I’ve been get­ting nos­tal­gic lately.  In the past few days, I’ve been think­ing about nurs­ing, nurs­ing K, nurs­ing K while preg­nant, and what it was like when I thought he was wean­ing at 19 and 20 months.  Right now, A is 18 months, and I can’t imag­ine what it would be like if he wasn’t nurs­ing.  He’s still such a baby!  He barely talks.  He doesn’t eat much as far as solid foods go (in my opin­ion, which is obvi­ously pretty sub­jec­tive).  He doesn’t drink cow’s milk.  He’s a BABY!

Right now, K is 3 years and 2 months.  He nurses for com­fort only, and he often nurses between 1 and 3 times a day.  Yes­ter­day and the day before, he nursed only once all day long.  Today, it was three times.  Although he may not be any­where near wean­ing at all, I still think about it.  I think that I am far more pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­ity now than I was a year and a half ago.  I feel like I know him bet­ter.  I feel like he knows him­self bet­ter.  I feel like we can work through hurts, tired­ness, sad­ness, and sick­ness now in a way we couldn’t before.  When he wasn’t nurs­ing dur­ing the end of my preg­nancy, I would often hold him and feel uncer­tain and con­fused.  How would I help him if he was tired?  What would I do if he was sick and couldn’t keep any­thing else down?  I was at a loss.

Dur­ing that time, I read an arti­cle called Wean­ing Ella at Brain, Child Mag­a­zine’s web­site.  When I read it at that time, I was a mess.  I was in tears, and I only felt the bit­ter­ness of an early wean­ing child.  Now, as I reread that arti­cle, I do feel a lit­tle bit­ter­ness as my baby grows and needs me in dif­fer­ent ways.  How­ever, I also feel a sweet­ness to it.  We have done this together!  Nurs­ing is a part­ner­ship, and we are we made it this far by work­ing together.  Most of the time when I think about wean­ing or hear about it, some­one is talk­ing about a baby wean­ing.  I think right now is a time when I am wean­ing, too.

Does nurs­ing too long some­times hurt the case for extended breast­feed­ing? That’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing about lately. I will not wean my chil­dren because of what other peo­ple think, and they aren’t ready to wean, so they will nurse on. But… Could I put off a new mom from nurs­ing because I am *still* nurs­ing my 3 year old or because I’m not only nurs­ing a 3 year old, but I’m also nurs­ing a 17 month old, too?

I remem­ber read­ing some­thing like this on another blog quite a while ago. Some­one had sug­gested to another extended nurs­ing mom that maybe it was best not to be too “out there” about nurs­ing her tod­dler. I found the com­ments to be very encour­ag­ing and insightful.

Lately, we’ve had a few friends who have had babies and I’ve also had the chance to visit with some moms who have new babies. Some of them have not men­tioned the fact that my chil­dren nurse, but one of the moms asked me what my hus­band thought of me still nurs­ing K. Hon­estly, I don’t think that Jason thinks much of it one way or another. It just is for us.

I didn’t wake up one morn­ing and think ‘hmmm, I should try nurs­ing a 3 year old.’ I did wake up every day for three years and think that he still needed nurs­ing so I would con­tinue. He didn’t get too old overnight, but he has grown grad­u­ally day by day and week by week. He doesn’t pull on my shirt. He does ask for milk though. I’m sure there are peo­ple who won­der when will I EVER quit nurs­ing, and I can truth­fully say to those peo­ple that I don’t know how old K or A will be. I do know though, that I will stop nurs­ing when I am sure that it is their choice and because they no longer need or want milk from mommy.

If you don’t want to read about nurs­ing, today’s a good day to take a break from the beau­ti­ful let­down.

First, nurs­ing bras. Who makes these things? Why do they all sag? I have yet to find a nurs­ing bra with good sup­port. Even when I take the lit­tle adjuster things (the plas­tic clasps on the bra that make the straps longer or shorter) and push them over the back of my shoul­ders, I am still not get­ting decent sup­port. I have been wear­ing nurs­ing bras since Novem­ber of 2005, and I’m still unim­pressed. Any suggestions?

Sec­ondly, nurs­ing in win­ter. I need some new win­ter clothes or some­thing. Nurs­ing in clothes that keep me warm is a tough job! Sweat­shirts are too bulky. Some of my under­shirts are a lit­tle too tight. Some shirts don’t work out that well with a nurs­ing tank­top. Sigh… Appar­ently, I’ve been hav­ing apparel issues lately.

Next, falling asleep while nurs­ing. Nei­ther of my boys have ever been the nurse to sleep type. A did for a while, but he stopped that quite a while ago. K never really nursed to sleep even as an infant. I’m not sure if it was the turkey or what, but in the past few days, both K and A have fallen asleep in my arms while nurs­ing. It’s such a sweet feel­ing. They’re just so sweet and pure and loving.

Then, there’s three years of nurs­ing and almost eigh­teen months of tan­dem nurs­ing. After three years of nurs­ing K and about 18 months of nurs­ing K and A, I’m start­ing to feel ready for K to get ready to wean. At this point, I don’t think that I will do any­thing about my feel­ings. If K isn’t ready to wean, I won’t push him. I’ve con­sid­ered lim­it­ing the num­ber of times he nurses in a day, but I don’t think that’s fair to him. If he did it out of bore­dom or habit, I might con­sider it. I don’t think he does though. I think he really needs to nurse in order to reestab­lish a con­nec­tion with me. This morn­ing, my par­ents were up with the boys while Jason and I got a bit more sleep (thanks a lot, Mom and Dad, we appre­ci­ate it). I heard Kael out­side the door at one point ask­ing for “mommy milk.” I heard him ask­ing for me a while later just as I was about to get up. When I came out to the liv­ing room, he said, “Kael needed you. My wanted mommy milk to feel bet­ter.” Now, really, how can I argue with that? I don’t, because I know he’s telling me the truth.

Finally, sup­port. I have the best fam­ily. They are all great about the nurs­ing and tan­dem nurs­ing. My mom nursed me for at least a year and a half. She nursed my brother until he was almost three. She’s always been very sup­port­ive of the boys nurs­ing. She encour­aged me to check out the local breast­feed­ing sup­port group which I have really enjoyed, and she was a huge help when both of the boys were new­borns. She sat up with me and helped me with dia­per changes and burp­ing. WONDERFUL! I know that some peo­ple are for­tu­nate enough to have sup­port when their babies are young, but as the baby grows, their sup­port fades away and they hear “when are you going to start that baby on formula/solds/cows milk?” or “when are you going to stop nurs­ing?” I have yet to hear either of those ques­tions. Of course, my boys both eat solids, but I *never* get asked when I’m going to wean! That means a lot to me. Also, over the week­end, my par­ents stayed here as did my brother and sister-in-law. They don’t have kids yet, so I’m not really sure what their thoughts on nurs­ing are, but I would never have had any rea­son to sus­pect they are any­thing but pos­i­tive and accept­ing. K nursed sev­eral times over the week­end, and A nursed MANY times. In fact, he nursed a cou­ple times at the din­ner table on Thurs­day dur­ing our Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, and no one bat­ted an eye.

Since he was born, A has been sleep­ing in our room. He slept in a pack n play for a while. Then, for a while, he slept with us. Then, back into the pack n play. Last week, we decided to move him into a crib in the same room as K. I thought that it would be a rough tran­si­tion for A. He’s always been a baby who needed to be close to Jason and to myself. I fig­ured it would take two good weeks before we could tell how things were going. Well, he sur­prised us. After a cou­ple ini­tial strug­gles, he has done just won­der­fully. He nurses. Then, Jason takes him to bed where he lays down and falls asleep. K has been strug­gling with the tran­si­tion more though. Unfor­tu­nately, I think this came at a bad time for him. He’s also at a stage where he’s kind of ready to start potty learn­ing. He’s not able to get through the day with­out a nap, but if he does take a nap, then he strug­gles to fall asleep. I think that hav­ing both of those things to deal with and this tran­si­tion of A mov­ing into his room has been tough on him. Poor guy. I’ve been try­ing to give him some extra love and mommy time. He has ramped his nurs­ing up, too. Now, I just have to laugh at my wor­ries a few months ago that he wouldn’t still be nurs­ing at 3. I think he nursed 5 or 6 times yes­ter­day, and 3 or 4 today. Some­times, I won­der if A will wean before K.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.