My gorgeous wee man was born at 37 weeks exactly. His suck was excellent despite being early and we tried to feed straight away. During the first few days I had a lot of difficulty latching him and blisters and sores started appearing on my nipples. I was sure this wasn’t right and asked for some help, but everyone said I was doing fine and to continue.

We went home from hospital to have him taking up to 30 minutes to latch at most feeds, him screaming, me with tears running down my face. The pain became more and more at each feed. On about the 7th day I rang my midwife because I just couldn’t do it anymore. She advised me to express to give my nipples a break, so we began expressing all feeds and bottle feeding EBM.

By the next morning (I think) I was shaking all over and nearly collapsed on the floor. Beginning of mastitis bout, number one. This was horrid. I couldn’t do anything apart from sit up in bed to express and eat and drink a bit. Thanks to my mum and husband who were there to bottle feed the expressed milk. I got better, but my nipples were still red raw and there was no way I could latch. So I expressed day and night for another week then began to try relatching him.

This was excruciating! Eventually I managed to get him latched with nipple shields. We both gradually managed to get into a rhythm with feeds and make some progress. He took over an hour to feed each time and it felt like I was doing nothing else!

Now, the pain was still excruciating over this whole time! At every feed it felt like needles and glass were cutting my whole breast throughout the feed. After the feed it felt like acid had been poured on my nipples and I would have severe shooting pains through my breast for hours. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep! The pain was so bad I couldn’t wear clothing! So I was essentially at home the whole time. I think I bought every single breastfeeding product I could find (shells, shields, creams, pumps etc).

I then managed to get another 2 episodes of mastitis. More pain, more antibiotics. We were still using the nipple shields. But at least I was still feeding!

It took weeks to convince people this pain was not normal. I had been told to just get on with it and it couldn’t possibly hurt that much. FINALLY a lactation consultant suggested I may have thrush.  The thrush took over 6 weeks to cure. I had creams, then weeks of nystatin tablets, nothing worked. I finally got prescribed fluconazole tablets and my pain started to subside.

I finally got all the infections sorted enough to brave weaning from the nipple shields. It took another few weeks of gentle coaxing, tricking, encouraging, along with screaming and tears to teach my baby what that nipple felt like again!

By 12 weeks we were finally managing to feed without nipple shields and with much less pain!!

Then came the saga of an unhappy baby with blood in his poo!! It eventuated he was intolerant to cows milk and I then had to go onto a dairy-free diet. That lasted until he was over one! By about 14 months I could eat small amounts of dairy but he could still only tolerate breast milk. Thank goodness I had managed to feed him!

Anyway, here we are now, coming up to 21 months old. We are still breastfeeding.  My wee guy loves his “milkas” and this mummy feels like she has managed one of the best, but hardest accomplishments in her life!! I love the moments we have together feeding and the wee smiles and giggles looking back up at me! Oh yeah, and we have been pain free for more than a year.

I was having ultrasounds twice weekly because the doctors were very worried about twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a dangerous complication that happens sometimes with identical twins.  I drove to one of my Thursday ultrasounds, thinking that it would be more of the same: they are still different in size and very small, so you should lay around and do nothing all day.  Instead, they took a very long time to do the ultrasound, and when the doctor came in afterwards to give me the report, the first thing he said was, “So we have you scheduled for a c-section at 7:30 tomorrow morning.”  I was shocked!  I was only 35 weeks pregnant, and not feeling ready for the twins to be born.  But they had measured the blood flow from the placenta, and felt that Baby B, the smaller twin, was not getting enough oxygen and nutrients.  So it was time for them to come out.  Both babies were breech, and the doctors refused to allow me to even attempt a vaginal birth.  They told me that at 35 weeks, the babies should be healthy enough to come  home within a few days, and that “they might have to spend a day or two in the NICU, but it’s no big deal.”  I can’t believe they told me that!  And I can’t believe I bought it!

So the next morning, Jonah and Owen were born by C-section at 8:17 and 8:18 in the morning.  They were not breathing very well, so the nurses whisked them off to the NICU with nothing more than a quick wave to me.  My husband went off with them, and I was sent up to recovery.  It was so strange to be in the labor and delivery ward of the hospital with no babies.  I could hear babies crying in neighboring rooms, and I ached to be holding my two little ones.  When I went to see them in the NICU, they had their faces covered (for minimal stimulation), and were positively covered in wires and tubes and monitors.  We were not allowed to touch them or even talk to them above a whisper that first day, and the news just kept getting worse and worse.  I will never forget the moment when the doctor said to me about Owen, “Well, we don’t have many more tricks up our sleeve.  If he doesn’t respond to the Nitric, we’re going to have to call Boston.”  Both babies had severe respiratory distress syndrome, and they didn’t respond to hardly any of the treatments for the first 24 hours.

Meanwhile, I was pumping and trying to build my supply so that I could nurse them when they were strong enough.  At first, we were adamant that they not have pacifiers or bottles, but when the nurses said that bottle-fed babies go home sooner, I gave in.  It was two days before they even were able to have the first drops of colostrum swabbed on their gums.  Slowly, they started to be able to take little bits of my milk from a bottle nipple, once they were off the ventilators.  It was five days before we got to hold Jonah, the stronger of the two.  I kept asking when I could nurse them, but the nurses told me that it would make their oxygen levels drop, and they had to be on a certain type of ventilator, and all kinds of other excuses. 

I had plenty of milk, and I was pumping every 3 hours around the clock to build a supply for my little guys.  The hospital finally told me to store it at home in our freezer because theirs was full! 

But we still weren’t nursing.  Jonah was in the hospital for 2 weeks, and I nursed him 3 times before he came home.  Owen was in for 3 weeks, and I only nursed him once while he was there.   Once Jonah came home, we worked really hard to get him latched on and nursing.  He was getting stronger every day, but it was so hard to nurse him (he would nurse for an hour every feeding), then offer him a bottle of milk so that we could be sure he was getting enough, then pump so we would have milk to offer.  And I tried to go to the hospital every day to visit Owen, who was still there.  It was insanity! 

And it only got crazier when Owen finally came home.  We nursed every single feeding because I was so determined to get them on the breast.  And it was the same routine: nurse, bottle, pump.  All day and all night.  Owen had to have some special high-calorie formula that we mixed with breastmilk instead of water, because he wasn’t gaining weight very well. 

And when Owen came home, I started having excruciating nipple pain.  It felt like broken glass was coming out of my breasts at every feeding.  My husband would come home and find me nursing the boys and sobbing.  I started taking painkillers just to be able to feed them, because I refused to switch to formula.  Our doula told us that it was almost definitely thrush, so I went and got checked out by my doctor.  She told me that the boys’ latch looked good, and it probably was thrush, but she wouldn’t treat me unless their pediatrician also treated them.  Their pediatrician then told me that he wouldn’t treat them unless I was also being treated.  It took me three days to finally convince them that someone had to write the prescription first.  And so we all took nystatin, which did nothing for two weeks.   Then, my doctor switched me to Diflucan, and we used gentian violet along with it.  And, even though everything in our house was purple for a week from the gentian violet, it worked! 

We had four glorious, pain-free days of nursing before the pain returned.  And so I went nuts.  I read everything I could get my hands on about yeast.  I became the Hygiene Nazi, treating everything that touched breastmilk as though it were toxic waste.  We put vinegar on everything, and used grapefruit seed extract and gentian violet, and many courses of Diflucan.  Nothing worked. 

So I was in immense pain all the time, but we finally did get the boys solely on the breast, with no bottles at all.  What a triumph!  I wish I remembered more of it, but I spent so much time in a haze of pain that it all seems like such a blur to me.

Finally, six weeks after the pain returned, a lactation consultant at the support group I was going to said, “maybe it’s not yeast.”  The thought had never occurred to me (or, apparently, to my doctor).  So I went to the doctor and insisted that she culture my breastmilk, although she didn’t think it was necessary.  It’s a good thing we did, because it turned out that I didn’t have yeast at all; instead, I had a raging staph infection in my nipples. 

She put me on dicloxacillin, which didn’t make me feel better and gave me an allergic reaction.  When I told the doctor that I was still having pain, she told me she was just going to prescribe another course of Diflucan, because it was probably just yeast from the antibiotics.  I would not take any more meds without being cultured, so I insisted that they wait and do another culture.  And it’s a good thing, because it turned out that the staph was MRSA, a medicine-resistant form of staph. 

The doctor put me on Levaquin, another antibiotic that the culture indicated would work, but told me that I couldn’t nurse while I was on it.  And then told me that I could.  I asked our pediatrician who told me it was fine, and then another doctor in his practice said it was absolutely not.  I kept asking doctors, and kept getting conflicting answers.  Finally, I decided that I wouldn’t risk the health of my two boys who had already been so sick, and I decided that I would formula feed them for the fourteen days while I was medicated, and just pump.  I had to go stay with my parents so that they could help with the logistics of managing and feeding two babies and pumping.  After 24 hours of having the boys reject the bottles and then, finally, gulp down the formula and spit it all back up, I decided that I couldn’t do it.  I did a lot more research, and found some information saying that it was probably all right for me to nurse while I was on the Levaquin.  I still was wary of it, so I decided to nurse every other feeding, so at least they would still get the benefits of breastmilk, and any harmful effects from the medicine would be limited.  It was a disaster.  They had a lot of trouble keeping the formula down, and my supply dropped because the pump was not getting as much as the babies normally did. 

But the medicine was working!  By the end of the fourteen-day course, I was pain-free again.  And once I was done with it, I started nursing the boys for every feeding again, and trying desperately to build my milk supply back up. 

Unfortunately, the pain came back after only four days.  I had another two cultures done, because I wanted to make sure we were treating the right problem.  I was afraid that we had yeast again from the antibiotics.  But both cultures came back negative.  I was at my wits’ end.  I couldn’t understand why I was still in so much pain.  I went to my doctor, who told me that she just couldn’t understand it either.  She said that our latch looked good, so I probably just needed some time to heal up.  She told me to pump and bottle feed the boys for a week to let myself heal.  “No nursing for at least a week!”, she told me.  This didn’t sound quite right to me, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I tried it.  Again, it was a disaster.  My breasts no longer would let down for the pump.  I would pump for 20 minutes and get only an ounce of milk.  Needless to say, my supply plummeted.  We had to supplement the boys with formula, which they again had trouble keeping down.  I went against my doctor’s advice and nursed them once a day, in the evening, just to make sure they would go back to the breast after a week. 

After 4 days, they rejected the breast completely.  Every time I tried to nurse them, they would scream as if they were being terribly hurt.  It was horrible.  They had decided that the bottle was much easier, and they didn’t want to nurse anymore.  I stopped all bottles immediately, and we cup-fed them to make sure they were getting enough to eat.  They still refused the breast, and cried all day and all night.

I was completely at the end of my rope.  Friends and family were telling me to just give up and switch to formula, but I felt like I didn’t know how to be a mom without nursing.  It was so important to me, and I felt like Jonah and Owen really needed it, that I refused to quit.  I cried and cried and spent hours and hours researching on the internet.  Finally, even though we didn’t have the money, I bit the bullet and paid for a private lactation consultant to come out to the house and consult with us. 

She will forever be an angel in my mind.  In the space of about 15 minutes, she had diagnosed and then fixed our latch problem.  I felt so foolish that I had been ‘doing it wrong’ for four months!  As for the nipple confusion, she said to just keep doing what we were doing, and that now that they had a better latch, it would be easier for them to get milk from the breast.  Within a few days, my supply was back up, the boys were nursing like pros, and I was pain-free!  I can’t believe it was so easy after all that pain.  I had been told by two other lactation consultants, my doctor, and the boys’ pediatrician that our latch was very good. 

It was beautiful to nurse without having it make my toes curl in pain!  I was thrilled, but the boys were not happy babies.  They were covered in rashes, and spitting up constantly, and too uncomfortable to sleep, ever.  We were all exhausted, and I did more research.  Although my doctor told me that what I ate wouldn’t affect the boys, I thought that something I ate might be bothering them.  I cut dairy out of my diet for two weeks, and they got much better, and then worse again.  I decided to do the Dr. Sears total elimination diet.

So for two weeks, I ate nothing but rice, millet, summer squash, turkey, sweet potatoes, and pears.  I was ridiculously hungry and lost a twenty pounds, but it helped a lot.  The boys’ rashes disappeared, they stopped spitting up entirely, and they started sleeping longer stretches at night.  They seemed much happier. 

After a couple of months, we figured out that they were reacting to dairy and soy in my diet, which explains why they always had so much trouble with the cows’ milk formula. So now I eat anything but dairy and soy. Now that the boys are a year old, I am able to eat a little bit of cheese once in a while.

One day, when the boys were 7 months old, I noticed that my nipples were getting sore again.  We had started nursing in some new positions, so I just monitored their latches closely, hoping it would go away.  It didn’t, and one day I woke up to find that one of my breasts was red and hot.  I had had this for months before, and I figured it would go away, but later that day I started to feel hot and really tired.  Before long, I had chills and was in really bad shape.  I figured out that I had mastitis, and was put on antibiotics.  Within a day, I was feeling better and I thought that was the end of it.  Unfortunately, I had it again as soon as the antibiotics ran out.  The same thing happened twice more, and I ended up with three courses of antibiotics within 8 weeks.  I was sick from the antibiotics and worried about taking to many meds, especially because I was also on Diflucan so that I wouldn’t get thrush from all of the antibiotics.  The fourth time that I woke up with a red breast, I decided to give it 24 hours and see what happened, as long as I didn’t get a fever.  I kept a heat pad on my breast all day and after every feeding I swabbed my nipple with grapefruit seed extract, let it dry, and applied Bactrim and a clean nursing pad.  After 24 hours, the inflammation was gone!  

Still, five months later, this happens about once a week, but it always goes away with heat and super hygiene.  I had given up on it until recently, when a friend sent me a video about something called inflammatory breast cancer.  I was scared into getting some answers, and will be seeing a breast health specialist this month and getting a mammogram and an ultrasound.  So far, no one has been able to give me any answers, but I’m hopeful that we will figure this out.

Our nursing relationship has been worth every bit of trouble.  It has been amazing to watch my boys grow from two tiny, sick, skinny babies into happy, healthy, chubby mama’s boys.  They will be a year old this month, and they are complete milk monsters.  Their first baby sign was the sign for milk.  They don’t even know what to do with a bottle.  Aside from the disastrous (and, thankfully, occasional) formula, they were exclusively breastfed for 7 months, when they started solid foods. 

I think we have made it this far on sheer determination, but I hope the next year will be easier; my initial goal was a year of nursing, but now I think we’ll do two!

A was a much anticipated first bebe and it didn’t ever occur to me that things would be anything but natural and enjoyable.  Of course, not necessarily easy, but if we followed our intuition then all would work out.  I suppose, in pregnancy bliss, one can’t even contemplate the difficulties of a baby screaming constantly with acid reflux, severe allergies and even being tongue tied!  What a combination, especially when one is living in a foreign country where you can’t speak the language and away from normal support structures.

Almost from when A was born, he cried.  Our poor little mouse.  The first attempts to breastfeed were painful and difficult, he didn’t latch on properly and I can remember what seemed like an endless stream of midwifes thrusting by engorged breasts into his tiny red screaming mouth.  Even when I got the hang of the positioning, his sucking felt like broken glass piercing the most sensitive part of my body.  In desperation I started taking pain killers in order to feed him.

I have a strong memory of mother, a committed breast feeder of my younger sister (after suffering two first bebes, my brother and I, in humidity cribs that couldn’t feed) pleading with me to stop trying.  She and I were crying hysterically and the pain that I felt seemed to be an endless cycle between short bursts of sleep. Yet I persisted.

In addition to the constant crying, A pooed constantly with acidic green slime emerging from his cloth nappies.  His tummy was constantly swollen and he barely slept.

I searched for help online and found it in the form of Mary and a wonderful lactation consultant in Brisbane who despite being on a different time zone (we lived in Europe) spent hours on the phone with me making me feel ‘less crazy’.  Following a photo that I sent through to her of A, she casually remarked that he was tongue tied!  I couldn’t believe that hours one on one with lactation nurses in Europe had failed to notice that small fact!  Somehow the explanation for the pain in feeding made me feel justified and not totally insane.

A also had allergies, as it turned out to egg, diary, nuts, seafood and wheat.  I forced myself to eat meat (having been a vegetarian for 15 years) and survived on quinoa, celery, lamb, chicken and garlic so that I could keep breastfeeding A.  It helped marginally, but he even reacted to brown rice. Not surprisingly I ended up in hospital having lost so much weight and weighed down with considerable stress, and to be honest guilt, that everything that I consumed could be hurting my red faced screaming little fellow.

Of course, over time things improved.  I was forced to eat a wider range of foods.  A did not consume solids for 10 months and I breastfed him for 2 years, despite starting a highly demanding job when he was 10 months old.  I have to laugh remembering how I used to run into the bathroom to express and then treated the breast milk as pure gold, not the usual run of things in a large law firm!

When I look back, I am not sure that I could have done any of this without the strong sense of love and commitment that I felt to my little A and the support that I got from my amazing husband and from gorgeous Mary, herself going through so much with little C.  Interestingly though when I think back to a very challenging first year with A, the highlight is the closeness that I achieved with him through breastfeeding.

As I rub my growing belly, I can only pray that my next little one does not have to face the same early challenges.  Breastfeeding is an amazing gift, but at the same time, I would never judge anybody that doesn’t because I know that it’s not always easy.

During my last couple of months of pregnancy I attended a breastfeeding class as was suggested by the midwives at the hospital I went to for checkups. I wanted to do everything that was offered to me, but I think that perhaps I thought that breastfeeding was going to come naturally to me and wondered what the content of the class could possibly be? I was equally confused when my cousin lent me a couple of books on breastfeeding… one of them being the size of a novel… I had no idea what someone could possibly fill that many pages up with.

I never got around to reading the books on breastfeeding, probably because I was so wrapped up in my wonderful pregnancy and preparing for birth, but I did attend the breastfeeding class and felt more than adequately informed afterwards. I was sure it would be a breeze… ’cause like they said “breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt… if it does, take the baby off and re-attach”… Easy.

I had enjoyed all the changes in my body through my pregnancy and felt very womanly and sexy and beautiful. My breasts grew to more than twice their original size and having been quite small beforehand, I was very happy with my new bust. My nipples and areole had grown quite a lot and were now a deep pink. I had been expressing a small amount of colostrum since it had first appeared somewhere in my second trimester and had shocked me with it’s bright orange colour, and had been rubbing this into my nipples to prepare them for breastfeeding. I also found some joy in squeezing the little white lumps that had appeared in my tubercules montgomery… it was similar to the joy of squeezing a big juicy pimple or a blackhead! :)

So I had been doing all the things that were recommended and I felt that my nipples would be ready for anything. I knew it could hurt for a while as my nipples got used to the feeling of breastfeeding and I felt as though I had read enough about breastfeeding from pamphlets and the internet for us to be successful.

Arwen had his first breastfeed a short while after his birth. He started turning his head towards his hands that were scrunched up next to his face and my mother commented that he was probably looking for something to suck on. So I excitedly placed him close to my breast and he latched straight on. I remember it being a strange feeling and I’m not sure if he was attached correctly, but I didn’t really mind, I thought I’d figure out the specifics of attachment later.

Arwen slept for quite a few hours the first night and I think I just lay there next to him watching him as I was too pumped after the birth and just wanted to look at my new baby. I was physically exhausted, but was on such a wonderful high.

The following night, Arwen barely slept and seemed to be feeding constantly. Ten minutes after I took him off the breast after an hour and a half long feed, he would wake up and want to feed again. I was feeding Arwen lying down, but was still getting used to breastfeeding and co-sleeping, so this didn’t really mean any extra rest at this stage. I was utterly exhausted after being awake for three days and was finding that my nipples were becoming very sore. I was really looking forward to my milk coming in and I thought that perhaps this would mean some more rest for me as Arwen would actually be satisfied from his feeds.

Throughout my hospital stay I had been telling the midwives that breastfeeding was quite painful and I knew it shouldn’t be. I asked them to please have a look and make sure I was doing it right, because I was sure that I could not see any problem with my technique or the attachment. The midwives said that I was doing it right and that he was attached right, but at the same time they said if it hurt, there must be something wrong… so one midwife got me to visualise the feeling of breastfeeding to try to get me to find the source of the pain. It was hard to pinpoint the site of the pain when my whole nipple and areole was hurting! So I was shown a video about breastfeeding that I had already seen and felt comfortable that I had absorbed well. Needless to say I didn’t gain any new information from it and the pain was still there. I went to another midwife who I felt was more compassionate to try and get her to help me find out why it was so painful. She said I was doing everything right.

Just before I left the hospital the following day, Arwen had a checkup with the paediatrician, who found that he had a tongue tie, just as I had when I was a baby. It was amazing to me that he had the same ‘defect’ I had when I was born :) I was told by the paediatrician, who I quite liked, that there was no need to cut the tie unless it proved to be a problem. I said that mine had been cut when I started to talk and she said that there was always speech therapy, which could help with any issues he may have with talking. I felt happy with this and put it in the back of my mind to be watchful of any problems he might have with eating and talking. It didn’t occur to me that his tongue tie could cause problems with breastfeeding.

I had been feeding Arwen from one side of the breast each feed, alternating sides each time. In all the information I had been given, it said that the baby would take themselves off the breast once they had finished and then you should offer the other side. Arwen stayed on one side for an hour and a half or so and by then he was usually asleep I think. I stuck to giving him one side at each feed and used my ring to remember which side I was up to. I would place it on the hand of the side I had to start from next.

My milk came in a day or so after I came home from hospital and I continued the one side each feed routine. I seemed to be constantly feeding around the clock. My nipples were so painful that with every feed I was crying. My right nipple had scabs and seemed to be causing the most pain as it was shaped differently to the other one. I had understood that you should only put breastmilk on sore nipples and the antibacterial qualities would help to heal them. A couple of people had said I should try putting lanolin on them to ease the pain, but I had stood firm by what I had read. Then when the midwife who was visiting me at home recommended Lansinoh to me I wished I’d listened to those other people, as it was a great relief! It really took the sting out of my nipples. I was sitting on my bed all day propped up with about eight pillows around me, topless and in pain, but determined and convinced the pain would pass.

Within a week of arriving home I came down with something similar to the flu. My whole body was aching and I couldn’t stand up. I seriously thought I was going to die. All I could relate it to and think about was the fact that Arwen’s placenta was incomplete and I possibly had retained products. I thought perhaps the missing placenta piece had caused me to get some horrible sickness and I would have to get a hysterectomy to save myself!! I was quite scared and feeling sicker than I’d ever felt.

My mother called me from work to check on how I was doing and I told her I couldn’t stand up. She came straight home from work and we went to the doctor. I was told I had mastitis!! I had thought that mastitis was when you had some pussy green goop pouring out your nipple. I had no idea. The doctor pointed out a reddish mark on my breast which I hadn’t noticed before. As my breasts were so full of milk I had missed the fact that I had a big lump in my breast. I was in shock that a blocked milk duct could make me feel like that and I wished I’d read more about the problems associated with breastfeeding.

The doctor asked about my feeding technique and pattern and I told her that Arwen had never needed to have both sides during a feed. She was a bit shocked by this and told me that it was common to feed for 15 minutes on one side and then swap the baby to the other side. I was quite upset that I hadn’t been told this and something so simple could possibly have prevented me from getting mastitis! The doctor prescribed some antibiotics for me and warned that Arwen may get some diarrhoea from it and be a bit unsettled. She said that if it didn’t improve within the next day that I’d have to go to the hospital to get it drained. So I rubbed and expressed my breast as much as I could.

I had recovered from the mastitis a few days later I think. But I have had it a few more times since then. Luckily each time I have recognised the signs early and I haven’t got nearly as sick as I did the first time.

The pain in my nipples was still intense though. I was determined to wait it out as I was sure there would be a day when it would be ‘pleasurable’ as the literature said.

I think it was when Arwen was about seven weeks old and the time my lochia had eventually disappeared that I was able to breastfeed without pain. I was of course very glad I had stuck to it and not given up.

A week or so later, when Arwen was 8 weeks old, I started my course part time at uni. So Arwen had to be in child care one and a half days a week. This meant that I had to do a lot of expressing! I knew that he would be happy to take a bottle as his father had given him some expressed milk in a bottle when he was about four weeks old. He had guzzled it straight up without any hesitation.

During my first few weeks at uni I went into a toilet cubicle to express, being embarrassed whenever someone came into a cubicle next to me as it was so quiet and I was making a big loud squirting sound!  So I would usually stop and wait until they had gone to resume my pumping.

After I mentioned expressing in the bathroom to someone, they had told me that universities have a parent’s room where I could surely express, and that there would possibly be a fridge for me to keep the milk in, rather than carting it around in an insulated container all day. So I found the parents room and spent a couple of hours there every Tuesday pumping out bags and bags of milk. I stored the expressed milk in the fridge at the child care centre and picked it up on my way to the bus stop. I would then give the expressed milk to Arwen’s family day care worker and she stored it in her freezer ready for next time. She also had a can of formula in her freezer ‘just in case’ there wasn’t enough expressed milk. She ended up giving him a few bottles of formula during his time there, which I wasn’t happy with, but I didn’t have any known alternatives at the time.

When Arwen was about four months old, he started to get eczema and I eventually deduced that he had a reaction to cows’ milk and possibly nuts as he would get red blotches of eczema on his face the day after having some formula, after I had drunk some milk, or I had eaten peanut butter. I immediately bought a new back up tin of soy formula and excluded dairy and peanut butter from my diet. Arwen stopped getting eczema, and has had a few reactions after eating yoghurt, ice cream, being touched by someone who had just been holding cashews and sharing a drink with someone who I suspected had just eaten peanuts. So I am convinced that removing these things from our diets was the right thing, and even more convinced that breastfeeding is very important for Arwen’s health.

Arwen breastfeed almost constantly until four months when one day he started to go for a few hours at a time without a feed and the time between feeds gradually increased as he got older. He has gone through periods of being mostly a night feeder and of being a constant feeder when he’s feeling unwell or in need of some extra attention. He didn’t have a regular non-breastmilk meal until he was about 13 months old as he was thriving on my milk and was just not that interested in eating food. He loved sultanas, but that was about all that he would definitely eat more than a mouthful of. Now that he is almost two, he still breastfeeds at least three or four times a day and usually two or three times throughout the night. I don’t worry if he doesn’t eat much of his meals because I know that he is getting so much nutrition from breastmilk and I’m very glad I’m able to have this relaxed attitude to food, though I’m not at all relaxed when it comes to junk! ;)

I have had thoughts lately of weaning as sometimes I’m just not in the mood for Arwen to sit on me and my face and twist and wriggle and pull my hair and demand a feed in the middle of the night. It is also painful for me sometimes to breastfeed, but mostly it’s just a bit uncomfortable. But most of the time I do enjoy it and know how much I will miss it when it’s gone.

I had a big discovery a while ago when someone I know mentioned that her daughter was tongue tied and that after her operation, breastfeeding became easier. I had not ever considered that the pain I had been experiencing was due to Arwen’s tongue tie. By the time I read this, I was well into breastfeeding and had become used to the discomfort and I just felt happy to have a reason behind the pain. I actually think that breastfeeding has helped Arwen to use his tongue and he seems to be able to stick it out further as the months go by, which I’m sure is due a lot to breastfeeding. I don’t think I will consider surgery unless Arwen’s speech is majorly impaired, which it doesn’t appear to be. My nipples are definitely a different shape than they were before breastfeeding, but as far as I know there doesn’t seem to be any major damage, so there is no real reason for me to stop feeding Arwen. If my nipples become too sore I just unlatch him (which now means prying his teeth open with my finger) and change sides.

Overall, I love being able to lie there at night so close to him to feed him, and I love the fact that I can get him to stay in one place for a feed when I’m feeling the need for a bit of a rest. Arwen’s got boundless energy and is constantly moving and talking and running around and jumping off things… it’s nice to have a bit of relative stillness through breastfeeding and it’s nice to feel reconnected with him through breastfeeding when I’ve been ratty with him. I really do hope that we have at least a couple more years of breastfeeding ahead of us :D

I wrote this story almost four years ago now, and Arwen is still breastfeeding at the age of 5 years and 8 months.  When Arwen was a baby I never in my life thought I would be breastfeeding a nearly six year old, and even had the thought that breastfeeding a baby who is old enough to have teeth and talk was disgusting!!  Thank goodness I was exposed to healthy and inspirational breastfeeding stories and my thinking was challenged and a new perspective reached.  Breastfeeding a nearly six year old is something that has just crept up on us and was never something either of us set out to do.  Each day just blends into the next and I’ve just continued to feed him as he’s wanted and needed, but with increasing negotiation about when and how long and where as he gets older.  His tongue tie is still there and he does have trouble with the “th” sound, but that’s not uncommon for a five year old really.  He also has a gap between his two bottom front teeth so that the “tie” in his tongue can fit through when he talks.  But when it comes to breastfeeding it really has not been an issue these last few years.

I have since had a daughter, Anise, who will be 2 in one weeks’ time.  Arwen breastfed right through her pregnancy, even during the time when my milk vanished for a few months, and even when my colostrum came in during late pregnancy and the taste was unusual and salty.  He got used to the taste of the colostrum and then gorged himself on milk when it came in after Anise’s birth.

At this stage Arwen is usually only breastfeeding once or twice a day and finished feeding overnight shortly after Anise was born.  It became too draining on me to wake more often to feed my four year old than I did to feed my newborn!  He gets knocked back for feeds frequently by me because I just don’t feel up to it every time he asks, and this is something he quite happily accepts.  We have talked about our breastfeeding relationship coming to an end and he thinks that the earliest he wants to wean is after his sixth birthday.  I’m not sure whether he will want to wean as his birthday comes around, so I’m just playing it by ear, but still planting the seeds of thought about weaning, and that his breastfeeding days are winding down.