One of our most popular posts is Boob Candles, a post that is about sore breasts and candles, but has nothing to do with actual boob candles, an adult gag gift. If you’re interested in buying the candles mentioned in the original post, check out Our Own Candle Company’s candles. When I asked my wife why she titled the post that back in 2003 she said she didn’t remember. I’m blaming it on her baby-scattered brain.

Imagine it’s the middle of the night. You are sweetly tucked in next to your hubby and your nearly 18 month old son. Said son is nightweaned, however still nurses during the day. Suddenly he wakes up. And when you awaken enough to figure out that he is fussing, you realize that he is saying “drink! drink!”

Now if you were not nursing you’d most likely have to get up, trudge downstairs, get out the cup and fill with water, head back upstairs, hand son the drink, and try to get back to that comfy sleep you were enjoying.

However, since you are still nursing all you had to do was pull your son to face you, latch on, and fall back to sleep. As you are falling asleep you tell yourself ” this nursing toddler stuff rocks.”

Supporting Sucking Skills in Breastfeeding Infants is a resource for any health care professional working with new mothers and infants, Supporting Sucking Skills in Breastfeeding Infants provides information and strategies needed to assist normal infant feeding. Taking a deliberately multidisciplinary approach, the author draws on varied clinical experiences and empirical evidence to help consolidate information in a complete, usable framework for breastfeeding evaluation and support. This books provides instructors with an advanced, broad knowledge of breastfeeding knowledge required for selecting the right level of intervention for supporting and improving sucking skills in healthy infants and those with anatomical variations, developmental respiratory issues, pre-maturity, and mild neurological deficits.

Bursting with hard-to-find information, this book features some of the finest minds in the world offering cutting-edge insights on challenges that lactation consultants and other health-care professionals face every day. In her own chapters, editor Catherine Watson Genna addresses tongue tie, sensory integration problems, neurological issues and other topics. Chapter authors include international luminaries such as Nils Bergman, Christina Smillie, Rebecca Glover, Diane Wiessinger, Linda Smith, and Kerstin Nyqvist. This book is a must-have for anyone working with breastfeeding families, including occupational therapists and speech-and-language pathologists, whose training is often based primarily on bottle-feeding norms.

This book is perfect for many individuals; whether you are a medical professional, lactation consultant, or a new mom seeking the most up to date information in the field of lactation, this book covers all the bases.

Although this is a medical text(which more often than not are dry as toast,) Ms. Watson Genna’s writing is absorbing and insightful. It provides answers that many pracitioners need in a clear, concise manner. Anyone working with breastfeeding mothers, either prenatally or post partum, should have this book in their library.

Suzanne is studying to take International Board of Lactation Consultant’s IBCLC boards, but she needs help getting these two books, Breastfeeding and Human Lactation 4th Edition and Breastfeeding and Human Lactation 3rd Edition Study Guide. She plans on taking the test in September so we need to act soon. Thanks for all of your support!

When I was pregnant with Magdalena, I practically devoured every breastfeeding book or article there was out there.  Friends like Beanmom and Rachel pointed me to terrific books.  I felt solidly prepared for the journey we were about to start.

And then Magdalena was born.  It was a really long labor followed by a csection.  Erich did everything I asked, and stayed by her side the entire time they did their assessments.  When they got me back to the room, I was anxious to see her, hold her, but most importantly, I was anxious to nurse her. After asking about when she would be done, a nurse casually mentioned that she appeared to be tongue tied.

Tongue tied? It seemed like such a curve ball to be thrown.  Erich wasn’t tongue tied, and I wasn’t either.  And all the literature said that tongue ties were usually hereditary, so where did this come from?  12 hours after her birth, I asked if they would clip her tongue.  I was lucky that there was no hesitation and the pediatrician immediately clipped her tongue in the hospital.

Our walk down breastfeeding lane started as a rocky one.  By the time they clipped her tongue, I was already sore.  Then she was super sleepy on day 2, as most newborns are, and she seemed to not know what to do with her newly clipped tongue.  By the time I left the hospital I was bleeding and blistered and using a nipple shield. But I was determined! Some might say I was stubborn.  And after a couple of weeks, Magdalena and I fell into a routine and breastfeeding became that wonderful journey that so many talk about.

When Carmina was born, it was the first thing on my mind.  Was she tongue tied?  And while she was a lazy nurser, she was not tongue tied, and breastfeeding was a smooth journey.

With Kevin, I never really thought about him being tongue tied.  With all the drama surrounding his birth, then his respiratory difficulties, it was honestly the last thing on my mind.  The few times I could really look inside his mouth when he was crying in that first week, I saw what I thought was a tongue tie. When he was 7 days old, he came off of all respiratory support and I was allowed to nurse him for the first time.

Kevin was born to breastfeed! He was a champion nurser right from the start, an impressive preemie with a great suck.  He seemed to do okay with his tongue tie, but he had his moments.  I asked the NICU nurse if someone would be available to clip his tongue before we left, but I was told it was unusual to clip tongues in the NICU.  Everyone seemed confident that it would stretch and he was doing well- gaining weight.

But he did have some issues latching.  This time though, with two other breastfed children under my belt, I was able to help him latch better and change up positions.  But he still seemed to have a shallow latch at times and sometimes had issues fully extending his tongue under the nipple.  I asked our dentist if he would clip his tongue, and he agreed!  So on Tuesday we had his tongue clipped.

Before:

And after:

The procedure was simple and I assume painless because he did not cry at all. Best thing of all, about half an hour later I nursed him and found him to have a perfect latch.  Clipping his tongue was an instantaneous fix to his latch issues!

That would be the reason for the silence on this blog, at least that’s what I’m claiming.  I recently had to shut down my business to customs.  It was a hard decision, because I have major issues telling people no and I enjoy the knitting. But I realized that time was going much quicker than my fingers.  I have this long list of stuff to do for the Little Dude who will be here in 3 weeks (!) and I couldn’t work on all of it, unless I give up something, like sleeping.

So I shut down my store to customs and hope to open it again by Halloween.  I woke up one morning with the incredible urge to either knit every yarn I have in my stash, or to sell it.  So I sold a BUNCH of stuff and started knitting a bunch of stuff.  If you frequent my Flickr account, you probably see how much stuff is coming off of my needles.

I also decided that I needed to work on a homeschooling room.  It turned out really nice and Magdalena is very excited about it.  I have plans to order the rest of her books for this quarter of her curriculum on the next payday.

We are also excitedly anticipating the local Pork Festival.   Magdalena has been talking about going to parades since the festival ended last year.  It’s also the last thing on her calendar before her baby brother is scheduled to make his appearance.  She’s a very experienced and excited big sister you know.

Carmina is also seems to be understanding that their is a baby in my belly.  And I think she gets that he will want to nurse and that she will have to share. Of course, telling her that the baby will nurse, just makes her want to nurse right away.

Anyway, a busy month.  Hopefully I’ll get better about posting.  And Erich will be posting here and there and will also update when the Dude makes his arrival.

http://www.leagueofmaternaljustice.com/

I believe I have a clogged duct. How? I can’t wrap my mind around how it’s even possible to have a clogged duct when Carmina has been nursing non stop (on both sides!) for the last 24 hours or so. Seriously, she was up practically all night. I’m tired, worn out, and my breast hurts.

The girls are growing. I’m getting smart at this Mom gig and scheduled their well baby checks together this month. Carmina had her 6 month check up and Magdalena had her 3 year checkup. THREE!

I can’t believe it. This can’t be the squawking baby that had so much trouble nursing a little over three years ago. If I had known that she would still be nursing three years later, I wouldn’t believe it. So she did a lot of growing this year. She weighs 30 pounds even and is 36.5″ tall. She grew 5.5″ in one year. Really she grew that much in the last four or five months. Amazing. She’s so verbal and funny. She’s smart and is Mommy’s little helper. She has so much compassion and loves dancing and singing and being silly. For as many challenging days that go by where I think that I really suck at this Mom gig, I must be doing something right because she is absolutely wonderful.

Carmina is a petite 14 pounds and 27″ long. She’s your typical six month old. She’s trying with all her might to crawl and she can roll from back to tummy but chooses not to a lot of times in favor of screaming until her sister brings her what she wants. She’s trying to cut her two front bottom teeth. She’s babbling a lot now and Erich swears she says “dadadadada” heh. She’s a lot of fun. Oh, and surprising to us, her eyes are still blue! They have bits of brown and green in the middle and they look *so* much like my Daddy’s.

I know I’m not doing well with the updating. Honestly, days pass by like hours around here. I’m not even getting stuff done that I *need* to be doing, like some knitting projects for both the girls and some stuff I wanted knitted for Manda since she was so kind to give me her PIS in trade. (I’m GOING to send that package out this week. I promise Manda! okay!? i promise!)

But this isn’t going to be the greatest update. Carmina is going through her three month growth spurt. This girl is BIG. But she isn’t chubby, she’s LONG. My goodness. She almost comes up to Magdalena’s shoulders when we stand them next to each other! Magdalena is my petite, lean toddler and Carmina is my tall, lean baby but they are both incredibly gorgeous. So gorgeous it makes me want to cry. And it makes Erich want to start digging the moat around the house because, dude, these girls are going to have boys lined up!

SO yeah, Carmina is growth spurting which means that she refused to unlatch for more than 5 seconds last night and she was fidgety and restless and she didn’t want me to hold her but she didn’t want to nurse at some points and she didn’t want me to burp her but she wanted to sleep but she couldn’t get into that place where sleep was nice and deep and lovely which means, that I did not sleep well. **yawn** And the toddler woke up FULL of energy! yay! I’m gonna take a LONG nap with Carmina and I’m going to convince Magdalena to lay down with some books and hope that she falls asleep after a few minutes and takes a long nap too.

Whenever you stop and think “gee the baby hasn’t pooped in a while”, make sure that your laundry is caught up. Because if you think about the poop, the poop will come. And it won’t all end up in the diaper. And you’ll have to stop all of the laundry to push the swing cover to the front of the line so it doesn’t stain. And you’ll have to stop eating lunch to clean it up.

One would think I would have learned this lesson by now, huh?

There is a lot of talk about the babytalk magazine lately. Erich heard them talking about it on the Bob and Tom Show (scroll down to see a comment and picture of of their take on the babytalk issue) where they talked about the benefits to both mother and baby while breastfeeding. I really enjoyed hearing about an all male radio show encouraging breastfeeding, and Erich has said that this isn’t the first time breastfeeding has been referenced in this show.

I think my main problem with this scenario is not only the lack of breastfeeding in our society today, but the pettyness of it all and the fact that people can be so immature. Grow up people. It’s a breast. I have two of them, in fact we all have them. I have a picture of Magdalena nursing somewhere, but I think I’d rather share one of Carmina. I don’t have one of both of them nursing, though that’s on my list of things to get before M weans (which I don’t see coming anytime soon btw). I do want a picture so they can both have a copy so they can see how they loved on each other so early. Generally Carmina watches Magdalena and smiles at her while Magdalena strokes Carmina’s hair. It’s a beautiful time. We generally sit down together after bathtime and nurse. All three of us girls enjoying quiet peaceful time just loving each other.

nursing my toddler girl. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to have that tiny itty bitty baby in my arms grunting cooing and rooting for some milk. And I loved when Magdalena was tiny and passed out in my lap after nursing. Erich and I always said she looked like a drunk frat boy after a really good keg.

But this nursing toddler stuff is awesome. Your baby crawling into your lap and smiling sweetly, telling she loves you and then demanding asking sweetly for “dis side pease Mommy!”

She tells me she loves to “durse” and that ones tastes like cheese and the other like apple juice. Apparently I’m a regular snack bar.

Honestly, I can’t wait to hold both of my girls in my arms and nourish them. It’s pretty mind boggling now in the late evenings, nursing my daughter. It’s the realization that not only is my body growing a baby, but also still taking care of my first baby. It’s hard to wrap my little tiny brain around, yk?

I truly awesome read from a male perspective.

http://blogs.savingadvice.com/wixx/2006/03/16/bottles-vs-breat-milkno-contest_6443/

I’ll be back later with a post (and a picture!)

I was laying in a hospital bed two hours after giving birth. I was exhausted and thrilled and totally in awe of this tiny creature they pulled from my body. She nursed all night long that night and slept on my chest and I was never more happier.

This evening, at 8:14pm I was nursing my baby to sleep and remembering that first cry she made while only her head was out. She cryed before they could even pull her out. And at 9:30 pm this evening when she woke and I nursed her back to sleep, I remembered the first time I held her and latched her on. I remembered the first time she ever nursed. If you would have told me 22 months ago that I’d still be nursing this creature, that I’d still be in complete awe, that I’d marvel at how she is such a baby and a little girl all at once, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Isn’t this exciting?

And it’s so close to me! You can bet your bottom dollar that when I have another baby (or two!) I’ll be out there donating all my oversupply. I totally qualify to (except for not birthing in the past 12 months.) But seriously, I’ll be a frequent visitor.

HSG was very very very painful. Ouch. Oh. Ouch. But I saw my ovaries and my tubes and they are hanging out in there going “hello! We are perfect and waiting for a baby! Send something my way!” Ms. Uterus is very angry with me right now saying things like “how dare you send such vile stuff up here in my beautiful home. Now I must clean with a vengence!”

Dr. declared my uterus perfect and normal. Woot. SO the plan… that’s what you’re all waiting for right?

Thursday I go in for a drug conference. They teach me how to inject drugs into my flabby (yet partially numb) tummy. (I had a csection and yes part of my nerves never really got the hint to start working again.) They’ll give me all the stuff to order my meds. Once the meds arrive I can stop the birth control and five days later start the injections. No waiting to bleed! yay! In a perfect world, I can stop the pills in anticipation of the day the send the drugs and start the next day. This is all dependent on Erichs erm sample coming back A. OK. But I’m not really worried about that.