This is a guest post from a good friend of mine.  I’m respecting her desire for anonymity, but you can find her introduction here.  Enjoy!

What I want you to know:

-I’m the mom of four children and I’ve been breastfeeding nearly nonstop for eight years now.

-I’m an advocate for breastfeeding, but I don’t think it should be a topic that divides one mom from another.

-I think more women could successfully breastfeed if they were given an environment of encouragement and support instead of feeling guilty or condemned when things don’t go as they’d hoped.

-I nursed my first child till he was nearly four.

-I’m aware that the last bullet point made some of you choke on your coffee.

-In spite of that, I’d like you to give me a chance and to believe that I am actually a regular person and to try to hear my experience with an open mind.

-I like strong tea, a good book, a political argument, a moment alone, and always chocolate. (See, we’re not that different you and I. Chocolate brings everyone together.)

Briefly describe what your initial breastfeeding experiences were like with your child. Breastfeeding my first baby was darn hard. I imagined quiet, serene moments of mothering bliss. Ha! What I got instead was a poor latcher, sore nipples, sleepless nights, fits of crying (baby cried, too), and serious disillusionment. I had determined before he was born that I was going to nurse him come “hell or high water”, but it was definitely more difficult than I had anticipated. Thankfully, I had some excellent support and the determination to keep trying one more day. We finally figured each other out and began to be able to nurse well as a team after several long weeks.

What was your opinion of extended breastfeeding when your son was a baby? Was it something you’d considered for yourself? 
Frankly, I was a bit shocked at the idea of nursing a toddler, and quite put off at the idea of nursing a preschooler. How disgusting and wrong! I certainly understand that reaction since I had it myself! It was something we sort of grew into. I had absolutely no idea I would nurse a child so long. He’s the child I’ve nursed longest, because he truly needed it. I would have probably tried to nurse my others till about two or so, but I found nursing through pregnancy challenging (to say the least) and the others have been weaned about 18-20 months because of that.

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Today we’re hearing from Renae.  You can find my introduction for Renae here.  Short version- she’s awesome and she blogs over here.  This is her story in her own words.

Briefly describe your breastfeeding experiences with your first two children.

My oldest son, Simon, was born six weeks premature. I had planned on breastfeeding, but he spent the first three weeks of his life in the NICU and wasn’t allowed to come home until he could take all of his feedings by mouth (whether from bottle or breast), so at that point we were thrilled with anything that wasn’t a tube feeding. He had not fully developed his ability to suck, and it was difficult to build my supply. He got as much milk as I could produce and then we supplemented with formula.

When we brought Simon home from the hospital, I rented a hospital-grade pump, and the early days were a blur of pumping and alternating between nursing and using bottles, not to mention taking fenugreek and eating oatmeal and whatever other things I heard of to increase my supply. My husband was an incredible support and would get up with us for every nighttime feeding. He would warm up a bottle while I tried to nurse Simon, and then he would finish with the bottle while I pumped.

I would go to the lactation consultant each week and feel like it was a lesson that I hadn’t practiced for. It was frustrating to say the least, but she said a couple of things that gave me hope. First, she noted how quickly he would calm down whenever I put him to the breast (regardless of how nervous I was). Second, she said she saw a lot of babies that were not interested in nursing (and how heartbreaking that was to their moms who were trying so hard) but that my son was so eager to nurse but was simply having a hard time growing strong enough to nurse full-time. And so we carried on.

In the end, it took three full months until Simon was breastfeeding exclusively, but our story gets much more straightforward from there. He loved nursing once we both got the hang of it, and so did I. And, actually, so did my husband, who could then more or less sleep through the nights (something Simon didn’t do, even once, until he was eighteen months old).

By the time Simon was sixteen or seventeen months old we were still going strong, and I started to worry that maybe he would never want to wean, that weaning would be as difficult in its own way as getting him to nurse had been. Before he was born, I had in my head that I would breastfeed for a year and then be done. The reality of our experience was that neither of us were ready to be done then. My revised thought was that if he didn’t wean on his own by age two, I would wean him then. As it happened, though, he stopped almost cold turkey at eighteen months, when I was fourteen weeks pregnant with my second son.

Ian’s story is much simpler: he was also born early, but only four weeks. My supply and his sucking ability were both better, and although he took bottled breast milk in the NICU, we somehow managed to make it without any pumping once we got home. Like his brother, he loved nursing, and he, too, weaned himself at eighteen months when I was again fourteen weeks pregnant, almost to the day.

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