steeped
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Turns out that supply does, or at least can, keep pace with demand, so long as the breastfeeding mother doesn't mind feeling like a she has had half of her brains scooped out, finely diced, and then ladelled back in. After a blissful but all too fleeting stint of sleeping through the night, Maggie's diurnality has become a little less reliable of late as she wakes for feeds at various ungodly hours. Toss her sister's equally unreliable sleeping (and toileting) patterns into the mix (apparently this week is International Wet The Bed Week) and you'll see why for the past three weeks I have been lurching from lecture to lecture, my rhetorical powers drying up with each passing day. The other night at 2.00 am I found myself seriously questioning my commitment to exclusive breastfeeding. Or maybe that's just crazy sleep deprivation talk.
But breastfeeding is a bind; often, it can feel like a trap. Not least because for me at least, it's become a competition with myself: how long can I keep going this time? Can I beat my previous record (ha!) of 11 weeks' exclusive breastfeeding? This time, can I make it to six months before I start drying up? A year? By which time there will be no question of starting her on formula as by then cows milk is acceptable? More worryingly, I'm afraid that if I introduce formula now just so I don't feel so wrung-out by her need to feed, she'll develop the eczema that continues to afflict her combination-fed sister, and which I've always fretted was triggered by the formula in the first place.
(And yes of course you can pump, if you need to get away, or to supplement. Except at the end of a day dashing from pillar to post, it can be hard work to get much more than a dribble.)
In any case, the teaching finishes this afternoon, and tomorrow Rebecca's gran is taking her to Auckland for a spell so it will be just me, Jack and Maggie until the end of the month when we drive up and join them. As keenly as I'll miss the firstborn, with only one baby to look after, no paid work to worry about and not even Becca to pick up from daycare, I'm ideally placed to spend a week and a half sitting on the couch lactating. Bountifully, with any luck.
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