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From:
Diane Wiessinger <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 9 Feb 2009 09:51:36 -0500
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My oldest is 29.  I had read, or at least browsed, Karen Prior and the Womanly Art, and I had probably seen my sister breastfeed, from a discreet distance, though I don't remember it. 

I remember a heavy, wet body on my stomach and his few minutes of whimpering on my chest while I lay flat on my back.  He didn't nurse and I didn't see him again for at least an hour.  I don't remember our first nursing at all, nor do I remember any concern that it might not work, or any instructions.  I think we just... did it.  (I do remember being told to tuck in the little plastic tab on my nursing bra so it wouldn't stick him, and being told to take a moment to get reaquainted with him before each feeding.  )No rooming in, though he did come and "visit" for stretches in his plastic bin.  I remember two nurses perching on my bed and telling me they needed to give him water so he wouldn't get dehydrated, and he always came to me with a bottle of water.  I gave him some once, but it wasn't any fun, so I figured if they were so bent on his having water they could give it to him themselves.  A bit later in my 5-day stay I remember a nurse telling me with glee that he "took two ounces" at my breast, and thinking, "Two ounces?  Is that good?"  I hadn't known there was weighing going on, and I never changed a diaper.  He mostly just came to me to eat.  I do remember *extreme* (and suppressed) irritation at having my husband hang over us while I nursed in the hospital.  (We're still married, though.)

At home, I remember his cute little fists balled up on his chest as he ate, so I know he must have been belly-up with head turned when he fed.  But I have a photo from a few months later, and his whole body faces me, so we obviously worked that one out over time.  My nipples were supersensitive, but not cracked, for 6 weeks.  But it never occurred to me not to breastfeed.  "Everybody I knew" breastfed.  (Years later I would count up just who the "everybody" was.  It was my mother and my sister.)  Besides, I would have had to learn how to bottle-feed.  (The same reason he never got cereal; I didn't know how to make it.)

I learned to hand express by leaning over the bathroom sink occasionally, relieving extra milk that he was too sleepy to wake up for.  And like Pat, I learned to nurse lying down by lying on the couch.  I learned it during the day, when I was alert, and used the couch back to hold me while I tried different angles.  Then I transferred what I learned to the bed, though I didn't fully commit to a family bed until #2.  We nursed until he was about 2 3/4, a few weeks before #2 was born.  

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.normalfed.com

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