Hello Everyone! My name is Kelly and I’m a new blogger over at Oh Miss Noelle where I talk about the adventures of me and my little!
Once I started reading Julie’s breastfeeding diaries I was hooked and couldn’t wait to join. Thank you Julie for letting me be a part of this wonderful series.
Meet my daughter Miss Noelle who came into this world 14 months ago. She is full of energy, abundant joy and has quite the attitude already. After struggling for 18 months of infertility we finally found out that we were expecting. I knew right from that moment that I looked forward to my own breastfeeding journey.
Once I started reading Julie’s breastfeeding diaries I was hooked and couldn’t wait to join. Thank you Julie for letting me be a part of this wonderful series.
Meet my daughter Miss Noelle who came into this world 14 months ago. She is full of energy, abundant joy and has quite the attitude already. After struggling for 18 months of infertility we finally found out that we were expecting. I knew right from that moment that I looked forward to my own breastfeeding journey.
I had decided while I was pregnant that I wasn’t going to spend countless hours reading books on how breastfeeding was supposed to be or all the technical details. I figured that since women have been doing it for years that we would figure it out on our own. However if you’re looking for a book to make light of breastfeeding and the whole birthing journey check out Breastfeeding Sucks, I picked this up on a recommendation from a friend and it’s very humorous.
The hospital we delivered at was wonderful in understanding the importance of skin to skin contact right after delivery and it didn’t take long for us to get Noelle to latch on. While her latch was great, my only concern right off the bat was that I never saw any colostrum and I felt like she wasn’t getting anything but she continued to nurse and seemed content so we just went with it.
It wasn’t until 5 days from delivery that my milk came in, and we continued to nurse exclusively from there on. I was blessed with an 18 week maternity leave before eventually switching jobs to part time. One my biggest goals was to keep my supply up and stock my freezer with tons of breast milk. I almost made this my mission and I found that it really all just came down to supply and demand. So that I did! I would pump in between every feeding and even wake at 4am. While this was extremely exhausting I knew I was increasing my odds of getting her to one year on just breast milk. (Although a lot of my stock pile came from her not wanting to drink it from a bottle)
(This was our deep freezer packed with milk bags)
There were definitely ups and downs along the way, I remember rocking Noelle in the wee hours of the morning nursing her and thinking to myself “Now I know why people don’t do this”or when around 6-8 weeks she would want to nurse for hours upon hours every evening to the point I felt like my nipples might fall off.
Then came our biggest challenge when we tried to introduce a bottle, she wanted absolutely no part of it and would scream bloody murder until I nursed her instead. We tried everything and I think I took every recommendation I could get, but nothing seemed to work. We tried giving her a little break, being super consistent, tried every bottle/nipple combo that existed and still nothing. For weeks upon weeks we fought with her to get her to take some breast milk from a bottle but she just refused. One day I had to be gone for about 9 hours and she went on her own hunger strike and waited till I got home to eat.
Finally that’s what it came down to was she would just wait all day till I got home and nursed more frequently through the night. My mom (who watches her while I’m at work) got really good at finding other ways to soothe her such as giving her some cereal (once she was older around 5 months), giving her warm baths and cuddling her because she would not eat from that bottle.
I would say it took her till about 6 months and then she started accepting defeat by eating a couple ounces from a bottle to hold her until I got home to nurse.
Overall I loved my breastfeeding journey and was sad to see it come to an end. At around her first birthday I started the weaning process and while I wasn’t ready I knew that the longer I continued the harder it would be for me to let go. It was an extremely smooth transition which made the end of the journey just seem right and over a matter of weeks she was weaned and I was FREE from pumping which is a wonderful feeling.
I give so much credit to all the moms out there that have struggled and persevered and to the moms that it just didn’t work out for keeping your heads high. We are all in this thing called motherhood together, we are all doing the very best we can for our babies and we need to stick together.
(Professional photos courtesy of CKP)
Please feel free to come visit my blog for the adventures and mishaps of my family! Also stay tuned for a post coming soon to include some detailed tip and tricks that I found helpful for stocking my freezer full of breast milk!
Be sure to catch up with the rest of the Breastfeeding Diaries at the top of my navigation bar!
Oh my. I should have taken that advice to wean closer to a year. We are having a VERY VERY VERY hard time weaning (as in my babe wants NOTHING to do with it). It looks like tandem nursing is in my future.
Lol Kel, Love the freezer stash! You are an amazing mama and Noelle is such a lucky little girl to have you as her Mom!
Talk about a breastmilk stock pile! My daughter would not take the bottle at all. I think I was able to get my son to take the bottle a hand full of times, but then he just reached a point where he just wouldn't and I was ok with it since I stayed at home. The late night feedings weren't all that bad for us.