Where do I fit in?

I love breastfeeding my little girl, here we are having a snack one day

However, Naomi is about to turn one, once she does I plan on reducing her booby-milk feeds by replacing the two day time ones we still have with cow's milk from her sippy cup.  We'll still be keeping the morning and night ones for a good bit longer, unless she decides she doesn't want them any more.

Following some advice from a friend I plan on doing this by offering her some cow's milk, once she is done/throws it on the floor she can have some booby-milk and in time I hope that she will drink more from the cup and less from my boobs!  She gets more and more distracted during booby feeds and so I am hoping she will enjoy the cup as it will allow her to look around, though I'm planning on still having her on my knee for settling down and cuddles, to keep those snuggles we currently have.

One issue that I am having is that I don't know how much milk she should be offered, I've never had to measure it coming out of my boobs ;-) but the main issue that I am having is I don't know where to go for support.

Health professionals don't know what to do with me because I have been breastfeeding exclusively (as opposed to giving formula) for a year, they stopped knowing what to do with me when I kept breastfeeding beyond about  6 weeks!  I also find though, that breastfeeding advocates don't know what to do with me because *I* want to choose (some of) the rate at which Naomi stops breastfeeding.  It doesn't make sense to me that I would let Naomi be completely in charge of this, I don't let her be in charge of other stuff (like how much she sleeps or whether she is allowed to eat (as she often does) rocks, so I am not sure why she should be allowed to be completely in charge of this.  I do want her to have a say, but I don't want her say to be the whole story.

I often find I am a bit scared of people who are very pro breastfeeding (despite being very pro breastfeeding myself) because I fear that if I tell them I want to give my child cow's milk at one, or that I might try and steer her away from booby feeds that they might tell me I am a terrible mother or barbaric in some way.  The thing is though, that I think these people, I sometimes call them the breastfeeding mafia, would think they are being supportive, encouraging me to breastfeed for as long as possible.  Unfortunately, though, it can come across as condemning rather than supporting.

This, then, leaves me in my dilemma, where can I go for support as a longer than the first few weeks but not as long as self weaning? Do you want to own up to being like me and join me for being a support network for each other?

Growing up

Naomi is nearly one! I am not sure I am okay with this!  I keep joking that if I let her turn one that it is only the first step in letting her turn 18 and I am definitely not okay with that!

As if she needs to rub in the fact she is growing up, she has just grown out of most her clothes and so I had to mover her into the next size up (thankfully she has some beautiful clothes now!) and last week she learned to walk.

Then she started dropping naps, now she's a big girl she doesn't need two naps a day!

Then she stopped asking for breastmilk so much.

Why do they think it is okay to set the pace, it is just too fast!

Holidays!

Is it really a week since I posted, I knew it wasn't yesterday but I didn't think it was that long!

Oh well, I am excited, for it is only 4 sleeps (if Naomi sleeps through, which she is currently doing every second night!!) till we go on holiday!  We will be taking the long drive to the frozen North to visit our families in and around Aberdeen.

Travelling with a small child has it share of stresses and complicating factors though!  There is, of course, the sheer amount of "stuff" they need.  I went through all the stuff we took last time and started trying to think of things we could take out so that we could avoid taking the roof box (I can't think what those things do to your fuel economy but I would really rather not do the 800 mile round trip with that attached to the top of my already quite brick-like family car!).  At one point I started telling my husband we could manage with only two dummies rather than six, he quite rightly pointed out that although this was true, it was unlikely to make much difference to the overall capacity of our car!  I likened the process to editing an essay at university, where what you needed to do was take out a whole paragraph, but being unable to decide which one, you would instead go through taking out some "the"s and maybe hyphenating a few words here and there.  In the end I am not sure I downsized the equipment at all, though I did promise to pack less outfits and sleep attire for the child! (Though I also swapped the bouncy chair we took last time for a bumbo, that definitely takes up more space!).  I fear that in a few days, when push comes to shove (quite literally) we will just admit defeat and put the roofbox (or sail) on top of our already quite big car!

The next problem is one of distance.  It is clearly unreasonable to expect Naomi at 6 months old, to sit in her car seat for 8 hours like her Dad and I used to do before she was around (well, we didn't sit in her car seat, we wouldn't fit!) so you have to start thinking about how to break up the journey and you start thinking of various relatives you haven't spoken to in years and phoning them up to ask if you can stop in for a cup of coffee or even to stay the night so the child can chill out for a bit.  Last time we travelled Naomi was only on breastmilk, getting food into her that way didn't take all that long and wasn't all that messy, this time we will need to think about how and when and where we can shovel some mush into her every few hours too!

The car has another issue too, if Naomi starts to cry on the motorway (which is inevitible, she hates the car and we spend a lot of time on the motorway) there is nothing you can do, you can't pick her up, you can't shove my boob in her mouth (I wish I could find a way) and if you have bravely sat in the front you can't even get into the back to tell her it will all be okay.  I feel like motorways are places of stress for me, I am examining every sign to see how far it is to the next service station and then you have to decide whether to gamble on her making it to the next one or do you stop now, thus lengthening the journey even further!

I am very excited for my holiday, it will be great to see family and friends again, but please won't someone invent a teleportation device, I find myself dreading the thought of the drive!

No sooner had I come back....

...as I was gone! My baby girl was sick (see previous post), my husband then got sick, I then got sick! Before I knew it we were all lying on the floor (quite literally) and no-one could move and no-one could keep their food down!

The sickness seems to have largely passed, though I as the last to get ill was the first to get better (I think that comes with being a Mum?) and my husband, although much better and back at work today, is not quite right either and I thought Naomi was better but today she showed us all what she thought of sweet potato by being sick in such a way it landed in her own eye! (Does it make me cruel that (after I cleaned her up) I laughed about this?)

It really has made me realise how, as mums, we really do just have to keep going.  My husband would take himself off to bed but I still was required to make milk.  Come bedtime, too, it was mummy that was expected to continue rocking her to sleep, even though 10 minutes before we had opted for a sponge down rather than a bath as Mummy didn't have the energy to pick the baby up, let alone suspend her in water!

It has really hit home to me that my next holiday will be in about 18 years, assuming I don't have any more children, which, actually, despite it all, I do!!

Owning up to being mad!

So, this is the main point of this blog, mainly because it isn't a big part of me any more, but I thought I would share with you some of the challenges of being a Mum with a history of serious mental ill-health.

I used to be very unwell, I used to be psychotic, I used to be depressed to the point of so many suicide attempts that I lost count long before I stopped and I also used to have periods of mania.  I spent much of my early 20s in a psychiatric ward, sometimes the doors were locked and I wasn't always there at my own choice.  For a very long time the only thing that kept me well(ish) was having drugs jabbed into my bum once a fortnight.  Perhaps controversially, though, I don't mind you knowing this, it is part of who I was (and to an extent am) and I think that the fear of people who are not completely mentally well comes from people being scared to talk openly about their experiences.

I longed for Naomi (well a child) all that time, I was desperate, my husband and I even tried for a baby for a while.  I am so pleased, though, that God didn't let it happen at that time, for I could barely look after myself, let alone another little baby.  I am pleased that God's grace allowed Him to deny me my greatest desire.

I did get better though, I received treatment in a Therapeutic Community and my life turned around.  I love life now, I no longer tolerate it!  I love my friends and family and I love growing in being a Mum and a child of God!


I still find some things challenging though, I have always struggled to keep my mental health good unless I get enough sleep, and (particularly recently) Naomi has been keeping me up a lot and so I have to make sure I catch up when I can and that I do other things to keep me healthy.  I need to make sure I get enough exercise (a challenge in itself with a small baby) and I need to make sure I eat sensible food and don't ALWAYS just reach for the chocolate bar when the day has proved difficult!

My OCDish ways also need to be negotiated, I wear odd socks, I do this because wearing matching socks would stress me out unless they matched EXACTLY, even having had one go through the washing machine an extra time and so be a slightly different shade, really makes me anxious and so I have made it part of my personality to wear odd socks.  All this to say, I can't let that affect the way I deal with Naomi and not just in her dress style, but also that when she gets older and wants to colour the man in the picture in blue, I will just need to let her, it will however cause me no end of anxiety!  As will her putting her books back on the shelf but not in alphabetical order!

The thing I am working through at the moment, is that as the mother of a 5 month old baby who doesn't sleep through the night and struggles to go back to sleep without having my boob put in her mouth, it is completely normal to have down days! The adrenaline of the first few weeks has gone, this is me settled into my new life and things are challenging.  Sometimes she cries, sometimes she refuses to eat even though she is hungry, sometimes she cries because she wanted that toy and I gave her a different one and often she cries when I leave the room (isn't her separation anxiety supposed to come at more like 9 months?), but having a down day isn't the same as being depressed.  i have to allow myself to feel rubbish without worrying that I am becoming ill, for that will only perpetuate the problem!

I love my little girl and I wouldn't not have her for the world, but my mental health had been stable for only about 2 years when she showed up, I took a big risk and I am pleased to report that, so far, we are all doing well :-)

Breastfeeding in public

If you are a Mum with a blog on parenting, you eventually need to do a post on the topic of breastfeeding in public, so here is my (first)attempt on the subject.

I chose to breastfeed my daughter for many reasons and although it was quite far down the list, one of the reasons was that I wouldn't need to make up bottles/warm bottles and that particularly when we were out and about I wouldn't need to think about it in advance, my boobs would just be there! What? I hear you cry, but being able to breastfeed in public was one of the things that attracted me to the idea.  It just seems easier to me.

Naomi has a picnic in the park

That said, there are a few things to think about when you are getting ready to actually *do* the feeding.

Now, I am quite happy to argue that during a feed my breast is not a sexual thing at all, it is an implement by which my daughter gets food, that said, I don't really want everyone looking at my boobs and many people don't want to look at them either (and I don't blame them!) so I have had to find ways of being subtle about getting my boobs out.  To begin with I though I would use a booby tent (as I like to call them) (link only given to show you what I mean!) and I was given one by a friend, but when it came down to it I just got myself in a muddle if I tried to use it.  I often ended up exposing more of myself in attempt to get the baby under it, my boob out and in her mouth! Although I know lots of people who swear by these things.

My next thought was to use a muslin or something similar, just get the baby on the boob and quickly cover her (and more to the point me) up, but she did not approve of this plan, when she was younger she wanted to be able to see me and now she is older she wants to be able to see everything (although I sometimes use a muslin now to attempt to reduce distractions) and so would wriggle around and pull at the muslin till it was gone, again only drawing attention to my semi nakedness!

Eventually we have come up with a compromise, I didn't want to be one of those Mums who just gets their whole boob out and to hell with what anyone else thinks, I find that slightly passive-aggressive, yet  am not ashamed of breastfeeding my little girl and I do think it is one of the most natural things in the world.  So we have developed (through practice) and technique that involves pulling my jumper down over my boob (although with the nipple still accessible) and then letting Naomi's head provide a screen to the rest of the world, I have looked at my reflection in shop windows and think that although it is very obvious I am feeding there is nothing to see at all, most girls in a skimpy top show off far more than I am.

There have been one or two major disasters, most notably the day that for some reason I became completely confused as to how to work my clothes (let's put it down to baby brain) and before I knew it my whole boob was out and the baby was nowhere near it.  One poor lady turned round and caught a glimpse before turning away, she apologised.  I told her not to worry as it wasn't her fault that I had got half naked in my town's shopping centre!

By and by this works though.  I am very fortunate not to have experienced some of the issues that others report with people giving them a hard time or asking them to move on.  This brings me to the reason I started this post, a few days ago I was sitting on a bench in town feeding Naomi and using my spare hand to turn her buggy round into a pram so she could sleep and making a bit of a pigs ear of it.  A lady walked past and then came back to me, "I just want to say..." Oh No! I thought, this is it, and I can't even go anywhere because Naomi was in the middle of what seemed to be a terribly satisfying feed! Anyway, random lady continued "...I am so proud of you for breastfeeding".  She told me how she had fed all three of hers for at least a year and it made her sad that so many people used formula and then she went on her way.  It is quite random to think that someone would come up to me and tell me they are proud of me, but I guess I quite liked it!

Breastfeeding traumas

I feel incredibly blessed to have exclusively breastfed Naomi since she was born.  As for any Mum, though, there have been some issues with this along the road.  It can be hard in the middle of the night to know that you *have* to deal with the baby, my husband can't do it.  Sometimes I feel quite tied to Naomi, like I can't be away for very long, not least of all because I hate expressing with a passion and try and do it as little as possible, while still maintaining some sort of life away from the house.

My biggest issues with breastfeeding have come now though, at about 4 months old (although I am sure there will be more in the future).  Naomi is very interested in the world around her and breastfeeding is no way to get to see the world, who wants to look at their Mum's boob or the chair behind her when you could look round the other way and see the people she is talking to, the park you are sitting in or even just the book your Mum thought it would be nice to try and read!!  Naomi and I got a good latch going very quickly when she was born and as a result my nipples didn't hurt very much, they do hurt now with all this on-again-off-again feeding she is doing just now.

The other issue is that my boobs are now covered in bruises where she likes to "hold" on, or pinch my skin.  I have tried giving her things to hold or play with and they satisfy her for a while and then she goes back to pumping my breast to squeeze out the milk and pinching my skin for reasons that I am yet to fathom!!

The next road I have to negotiate is one that Mums using formula need to walk down too; as we start weaning how do you know how much milk to give versus food, and even more than before, as a breastfeeding Mum, how do I know how much milk she is getting at all, and how do I give her less as time goes on?  I know that for now and the next several months milk is the most important part of her diet, and I know that she will take the milk she needs, but I feel a little lost with this particular aspect of breastfeeding!

We have made it through all the other breastfeeding traumas, and so I am sure we will make it through these ones too, but I think I had thought all my breastfeeding woes would be at (and end in) the beginning! Just not true.