Breastfeeding (BFing) is one of the biggest nutritional and physical gifts a mother can give her newborn. For more information on its benefits, Google “breastfeeding benefits” and start clicking links; two of the best resources are Kellymom and La Leche League.
Unfortunately, not every mom/baby pair takes to it. Many issues can be overcome by a lot of determination by the mom, but not all can be. Similarly, social and professional pressures make exclusive or even regular BFing quite difficult for many women. We see these difficulties reflected in the declining BFing numbers as babies age. According to the CDC, nearly 3 out of 4 women try to breastfeed when their children are born, but that number plummets to approximately 13% of women continuing to breastfeed their infants at 6 months of age.
Knowing the benefits, as well as the pressure to stop, many governmental agencies have begun to nurture BFing in general, as well as extended BFing (meaning longer than 6 months), through a slew of relatively new BF-friendly laws. They’ve introduced amusingly named “baby friendly” hospitals, which make me wonder whether all other hospitals are “baby toxic” and one should keep one’s child out of them. Many states allow public BFing and mandate employer lactation support. Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go, especially in terms of public knowledge, and many women don’t know their rights.
I was not one of those women.
Many months before Dear Child was born, I knew the state laws in my and neighboring states. I knew the pros and cons, and looked forward to sharing the experience with Dear Child. Dear Husband was also supportive and very much on board. Dear Child just turned 22 months old, and we just stopped BFing entirely.
One of the plusses of BFing is that it’s supposed to help women lose their pregnancy baby weight. I saw that result in myself and my friends who were able to BF consistently and continuously for months. In the first six weeks, breastfeeding helped me take off the 30 pounds I put on during pregnancy, which is a fairly typical result.
(Thus far during this exergaming process, I’ve been calling the weight I wanted to take off my “baby weight.” However, I was until now too embarrassed to admit that the weight was put on in the years leading up to pregnancy. So they’re better categorized as my “married weight.”)
But after that first post partum weight loss, BFing women are discouraged from losing weight too fast – no more than a pound a week. The theory is that losing weight fast puts too many toxins once stored in your fat cells into your breast milk to be fed directly to your baby. I can’t speak for many other moms, but that was one of my props for not losing weight, let alone not losing it too fast.
Since beginning exergaming a few months ago, I’ve also noticed that my body hasn’t allowed me to lose weight very fast. I think it’s due to BFing. There were a few days when I was too preoccupied to eat very much of anything, and I continued to exergame. Yet I didn’t lose any weight. I think, and I can’t find any studies to back up this theory, my body held onto the weight because it knew I was still feeding my child and presumably was trying to keep that supply consistent. Again, I can’t prove it, and can’t find any studies on it either, but I hope someone does study this hypothesis. I for one would be very interested in the results.
But now I’m speaking as a former BFing mom. Dear Child and I stopped at 22 months last week. I thought it might take a month or two to but our new routine seems to be working of snuggling while reading and drinking milk. I actually seem to be more saddened by the end of BFing than Dear Child, which I’ve heard is fairly common (another thing to be studied by clinicians). But my emotionality goes along with the general nausea, sleepiness and dizziness, which I’m told is caused by the hormonal changes, which must be pretty drastic.
I’m also wondering whether the weight loss plateau last month was caused partially because we stopped Dear Child’s second to last BFing, whether weight loss will plateau a bit now, and whether losing weight will become a bit easier moving forward. As with everything, we’ll see!
If you have any feedback, BFing stories, etc, please post a comment here or feel free to email me. I’d love to hear from you.
