Yup, I'm STILL Breastfeeding

A post caught my attention in my Facebook feed earlier this week: an article from RoleReboot on "extended breastfeeding" shared by KellyMom: Stop Shaming Moms Who Choose To Breastfeed Their Babies Past A Certain Age. It was originally published nearly a year ago, but it is particularly relevant to me now, with a nursling who's coming up on two & a half.

Breastfeeding is such a HUGE thing in our culture & it seems like everyone has an opinion on it, men, women, whether they have children or not. I have to admit, living in East Van & travelling in the circles I do, I haven't really ever encountered any negative comments about breastfeeding in public or the age of the child I was nursing. I feel like it's only a matter of time until I get something, however, as Bronte is still adamant that she needs "noms" during the day, whether we're out or at home.

Breastfeeding is also really complicated personally. It does mean I'm tied to my child, responsible for an aspect of her care that no one else in the world can do. Being wanted & needed is nice... to a point. Nursing her down at night or for naps is easy, in a way, but it can also be really annoying to have to be physically attached to her at those times. I threaten to wean her all the time when she keeps scratches me or closes her teeth as she unlatches.

So why do I still do it?

The other side of the coin is that I got this far because I was so invested in breastfeeding from the get go. I don't want to give up on something I fought so hard to make work (all the latch problems & supply issues in the early days). I like the cuddles that I have with her while she nurses. It feels like a magic power to be able to comfort her so quickly & easily after a vaccination or injury.

Then there's the health benefits to both of us: I worry just a bit less about her diet because I know she's getting some nutrition from breastfeeding. I'd guess she still drinks around 12 ounces of my milk a day. In that milk there are also antibodies to whatever viruses that I'm fighting which help her immune system. For me, every month more that I breastfeed means a lower risk of breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease & rheumatoid arthritis.

Emotionally, Bronte still needs to breastfeed. She wouldn't be doing it at least six times a day if she didn't. Of course, it needs to be a balance--some days the scale swings over too far to her side & I get frustrated, needing more space--so I do actively try to distract her or put her off when she wants to nurse & I don't.

The last reason I breastfeed, or at least the reason I do it in public, without any cover, wherever we happen to be, is for other people. I want other moms of breastfeeding toddlers to see me so maybe they'll feel just a little more comfortable next time they do it. I want children to see that breastfeeding is no big deal & this is what breasts are primarily for. I want everybody else to see me breastfeeding a nearly two-&-a-half-year-old child who can walk up & ask in a grammatically perfect sentence, "Mama, can I have some noms, please?" because we need to normalize this.

If you haven't yet, head over to RoleReboot & read the article: Stop Shaming Moms Who Choose To Breastfeed Their Babies Past A Certain Age. I'd love to hear what you think &/or your experiences breastfeeding past a year or two in the comments.

Follow Spokesmama here too:

A Comfy Surprise--Two New Bravado Designs Nursing Bras

Thank you Bravado Designs!

Last week, when I got a little sentimental about retiring my very first nursing bra, I thought I'd post it on Instagram. The words kept coming as I was captioning the photo, so I decided to write a blog post. Bravado Designs, the maker of the simple leopard print bra that I've worn the heck out over for the past five & a half years, contacted me after they saw my posts. & the lovely ladies of Bravado Designs offered to give me a couple of new ones!

This was amazing because, A. who doesn't like to get a lovely new bra? & B. I'm still breastfeeding Bronte, but I've lost enough weight that my other go-to bras are a bit big--the Bravado Bliss Nursing Bra & the Allure Nursing Bra. They're both in great shape despite about four years of heavy use, by the way. I can't remember when exactly, but I know I bought both while I was still nursing Linnaeus.

Friday the bras arrived on my doorstep via courier: a new Original Nursing Bra, in leopard print, naturally, plus a Body Silk Seamless Yoga Bra in heather grey. I immediately tried on the Yoga Bra & I kid you not, the claim that it's the most comfortable nursing bra in the world is absolutely true. It's really soft & stretchy, with a slightly wider back that has three hooks. The straps are really adjustable & it has the signature one-handed clasps to open each side for breastfeeding. Another feature that I particularly like is that it's lightly padded (easily removable) for a nice smooth look under a t-shirt. Especially since losing over 20 pounds, I like a little extra in my bras. It's also kind of awesome on those days every month when my nipples get sore.

I could go on & on about how much I love Bravado bras. & it's not just because I'm excited to be gifted two: I've bought four of their nursing bras as well as a nursing tank, plus half a dozen pairs of their underwear too. They aren't the lowest priced nursing bras out there (the Original is $37, the Bliss, Yoga & Allure are $55-60 but that's a great deal for a comfortable, easy to use nursing bra that will last you from the sore-boobs-bra-wearing-24/7-last-trimester stage through newborn-growth-spurt-cluster-feeding-sore-nipple-madness, super-distractible-baby-where-lightning-reflexes-pop-those-nipples-back-in-quick, & crazy-toddler-gymnurstics phase.

Thanks again, Bravado Designs!

By the way, if you heart your Bravado bra too, & want to spread the love on social media, use the hashtags #BeComfortable & #BravadoYoga. :)



Disclaimer: Bravado Designs gave me two bras but I was not asked to write a review.

Follow Spokesmama here too:

Goodbye, Old Friend

Goodbye, old friend.

The last few times I've put on this bra, I keep noticing the holes along the elastic getting bigger. I've been meaning to repair it, but while doing a closet purge & really looking at it, I realize this bra's a little beyond that point now. It's time to say goodbye.

Why so nostalgic about an undergarment? Well...

Back in the summer of  2010, close to ready to pop

This Bravado nursing bra has been with me through the awkward nights of sleep during two pregnancies, two newborns worth of midnight feedings, low milk supply both times, countless breastfeeding clinic visits, nearly a year total of daily pumping, thrush infections, finally making enough to exclusively breastfeed, nursing in public the first time, tiny sharp toothed bites, toddler gymnurstics, mom & baby fitness classes, many tears of frustration, & more happy moments.

I'm sad the bra won't make it until I finish breastfeeding; Bronte is nowhere near ready to wean. Between her & Linnaeus, I've now breastfed over 55 months. Add to that the time I wore it to bed during my last trimesters & I've worn this comfy little bra (along with several others) for five & a half years.

So goodbye, my old friend. Or... maybe this is the sort of thing I should keep to show my grandchildren? Ha!

Follow Spokesmama here too:

Spiked Milk? Drinking & Breastfeeding

Beer & Breastfeeding?

It's the holiday season & that means more parties, more get-togethers with family, & probably more drinking. For those of you breastfeeding mamas out there, this might be a bit stressful. If you want to indulge in a little rum & eggnog or maybe some mulled wine, you might have some questions.

How much can I safely drink while breastfeeding? Should I abstain completely just to be safe? Can I pump & dump to get the alcohol out of my milk? 

I should start by saying right off that I'm not a medical professional or a researcher of any kind, but I do pride myself on making decisions based on science. A few years back, probably just before Linnaeus' first Christmas, I started googling to find the facts on drinking alcohol & breastfeeding.

I found a short article on Motherisk: Drinking Alcohol While Breastfeeding: Will it Harm My Baby? It's worth pointing out that the recommendations in the Motherisk piece are for newborns, because "infants detoxify alcohol in their first weeks of life at only half the rate of adults." If your baby is older than that, you may not want to be so conservative.

If you just skim the article, you might be scared away from drinking at all. However, the chart that follows the article is pretty useful. You can assess how long it'll take your body to clear the alcohol from your milk by your weight. For the average mom, that'll be two or two & a half hours for one drink.

If you have a nursing baby that's older than a few weeks, you might be wondering if you really have to wait two or three hours after drinking to feed them. As the Motherisk article mentions, there is no established safe threshold of alcohol for babies. That said, it's worth mentioning that your milk will have around the same amount of alcohol in it as your blood. It all depends on the strength of the drink, & your size, but if you have just one drink, most likely your blood alcohol level (& thus milk alcohol level) will be less than 0.1%. The drink you had was probably 40 or 50 times that strong--it's very diluted in your milk.

If you had a drink with 0.1% alcohol in it, it's likely you'd never notice. Or, maybe I should say, when you've had a drink with 0.1% alcohol, because you probably have. A glass of orange juice could have that much alcohol. Ripe fruit, or fermented foods like miso, kefir, kombucha, pickles, may have more alcohol than your breastmilk after one drink. (source) Have you ever given your baby fruit juice or ripe fruit? I don't say this to freak you out, but just to say that alcohol is actually in a lot of foods that we & our children safely eat all the time.

La Leche League has an FAQ on alcohol & breastfeeding as well, with even more information from diverse sources.

I hope this has been useful to you & gives you a little peace of mind, whether you choose to abstain, wait to nurse until your system is clear of alcohol, or drink moderately while nursing. Enjoy the holidays!

Follow Spokesmama here too:

Our Milk Sharing Story for World Milk Sharing Week (+ Giveaway)

L getting his 'top up' after breastfeeding

Did you know that this week is World Milk Sharing Week? It's basically a week to promote awareness of breast milk sharing in all its forms. Sharing milk isn't anything new, but I think it died down a bit in the last century or so, along with breastfeeding itself. In the past few years, with the help of social media, milk sharing has grown, providing many parents a fantastic way to nourish their babies with the next best thing to their own mama's milk.

For Milk Sharing week this year, I thought I'd share my experience with milk sharing with you. If you've been a long-time reader of Spokesmama, you probably remember that we were recipients of donated milk. Here's our story.

With both my children I struggled with low milk supply when they were newborns. It was quite a blow to discover that my 12-day-old son wasn't gaining enough weight because I wasn't making enough milk. We switched into emergency supplement mode, getting him formula immediately on top of each breastfeeding session, but I wanted him to have as much breastmilk as possible, so my midwife referred me to the BC Women's Milk Bank.

Prescreened moms with an abundant supply of milk pump & donate to the bank, where the milk is pasteurized & bottled. First priority goes to infants in the neonatal intensive care ward at BC Children's Hospital. If there is enough of a supply, babies like mine are able to get some too. We took home about a dozen bottles of the liquid gold for baby Linnaeus.

B getting her post breastfeeding top up

On top of the milk from BC Women's that we got, my sister also gave some to Linnaeus. Her daughters are ten months older than him & during a nursing strike, my sister pumped milk. Her daughters wouldn't take it in bottles, so she gave it to us.

I tried everything I could to increase my milk supply, but I never got up to more than about 80% of his needs, so I supplemented breastfeeding with the donated milk & formula for nearly ten months with Linnaeus.

When I became pregnant again with Brontë, I started planning as much as possible in an attempt to avoid low milk supply again. Despite my best efforts, I still wasn't making enough for baby Bronte in the first months. I put the word out to find some informal milk sharing situation. A friend donated a bottle to us, but I was too overwhelmed with now being mother of two kids to seek more. Thankfully, I managed to make more milk than I had with Linnaeus & we dispensed with the supplementing when Brontë was about three months old.

Though we didn't use a huge amount of donated milk, I'm so very grateful for every ounce that we got. I spent many hours of my life hooked up to a breast pump & I have to admit, I'm really glad those daily pumping sessions are well behind me. I applaud the mamas who give their time & their milk to BC Women's, or to more informal milk sharing arrangements, so that other babies can have the benefits of breast milk.

If you're interested in donating milk to BC Women's Milk Bank, please visit their site to find out more on eligibility.

Snugabell, a local company that makes the PumpEase bras & other accessories to make pumping better for mamas, created a great video celebrating the beauty of breastfeeding for Pump Across America. You can watch it right here:


I saved the fun stuff for last:

Snugabell is offering you the chance to save some money on PumpEase hands-free pumping bras from Sept. 24 - 30 on Snugabell.com, Amazon.com, and Amazon.ca. Just use promo code GIVEMILK. There's more info on the Snugabell Facebook page.

In honour of World Milk Sharing Week, Snugabell will be giving away a PumpEase Prize Pack (one of their awesome hands-free pumping bras, a wet bag to match, & a door hanger) as a grand prize and Through a Child's Eyes Keepsake Colouring Books as runner-up prizes. 

You can enter here. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Read more stories of milk sharing on the Snugabell blog!

Follow Spokesmama here too:

Normal-Term Breastfeeding, or, "Mama, can I have noms?"

Old enough to ride a bike & still breastfeeding

If you've been reading my blog more than a year, you might know how long I breastfed my son: 29 months. That is a lot longer than average here in Canada, but I'm not looking for a prize or anything. I want to write about it to get all the other moms who are breastfeeding toddlers out of the closet. I want to encourage the moms who have 11-month-olds to just keep going & let their kids decide when they're done--as long as mom is still willing too. I hope that the moms who are going back to work know that they don't need to wean at that point, their babies will adjust & they can keep breastfeeding around a full-time work schedule.

Though not necessarily the average here in North America, breastfeeding past two years of age is normal for humans. Despite what the knee-jerk naysayers will tell you, or the trolls commenting on articles like the Time Magazine cover from last year with the woman breastfeeding her three-&-a-half-year-old, the worldwide norm for weaning is between two & seven years old. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding until at least two years of age. There are countless studies showing that breastfeeding confers benefits on children's immune systems, cognitive development, & more.

But you might have heard all that. Maybe you've even been to a La Leche League Meeting. Maybe you're breastfeeding right now as you read this. So I'll just tell you my story, since that's more what Spokesmama is about.

With Linnaeus, I breastfed him when he was just a few minutes old, giving him a bit of help to wriggle his way up my belly to find my nipple. Though that was natural & things seemed to get off to a pretty good start, I was devastated to discover that he wasn't gaining weight properly in his first few weeks. I've already written fairly extensively about my difficulties with breastfeeding & low milk supply, so I'll spare you the exhaustive details.

Suffice it to say, Linnaeus was one of those babies who needed formula. We did get some donated milk from the BC Women's Milk bank, but nowhere near as much as he needed over the 10 months that we supplemented my own milk supply. Informal milk sharing wasn't really as big a thing as it is now back in 2010, so that didn't really cross my mind.

I wanted very much to breastfeed & was extremely frustrated that it just wasn't working despite fairly heroic measures. My goals in the first month were to get through each day. Then to make it to three months, then six.

Once we'd hit that six month mark & I'd done everything I could to increase my milk production, we settled into a routine of breastfeeding about six times throughout the day & adding in a couple of small bottles of formula each evening. After Linnaeus started solids, we gradually weaned him off the formula supplements so I was just breastfeeding him, on top of three squares a day, by ten months old.

Breastfeeding was a lovely bonding ritual, once we got past the stress of the early months & the brief phase of biting around when he got his first teeth. I nursed Linnaeus to nap & to bed at night--getting him to sleep was easy with the magic boob. He eventually grew out of this, though breastfeeding was still part of the bedtime ritual, he didn't fall asleep that way anymore by about 15 months old.

Breastfeeding also helped calm him if he was upset from a bump on the head or his vaccinations. It was also how we started our day--he'd wake up, I'd go get him from his crib & once he was talking, he'd ask for "noms". Once he'd had enough from one side, he'd say, "I want 'nother side noms'" & switch. When I was in school & he was at daycare one or two days a week, breastfeeding was how we reconnected when I picked him up.

Two years came & went. Linnaeus had gradually reduced how many times he was breastfeeding down to about once or twice a day. Somewhere along the way I stopped nursing him before bed & Papa took over all of the bedtime routine. Few people would have known I was still breastfeeding as he only wanted "noms" first thing in the morning, so unlike many of my friends, I wasn't nursing a toddler in public.

In December in 2012, when he was getting close to two & a half, Linnaeus started skipping days. Around Christmas, he didn't ask to nurse at all for three or four days & I thought we might be finished. It was a false alarm: he started up again every day or two, asking for "noms" when he'd wake up, run to our room & climb under the covers with me.

By mid January, I decided to give him a bit of a nudge to wean. I was getting very sore nipples because I was about six weeks pregnant with his little sister. I stopped offering to breastfeed & he really never asked & that was it. 29 months.

Determined to get more photos breastfeeding this time.

Fast forward nine months & I found myself mired in the same breastfeeding issues with my daughter Brontë. Sigh. I did a few things differently--I was more proactive about medication, herbal supplements, I had a double pump & a phone app to track things--but we were back to the formula supplementing again. Things went a little more smoothly the second time around, however, so by about three months, Brontë was getting exclusively breastmilk. Because I'd been on the low-milk supply rollercoaster before & exited the ride breastfeeding nearly two & a half years, my goals were not so short term this time around.

With Brontë, I want to get past two years again, but it's all up to wee girl herself to decide when we're done. Being the second--& I'm fairly sure last--child I'll have, there will be no pregnancy to make me want to wean her. Though Brontë began with the same rocky start to breastfeeding as her brother, she nurses a lot more frequently than he did at her age, so I predict I'll be nursing a walking, talking toddler for quite a while to come.

I wanted to share my breastfeeding story with you today to join up with some other bloggers & breastfeeding advocates that I know. The focus is on normal-term breastfeeding--aka, nursing beyond the point that they can walk up & ask for it. Please visit Hillary With Two Ls , Lilahbility , One Crazy Kid & 
Apartment Baby to read more stories. If you've got a story about breastfeeding a toddler to share on your blog, share the link with us! If you're not a blogger, you're more than welcome to share in the comments below!

Follow Spokesmama here too: