Jason, the boys, and I spent yes­ter­day and today at his par­ents’ house. We intended on only spend­ing yes­ter­day with them, but it got late, and the weather wasn’t sup­posed to be all that great, so we spent the night. Today, we went to church, ate out, and after­wards, I took a nap (and it was WONDERFULLLLLL!!!) on the couch. We decided about 3:30 to get mov­ing and get home before dark. Gen­er­ally, it’s a pretty quick 60 mile trip on the inter­state. Well, today, things were a bit different.

Before we even got out of town, I found that dri­ving the speed limit on the roads *in town* was too fast. I could feel myself slip­ping on the ice, and I had to slow down on roads that were only 40 mph. Nor­mally, Jason does all the win­ter dri­ving, and I either read or stare down the road and freak out inter­mit­tently as I feel the car slide a bit. Well, he’s had the flu (not the stom­ach flu, the actual influenza flu) since Thurs­day, so I got the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice my win­ter dri­ving skills. We started out of town, and the first 3 miles were great. I was very relieved until we went around a curve in the road, and all of a sud­den, the road was cov­ered in ice.

The nor­mally 60 mile, hour long drive became a 25–35 mph, 90 minute drive. As bad as it was for us, I was con­cerned about friends of ours who had gone out to west­ern North Dakota for a hockey trip. They had a 5+ hour trip on nor­mal roads. I had Jason call their house while we were dri­ving home and we got no answer. We got home, and I meant to call them again, but I was wor­ried it was too late so I decided to wait until morn­ing. They just returned our call and said that between the turnoff where we live and the one they take, which is about 10 miles, there were 13 cars in the ditch. It was just a quick con­ver­sa­tion so I’m not sure how long their trip lasted, but if it was any­thing like ours and they had to deal with the dark, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it was 8 or more hours.

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.