Why now?
When Elijah was born way way back in June of 2009, I was determined to exclusively breastfeed him. Exclusively breastfed can be shorted to EBF, for those of you who aren’t in-the-know. All was going well, with mostly boobie milk and the odd bottle if he was particularly ravenous, until his 1 month check up. My 8lb 15oz at-birth son had ballooned up to…8lbs 9oz. If that’s not enough to set off a pediatrician’s radar, I don’t know what is.
So, she suggested we wait for 2 weeks and come back in to do a check-up. My instructions were to offer a bottle after each nursing session. This is, of course, the death knell for breastfeeding, but my son was losing weight. As a dutiful mother, I followed the instructions and EBF was over.
Two weeks later, he was checked again. He’d gained a whopping 1 ounce. Maybe, the pediatrician suggested, he just needed more formula. Adding a little bit had resulted in a gain, so maybe some more? We briefly discussed the possibility that he was metabolically a carbon copy of Darling Husband who can only be described as “rail thin.” She said it was possible; however, she was still concerned with the slow gain.
We came back for a 3 month check-up. At this point, breastfeeding existed for comfort only. Once when he woke up, in the middle of the night when he had trouble sleeping and during the day if he became particularly fussy. He’d broken the magical 9 pound barrier, an astounding ounce above his birthweight.
Things progressed in much this way throughout his infancy. At 6 months, he tipped the scales at 13 pounds – a full 4 pounds less than he should be. He doesn’t register on the charts for weight, although his height is between the 50th and 60th percentiles.
I’ve missed breastfeeding throughout all of this. I went through three weeks of my own personal 7th Circle of Hell to get him on the boob. Crying (mostly from me) from intense pain and frustration; several tubes of lanolin; worries over latch-on and positioning. My other three never got the hang of it but he did. I was in mommy-nirvana when the pain went away and only the sheer bliss of sustaining my baby remained.
Now, he’s seven months old. My eldest daughter has braces, something I learned, to my shock, can be largely avoided by breastfeeding. Formula has as much sugar-in similar form!-as a can of coke. My previously slim and trim infant is putting on the much expected “bottle bloat” many formula fed babies experience.
I learned, through Shari’a law, that Muslim women are asked to, if possible, nurse their child for a full two years. Many primitive cultures nurse until the first replacement of a “milk tooth” with a full-fledged meat-gnawing front tooth, around the age of 6 (I’m not sure I’ll go this far). Breastfeeding protects against a whole host of problems, from asthma to obesity to Type II diabetes, all of which are a problem in my family to one degree or another.
Oh, and my boobs are with me where ever I go and don’t need special preparation. They don’t cost me a dime, while formula costs bouku bucks-$10 a week when Wal-Mart has the $5 cans and $30 when they don’t.
The challenge is to switch from mainly formula to mainly breast milk in 28 days. Here are the requirements of the challenge
- Get rid of the nookie(s)
- Go nowhere without him (exceptions for bars and bar-like places like GameWorks)
- Wear him more often
- Take my More Milk Plus tablets religiously
- Pick him up as soon as he cries and nurse him when he doesn’t stop immediately
- Offer the breast at least once every hour
- Nurse him until he pulls away, and offer the breast after 2 ounces of formula
- Use my Medela-made torture device (colloquially known as a “breast pump”) once every 30 minutes during his naps
Tags: baby, breast feed, challenge, relactating
