The Unadventures of Tracie

I have talked before about my experiences with breastfeeding . Things started getting better around 10 months, which made me happy. I looked forward to nursing Morgan for many more months. But alas, it was not to be. I'm now in a period of mourning. Around 14 months or so, Morgan started losing interest during some of our remaining 2-3 daily nursing sessions. It was not the same as the nursing strike s that he had had at 3 months, 6 months, and 9 months in which Morgan fussed and refused to nurse consistently for a period of a few days before returning with gusto to nursing regularly, as is what normally happens with a nursing strike. It was different. He just didn't seem as interested. I realized that my milk was decreasing as I had stopped pumping and I had stopped talking my lactation supplements. I think he was getting frustrated with how little milk I had left, which just decreased my supply even more. I tried to continue nursing as I realized that I wasn't ready ...

*I wanted to post this when Morgan turned one to mark the reach of my goal but I didn't finish it until now. I have always wanted to breastfeed. I knew that when I had a child it would be something that I would do. Having an unmedicated (aka "natural") childbirth was also something I knew I wanted, for so many reasons. (Post to come on this later.) And I succeeded. Unfortunately, I spent so much time preparing for birth that I forgot to learn about breastfeeding. Ideally you wouldn't need to learn about breastfeeding. You would know how because you've seen others do it. You would've heard other people talk about it. About the challenges and the solutions. And though I've known some women who breastfed, I realized I hadn't really seen how it was done or talked about it with them. I went into it completely naive, which is so against my usual nature of study, search, and prepare. I think I figured it would be easier than I thought. I also did not know...