Extended Breastfeeding: 4 kids, 57 months & Counting

D-man is still nurs­ing at 16 months old, any­thing over a year is gen­er­ally con­sid­ered extended breast­feed­ing. I have breast­feed all my chil­dren for a year or longer.   At this point I have breast­feed for a total of 57 months.  Did you catch that? 57 MONTHS or 4.75 years.  I was actu­ally sur­prised when I added it up, it didn’t seem that long but I have nursed for longer than my under­grad­u­ate degree took.

When I started breast­feed­ing I never thought much about how long I’d do it for & never thought I’d have nearly 5 years under my belt. Before I knew it days turned to weeks, weeks to months. I have strug­gled with cracked nip­ples,  pump­ing for work, milk sup­ply, mas­ti­tis, post­par­tum depres­sion, & the day to day strug­gles that go along with breastfeeding.

Tak­ing it slowly, hav­ing help when chal­lenges arose, being in the moment & hav­ing a really great sup­port sys­tem helped. My hus­band has always been my rock in sup­port.  Mike’s sup­port of breast­feed­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, is tremen­dous.  He’s a very hands-on par­ent, we work toward being part­ners in par­ent­ing & this wasn’t any dif­fer­ent, minus the whole “he has no breasts that lac­tate” thing.

And with each strug­gle I was able to work though them with Mike’s sup­port & con­tinue the breast­feed­ing rela­tion­ship.  I feel like after real­iz­ing how LOOOONG I’ve been at this I’m all nos­tal­gic about it, even though it wasn’t all roses.  

Mr. J nursed for about a year.  Being it was my first time I had ever nursed I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I can say we did have a rough start, latch­ing & just get­ting a groove. Once we found it & worked through his acid reflux & my over active let down we did very well.  I learned how to nurse or pump while: read­ing, writ­ing, typ­ing & brush­ing my teeth.  He was my ini­ti­a­tion into multi-tasking at a whole new level.

Mr. J and Mr. G are also 18 months apart.  He was 9 months old when Mr. G came into being & by my 2nd trimester my milk was dry­ing up. Mr. J was a year old when the milk sup­ply was gone & he wanted no part in nursing.

Then Mr. G was a breeze baby.  Really when it came to sleep­ing & eat­ing he was a piece of cake.  I thought it was because I was a pro!  But really now that I have more expe­ri­ences under my belt I real­ize that it wasn’t my pro sta­tus that made it a breeze.  He just didn’t encounter some of the same strug­gles his brother had. Then when Mr. G was 10 months old, Mamacita was on the scene.  While she was cook­ing away my milk again decreased sud­denly when I entered my 2nd trimester.  Mr. G made it to 14 months, but again when the milk was gone he wasn’t interested.

Mamacita nursed for 15 months.  She taught me that I couldn’t rest on my lau­rels when it came being a pro.  In fact, now that I think of it she still does this.  I guess she’s help­ing me learn humil­ity. Any­way, she was more chal­leng­ing than Mr. G in how she latched.  She also wanted to com­fort nurse more than either of the boys before her.  Her need for com­fort cou­pled with my over active let down had to be worked through.  She also self-weaned at 15 months, not because I was preg­nant again but I had some weird hor­mone flux that caused prob­lems with my milk as my milk pro­duc­tion con­tin­ued to decrease she became less inter­ested in nurs­ing.  Before we knew it we no longer were breastfeeding.

Now there’s D-man.  He & I have had prob­a­bly more chal­lenges than the oth­ers. With him I had my first hor­ri­ble bout of mas­ti­tis, I had never had it go full blown before, but it did with him.  I dealt with severe post­par­tum depres­sion & the unique chal­lenges to nurs­ing that existed through this.  He also bit me, he once drew blood.  At that point I did con­sider end­ing breast­feed­ing, I mean it really hurt, but he wasn’t ready & I knew it would be an awful time.  So we worked through teach­ing him not to bite & to be gen­tle.  I also had to work through my TOTAL ter­ror at the thought I might lose a nipple–seriously that kid has a mas­sively strong chomper.

BUT I’m glad we worked through it like we did because he’s 16 months & I’m not sure when he will be ready to wean.  I lean toward the idea of child-led wean­ing or self-weaning of a child although I may at some point decide to intro­duce gen­tle wean­ing.  I’m not sure yet.  After one year I don’t rush it, obvi­ously given my cur­rent track record.

I do crack jokes about how long he might nurse, but that’s because I’m not able to NOT crack a joke.  It’s against my nature to be any­thing but a smart-ass I think it’s in my DNA. How­ever, even with my smart-ass self  this breast­feed­ing rela­tion­ship works well & is gen­tle for both of us.  I’m really glad that we’ve got­ten to share it together, as with the other rabble-rousers back when they were littles.

Some great resources for sup­port & infor­ma­tion on breast­feed­ing I’ve turned to over the years:

• Le Leche League : Even though I’ve never attended a meet­ing the infor­ma­tion avail­able has been invalu­able. I do a mem­ber­ship though & I find the mag­a­zine that I receive, New Begin­nings, in the mail to be hugely sup­port­ive.  I also have a well-worn copy of The Wom­anly Art of Breast­feed­ing.

• Kel­ly­Mom: Very easy to use & a go to resource when I needed help fig­ur­ing out what to do. I love the way this site is laid out.  It offers a trea­sure trove of information.

• Moth­er­ing Mag­a­zine: I may not do every­thing all nat­ural but the sup­port over­all has been really won­der­ful for me. Moth­er­ing also has a great forum that has a lot of sup­port avail­able in this area.

• As a Catholic who breast­feeds I also drew on the fol­low­ing book for sup­port: Breast­feed­ing and Catholic Moth­er­hood: God’s Plan for You and Your Baby by Sheila Kip­p­ley.  Even though I got it as I was hav­ing my 3rd, both my hus­band & I were not a prac­tic­ing Catholics until after the birth of Mr. G (a story for another time), & I was feel­ing wor­ried about bal­anc­ing 3 kids under 3 while breast­feed­ing.  It helped me to turn to my spir­i­tu­al­ity for addi­tional sup­port.  While there is NO offi­cial Catholic Church teach­ing on breast­feed­ing (this is because each mother-child rela­tion­ship is unique) the Church is very sup­port­ive of breast­feed­ing moth­ers as it is of all moth­ers & it helped me to have that support.

• And another great Catholic resource is the Catholic Nurs­ing Moth­ers League.  This is a great net­work of sup­port for women of Catholic faith who are breast­feed­ing while prac­tic­ing gen­tle Catholic mothering.

Tagged as: baby, breastfeeding, breastfeeding resources, catholic breastfeeding, extended breastfeeding, family, feeding, kellymom, le leche league, motherhood, nursing, weaning