The secret about my boobs
Lucy turns six months old soon (gah, stop growing!), and when she does we’ll have reached an important milestone Eric and I set for her: half a year of exclusive breastmilk.
When we started breastfeeding, we set a goal of four weeks. Then six weeks. Then two months. After that we knew we could go until the end of August.
I’ve loved breastfeeding (I still really really want a shirt like this), but I have a dark secret: I can’t wait to start Lucy on solids.
It’s not that I’ve had it with boob feeds. I’d actually love to keep feeding Lucy once or twice a day until she’s a year, if she’ll let me. But…
-she’s so very ready for more. She grabs at our food, watches us eat, and super-flicks her tongue when we dab smears of popsicle or grapes or yogurt on her lips
-this baby has outgrown all her 12-month onesies and is firmly in 12 month sleepers. People politely and laughingly say she’s “thriving.” While this is a perfect example of the powers of breastmilk, I think she could grow even stronger with some additional food
-selfishly, I am sick of a) wearing a bra to bed, b) wearing the same three bras 24/7, c) wearing bras with plastic flap clips, d) having big boobs — I want them to shrink!, e) getting crappy back scratches while on my side because I can’t lay on my belly
-feeds can be a battle now that Lucy is older. She’s easily distracted because she’s so aware of her surroundings, and it’s exhausting to keep her from twisting her head and unlatching. Some days I go to bed with sores on my nipples like in the beginning
-I’m excited to get Lucy in the highchair and introduce her to new foods
A part of me feels tremendous guilt for this. I should want to keep being her one and only super feeder, right? But isn’t that also selfish because I’m denying her a whole world of exciting tastes and textures and oooey-gooey-messy fun?
(Did I tell you it hurts to watch Lucy take a bottle, too? All these months of waiting for her to do it, and it pains me to see her drinking from a plastic nipple {I know, it’s still my milk} while staring at me.)
Argh.
I will always be proud that we made it to six months, that Lucy will have had my milk exclusively longer than most babies, that we beat the odds.
But on Sunday, August 27, you can bet she’ll be in her high chair getting her first taste of cereal from an airplane spoon.
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Great job, Carly. The six-month one is a HUGE milestone. But I wouldn’t count on the introduction of solids meaning cutting out a lot of nursing sessions — really, they’re only meant for practice, and for the entire first year, the majority of calories are supposed to come from milk. With my guys, I was lucky to get half a teaspoon of solids in at a feed for the first couple of months. They just wanted their mamamilk.