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Tamara's Story: A Change of Attitude
Tamara had already suffered a miscarriage and lost a baby six months into her pregnancy, when, at 21, she gave birth to a baby boy. A total lack of support made nursing her firstborn impossible. She reflects, below, on the impact that meeting other nursing mothers had on her ability to nurse her second son. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When my second son was a couple of weeks old, I watched a TV show where a baby became malnourished and died because the mother was told to nurse him only every few hours. I don’t remember the exact schedule she was told to follow, except that she wouldn’t feed him when the baby cried because she had just nursed him an hour earlier. I was going through major post partum depression and I panicked. Trenton was small and I was unsure if he was losing weight. And according to what everyone was saying, he wasn’t nursing “properly. They all told me to nurse fifteen minutes on one side and fifteen minutes on the other, but Trenton was a power nurser and nursed only five minutes on a side. I went to the hospital to seek out help from the lactation consultant. I asked them to do a weight check and, as it turned out, he had gained a couple of pounds.
The lactation consultant told me she had a support group and I was welcome to come. The group made me aware that there are different ways to nurse, not just a standard way, and that nursing doesn’t have to be by the book. As long as he had wet and poopy diapers and was gaining weight, it didn’t matter how long he spent on each breast.
The support group really educated me about breastfeeding and made me feel more comfortable about nursing. When my first son was born, eight years earlier, I was young, naïve, and totally uneducated on motherhood. The nurses at the military hospital told me I couldn’t nurse my son because they were treating me for strep B. I believed them. They gave him formula without letting me know and told me I should still be able to get him to nurse later on. Many nights I sat up and cried, trying to get him to nurse, but to no avail. I tried to pump but I had no idea that battery operated, store pumps hurt so much. It felt like my nipple was being ripped off. When I look back now, I can’t believe that the hospital didn’t provide lactation consultants because had there been somebody to follow-up with me, to help me with the problems that I was experiencing, my attempt at nursing could have been so different.
When I had my son two years ago, I was in a second marriage and still naïve. I thought I had to follow directions and do what the doctors wanted me to do. I wanted everything about the birth to be natural, but I didn’t know that I didn’t have to lay in bed, that I could walk around if I wanted to. The only thing that I did know was that I wanted to nurse. I had done more research and felt that breast was best, no matter what.
My whole attitude toward breastfeeding has changed since then.. Through the support group I met several ladies who have breastfed children beyond the age of one. As I grew and my friendships grew, so did my feelings and convictions about extended nursing and about being able to nurse in public. I used to feel uncomfortable, nervous and insecure about nursing in public, because so many people look down on it, but now I don’t really care. I know that I’m doing what’s best for my child and that’s all that matters. I used to panic and need a blanket, but I’ve become quite proficient. I’m not indecent, in fact, people often don’t realize that I’m nursing – they think I’m cuddling.
I also thought I would only nurse for the first couple of months or so, especially since the people around here, including many family members, thought that you should only nurse for the first couple of weeks. But as I started to become aware of the benefits, I decided to nurse my son for as long as he wants to. I used to think that two years was so old to be nursing and now I think that’s still very young. And I’ve gone from thinking it’s strange to having a child come and pull on your blouse, to thinking that it’s absolutely adorable.
Some of the women and I started our own little playgroup of nursing mothers. We open it to all mothers with the intention that we’re here to educate other people on nursing. If we can’t help them, we’ll help them find advice. It’s been wonderful to have the kind of support that I now have and I want other people to know what I didn’t know, to feel more secure than I did. And I want them to know that it’s ok and you’re normal if you nurse beyond a month or two.
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