Breastfeeding at 19 months

This was supposed to be an update on breastfeeding an 18-month-old but I am so late with it it's turned into breastfeeding a 19-month-old!

When I had Violet I had no real timescale in my head for how long I would breastfeed. I weaned Cherry at nine months to kick-start my cycle again so I could have Violet, but knowing she was to be our last child there wasn't the same pressure.

And so I find myself breastfeeding a nearly 19-month-old with no surprise. There has never been any real reason why I would wean Violet, and so I haven't.

Well actually that's not true. There's one very big reason why I might consider weaning and that's that Violet wakes frequently to feed at night. Still! So from time to time the subject of night weaning has been broached. Once or twice I've tried settling her without feeding, and sometimes this works for the first, second and even third wake ups. But eventually there will come a point where Violet will make it abundantly clear she's not settling without feeding, and I will of course feed her.

I know night weaning has worked for many a knackered breastfeeding parent, but it doesn't seem likely it would work for us. In all honesty I think I would just spend hours comforting a crying confused toddler. I fancy that at 11pm, midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am like a hole in the head.

Plus I can't shake the feeling that she will get there when she's ready. Of course I'm tired and so is Noel but we get on with it, we don't moan and complain (well, not much) and it doesn't have a dramatic impact on our quality of life. We remind ourselves and each other constantly that it will end, it won't be forever, this will pass. Perhaps we're just used to it. I have faith in Violet and faith in my instincts.

Breastfeeding her at 19 months is never dull. She calls it 'EAT!' and she's quite insistent when she wants to feed. She will march her little self over to the nearest chair or bench or sofa, clamber up, announce 'At-dee' (her word for 'up' or 'getting up', I think she's trying to say 'upski!' which I often say when I pick her up) and demand 'Eat.' If no 'eat' is forthcoming she will absolutely insist. Violet is fierce, I rarely argue with her.

She's entertained by the way I spray during a milk letdown. I am fascinated that I still do this after 19 months, and can only assume I have gold-top fuelled torpedoes for breasts. I can also safely assume that, given that she feeds hourly at night (more eat! MORE EAT!) which is when milk production is governed, I have the supply of a dairy cow. Certainly Violet is bursting with health and vitality.

She's quite physical and feeding, especially at bedtime, can often involve a good deal of wriggling and hands flailing around and even a bit of pinching, which I don't like and tell her so. I also don't like it when she pulls madly at my clothes, but other than this I do very little in the way of 'discipline' around breastfeeding. She asks, I provide.

I have never left Violet at night (I've only left Cherry twice at night and once was to have Violet!) so I have no insight to offer on how she would cope away from me for a night. I have spent the odd full day away from her and she's been absolutely fine. She does want to feed when I get back, and I am always so bursting that I would keep trying even if she didn't want to!

I think the difference between breastfeeding Cherry and breastfeeding Violet is how I feel about it. As much as I loved breastfeeding Cherry I thought of it as simply being about food, a way of dispensing nutrition. With Violet I view it as a relationship, even a mothering 'technique' if you want to call it that.

In a way it's a metaphor for the difference between the way I have approached the early days with both of them. With Cherry I was far too anxious to trust my own instincts and to trust her, and so I complicated matters with routines and methods and techniques and not 'letting her get into bad habits!'. With Violet I listened only to her and myself everything has just flowed beautifully. It's been a far easier, more natural and more rewarding way of parenting. Although I concede I've had far, far less sleep.

And it means that (hopefully) I don't have ahead of me the difficult second year I had with Cherry, in which I realised things had to change but had no real blueprint for what attachment parenting a toddler would look like, so we had to kind of feel our way and make yet more mistakes on top of mistakes until we found a balance that suits all four of us.

Today I sat watching Cherry and Violet while I ate breakfast. Violet was pottering about in her new Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas in a particular shade of blue that suits her so beautifully. I caught her eye and we just had a little moment in time, the two of us together.  She stopped her pottering, came over to me, held out her arms and said 'cuddle Mummy!' I picked her up and she cuddled into my lap, put her little arms around me, and leaned against me.

It felt like a real concrete example of the connection between mother and child that breastfeeding is so helpful in building. I'm not for a minute suggesting you can't build that connection formula-feeding, before anybody jumps to that conclusion. It's a connection I have built with my older child only after weaning! But this is a post about breastfeeding and those are my honest feelings on that moment. Breastfeeding Violet is one of many very easy ways in which we maintain that connection. It requires no thought whatsoever, it's completely instinctive for both of us and for that reason I can't see either of us wanting to stop any time soon. (Although because I have been asked this more than once, no I don't imagine I'll still be breastfeeding her when she's 21, much as I don't imagine I'll still be changing her nappies, reading her stories and helping her wash her face, brush her teeth and get dressed when she's 21 either)

The size of things

I took these photos this morning, for a different post (to come) on what I'm doing round the house.

I knew I'd got bigger lately but I hadn't realised, or wanted to see, quite how big.

Generally I dislike how I look in most photographs, the photos I like the most are the ones in which I probably look least like me. That's a complicated sentence to explain. I've been reading a lot by Geneen Roth recently (highly, highly recommend) and she talks about growing up waiting to look like a model and being utterly perplexed when she didn't.

I really identified. Growing up I read glossy teen magazines and the occasional illicit Cosmo. I was mesmerised by the girls in the pictures and desperate to be like them. But also, as a young impressionable girl, I was desperate to grow up and somewhere along the line my brain confused the two. I thought when I grew up, I would look like a model - because all the images I consumed suggested that would be the case.

I can see I've never really let go of that idea. I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant, I want to make it clear I don't actually think I look like a model. But I am so used to seeing images of women who are so slender in the first place so posed and airbrushed and manufactured that somehow my brain seems to think ALL women look like that in photographs - including me. Everybody knows there are only three body types for women. Tiny and petite and delicate, tall and willowy, or curvy. I'm neither petite nor curvy, I am tall, ergo surely I should be willowy, yes?

Well clearly not. But believe it or not that's the image of myself I've been carrying around with me. I like photos of me that hint at willowiness, emphasise my bone structure, disguise my broadness and softness. We all like pictures that emphasise what we perceive as our best features after all.

I actually don't have huge amounts of pictures of myself. My parents didn't take that many when I was growing up and I never took any during my 20's. So I don't have a lot of photographic evidence to counteract my mistaken belief that I am, somewhere underneath, willowy and ethereal.

When I looked at these pictures I think for the first time I truly let go of that idea and just saw myself. Truly myself.

I can't say I was thrilled. I look bigger than I want to be. Bigger than I've been in years. Bigger than I'm comfortable with.

I waited for the inevitable self-flagellation to start, the despairing thoughts about being fat and overweight and lazy and greedy and having no self control and all the other things we tell ourselves when we're not happy with ourselves.

But when I thought about it, none of that was there.

When I look at these pictures I see a woman who has given away too much of herself.

A woman who has lost touch with her body and what her body wants and needs.

A woman who hasn't slept through the night in 18 months and is still smiling.

A woman who has given as much of herself as she possibly, possibly can to her family and her very young children, and who is still giving.

I see a woman who is always carrying, wiping, lifting, fetching, helping, moving, pushing, cuddling.

A woman still breastfeeding a voracious 18-month-old (breastfeeding might melt away the pounds for some, for me it sees my body desperately hang on to stores of fat put down during pregnancy. What can I say, I make gold top.)

I see a woman who has put her children's needs way, way above her own longing for time and space and physical activity and breaking a sweat.

I see a woman who misses her fitness and the daily workouts she once took for granted.

I see a woman who feeds her family and often doesn't have the energy left to think about what she might want to eat, so instead eats snacks and treats and too much of the wrong thing because it's there.

And I see a woman who often does reach into the cupboard for a chocolate biscuit or a cake or a treat because she wants something for herself, even if it is just baked goods.

I feel great compassion for that woman. The last thing I'm going to do is give her a hard time for gaining a bit of weight.

What to do, though? I have never been on a diet and I don't believe in diets per se. They are a short-term fix for a symptom, and completely overlook the cause. I know what food is 'good' for me and what is 'bad' for me. I don't want to follow complex and restrictive regimes and I respond extremely badly to any sense of deprivation.

I need to get back in touch with my body and let my body guide me. My body likes to be active and move. It likes to eat food that nourishes it. I've known I was gaining weight for a while because I feel pretty uncomfortable most of the time. My body isn't happy with what I'm eating and how I'm eating it, that much is clear.

If I think about it, properly think about it, I don't want to eat rubbish and junk and endless chocolate and snacks. It doesn't make me feel good and it doesn't satisfy me. Nor does not exercising, sitting on the sofa watching TV, or any other weight-inducing habits.

If I listen to my body, really listen, I am pretty confident the weight will take care of itself. And even if it doesn't, when I look at these photographs, I can still find plenty about them that I like.

(I just want to make it crystal clear this is a personal post about my personal feelings about my body and my weight and relates to nobody else's body, feelings, size or weight but mine!)

Living Arrows 3/52

You on your bike. Don't you just make me burst at the seams with pride. You ride to pre-school now. It's a good mile. I feel anxious sometimes, we're only going down residential streets but they get so busy especially around school run time. But I choose to trust you, with the odd (OK regular) reminder to be careful, stay close and stop when you get to the road. It's been freezing cold all week but there's no holding you back, little love. And there's no getting you to wear your coat either! This fluffy cardigan is as close as you'll get.

Your latest trick is…wait for it…SLEEPING! You still wake when Daddy and I come to bed at around 10pm, and then again at around 4am for the restless pre-dawn hours which you spend feeding, shouting for Cherry and dozing. But for the last few nights, that's been it! I'm so glad I let you get there in your own time. It's been a conscious decision not to night wean, push you to sleep through or 'train' you out of your natural restlessness at night. I had faith in you. It's not exactly the 12 uninterrupted hours we as a culture are so obsessed with, but if there's one thing I know about you, and your sister, it's that you do things your own way. 

10 things that surprised me about breastfeeding *this* one-year-old

1. That it's an entirely different experience to breastfeeding my older daughter, who I weaned at nine months. Hence this is ten things that have surprised me about breastfeeding *this* one-year-old not *a* one-year-old. Because every child is different.

2. There are no thought processes involved at all. I don't think about how much she feeds, when she feeds or why she feeds.

3. I have no idea how often she feeds. Somebody asked me this a couple of weeks ago and I was genuinely completely stumped. This is because, as per point number two, I give it no thought whatsoever. She asks, I feed. She doesn't ask, I might offer. I have no idea when, or how often, or for how long, or how much she takes.

4. It's not about 'giving her milk'. Breastfeeding Violet isn't an act. It's a relationship. It's a two-way thing. At her one-year review the HV asked 'does Violet drink milk at all?' and I immediately said 'no', because she drinks water or occasionally juice. Then I understood what I was actually being asked!

5. It doesn't 'interfere' with my life in any way, shape or form. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I have readjusted my life, and myself, so as not to interfere with breastfeeding a one-year-old. I don't drink alcohol any more so that's not an issue. We co-sleep most nights so night feeds aren't an issue. I can be away from her for hours on end and my breasts will feel full, but I think this has happened twice in the last year. It's just not an issue because I have chosen not to separate myself from my children for any length of time other than on very rare occasions. This comes back to breastfeeding being a relationship not an isolated act. It's part of the whole.

6. She has eight teeth and has bitten me frequently, usually when another tooth is coming. And yes, it hurts! Cherry had no teeth when I weaned her so the experience is completely new, that said, V cut her first tooth at four months so I've had plenty of time to get used to it.

7. Having done it before with another child doesn't necessarily make it 'easier' second time around. I've had more issues to overcome feeding Violet (blistered, cracked nipples at the start due to incorrect latch, nursing strike due to thrush, those teeth!) than I had with Cherry.

8. I have no idea for how long I will continue to breastfeed. As long as we both want to, is my stock answer.

9. I loved breastfeeding Cherry and expected to love breastfeeding Violet too. But when I think about it 'love' isn't really the right way of putting it, because that implies breastfeeding is something of a 'bonus' or a 'treat'. I think lovely Adele at Circus Queen really sums it up in her post here when she says that breastfeeding is 'our joint right'. It's our right too. Do you love your rights? They're more fundamental than that.

10. Nobody else seems to think it's 'weird' that I'm breastfeeding a one-year-old. Even if they did, I probably wouldn't notice. You don't tend to pay much attention to what others think of your rights.