So, true to form, I took no pictures of the Gatlinburg trip. I'm waiting for my brother to send me a picture that the entire group, minus Peter who was at the cabin working on homework, took at the top of a 2-mile hike. That's about it.
It was a great weekend, though. It was so awesome to just
hang out with my friends, something I haven't gotten to do since we moved to Tennessee. Seeing Lukie's Uncle Eric was pretty rad, as well, and even though Pete and I spent the better part of the weekend chasing Lukas around a 4-story cabin that was basically a baby death-trap, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.
So, on to the real reason for this post.
Lukie turns 1 year old next week. A long time ago, when I was having trouble feeding him, struggling with a baby who cried all day long, and wallowing in some serious post-partum depression (which really only started to lift around Christmas-time), I thought we'd
never make it to 1 year. Then, he turned six months old, and things started getting better. He stopped crying so much. He and I settled into a feeding routine that has worked. He got a little bit of independence and started turning into this awesome, smiley kid that he is today.
Life has gotten so much easier since then. Lukas woke up every 1.5-2 hours between the beginning of November and the end of March. Think about that. I never slept more than 1.5 hours straight between November and March. Somewhere around 9 months old, though, he started sleeping for closer to 3 hours at a time, and now he's up to 2-3 wake-ups per night. For some mommies, that might be terrible, but it feels great to me. Lukie goes to bed at 8:00, wakes up around 1:30, eats, and then goes back down until approximately 5:00. I feed him again, and most mornings (though none this week), he sleeps in until 6:30 or so. I feel like a totally different person when he lets me sleep like that.
Lukas' one-year birthday marks another serious milestone for Mommy. I will have made it an entire year breastfeeding my son exclusively. I never thought I'd get there.
As a quick re-cap, our bf'ing experience started out rocky, to say the least. I experienced awful pain in the first couple of weeks, and when I realized that it wasn't getting better and I wasn't just "toughening up," I sought out help. It was really hard to find, but after a week of frantic searching and crying and feeling guilty and almost giving up completely, I found Katherine of BreastFeeding Essentials in Bristol, TN. I owe her so much (and any mommies in the East TN area-- seriously, if you are having any trouble breastfeeding, or even just want to learn more about it before you try-- give this lady a call!
http://www.breastfeedingessentials.net/index.html).
Over the phone, through multiple tear-filled phone calls, Katherine diagnosed Lukas' extreme lip tie. He was biting me to try to stay latched on, never getting full (hence and needing to eat every 1.5 hours). His biting was causing me
horrible pain. Katherine brought me to a cosmetic dentist who, in approximately 10 seconds, lasered Lukas' lip, cauterized it, and solved the biggest issue we were having.
My sweet little guy getting his lip tie fixed at 3 weeks and 2 days old.
Things didn't get 100% better from there, as I got a thrush infection that felt like I was on fire every minute of every day for a week. We went through a couple doses of medication and some seriously scary blue stuff to fix it...
Gentian Violet. It worked...but seriously...ew.
After we finally killed the thrush, things got better. I went back to work when Lukas was 8 weeks old. My depression started to lift a bit, and I settled into a routine of pumping 4 times a day (now 3) while at work and sending what I pumped to daycare with him. We had trouble with him taking bottles for months, and each Monday, after nursing all weekend, he would be a bit persnickety with the daycare ladies, but for the most part, it has been a really successful breastfeeding experience. I haven't had to give him formula since he was 2 days old and needed a little supplementation until my supply established itself.
Lukas has done so well on breastmilk. His daycare teachers notice how soft his skin is and how, even though all the other babies at the daycare have runny noses, neither he, nor the other baby who is breastfed, have them unless they have a cold. Which, by the way, has been remarkably seldom.
I don't judge moms who can't go for as long as I have. I've been lucky that pumping has worked well for me, that ultimately, my child was willing to go from bottle to breast and back again, and that I have a work environment that's supportive of my decision to breastfeed for an extended time. I'm hugely proud of myself, however, for sticking it out. It hasn't been easy, and it's been a source of stress, but I'm very, very glad I did it.
Where will we go, nursing-wise, once Lukas turns a year old? Pete and I have been discussing it, and I think we're going to start weaning him off breastmilk during the day at the end of July, once I've had time to talk to his doctor and find out what we should use in the breastmilk's place. My goal is to eventually get him off of daytime feedings, or at least cut my pumping back to once at lunch time, and then feed him in the morning and night every day until he decides he's done breastfeeding. It'll give me the solution I want: let him be the final decision-maker as far as our breastfeeding relationship goes, but make it easier for me as I work and live a slightly more flexible lifestyle.
Here's my big, beautiful, chunky kid. I'm proud of every pound of happy!
(And no, those aren't teeth in that second photo. Still no teeth. Just swollen little gums.)
