On breastfeeding while pregnant.

Before BlueEyes was born I knew I wanted to give breastfeeding a try, but I didn’t have any particular goals in mind. I first wanted to see how things went and if I could even do it. Shortly after he was born he started nursing and it went surprisingly well. I was very lucky and never really had any problems. No clogged ducts, no mastitis, no nipples that were hurting. It was all smooth sailing. 

Before I had BlueEyes, I thought nursing a toddler, let alone a bigger kid, was a bit weird. I guess it doesn’t help that you rarely see people do it. But your own child becomes a toddler very gradually. So slow that you almost don’t realize that he’s not a little baby anymore. So there is no one day when all of a sudden he is a toddler and you ‘have to’ stop nursing. I’m still breastfeeding BlueEyes, because I really don’t see a good reason not to. What I didn’t realize before is that after about a year you can stop pumping at work, because your breasts slowly turn from milk storage units to milk making units (i.e. you make the most milk during a feeding instead of throughout the day). BlueEyes nurses shortly when we come home from daycare, he nurses (a lot) before he goes to bed, and then when he wakes up at night he nurses to fall back to sleep easily. And he nurses when he’s really upset and angry and when that is really the only way to get him to calm down.

And now I’m pregnant and again, before I had BlueEyes I didn’t even realize that that was a thing: breastfeeding while you’re pregnant. Well, it is. And now you know it too ;-).