Breastfeeding after reduction - 2 years and still going strong

When I was 15 years old, breast­feed­ing was the fur­thest thing from my mind, I just wanted smaller breasts.  I went from a 44E to a 38B (yes, clearly I was in the wrong band size pre-surgery.  I didn’t know about spe­cial order­ing bras, so I was just in the biggest I could get at the local depart­ment store.  If my band size was really a 38, I must have actu­ally been a 38H).  When I got preg­nant, I did the research and knew I wanted to try breast­feed­ing.  The first few months were a strug­gle, I had to take sup­ple­ments, pump, and give my son extra for­mula feed­ings, but I even­tu­ally found my stride.  At 19 months, it was pretty smooth sail­ing and we were both lov­ing breast­feed­ing, so has any­thing changed?

Not sig­nif­i­cantly.  The last cou­ple months, I have started won­der­ing about wean­ing.  Oliver still breast­feeds sim­i­larly to how he did at 19 months.  If we’re out and about, he doesn’t usu­ally ask, but if we’re home, he wants the booby every 1–2 hours.  Actu­ally, if we’re out and I sit down, he often wants the breast too.  I’ve started try­ing to deter him, like when we were at the bank open­ing a sav­ings account for him, this just didn’t feel like an appro­pri­ate time.  Some­times he’s okay with this and just goes on to some­thing else, and some­times he throws a tem­per tantrum if he can’t have the booby right then and there.

I don’t think wean­ing will be hap­pen­ing any time soon, at least from his side.  He can be demand­ing, which makes me won­der if I should just wean, but I’m not sure if life would really be eas­ier if he didn’t breast­feed.  He wouldn’t have that out­let for com­fort and stress relief.  Sure, he’d find other out­lets, but I might be deal­ing with more tem­per tantrums too, not some­thing I really want to replace breast­feed­ing with.  I also don’t want to dam­age his trust in me by forc­ing wean­ing on him.  Some­times I’m shocked by just how much he trusts me.  He jumps off walls and into pools, com­pletely trust­ing that I’ll catch him.  While not uncom­mon, I’ve seen kids that don’t trust their par­ents enough to do these things (it could just be a per­son­al­ity thing too).  I don’t want to do any­thing that could les­son his trust in me, I’m hon­ored by it.

Oliver also doesn’t sleep through the night with­out feed­ing yet, and instead of decreas­ing, his fre­quency of wak­ing has seemed to increase lately.  If I’m at the com­puter work­ing, I can expect 2–3 vis­its from him after his bed­time and before I even get into bed.  We’ll be spend­ing our first night apart in three weeks, two nights in fact, when I go to a blog­ger meetup in Munich for the week­end.  I have no idea how this is going to go over.  Maybe he’ll be fine with me gone and just accept the fact that there’s no booby.  Or maybe he’ll be incon­solable (I really hope not, for everyone’s sake).  Per­haps this pres­sure I’m putting on him not to breast­feed some­times is the rea­son for his increased night fre­quency.  Maybe it’s mak­ing him a lit­tle insecure.

Still, I’m pretty happy with breast­feed­ing, and feel the ben­e­fits out­weigh the costs at this point.  But I’ve reached my goal of two years, now we’re just tak­ing things one day at a time.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Our Weaning Story (3)
• Facebook still banning breastfeeding photos (1)
• Breastfeeding After Reduction: One Year In (13)
• Breastfeeding after reduction surgery - the second time around (0)
• Breastfeeding After Reduction Surgery - 19 months and counting (5)

Tagged as: bfar, Breastfeeding, breastfeeding photos