Preventing Early Weaning/Update on PFB

Mare Asks Q: I don't get it - isn't the point of baby led weaning for the baby to go at its own pace? So like if the child is exciting about eating and wants to eat more - why wouldn't you get them naturally do that if that is what they want to do? It seems like you are trying to force him to breastfeed more?

Couldn't he still get the benefits of breast milk through things like breastmilk "yogurt" (if you did that) and cereal with breastmilk, things like that? So he feels like he is "eating" but still with breastmilk involved?


A: The point of baby led weaning is for them to eat food at their own pace. However, like I said, there is a lot of evidence that too much solids too soon (especially with an active and interested in food sort of baby) can lead to early weaning (which to me means before 2 years old). I was, in fact, one such baby who had three meals of pureed food a day from 6 months and loved it, and also was extremely active. It was easy for me to decide not to nurse (I think around 9/10 months old). But I don't want james to wean early, so what interventions can I put into place now?

As he starts eating cereal with milk and more solids I will definitely give him breast milk that way, too, but I would prefer if I could keep him nursing as well until he is at least two--that is the ideal way for him to take at least some of his daily breast milk. If he wasn't still nursing I would feel like I needed to give him some other kind of milk which I don't want to do. If we weren't vegan MAYBE it wouldn't be such a big deal to me, but it still might be.

According to the WHO, 80-90% of a toddler's nutrition at one year should come from breast milk (ideally)--meaning nursing pretty much as often as you had always been, MAYBE dropping ONE feeding by a year; and 25% of their nutrition at TWO should STILL come from breast milk--which is nursing at least once or twice per day. So I'm going to do all I can to keep him nursing until then, including adding night feeds if I have to.

You cannot FORCE a child to breast feed, and just as an overtired child can refuse to sleep even though it's what he needs, an overstimulated and hungry baby can not initially seem interested in nursing, but it might be exactly what he needs. As parents, one responsibility is to anticipate and meet your child's needs even when your child doesn't know that that is what he needs/wants.

I have seen many people wean sooner than they planned (which might end up working out for them, or they might have regrets and wonder what they could have done to keep the child nursing). So part of what I am having this intervention is to see, if you are in the position of seeing your baby begin to nurse less, if there are things you could do to turn them back to nursing more . . .

(Transitioning into an update on Project Fat Baby (PFB) now . . . )

So even though I've only been doing these things for a week or so now, I think it is already making a difference. Here's where I have implemented changes and what the effect has been:

1. I have stopped attempting to do anything else while nursing him. I have resigned myself to the fact that nursing is a two person job requiring both of our 100% focus. I have stopped attempting to (watch TV, read book or kindle, text, take pictures, go online, etc) while nursing. I stare at the baby so he can focus on eating.

Due to this intervention, I can more often get james to have a full feeding in between naps if he gets hungry. Before this intervention, he would only stick around for one letdown max--now I can get 2-4 into him.

2. I have started laying down to nurse him to sleep (or nearly) for every nap. I was doing this sometimes before, but if he's eaten recently I would skip it. Now I do it every time.

Due to this intervention, I have added some feeds to his day, and most importantly, these before nap/falling asleep feeds are usually really long. That's why it helps so much to lay down with him--I'm able to be patient and let him nurse as long as he wants. When I was holding him sitting up, I would cut him off at some point when he slowed down because I was tired, but this way he keeps eating for longer more often. The milk at the very end of the feed (when the breast feels empty) is the fattiest, so it should make a difference to get some WHOLE (fatty) milk into the boy.

3. We have started bed-sharing full time.

This helps a TON, I think. Specifically, it adds one feed when we go to bed (which I would sometimes do before, too), and he nurses sort of non-stop or over and over from like (5? 6? I couldn't even say), maybe every hour or half hour, until I decide to get up, usually like 9 or so. Before we were bed-sharing, we would move him over to his swing a lot for the early morning and he wouldn't nurse as much, though obviously at least still twice in that time (first wake up and again a couple hours later). Overall I would say he could be eating as much as twice during this time, and definitely more high-fat milk.

So, our next appointment is on June 15th--then we'll see if this has worked at all! ;-)

Bedsharing Night Two (and 3-7)

So after james' six month appointment and the commencement of PFB (Project Fat Baby), we decided to give bed-sharing another go.

As you might recall, we tried bed-sharing with the unswaddled baby a few weeks ago with disastrous consequences, after which we decided that he still needed to be swaddled.

So, we tried again a week or so ago, and it went very well! One thing we did was we DID swaddle him to fall asleep, but then we unswaddled him when we joined him in the bed. So he didn't wake up in the evening this way.

It is really nice to get to snuggle up with him at night. AND it definitely benefits PFB, because he is nursing more throughout the night and morning, apparently without me even knowing it.

It is really adorable now to find books and baby toys in our bed, or to wake up to see james playing with one, or touching his Dad's arm, or snuggling up to me and breastfeeding (apparently almost unconsciously on my part).

All the fears I had about rolling on him or him suffocating have basically disappeared "overnight", as I saw within one or two days how absolutely aware of him James and I are, it's really crazy actually. And now he's really old enough (rolling both ways just today!), and strong enough that I know he could flip himself over, turn his head if he needed to, clear away a blanket or something if it got near his face--I'm just a lot more confident in him. I can't believe he's over six months old now . . .

And this weekend we committed, haha, and bought a toddler rail for my side so he can spend the majority of the night between me and the rail and won't be able to fall out of the bed. We'll see what we end up doing when he starts really crawling, though, we might need to put our mattress on the ground of something. Good thing summer is coming!

Anyway, I think we ((HEART)) bedsharing and probably won't use that co-sleeping thing again until we have another one, haha.

Okay Mom I Don't Think We Are Getting a Crib . . . (cringe)

Sooooo

We never registered for or got a crib. I knew I wanted to cosleep, and many of my friends who did ended up never using their cribs. I really didn't want to spend 500-600 dollars on something we wouldn't use . . . so I figured I would wait and get one when I wanted one.

So maybe about a month ago, watching james start to fill up his cradle that I somehow seriously thought he would physically fit in until he was 2 (it's 31 inches long), I started feeling some pressure to make a decision about his sleeping situation and thinking maybe we should get a crib for him to use for naps, especially because at this point I was having some success to rocking james to sleep and putting him in his cradle . . .

. . . however, in the month since then, as I alluded to before, something has sparked to life in james which cannot be controlled or even guided much of the time. He loves life. He doesn't want to sleep (or even get a good meal in, sometimes!). He wants to look and play and wiggle and chew on things. He has discovered that the world contains all this interesting information and objects which are a joy to behold and interact with.

This is quite adorable but it means that our sleep situation has changed. It is nearly impossible now to rock him to sleep without a LOT of time and effort invested. Right now there are two easy ways to get him to sleep. One: Nurse him and then rock him, and then stick him in his swing and leave him there to "fuss it out" until he falls asleep, anywhere from 2-15 mins. OR, lay in the bed with him and nurse him for 5-10 mins until he is completely asleep. Nursing is much easier and even pleasant and relaxing (for both of us). AND it's sustainable on the long term. Which putting him in his swing isn't.

So my basic conclusion, here, is that the easiest thing for us on the long-term is for me to nurse james to sleep. A crib, therefore, is not going to work for us. Attempting to transfer him to a crib will mean that he notices he is alive and begins to smile and look around again. Cute, but not restful.

So I believe our immediate action on his sleeping situation is going to be to get toddler rails for one or both sides of our bed. And then before he starts crawling (in the next month or two), we'll get a twin mattress and throw it on the floor in our bedroom and I will nurse him to sleep and then he can nap there and potentially spend part of the night. If he wakes up he can crawl out safely--we can put the mattress on blankets or a rug or something so it's soft for him.

At this point we'll also get a baby gate that we can set up in our bedroom door.

And then when his room is done (and has out-gassed for several months), we can transition him to sleeping in his own room on the twin mattress on the floor (and at that point, put the baby gate across the hallway so that he can access both of our rooms but that is all). And then he'll have plenty of time to get used to his own room before we night-wean him (out of our bed and from nursing at night). I would hope to do that around 18 months or so.

So that's the plan. Mom, if I feel like I want a crib in the future I will still get one! But we're going to try this first and see how it goes.

Bed-sharing Night One

So we've always co-slept with james at night. He has always slept in an on-the-bed co-sleeper, so that he could be swaddled and have his own little space and we wouldn't have to worry about him. While he was very tiny I really needed this to feel secure with him because I was SO worried about covers and pillows and blankets, and whether the adult mattress is safe for the baby.

Now understanding more deeply the absolute lack of movement that a swaddled baby has (unable to turn over or bring blankets up toward the face), I already am guessing I will be slightly less paranoid for our second baby . . .

But secretly I've always wanted to just have him in the big bed with us. When he's there, he stares into my eyes, touches my face, and then looks around happily for awhile, kicking and wiggling or calm and peaceful, sometimes playing with the sheets or comforter or a toy . . . it is so sweet and special to be able to snuggle up with him in the night or morning . . .

So now that he's getting a bit more sturdy and getting toward the age when people stop swaddling, I wanted to give it a go with him unswaddled in the big bed with us all night to see how it would go.

And basically it did not go well, for two reasons which are both solvable.

1. I think he still needs the swaddle. He will not sleep longer than about 2 hours unswaddled, even when he was snuggled up to me.

2. He is a HOT SWEATY baby with a cold clammy Mom, hahah. Meaning that I want to be all covered up but if he's snuggled up next to me (partially) covered up--he gets so hot in his sleep that sweat just pours off of him. I woke up to his entire clothes and the sheets around him (and, therefore, me) being soaked in a way that doesn't seem like pee.

Soooooo, not sure what's going to happen with that as the summer approaches. James said he wanted to get a better air conditioner for our room so maybe that would help? But it's not like our room was hot last night and it happened anyway! Maybe if we can get the right kind of pajamas or lack thereof it would be okay?

I guess I'll see if we can keep him in the swaddle and cosleeper until he's six months and see if it goes better then, or perhaps start transitioning into bed-sharing after a middle of the night wake-up or something. We'll see.

But that was bed-sharing night one

Five Months Old!

My darling baby is five months old today.

I can't believe it. In one more month he will be half a year old! And so much is changing so quickly it's hard to imagine what he'll be like in 6 more months when he's nearly a year old!

Some of James' new things this month are blowing raspberries/spit bubbles. As if he didn't drool enough already, now he can send even more massive amounts of liquid out of his mouth. He sure is proud of himself when he does it, too, LOL!

While I wrote last month that he has just rolled over for the first time the day before, now a month later he still has yet to do it more than say, half a dozen times (from front to back). He has not yet rolled back to tummy either (but I think he is getting much closer!). He IS getting slightly more fond of tummy time but I've neglected to do it very often, so that's a goal for this month, hehe.

He is getting better at sitting, needing less and less support from us or cushions and chairs. I think he is THIS close to "tripod sitting" (supporting himself with his hands).

He now REALLY REALLY loves his bouncer, and has now figured out that he can turn it totally around to sample the different toys that are there--he is really into it. We still need to prop a book under him so he can reach the ground (and blankets around him so he doesn't topple), but he is really loving it.

And he LOVES "standing", with his legs straight and his arms and/or body supported. Sometimes when we try to make him sit he refuses to bend and will only stand, LOL.

He is also getting better and better at using his hands--he can grab, say, the handle of a cup with a targeted motion with both hands. And he LOVES his Tommee Tippee Sippy Cup. It's almost too stimulating for him--he gets frustrated and over excited with it after a while and I need to take it away to let him calm down, haha.

He is starting to get better at "playing" with food, as I wrote about before . . . he's still not really to the eating stage but he's nearly there!

We've continued his nap routine (change diaper, read books, nurse, rock to sleep/put in swing) with some diligence. At the very least he is definitely getting more patient and focused about reading. Now we can read for short periods from books with hardly any pictures. For example, I read him a mini-chapter of the Little Prince during many of the reading sessions. He really loves the simple squishy page books, or board books, though. James was telling me that he would even turn the pages himself if presented with them . . .

He continues to be an interminably happy baby. He barely ever cries and just laughs and smiles and plays and is a baby all day long. Cutie.

He is starting to be a distracted nurser...

...(look for my Wordless Wednesday post tomorrow for more), which means that for a lot of his feeds he is not getting a full bellyful. I guess he makes up for it at other times? Unfortunately that often means during the night, but it's okay.

I am now a pro at nursing lying down and pretty much exclusively do that at night. We are still swaddling him but I'm THIS close to stopping swaddling and starting to transition to full-time bed-sharing (he's up until now been in an on-the-bed co-sleeper, swaddled).

Everyone just loves him so so much.

I've been falling more and more in love with him recently, as his personality grows and his good humor shows through more and more. Sometimes we snuggle and he just laughs and touches my hair and face, I LOVE HIM!!

Cosleeping: Why Could Cosby get Away with it?

I feel like there are a lot of ideas and things packed into this blog post. Sorry if it's a bit fragmented but I think there's a common thread . . .

My sister and her roommates and my Mother-in-law were all over here the other day and someone brought up the case of a 7 or 8 (they weren't quite sure) year old boy who was still breastfeeding and how shocking this was. Now, I am a huge advocate of extended breastfeeding, and so, some part of me wanted to (and did) defend this family. But I am forced to admit that 8 is quite old--would be too old for me. Still, I have heard of cases (in more supportive cultures than the US) of children breastfeeding until age 9. That seems to be pretty much the oldest that I've ever heard of.

The story about the family continued, though, that the father of the child had been complaining because he'd been kicked out of the bed and the Mom and child were cosleeping in their bed. "So clearly," I expressed to the group, "there are issues there beyond breastfeeding." Which there are, because the father was unhappy . . .

However, when did cosleeping (especially with an older child) get such a bad rap? I'm totally all about cosleeping in general and yet THIS was the thing about the story that I had the most judgement in my heart about, and why?

This morning I was thinking about this, and about the Cosby show, which I've watched recently with much enjoyment. Cliff Huxtable was an Obstetrician and known far and wide as THE parent. The one raising his kids right and sending them to college and keeping them out of trouble and honest. And what happened almost every night of the show? 5, 6, 7, 8 year old Rudy would be there at the door saying: "I had a bad dream, can I sleep with you?" and climbing in bed with her parents and snuggling up. More than that, 10, 11, and 12 year old Vanessa was sometimes accompanying her. Or her father would come home from delivering a baby and find one or two of his young daughters in his place in bed next to his wife, and he would retire to the couch or carry them into their beds or snuggle up in the bed with them.

But he was never ASHAMED about it. At a time not that long after the first TV COUPLE shared a bed, very scandalously, we have a whole family bed-sharing together, and not on "Married with Children", on the freaking Cosby Show.

So why the judgement? I'm asking myself as much as the next guy.

I think for some reason now-a-days, co-sleeping and bed-sharing and especially "the Family Bed" is so looked down upon. Of all the parenting decisions I have made, the fact that I don't yet own a crib and pretty much plan to bedshare with my baby (he currently sleeps in an on-the-bed cosleeper) is the one I have gotten the MOST flack over.

Yet? I'm pretty sure that like the 75% of the world cosleeps for the first 2-5 years of the baby's life. I know in China they do, and let's be honest, that's like half the population right there. But seriously, cribs are not a worldwide thing--or if they are it's only the richest 25% of people worldwide.

Honestly, I, myself, am nervous about cosleeping because of the aggressive campaigns against it in the United States, claiming that it is unsafe.

Of course as with any other infant sleeping arrangement, it has to conform to certain rules--a firm, flat mattress, no excess pillows or blankets around the baby (and none around the baby while it is tiny). Neither parent (sharing the bed) should smoke or be under the influence, and the Mom should be breastfeeding. All these things make cosleeping 100% safe.

Honestly since seeing the video I posted a while back about how 100% of bedsharing deaths were in the case of f0rmula fed babies (in whatever studies they examined, I don't know if that is UNIVERSALLY true), I have been able to put in check the fear caused by those smear campaigns. Personally I'm waiting for James to start rolling over more consistently (before I let him stay directly in the bed with us, unswaddled, instead of in the cosleeper, swaddled) because I want to make sure that he'd be able to right himself if he somehow rolled over, but even this is being excessively cautious. I have sleep shared with him a bit here and there, getting ready to do it full time, and from what I have observed it is 100% safe. My body is 100% aware of James even when I am asleep. Furthermore, I LOVE IT!

I can't tell you how ridiculously sweet it is to snuggle up to my baby in the morning or the middle of the night, and be able to kiss him little face and breathe in his little smell and have his little hands touch my face or his little eyes look into mine and his little body all calm or wiggly . . . It's just like being bathed in love.

So I'm not going to judge this (other) family for what they are choosing to do. Hopefully things work out for them. And just wanted to give a last shout out to extended breastfeeding, which has many health and emotional benefits (for the Mom and child) for as long as it lasts, has never been shown to have ANY negative effect on the child or mother. (Emotional/family problems, like babying your son and ignoring your husband, are going to be problems whether extended breastfeeding is present or not, but breastfeeding is always blamed in situations like that.)

I think as always it comes down to personal preference--parents should (and probably do) do what makes them most comfortable, and who are any of us to judge . . . every kid is different and every parent is different, so every parent-kid relationship is unique and has it's own dynamics.

(And if anyone who was present at this conversation reads this, I'm speaking as much to what I thought/felt/said as to what you said, I didn't think anyone was being mean or overly judgmental, it just gave me something to think about!)

Co-Sleeping

So James David does not have his own room. I just didn't see the point. Little babies need almost nothing. He has a dresser for his clothes, receiving blankets, and wraps and carriers--it is in our room. He has a changing area--in the bathroom--located in close proximity to the toilet, which is very handy while cloth diapering . . .

He has a cradle, located next to our bed, and then there's his cosleeper, which goes on our bed:

Since we would have wanted him near us at night anyway, the only thing that we maybe could have put in a nursery is the dresser . . . not a very full room.

So he doesn't have a room. I think by the time he is one or definitely by the time he turns two, we'll have designed and decorated a nice little toddler room for him, complete with his own bed, dresser, painted letters and animals on the walls, chalkboard paint, cork boards, the whole deal.

In the meantime, he'll sleep with us. This was, quite unexpectedly, the one point that my Dad freaked out about. It was fine that we had a midwife, a home birth, that we'll delay vaccinations and didn't circumcise, but co-sleeping was just too much for him. (It's sort of weird how everyone has their points of contention).

In the first few days, he was just in the cosleeper. Both James and I wanted him RIGHT THERE, between us, in front of our eyes, at the reach of our hands--we both woke up multiple times in the night with a gasp, reaching over to check that his chest rose and fell, poking at him to see his eyelids flutter--making sure that it was not all a dream--that he was there with us.

Now, typically, we'll get him to sleep "for the night" sometime between 10pm-12am, and we'll put him in the cradle. We'll have our opportunity then to snuggle with each other, hold each other as we fall asleep. Then James David will wake up between 3-5am, and at that point, we pull out the cosleeper and he'll sleep there for the rest of the night--easy to reach out and comfort if he is fussing--easy to get if he needs to nurse . . . accessible.

At some point in the future when he outgrows the co-sleeper and the risk of SIDS falls, he'll probably just sleep right in our bed, and so far, that is where James and I like him. It is by far the easiest situation for nursing and bonding.

Honestly, I can't imagine putting him in a crib in a separate room and closing the door. I carried him inside me for nine months, and such a drastic separation right away feels so unnatural. I want to be near him, to hear his noises and see him--all the time. It feels very very odd to be apart from him--even in a different room.

So I know co-sleeping isn't for everyone, but it is working great for us, so far. My Dad insists that we'll never get him out of our bed but I'm fairly certain that he won't take us to college with him, ;-) Anyway, at this point I have bigger fish to fry--sleeping in close proximity to your baby greatly reduces the risk of SIDS, promotes a good breastfeeding relationship, in short--helps a newborn grow into a healthy toddler. That's what I'm focused on right now--we'll worry about teaching him to sleep without US when we're ready to sleep without HIM, and that time is definitely not now!