Breastfeeding is Bestfeeding!

According to the birth plan, I had my son placed skin to skin to me at birth. Breastfeeding started a couple of hours after Victor was born, and continues today with full strength. For the past few weeks, we have been giving Victor a bottle, as he needs to learn how to use one because the fact is that he will be getting one when I happily return back to work.

I remember Nicolas struggled sucking on the bottle at first, after 6 weeks of breastfeeding at about 11 weeks old, I decided to try to give him a bottle again, and start pumping. At that time I realized that I didn't have enough in the freezer milk to go back to work anyway.

A learning experience it was, I know now what to avoid.

Nicolas had the bottle first, and he had them because the NICU wanted to know, how much he was eating. Nicolas arrived home, and I was still pumping and feeding, I didn't know what over pumping would do to me, or not pumping enough out, and I had mastitis. This is how I became a vegan, when I learn that cows get mastitis as well, yuck. My sister badly advised me that since I had a fever that I would need to stop nursing. My mother corrected my sister and said, no keep breastfeeding that child. I decided to do some searches, and I learned that goat and cows get antibiotics when this happens, and they give us that MILK. I'm drinking antibiotics, pesticides, in that WHITE stuff, the call the perfect food.

What I didn't realize was that it was best to just put Nicolas at the breast. That would avoid all supply issues. However, Nicolas was very sleepy, and he would fall asleep while eating, and get really angry when I put him down. After five weeks of trial and tribulations with Nicolas at the breast, I got in touch with La Leche League. I got some good advice, and breastfed Nicolas for 3 1/2 years.

Victor never fell asleep at the breast like his brother. That makes a huge difference in a full term and pre-term baby. This time around I have a freezer stash of about 60 ozs, and still growing. No experimental formula for this baby, only the best.

I read while breastfeeding Victor, Hirkani's Daughters by J.Hicks, and the Milk Memos by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette. La Leche League has these books at their Library. In addition, I recommend, Nursing Mother, Working Mother by Gail Pryor, I read this one when Nico was three months old, a little too late, but inspirational at best.

La Leche League of New Jersey

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend a great conference that creates awareness in breastfeeding. It was pretty interesting. I personally went to 4 groups. One of the groups discussed psychological impacts of breastfeeding. They went a little in depth as to why some women choose not to breastfeed or only breastfeed for a few weeks. The next workshop I went to was about co-sleeping, the family bed. The third workshop was about positive thinking (the author of this website, wwww.letthebabydrive.com). The last workshop I went to was about babywearing, different types of carriers and how to use them. In the middle of all this was speech presented by Dr. Sear's son about attachment parenting, inspirational to those of us who practice some sort of version of it.

La Leche League is a great program that helps ladies thru mother to mother support gain trust back into breastfeeding. I did with my son when he was 5 weeks of age, I had tons of doubt, and problems. Despite of the mastitis, the lack of support, and other things, I breastfed for about 3 1/2 years...basically almost two to three months ago, my son stopped mainly due to breastmilk probably decreasing due to my pregnancy, in which I was frequently complaining about tenderness. In all honesty if I was not pregnant, I think we would still be a breastfeeding duo.

La Leche League can be found at www.llli.org, and the La Leche League of NJ can be found at www.lalecheleaguenj.org.