing, and pooping.

We went home, and feed­ings remained a chal­lenge. K woke every 2 1/2 or 3 hours at night to eat, and feed­ings took at least an hour. Dur­ing the day though, I had to wake him and strug­gled to get him to nurse every 3 hours.

That went on for about three months. Dur­ing this time, I tried to get him to stop using the shield and nurse with­out, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t. Finally, one day, I was try­ing to get him to nurse when he was three months old, and he refused to latch. As a last resort, I took the shield off and offered the breast. He latched right on! I was so amazed. Another big change that day was that he went from tak­ing 60+ min­utes for a feed­ing to only need­ing 15–20 min­utes. I even called my sister-in-law to ask her if that was nor­mal. It was such a quick change that I wasn’t sure what to do, but I just decided to go with it.

At that point, my nurs­ing goal became to make it to one year. Look­ing back, I can say that after that day when K was 3 months, we didn’t have many, if any, chal­lenges for quite a while. A week before Kael turned one, he got the rotavirus. He also ended up with an ear infec­tion from it. Dur­ing that time, he didn’t want any­thing to eat or drink. He only nursed. I am con­fi­dent that nurs­ing is what kept him from becom­ing dehydrated.

When he turned one, I knew that I had made my goal of nurs­ing for a year, but other than that noth­ing else seemed to have changed, so I wasn’t sure why I would choose to wean at that point. So, I didn’t. A week later, I found out I was preg­nant with A, and know­ing that 70% of babies who are nurs­ing dur­ing preg­nancy self-wean before the next baby is born, I decided to let K make the deci­sion about whether to con­tinue nurs­ing or not.

For the first 20 weeks of my preg­nancy with A, I didn’t find much dif­fer­ence in my nurs­ing rela­tion­ship with K. He nursed 4 pre­dictable times a day. He nursed first thing in the morn­ing, noon­ish, 4 o’clockish, and before bed. How­ever, right around 20 weeks, my milk sup­ply dropped dras­ti­cally. It was a very hard time for K. He went from nurs­ing 4 times a day for 15 min­utes to nurs­ing almost all day long. He would ask to nurse and he would latch on and nurse for an hour or more at a time. I knew that at this point nurs­ing was as impor­tant for secu­rity as it was for nutri­tion, so I allowed him to nurse as much as he wanted. Some days, I think he nursed more of his wak­ing time than he did any­thing else.

By about 30 weeks, I knew I had to talk to my doc­tor about my con­trac­tions. I was hav­ing brax­ton hicks con­trac­tions all day long and espe­cially while nurs­ing. I was hav­ing 30 or more con­trac­tions a day. Some days they were as close as 2–3 min­utes apart, but they never lasted very long. When I did bring it up with my doc­tor, she did a test for preterm labor and ordered an ultra­sound to check my cervix. Both came back with reas­sur­ing results. I was neg­a­tive for preterm labor, and my cervix was nor­mal, long, and closed. I was okay to con­tinue nursing.

I did limit K’s nurs­ing a lit­tle after this point. Since he had been born at 36 weeks, I was con­cerned about another early baby. Also, the closer I got to my due date, the stronger the con­trac­tions while nurs­ing got. At some points, the con­trac­tions were so strong that I had to hold my ribs and breathe very shal­low to man­age the pain.

At about 33 weeks, K started nurs­ing less. In fact, in May (A was due in July), he went an entire day with­out nurs­ing for the first time in his life. After that point, he would often go 2–3 days with­out nurs­ing, then, nurse 4 times in a day. I had decided at that point to let him do what­ever he wanted. I didn’t offer to nurse, but I didn’t refuse when he asked.

A was born three days after his due date, so I did not have a sec­ond early baby. A was also 9 pounds 12 ounces, so appar­ently nurs­ing K dur­ing the preg­nancy didn’t keep A from get­ting the nutri­ents he needed to grow and gain weight. While I was in the hos­pi­tal, K didn’t ask to nurse and I didn’t offer.

When I got home from the hos­pi­tal with A, he again didn’t ask to nurse. I waited a day or two, and finally, I was so engorged one day I asked if he wanted to nurse and he did. When he real­ized that my milk was back, his eyes got wide and he just melted. It was every­thing I’d hoped for.

Unfor­tu­nately, K got a pretty nasty cold right away after A was born. So, as I was deal­ing with try­ing to learn to nurse A (which is another story in itself), K was try­ing to nurse with a plugged nose. He was so excited to have milk again that he was nurs­ing as much as A some days. When he was sick, he would latch, and start nurs­ing. Then, when he had to breathe, instead of unlatch­ing and breath­ing, he would hold my nip­ple with his teeth to take a breath. Very uncom­fort­able, bor­der­ing on painful. He also had some issues with jeal­ousy of A nurs­ing. He never seemed upset at the baby or mad at him, but often, when I was nurs­ing A, he would stand on my feet and cry as he waited for his turn.

Slowly, we got into a rou­tine where K was less upset with A nurs­ing. I think he real­ized that there was still milk even if A did nurse first. He still gets upset while wait­ing for his turn some days, but that’s not nearly as com­mon as it was even a month ago.

K still nurses sev­eral times a day. Some days, he nurses as often as A does, but again, I’ve cho­sen not to limit his nurs­ing. I feel like he’s had to grow up a bit more quickly than he would have oth­er­wise since we chose to have another baby so close to him in age. I believe that if I allow him to con­trol the nurs­ing rela­tion­ship, he will be able to make devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate choices for when to nurse, how often to nurse, and when to stop.

So, that’s K’s nurs­ing story. As hard as it was in the begin­ning, I’m not sure I would change any­thing, because if I did, I don’t know where we would be now because of the changes. I feel like where we are right now is a pretty good place to be.

Some­thing I noticed dur­ing my preg­nan­cies and after hav­ing my boys is that there are def­i­nitely a lot more hor­ror sto­ries float­ing around out there than there are low-drama, no prob­lem, happy to be preg­nant, great labor stories.

Why is it that “they” and some­times “we” feel the need to scare women who are not yet moms or who are preg­nant and have not yet had their babies? It’s not like scar­ing them makes our expe­ri­ences more valid. When I tell peo­ple that I had pretty great preg­nan­cies and very, very fast labors, peo­ple look at me like I’m crazy not to have had some hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence. I just don’t know what comes of scar­ing some­one like that. It just seems mean.

Two years ago tonight, I was in the hos­pi­tal. I was try­ing to decide if I was in labor or not. Look­ing back, I would guess it’s safe to say that I was.

Two years ago, on Novem­ber 2nd, I had an appoint­ment with the cer­ti­fied nurse prac­ti­tioner. I was 36 weeks preg­nant, and the prior week, I had been dilated to 3. I wasn’t hav­ing any major con­trac­tions, and it was my first baby so I assumed that I would still have a while. K wasn’t due until Novem­ber 29th, so I didn’t even have my bag for the hos­pi­tal packed or any nurs­ing bras! At my appoint­ment, the NP told me that I was dilated to a “good 5 cm.” I was shocked to say the least. I had been think­ing I would go late, and I had even told my mom, who was com­ing to stay with me after the birth, not to worry about tak­ing any time off until at least Thanksgiving.

That after­noon, I decided to run some errands. I picked up a pair of paja­mas for after the baby was born. I also bought myself a cou­ple nurs­ing bras. I may have even stopped for ice cream or cof­fee. To me, it was just a reg­u­lar day like any other day.

That night, my hus­band, Jason, who was work­ing on his master’s inde­pen­dent study, was meet­ing with his advi­sor. While he was at his meet­ing, I real­ized I was hav­ing some­what reg­u­lar con­trac­tions. I decided to start tim­ing them, although they didn’t hurt and I couldn’t feel them at all. I drank a lot of water and laid down on the couch. After tim­ing for about 30 or 40 min­utes, I called him and I told him I was hav­ing con­trac­tions, but he did not need to come home. Well, ten min­utes later, he walked in the door. His advi­sor had sent him home. Thanks, Dr. O!

We waited and timed and waited. Finally, around 8, we called the hos­pi­tal. I didn’t want to go, but know­ing I had been dilated to 5 ear­lier in the day, I wasn’t sure what to do. I kept telling the nurse that I didn’t feel the con­trac­tions yet, and she said that I should still come in and get eval­u­ated. We got to the hos­pi­tal at about 8:30. I was 5 1/2 cm. They wanted us to walk for a while and see what hap­pened. We walked, they checked. We walked some more. By the time we were checked the last time, I was about 6 cm, and I was stay­ing overnight in the hospital.

The next morn­ing at 7:30, my doc­tor came into the room with a res­i­dent and said, “Scoot down, let’s break your water.” Know­ing I wanted a nat­ural birth, prior to com­ing to the hos­pi­tal, I was sure I did not want my water to be bro­ken. How­ever, for some rea­son, I said noth­ing and just did what she said. She broke my water, and she said she’d check on me later that day. Jason and I decided to watch tv and relax. I did pretty well for about 2 1/2 hours. Then, sud­denly around 10, the con­trac­tions started in and were very intense.

Around 10:45, I asked if the nurse would check me. I was start­ing to get over­whelmed by the con­trac­tions, and I needed to know if I was mak­ing progress. Look­ing back, I prob­a­bly should have changed posi­tion, laid on my side, closed my eyes, breathed, or any num­ber of other things. I didn’t though. I just sat in my bed and tensed up wait­ing for each con­trac­tion. The nurse checked me and I was 8 1/2 cm dilated. About 5 min­utes later, I started say­ing, “I have to push! I have to push!” Sure enough, I was ready.

I pushed and drank ice water for about 45 min­utes and K was born! He had the cord wrapped around his neck, but as soon as that was taken care of, he was just fine. He was born at 36 1/2 weeks and was 18 inches long and 6 pounds 12 ounces. Not a huge baby, but he was def­i­nitely big for being 3 1/2 weeks early.

Look for pic­tures tomorrow.

Yes, 40 min­utes from start to fin­ish is what it took to deliv­ery my son.

On July 15th, we got up, and we went to church. A few of my friends knew I was over­due and asked me if I thought the deliv­ery was com­ing soon. I told them it had to be some­what soon since I was already 3 days late. I didn’t think that day was the day though. We went out for lunch after church, and I had a big, greasy, YUMMY ham­burger and onion rings. I told my hus­band, “If I go into labor today, I will prob­a­bly throw up.” We got home from lunch at about 1:15. I laid down for a nap at 1:30, and at 2:19 (yes, I remem­ber the exact time), I woke up with my first con­trac­tion. Know­ing that I had been dilat­ing about 1 cm a week since I was 34 weeks, I was some­where between 6 and 7 cm dilated. I laid in my bed and waited to see how long I had before the next con­trac­tion. At 2:29, I had con­trac­tion #2. I knew at that point it was the real thing and that I needed to get my hus­band and tell him to hurry. I went to the bath­room, and at 2:31, I had my 3rd con­trac­tion. Yes, that’s right. They went from noth­ing to ten min­utes apart to two min­utes apart in 3 contractions.

My son, K, was tak­ing a nap. I told my hus­band to wake him up, call the hos­pi­tal, and get in the car. I called a friend who was going to meet us at the hos­pi­tal to take K to her house until my mother-in-law arrived. By this point, my con­trac­tions were about a minute apart and a minute long. I def­i­nitely had to breathe through them.

We got into the car, and I said, “Drive as fast as you safely can.” We live 10 miles from the town where the hos­pi­tal is. Ten miles on the inter­state wouldn’t have been too bad, but at that point in the sum­mer, there was road con­struc­tion on about 5 miles of the drive. We were behind a truck who was abid­ing very closely to the 40 mile an hour speed limit. At that point, I called the hos­pi­tal to let them know I would not be able to make it up to labor and deliv­ery on my own. They told me that we should drive into the emer­gency room area, and they would meet me there.

The drive seemed to take for­ever, and 2 miles south of the exit for the hos­pi­tal, I told my hus­band, “I HAVE TO PUSH!!!” He said, “Don’t!” Then, I noticed that he was breath­ing as deeply as I was, and I told him to knock it off. Well, he informed me that he was breath­ing for him­self and not as an exam­ple for me. Haha, poor man.

As we pulled off the inter­state, we came to a red light, and I was beg­ging him to run it. I hon­estly didn’t think we were going to make it to the hos­pi­tal before the baby was born. I won­dered how one would clean a car after hav­ing a baby in it. Yuck. For­tu­nately, we did make it. We pulled up to the emer­gency room, and they had a garage door open for us to drive into. There were prob­a­bly 20 peo­ple wait­ing for us, and they had a stretcher.

I rolled out of the car and onto the stretcher. They strapped me on and pushed me up to the labor and deliv­ery ward. We arrived in labor and deliv­ery at 3:00. I rolled off the stretcher and on to the bed. My water broke at 3:01. I pushed a few times, and my doc­tor told me that the baby had passed meco­nium, so when he or she was born, they would have to take him/her before putting the baby on my chest or let­ting me hold him/her.

I laid on my side, and I pushed a few more times. My baby was born at 3:03, just 44 min­utes after my first con­trac­tion. When the baby was born, I asked, “Boy or girl? Boy or girl?” Some­one told me that he was a boy. They said, “He’s big.” I knew he would be big though, because my fam­ily has a his­tory of big babies, and because my pants had been too small around the waist for sev­eral weeks by that point. When they finally were able to weigh and mea­sure him, I found out that he was nine pounds, twelve ounces and twenty-one inches long.

Whew! It was a much faster labor that I had antic­i­pated, but every­thing worked out in the end, and now I have one great story to tell for the next sev­eral years.

It may not seem like it, but I am still around. I think about blog­ging at least once a day. I think about top­ics for blog­ging quite often. I just seem to be miss­ing the step in the process where I sit down and write out my thoughts.

Some of you may know that we now have baby #2 in our fam­ily. I had a baby boy July 15th, and I’m now a tan­dem, extended nurs­ing mom. Both boys are still going strong breast­feed­ing. K, my 23 month old nurses about 6 times a day, and A, my 11 week old nurses about every 2 to 2.5 hours dur­ing the day and every 4 hours at night so about 10 times a day. Wow, that sounds like a lot when I say it that way. It really doesn’t seem like that much, but I sup­pose 16+ nurs­ing ses­sions a day is quite a bit.

Now that I’ve taken the time to sit down and start blog­ging, I have about 10 top­ics run­ning through my head. Instead of squeez­ing them all into one humon­gous post, I’ll just let you know what will be com­ing on my blog in the next few days and weeks. My (40 minute) birth story, tan­dem nurs­ing, extended nurs­ing, deal­ing with a tod­dler and an infant, cloth dia­per­ing, dairy sen­si­tiv­i­ties, and over­ac­tive let­down and over supply.

When I was preg­nant with my son, I had read a few par­ent­ing books in my plan­ning for life with baby. I read both On Becom­ing Baby­wise and Secrets of the Baby Whis­perer. I had it all planned. My son was going to be born and go directly onto a sched­ule which included him learn­ing to sleep through the night by 8 weeks if not sooner. Sounds great, right? Well, the minute he was born, my heart changed. I threw those books out the win­dow and became what some peo­ple call an attach­ment par­ent. I quickly real­ized that I didn’t want my son to cry with­out me or my hus­band calm­ing and sooth­ing him. I wanted to breast­feed for as long as it worked for both of us. I wanted to wear him in a baby car­rier. I became what is also lov­ingly referred to as a “crunchy” parent.

To find other moms who had sim­i­lar par­ent­ing philoso­phies to me, I sought out the Attach­ment Par­ent­ing mes­sage board at Baby­zone. Since I was already active on their mes­sage boards, I started look­ing there for sup­port in my new­found phi­los­o­phy. That was eigh­teen months ago, and since then, I’ve come to believe even more so in our choices to be “attach­ment parents.”

The other moms on this board did things I didn’t know peo­ple still did. They made their own baby food and they cloth dia­pered! When I first heard that, I thought that maybe they were crazy. Then, I started look­ing into cloth dia­per­ing, and I talked to my hus­band about it. He was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal at first, but when I showed him the dia­pers that I wanted to try, he become more and more interested.

Now, instead of using a sim­ple piece of cloth with pin and a cover, cloth dia­pers have become more and more sophis­ti­cated. Now, there are many choices. There are pre­folds, pocket dia­pers, and all-in-ones to name a few. The dia­pers that we researched and even­tu­ally pur­chased are the Bum Genius 2.0 One Size dia­pers. The appeal of these over the oth­ers was that once the new baby reaches 10–12 pounds, we will be able to cloth dia­per both of our chil­dren in the same dia­pers with­out hav­ing to buy new sizes from about 10 pounds until 35 pounds. Hope­fully, by 35 pounds our older one will be potty training.

Yes, now not only am I an extended nurser who advo­cates nat­ural child­birth, I’m also a cloth dia­perer! The next thing I want to try is can­vas shop­ping bags instead of using the store’s paper or plas­tic bags. Wish me luck!

Since I have been about 20 weeks preg­nant, I could tell that my milk sup­ply has been dip­ping more and more. My lit­tle milk man was still deter­mined to con­tinue nurs­ing though. He nursed sev­eral times a day at that point. Steadily, though, he has decreased his nurs­ing over the past weeks until he was down to one or two times a day pretty con­sis­tently. Well, the week­end of May 12 and 13, my fam­ily was in town, and with all the com­mo­tion of hav­ing them here, my lit­tle milk man seemed to for­get about nurs­ing. May 14th was the first day in his life that he went an entire day with­out nurs­ing. He did nurse the next day though, so I thought maybe he would slowly cut out that last session.

Well, this week, he went from Sun­day, May 20th until today with­out nurs­ing. Imag­ine my sur­prise when this morn­ing after I got him from his crib, the first thing he did was look at me and do the milk sign!

So, when do I say he offi­cially weaned? I have no idea, but I do know that I will let him nurse as long as he keeps ask­ing. Just for my own pur­poses, I would love it if he could make it until June 3rd, so I can say that he nursed for 19 months. I do know now that each time he nurses, I try to remem­ber every minute of it. I real­ize that each time that could be the last time we ever do that, and I won’t know it at the time. I’ll only be able to look back and real­ize it later.

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.