Nursing Story for Adopt-a-Mom Application
I was lucky to have my daughter at a breastfeeding-friendly hospital. I labored, delivered, and recovered all in one room, and my daughter never left that room for any reason until we checked out to go home as a family. Soon after she was born she latched on for the first time, which was beyond amazing. We did our best, but we had a rough go of it that first day. She had a tongue tie and my nipples became cracked and blistered and were bleeding due to the bad latch and our general inexperience. The hospital's IBCLC fitted me for a nipple shield which turned out to be a life saver. She taught us some exercises to help with the tongue tie and came back the next day to check our latch and progress, and fix some lingering positioning issues. Fortunately, we didn't have any milk transfer issues with the nipple shield, and my daughter thrived. At about 6 weeks we were finally able to wean off of the shield completely and maintain a good latch on our own. It took me another week to get over the new discomfort of nursing her without the shield. And then all of a sudden it was easy. At two months old I finally experienced what women meant when they said they loved breastfeeding!! And it has been extremely smooth sailing ever since.
When my daughter turned 3 months old, I returned to work full time and entered the ranks of the pumping mamas. I responded well to the pump and was even able to donate through MilkShare. My daughter does wonderfully well switching back and forth between bottles at day care and me at home. She was exclusively fed breast milk until she was 6 months old at which time we began to introduce solids. She is currently a beautiful, healthy 8 month old. I'm looking forward to a long breastfeeding relationship ahead of us.
ETA (11/24/09): My daughter is now 15 months old. I stopped pumping at work when she was 13.5 months old , but still nurse her outside of work (mornings, evenings, weekends). Her "milkies" sign is her favorite sign. Nursing a toddler has been so different than nursing a baby, and both have been wonderful in their own ways. She is growing into such a lovely, confident little girl :)