Keep On Keeping On

Guess who's getting her first tooth!? Yep... It's happening, like for real this time, and Lilly has been pretty miserable. Lots of love and TLC and teething tablets and nursing. I actually celebrated the new year nursing Lilly at midnight. It's hard to believe that it's been almost 9 months of breastfeeding for us. I would like to share my mothers first breastfeeding experience with my oldest brother. It gives me motivation!

When my brother was born in the mid 70's nursing wasn't very popular. My mom still wanted to breastfeed even though she didn't have much support besides my father. Her lamaze coach was very pro-breastfeeding and gave her lots of advice while she was pregnant. She even warned her of all the negative things people might say. She felt very prepared to breastfeed. Well, the time came to have my brother. Back then the husbands were not allowed in the delivery room and you were not allowed to leave the hospital until your milk came in. I'm pretty sure I would not have survived this! After Greg was born my mom was trying to breastfeed him. The nurses gave her zero support and told her she should be supplementing and that the baby was hungry. They didn't understand anything about colostrum or feeding on demand. And get this... The fathers had to LEAVE THE ROOM when it was time to nurse! So not only was she getting fussed at by the nurses, but her own husband couldn't even be in the room to help her. And to top it off, the nurses were only bringing my brother to her every 4 hours and they were giving him WATER in between feedings. My mom started to feel like she was doing something wrong.

Let's compare... The first time I nursed Lilly I had Mike, my parents, and my cousin in the room. The nurses were telling me how great I was doing. I was on cloud 9.

Ok, I promise this story has a happy ending but is your blood boiling like mine is right now!?

It was day 4 in the hospital and my moms milk still had not come in. She spent a lot of time crying. She was about to give up and give in. Then this one doctor came in and asked her if she was the mom that was nursing. He told her how she was doing such a wonderful job and how proud he was of her. Her milk came in that night. And she was able to breastfeed my brother for a year.

My mom said she only new a handful of other mothers that were nursing. They decided to form a club. They would get together and support each other. Come to find out they all had the same horrible experiences at the hospital. One mom even said that a nurse shook her finger in front of her face for choosing to nurse. So they decided to put together a presentation for the director of the hospital and inform them of things that other hospitals were doing and how to be more supportive of breastfeeding moms. The director loved it. The nurses hated it. But a lot of the rules changed after that. They even started allowing fathers to be in the delivery room.

Amazing.

So here's to 2013 and all of the milestones and nursing to come! It's going to be a great year!