When I had my first baby, I knew I wanted to breastfeed. I just had no idea what I was doing. The one nurse at the hospital popped a bottle of formula in Sophia’s mouth without asking. Another one expected me to know how to get her to latch on. At least the morning shift was much more supportive. After I left the hospital, I almost quit many, many times. Thank goodness for my husband. He gave me pep talks. Told me I wasn’t a quitter. Bless that man. Once we all caught on to breastfeeding, I felt like a pro. (I could even nurse her and pump the other side at the same time!)
Now with baby Jaxson (who’s 2 months old already), I had amazing nurses. He caught on right away. It feels so much easier. it all came back to me. Thankfully he’s not the kind of baby that needs a human pacifier. Heck he doesn’t even like pacifiers
The Valentine’s season is in full swing. That means I’m doing more Passion Parties. I’ve been sporadically pumping. So we have a decent stock in the freezer. It just occurred to me a few days ago that I need to pump more regularly. I leave for Las Vegas for our annual Passion Parties convention in 6 weeks.
Thus my frantic search this week for Medela replacement tubing for the electric pump my girlfriend gave me. (Yes, I know about the warning about not sharing breast pumps. Not hate comments about that please.). Can you believe that Babies R Us sells everything you need for your Medela pump except the tubing? Thankfully one of the local lactation centers came to save the day.
When Sophia was 5 months old, I went off to our convention. I was nervous. Would my colleagues give me the evil eye for ducking out our seminars every 3 hours to pump? Would she want to nurse when I came home after 5 days without mom? The good thing about working in an industry of mainly women, everyone understood. Heck, as I sat in the bathroom lounge pumping, women I didn’t know shared their baby and breastfeeding stories. How cool was that? Of course when I came home, Sophia latched on like I had never left.
I’m pretty confident that Jaxson will miss me terribly (as evidenced by his reaction after the party I did last weekend) and want to nurse for hours and hours when I return. Maybe I’ll hear some more awesome breastfeeding stories in the bathroom again.
Was your second (or third, fourth, etc) breastfeeding easier or harder than your first?