Tuesday, December 6, 2011

We're bottle free...

So for 9 months I planned and thought about breast feeding little Weston before he was born, then when he made his grand entrance it was another story completely!  For whatever reason, mine or Weston's, he absolutely couldn't latch...no matter how much we worked with our wonderful lactation consultants (I love our IBC/LC nurses at UK).  So, starting when Weston was about a week old he became a bottle baby...and as much as I love Dr. Brown's baby bottles, those suckers are a pain to clean (they have lot's of parts).  With much persistence on my part I was able to pump breast milk and keep up my supply until Weston finally did learn to latch at about 4 and a half months old...who does that?  I know, now I get made fun of for being the resident who was always gone "pumping" and who stuck it through until he was a whole year old. 

I actually stopped pumping a couple weeks before Weston's first birthday, but if you had seen our freezer stockpile, you'd understand.  It's almost unheard of for a resident to be able to keep up such good milk supply for so long.  Since I did stop pumping though, things started to change in some unfavorable ways (bye, bye breasts, hello weight gain).  Among the many benefits of breastfeeding, weight loss was by far my favorite! I didn't have to work out a day of Weston's life and somehow ended up weighing less than when I started.  But once the pumping is over, you don't need those 300-500 extra calories a day that your brain is used to making you put in...now it's going to have to be truly mind-over-matter as I have to choose fat free options a little more and I definitely don't have the thirst drive to get my 8 glasses of water a day. 

As Weston turned 1 year old I started to transition to mix his frozen breast milk with whole milk until the rest of the frozen supply runs out.  Finally we somehow found a sippy cup that he likes...surprisingly after buying over $40 in different kinds of cups (ones with soft spouts, straws, handles, etc) he chooses the cheapest, plain plastic cups to stick with for good. Last weekend after Weston had his tubes surgery we decided to just do away with his bottles all together (he's only nursing about once a day or so anyway)...including no bottle at night time, which is often the hardest one for parents to get rid of because kids become used to the "habit" of falling asleep after taking that last bottle.  So, all weekend and all this week he's gone bottle-free, and even at daycare he's being a rock star about it!  Wrapping things up, we've gone from breastfeeding failure to bottle, to breast again with bottles at daycare only, to come full circle to sippy cups...it's awesome, so much less crap to wash every night, and one less habit to break (now for that pacifier). 

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