Welcome to Tuesday’s Tastes on Second Base – our weekly breast feeding talk! This weekly feature is hosted by Courtney at Joy of Momma Joyner and myself! This week I’m just going to do an introduction and let you know how my breast feeding journey has been going with baby Addy. I hope you’ll come back weekly and join us in our conversations! 
I have nursed all three of my children. I nursed ZZ (my oldest) for 10 months. I nursed LA for 12 months and I am hoping to make it to 16-18 months with baby Addy. I have also been a working mama with all three of my babes and therefore have endured many struggles of pumping and supplying enough milk for baby when I am not there. So far all of my babies have been exclusively given breast milk. How is it going this time? Let me fill you in!
Baby Addy was born in February and she was born a nurser. She latched on and nursed like a pro very shortly after birth. I had to work with both of my older children a bit to get the hang of it, but not Addy. She knew what she was doing. Either that, or maybe I was more experienced and handled it better this time. After having Addy I knew I had six weeks of being at home and exclusively breastfeeding her until I had to return to work and give her breast milk in a bottle.
That is where our struggle began. Baby Addy was not interested in taking a bottle. She really wasn’t. She cried and cried. I tried, I had my husband try (since she was used to me nursing her) and she wouldn’t take a bottle from either of us. It took me leaving the room and my husband really working with her to get her to take it and even then it took her quite a while to adjust. We only started trying the bottle less than a week before I returned to work. I think she needed more time honestly. We made it past that hurdle though and she is taking her bottles just fine when I am gone now. I still exclusively nurse her when I am at home.
I have struggled with pumping at work since I went back to work after LA was born. Well, I say struggle and it’s really not a struggle. I think of it as a struggle because I feel I should be pumping more. Not more often, but more milk. I guess I am greedy and I want extra! LOL I always seem to pump the EXACT amount that I need to send to daycare the next day for Addy. It’s really amazing how that works out! I worry about it at times though because I worry I won’t pump enough. I’ve recently started eating Making Mama’s Milk lactation cookies though and they actually help and keep some of that worry away!
One thing I’ve noticed is that my nipples get a bit sore on the weekends. Sometimes I have 3-4 day weekends and I am exclusively nursing Addy during that time. I guess because I am used to pumping on work days, her actively nursing all day is more suction on my nipple and causes a tiny bit of soreness. It’s by no means anything that I can’t take. It’s merely a tiny annoyance that I am more than happy to deal with if I can nurse my baby instead of give her a bottle!
So, we are almost four months into this breastfeeding journey with baby Addy and I am so happy with how it is going so far. I really thank God for this blessing of being able to nurse her while I still have to work. I just pray that we are able to keep it going for many, many more months!
I want to thank you for this feature- I love reading about other people’s BF stories. My daughter was born early and spent some time in the NICU being very sick, so our breastfeeding journey got off to a rough start. Plus, turns out I have painful circulation problems that affected me being able to BF once she got home. After pumping pretty much exclusively for 6 mos, I was able to breastfeed her at least 3 times a day until very recently when she turned a year. I find your story (and others) inspirational, and it gives me hope for my next baby! Thanks again, I look forward to the next post.