The Return of the Boob (to Me)

Probably the last time I fed Noey in public, in Hong Kong Disney in Dec 09. I was hardly feeding him when we were out of the house by then.

On 16 March, I breastfed Noey for the very last time. He was 17 months and 2 weeks old. (It was supposed to be 15 March but I caved the next day!)

It's been a long journey and I must confess, I'm not sorry to see it end. Except on the days when it takes FOREVER to get Noey to sleep and I think back on how he used to suckle and drift off into oblivion. Breastfeeding wasn't difficult for me once I'd gotten the hang of nursing lying down. He could drift off to sleep while I get a rest and sometimes drop off to sleep myself as well. I think back on that fondly now as we undergo endless minutes of singing as Noey rolls all over the bed and all over me before he finally settles!

Seriously though, I'm not sorry I breastfed Noey, and when I have another child, I would do it all over again, daunting as it might seem to think about. For one thing, it certainly saved me a lot of money in formula. For another, Noey has been extremely healthy. But for the one time that he came down with flu last August, he's not come down with a fever that was not vaccination related and has only had the odd sniffle or two over the last nearly 18 months. I'd like to think the breastmilk went some way in keeping him well!

When I think back, I marvel at the fact that we managed to keep it going for so long. Not that Noey wasn't a good feeder -- he was a good feeder from the word go. It was the teeny weeny fact that he just doesn't like milk.

Who would have thought right, that a baby wouldn't like milk??

Things moved along swimmingly on the feeding front till he was around 4 months old. I think it was around that time that the milk strikes started. I would be holding him and practically jamming his face into the boob and he would be craning his little neck in the opposite direction, turning left and right, looking everywhere but at the boob where I wanted him to go. It was tiring and and stressful, espeically when the milk was his sole source of nutrition. The pressure eased up somewhat when he started on solids, but as milk was still regarded as his primary source of nutrition, we faced a new challenge when I went back to work -- the boy wouldn't take the bottle. While he would grudgingly take some milk when he got hungry (which was like, a mere once a day), he would mostly wait for me to get home and drink his fill at night, and sometimes in the middle of the night as well. He only wanted his milk straight from the source and wasn't too keen on the expressed stuff.

I tried transitioning him to formula instead, and surprise surprise, he didn't like formula. He'd take it in his rice cereal but not on its own. Since I had ample supply I didn't push it and figured that I'd just continue feeding him morning and night (leaving his caregivers to wrestle/cajole a bottle down his throat in the afternoon), and wait till he turned 1 to transition him straight to fresh milk instead. Except that, of course, he didn't like fresh milk either! I tried everything: different formulas, different brands of fresh milk -- Pura, Meiji, Farmhouse, Magnolia, even HL cos I thought he might like the vanilla taste (he didn't), soy milk unsweetened and lightly sweetened, all dished out in a variety of bottles, straw cups, cups, served cold or warm. Didn't work.

In the end, under the instructions of his Paed -- who confirmed that some babies just didn't like milk too much -- I gave him chocolate milk.

Now that, he liked. I have a video of him drinking chocolate milk for the first time during our Hong Kong trip in Dec and he was giggling randomly, positively drunk on the stuff. But even though it was approved, I couldn't in good conscience give him chocolate milk for every feed so what I've done is to dilute it with regular fresh milk in a 1:4 ratio and that's what he takes now, 3 times a day, between 120-150ml per time. It's a paltry amount, I know, but together with his regular serving of yoghurt in the morning, it just about meets the minimum requirements for his age.

At least he's drinking it!

"No more!" Noey's favourite moment.

Admittedly though, most of the time, the feeding sessions look more like this:

It's been getting better.

Anyway, I decided that the breastfeeding really had to stop. I think my supply was already barely there, and Noey was only feeding for comfort, not for sustanance. We had also fallen into the bad habit of offering him the boob whenever he needed to sleep because it was so much easier for everyone involved.

It was hard in the initial week. I couldn't put him to sleep alone and needed DD in the room with me to distract Noey from the fact that Mama was refusing him the boob. DD would sing and it would calm Noey down enough for him to try to settle down to sleep, usually only after much rolling and stroking of our arms and elbows, and sometimes my leg. He's very odd, this boy. In the first couple of days, he would wake up at the usual 4-5am time and require some middle-of-the-night singing in order to go back to sleep. But after 2 nights, he didn't need the singing and after a couple more days, he finally stopped waking up and is FINALLY sleeping through the night AND not breastfeeding. Hooray!

Now I have to find a way to get ME to sleep through the night. Sadly I'm the one waking up. And also figure out how to kick Noey out of our bed without screwing everything up!

One step at a time...