Nursing Your Kids

While I know in theory I’m not the only woman still nursing a toddler it was wonderful to see a mom nursing her two year old at the playground this morning. Wonderful because I’m relieved Sam no longer wants to nurse in public, and wonderful because it’s so nice to know I’m not alone.

I’m not much of a joiner but I’m starting to think I should maybe attend a few La Leche League meetings.

What I’ve learned in the past 18 months is that nothing stays the same for long with this kid. He goes through stages where he sleeps, stages where he doesn’t, stages where eat eats and stages where he won’t. After several months of thinking we were actually getting somewhere with the weaning process, he’s been nursing just about every day for the past week and a half.

Aside from the fact that it often hurts because I have to grab his flailing fists and pinching fingers I don’t mind too much. I know it won’t last forever and that he will, at some point, wean. I love looking down and his sweet face, especially when he looks up at me, his mouth full, and smiles.

Yesterday morning when Sam woke up at 6.30, a full hour before he’s been waking, I decided to try something I’d given up on months ago: bringing him into bed with us. He was content to cuddle for about a minute and a half before he sat up, and started pulling the blankets down and my shirt up. He didn’t have much luck and he started to cry and make the sign for milk. I sighed, lifted my shirt and tried to get comfortable.

Two hours later, after drifting in and out of a shallow sleep, I fully awoke to Sam’s mouth clamped firmly around my nipple. It hurt as badly as it did those first few weeks. I’m sure the monster nursing session exacerbated the fact that somewhere in the night he lost his latch and just grabbed onto whatever he could. And what he got wasn’t nearly as much as she should have.

I am now officially declaring a moratorium on morning snuggles until he’s fully weaned.

I stopped nursing Sam before bed around the same time he stopped falling asleep while nursing. Instead of settling down for a nice relaxing drink before bed he started beating the crap out of me and flailing around like he’d stepped into a hornets’ nest. For the past couple of months Bob’s been in charge of putting Sam to bed which has really cut down on breastfeeding in general. We’ve gone for more than a week and I’ve thought, “That’s it, we’re done,” and then for no reason he’d ask to nurse and I’d let him.

It’s strange nursing during the day. The few times he’s wanted to he’s been more interested in looking at my breasts than getting milk from them. He’ll sit on my lap and go from one to the other, back and forth, not really settling in at all. After a minute or two he’ll lose interest and either go back to playing or ask for something to eat or drink. At night though, the few times Bob’s not around and I put Sam down, it’s worse than it was before. He’s like a burrow owl or something. He’ll brace his feet against my legs, shove his butt up in the air and try to burrow his way into my breasts, mauling them in the process.

At what point will he settle down?

In a case that I find totally offensive in every way possible, a St. Cloud, Minnesota nursing mother in the middle of a custody battle was asked to stop breastfeeding by a court investigator.

Christa Burton, whose son Carter is now 15 months old, takes three different medications that are all listed as safe in the book Medications and Mothers’ Milk. The court made the recommendation based on testimony from a nurse practitioner who originally recommend that Burton breastfeed her child who was born 6 weeks premature. The court says that they’re erring on the side of safety, despite the fact that a doctor says about the medications, “They are basically all fine, particularly in a 14-month-old infant who can metabolize drugs as good if not better than an adult.”

Obviously I don’t know anything about this case other than the articles I’ve read, but it seems like the court is being totally misogynistic and anti-mother in this case. I’m sure that the father is probably threatened by the mother-son bond, and the fact that they’re still nursing threatens him even more. I can’t believe that this is fair game in a custody hearing, that the court is willing to ignore the numerous benefits of nursing a toddler to appease the father.

If you’re nursing a baby or toddler and are prescribed a medication make sure it’s safe for your child before you fill the prescription. Many unsafe medicines have safe alternatives. Medications and Mothers’ Milk sounds like a fantastic resource. I’ve been relying on the medication index in my copy of the Nursing Mother’s Companion.

Kellymom has an extensive list of the benefits of extended breastfeeding. Here are just a few of them.