This week the topic for the Breastfeeding blog hop hosted by The Slacker Mom is about how often do you nurse.
This definitely changed for me as we moved along in our nursing journey. This was also a frustrating part for me. The nurse told me at the hospital to nurse every 2 hours and for 15 minutes on each side. Well let me tell you this little girl had other ideas....so I picked up the nursing on demand really quick. I kept making myself sick for making sure she was nursing for 15 minutes on each side, but she didn't want that, she only wanted 5 to 10 minutes and then an hour later would nurse again.
We found out this was most likely because of my over supply. But she was always an efficient nurser. WE went a few growth spurts where she would nurse for 15 to 20 minutes and then be done for 40, and then we would repeat. I think she was like 3 or 4 weeks and we did this for about 5 days. It went from noon until about 6pm every day for a week. I got a lot of TV watching and Facebook time during this stint.
As she got older though we were more on a schedule. I still did on demand, but she made up her own schedule. Once when she would wake up, then sometimes before we would head off to daycare. SHe would get bottle fed a few times there and then I would feed her when I got home, then once before bed. She would then nurse about 3 to 5 times a night depending on her age.
It wasn't until after she was 18 months that I stopped the On Demand nursing (Sort of). We were starting weaning at this point and so I put a few more boundaries on it. Not nursing in public - especially if she tried to lift my shirt (she was a sneaky girl). Eventually we got down to once at night and once in the morning. By 21 months she was weaned.
For Baby #2 I definitely plan to let them take the lead again. It's helpful to know that they can do that and tell me when they are hungry, to stop when they are full and just go with the flow. I Have a feeling the first couple of weeks won't be nearly as hard because I will have better knowledge of what to expect, a better support system and just the knowledge that I just let it go and it will be fine.
This definitely changed for me as we moved along in our nursing journey. This was also a frustrating part for me. The nurse told me at the hospital to nurse every 2 hours and for 15 minutes on each side. Well let me tell you this little girl had other ideas....so I picked up the nursing on demand really quick. I kept making myself sick for making sure she was nursing for 15 minutes on each side, but she didn't want that, she only wanted 5 to 10 minutes and then an hour later would nurse again.
We found out this was most likely because of my over supply. But she was always an efficient nurser. WE went a few growth spurts where she would nurse for 15 to 20 minutes and then be done for 40, and then we would repeat. I think she was like 3 or 4 weeks and we did this for about 5 days. It went from noon until about 6pm every day for a week. I got a lot of TV watching and Facebook time during this stint.
As she got older though we were more on a schedule. I still did on demand, but she made up her own schedule. Once when she would wake up, then sometimes before we would head off to daycare. SHe would get bottle fed a few times there and then I would feed her when I got home, then once before bed. She would then nurse about 3 to 5 times a night depending on her age.
It wasn't until after she was 18 months that I stopped the On Demand nursing (Sort of). We were starting weaning at this point and so I put a few more boundaries on it. Not nursing in public - especially if she tried to lift my shirt (she was a sneaky girl). Eventually we got down to once at night and once in the morning. By 21 months she was weaned.
For Baby #2 I definitely plan to let them take the lead again. It's helpful to know that they can do that and tell me when they are hungry, to stop when they are full and just go with the flow. I Have a feeling the first couple of weeks won't be nearly as hard because I will have better knowledge of what to expect, a better support system and just the knowledge that I just let it go and it will be fine.
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1 comments:
It's definitely better to let baby take the lead! Much less stress on everyone. :) I too plan on doing the same for my next girlie come August.
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