When I started my parenthood journey the thought of breastfeeding was terribly hideous to me.  I'd never seen breastfeeding, I'd grown up thinking babies were fed from bottles and that it was the done thing.  I was rather adamant that it wasn't for me and thought breastfeeding past the first 6 weeks or so was terribly peculiar.  Throughout pregnancy there was a gargantuan amount of pro-breastfeeding paraphernalia shoved down my throat by health professionals. Thing One was born and showed absolutely no interest in my gargantuan breasts despite the random members of staff tugging, twisting and pulling them towards him at all hours.  I felt like  a piece of manhandled meat and Thing One? He felt mostly tired.  Upon hearing the news I had to stay in hospital until he was feeding I made the decision to formula feed, he gulped it down and grew like a weed.  I never met with any anti-formula stigma at all, apart from online where I was once accused of playing Russian Roulette with Thing One's life and told that formula feeding was as dangerous and irresponsible as not using a car seat.  Seriously.  Poor Thing One was our prototype, torn between instinct and taking so-called advice we stumbled along.

Throughout Thing Two's babyhood, my eyes were opened to breastfeeding through several very good online friends, and one in particular, and it was no longer alien it was beautiful.

 By the time Thing Two was born I was adamant she would bloody well breastfeed, and breastfeed she did, eventually.  Constantly. Day and Night.  Like some pretty leach.  A beautiful limpet.  She was the stereotypical velcro baby.  She was born pissed off and screaming and continued to scream for many months afterwards. Here began our love affair with babywearing.  It was simply essential seeing as she howled at the near sight of the buggy and took it as an absolute tragedy if I dared to put her down somewhere.  I was far too lazy to  express and was paranoid that if she met a bottle it would be the end of breastfeeding.  My goal was six weeks.  Then 6 months.  Then a year.  It kept moving. I remember being so paranoid for the first six months that I couldn't possibly be all she needed that I compulsively got her weighed near enough weekly.  It was a hard step from being ruled by numbers (numbers of scoops, number of ounces, number of feeds) to simply trusting my body and my baby. Eventually she night weaned at two years and six months of age and day weaned at two years and nine months.  One thing I noticed throughout our journey is that despite the immense pressure health professionals put you under to breastfeed, if you do infact do it once you get past six weeks, then six months they actually have no idea what to do or say to you.  Very few of them are versed in either extended breastfeeding or natural term breastfeeding.  Not only do they possess a lack of information they seem to at times spout a ludicrous amount of misinformation with professionalism going out of the window and opinion creeping in.  Opinions from health professionals are a dangerous thing to a vulnerable parent.  You trust them, they're trained professionals thus what they say must be true it's only when you research yourself that you realise it's only opinion they're basing their consultation on and that itself can be a load of old tosh.  The obsession to get you to breastfeed turns into a mission to get you to stop.  You can't win.

That brings us to The Toddler.  There was no question as to how he would be fed.  Despite the initial toe curling adjustment period, we were off.  At the hospital they left me alone figuring that due to Thing Two, I knew what I was doing.  This works for me.  I like to figure things out alone.  The Toddler is, for want of a better word, a boob-junkie.  Totally.  He is now 3.5years old and still feeding day and night.  Although we have cut down considerably in the amount of feeds, he shows no readiness to stop at all and that's okay.  It really is.

Many of us are aware of the benefits that breastfeeding a baby has for both baby and Mother yet there is an assumption that past six months these benefits magically cease to exist despite the WHO's recommendations for breastfeeding to at least two years of age.

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine affirms breastfeeding beyond infancy as the biological norm. “The average age at weaning ranges anywhere from six months to five years… Claims that breastfeeding beyond infancy is harmful to mother or infant have absolutely no medical or scientific basis,” says Arthur Eidelman, MD, president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.  “Indeed, the more salient issue is the damage caused by modern practices of premature weaning.”  The global organization of physicians further notes that“Human milk contains nutrients, antibodies, and immune-modulating substances that are not present in infant formula or cow’s milk. Longer breastfeeding duration is further associated with reduced maternal risks of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and heart attack.” (ABM 2012) 

Obviously I'm incredibly pro-breastfeeding however that doesn't make me anti-formula, I've been a formula feeder too and guess what?  It's not powdered poison or the devils piss and I have a beautiful nine year old Thing One who drank it for two years.  Yet even when formula feeding it is important to accept the fact, without getting offended or defensive that in the majority of cases, there is nothing wrong with formula feeding but it isn't the optimal and biologically appropriate feeding method for your infant, it is a substitute.  However you choose to feed your baby, make sure it's an informed choice.

Why I'm still breastfeeding at 3.5

The Toddler is demanding 'meemee', again.  I'm trying to ignore it having calmly told him several times that he can have a cuddle/snack/bmw/vodka/pony instead, however he's now venomously shouting it in my face, you know, just in case I'm deaf as well as stubborn.'Meemee' is his obscure yet quaint self named word for boobs, which I suppose is somewhat more tolerable in public than Thing Two's screams for 'BOOBIES' though not as humorous.  Obviously Thing Two doesn't do that now, what with her being seven and having weaned at 2y9m.  The Toddler is 41.5 months old now and would still breastfeed 24/7 if access was allowed. There's so much that is misunderstood about extended breastfeeding.  On an average day he will feed in bed upon waking (yes we still co-sleep too, such a shame I can't weave...what with my abundance of lentils) for up to an hour depending on the time and how long I'm attempting to delay getting out of bed.  He'll then mostly be distracted when asking during the day with offers of snacks instead, or his favourate....icepops.  Sometimes in the afternoon we'll have a long snuggle on the sofa and he'll feed then it's again at bedtime.  He's been frightfully close to night weaning several times now with us agreeing before bed on no meemee's during the night, only cuddles.  Often this will work.  If he demands I persist with the 'no' yet should his anger turn to distress, I give in.  It's not that I'm a soft touch it's just I have to consider the rest of the household who're trying to sleep and the fact that regardless of why, if he needs the security of a sleepy feed rather than simply wanting it, it's my job as a mother to meet that need.  Besides, sometimes it really is anything for a quiet life.  Generally he's quite good at the count to five rule and at most it's down to 1-2 night feeds at most.  Although I'll readily admit at times the idea of night weaning the little sleep assassin is awfully tempting yet the fact remains, he's simply not ready and I respect that. It's not just about the physical nutrition, it's the emotional nutrition too. When they are ready, it's relatively effortless and trauma free.  That's how I want it to be, that's how weaning should be.

Until recently he's had a good  run at night, then he became ill, again.  It all goes back to the start when he's ill as he reverts to feeding constantly once more.  The milkbar becomes open all hours. However, as any parent will know it's awful seeing your child suffer and feeling so helpless being unable to alleviate their pain and misery.  One thing I can do is let him nurse on demand at these times.  It gives him the comfort he craves, keeps up his fluid levels and helps his immune system.  For you see, when The Toddler gets ill, he gets really ill.  He caught Thing Twos cough and cold, it sounds average enough yet whenever he gets ill like that, he goes downhill...quickly.  The year before last he must have had about 4 or 5 trips to A&E with a need for nebuliser and steroids.  Ghastly, frightening times. So it's a blessing to keep him close, even if it means staying awake throughout the night in a state of torment and paranoia, attempting to administer ventolin without him waking whilst constantly counting his breaths per minute just waiting for that moment when you know he has to be seen by a doctor.  It's like being on a knife edge not knowing whether he'll perk up or slip quickly downhill.  Thankfully this time, he turned a corner and started to perk up with just ventolin and plenty of breastfeeds.  I genuinely dread to think how we'd cope if he wasn't sleeping right next to me. However, it does mean we're back to square one again, with the night feeds, again.  Yet as I lie in the still of the night I learn to cherish these moments, because they won't last forever.  He needs this, he needs me.  I am his. I couldn't withhold something he evidently needs from me even if my life depended on it.

Did I think I'd still be breastfeeding him at 3.5? No. Do I love it? rarely. Do I hate it? sometimes (especially when the painters are in) Time is ticking, maybe once he turns four if he hasn't self weaned I may give weaning a gentle push.

However often it feels like history is repeating as just like with Thing Two sometimes I'll say no and he won't accept it, the anger turns to distress and I give in which in turn makes the initial no seem pointless.  It's like I made him cry, for nothing.  Still sometimes, it's good to separate want from need and act accordingly.

Am I looking forward to the eventual weaning? Absolutely! Will I miss it? Undeniably (sometimes!)

Goodbye sun, hello moon: Autumn & everything after.

The last summer moon of 2013.

Goodbye Summer and Hello Autumn, I'm never quite sure whether I'm supposed to mourn this or celebrate this, but personally it's a celebration. I am not a Summer person. I love Autumn; the smell, the colours, the feeling of it.  I love the cozy dark nights and the vicious slash of colour against the grey days as if nature is ripping apart the grey at it's very seams with poetic fingers that draw the earths blood in pools of orange, red and browns.  Textures beg to be touched as they entice you into some illicit affair.  Things feel alive, the world is on fire, nature is the phoenix, as we dance upon that fragile line between birth and death.  Never has death looked so beautiful and rebirth so promising.  Winter is coming....

I love how ripe and swollen with delicious anticipation Autumn is as we count down to Samhain, Guy Fawkes night and then Yule.  As the leaves die in some macabre beauty around us and the branches lie barren for now, skeletal and brittle, we celebrate for we know it is not the end, just one end of many more which will lead to yet another beginning.  It's intoxicating.

I love the layers as we bundle up, the stews and soups with puddings and custard.....the splashing in puddles and kicking through leaves as we collect one of natures bounties, shiny conkers ripe for the plucking.

Autumn is when I feel most alive.

So how are we welcoming the equinox? well, Thing Two is full of snot and cough and Thing One and The Toddler are as always fighting like cat and dog, or more fitting for The Party of Five, like cat and kitten.  The Husbands temper is ablaze and I'm significantly useless.  With at least several hours of kip a day for a minimum of 5 days a week, I'm exhausted yet functioning...sort of.  Yet a week without daytime sleep and I can barely think straight.  Yet it is still somewhat more favourable than last week when I had my third evening out since  which resulted in me returning home to a bollocking from a furious Husband and a Thing Two in floods of tears followed by an impromptu two bus trip to a park last Sunday with Thing One running head first into a window at the bus station and The Toddler falling down the stairs on a double decker bus.  Joy.  Fear not though, they're terribly bouncy and have not a mark between them.  Yet another of those incidents that they'll likely never remember and yet we as parents will inevitably never forget.

The Kitten has been given free reign round the house in daylight hours now much to The Cats horror.  The days are punctuated by hisses and growls and The Cat finally grew a spine and decided to eat The Kittens Food.  The Kitten retaliated by shitting in The Cats litter tray.  It is essentially a pissing contest to see who's the cats bollocks, only not as they're both girls.  Happy days.

Things One & Two were deep in debate about whether The Toddler should be a boy or a girl with Thing One wanting him to be a boy and Thing Two rather convinced he should be a girl.  The Toddler however just wants to be a Power Ranger.  Fair enough.  Although I'm terribly impressed with their albeit oblivious belief that one can be whichever gender they so choose, I did rather feel duty bound to point out the somewhat obvious fact that The Toddler is a boy.  I say I felt duty bound, yet I never have been one much for duty so I left them be.  Not getting involved.

Thing Two has rediscovered her  inner photographer,seeing as she finally found her camera and we happened to actually have batteries for it, the moon must indeed have been blue that night.  Never one to disappoint in  predictability The Toddler wanted in on the action and commandeered the camera well on his way to needing his own Myspace and Instagram accounts if his penchant for photographing his winky and his dinner are anything to go by.

Sleep is still evading us, in this house in-between insomnia, illness and buggering demonology going on resulting in me sneaking lavender oil into the bath to try and knock at least one of the spawn out.  The Toddler refused to even get out of the bath last night as he did this amusing little ritual of floating whilst walking on his hands up and down the bath insisting he simply must do 'real fish' before he could even contemplate being extricated from the watery wonderland.  Who I am to argue with that logic?  It was an improvement on his earlier bath antics which made me exclaim 'please get your winky out of your watering can spout'  Upon finally getting the little bugger out of the bath the games commenced as I tried to wrestle him into his pj's whilst he laughed at me, forward and backward rolled at hyperspeed across the bed then farted in my general direction.  Such a charmer.

Oh but lest you be mistaken the fun indeed didn't end there.  Then commenced the epic 80 minute stint of singing, pretending to be a fireman, serenading me with Anthrax and nursery rhymes, demanding a towel to wipe his snot, burping in my face, attaching himself to my back, draining an entire beaker of water (this was after half an hour on the breast) and cuddling the orange cover of some sort of flashing light thing from a building site.

He then had the utter audacity to roll onto my side of the bed whilst I went moon hunting out the bedroom window which was rudely interrupted by a fog horn skank with a rather limited vocabulary consisting mainly of obscenities having a loud conversation with her young daughter across the street...in the dark.

Still, this morning soon arrived and despite a treacherous inability to go the fuck to sleep, I still had several hours in bed before being presented with a bacon and mushroom butty in bed ....and two bunches of roses!  The Husband evidently wants blowing.

The Sleep Assassin

Sleep is still somewhat of a delicate subject with regards to the Toddler, as in he isn't particularly proficient yet at letting me have any.  Some nights he'll easily drift to sleep either mid boobing or shortly after, only waking once maybe twice a night for a quick boob session, these are good nights.  Far from perfect yet manageable.  Other nights he'll resist sleep, usually if he's had a sneaky impromptu illicit nap during the day, he'll roll around his be and mine, try an initiate conversations about wee, poo and poo man, serenade me with Anthrax an generally test my fraying patience as my brain slurs the mantra 'gothefucktosleep' repeatedly.   When sleep finally overwhelms him, i'll try an make a quick escape to pee only to return to him blissfully still asleep....yet on my side of the bed! Cheeky git. This then leaves me with the choice of moving him an risk waking him or leaving him and being pillowless.  Give me strength.

Then there are the in-between nights where he'll nod off to sleep effortlessly and even stay asleep for a few hours but then due to illness or more often then not some inexplicable top secret reasons unbeknownst to me he will start to wake.....hourly. I shit you not.

Some day he'll sleep through.  Some day The Husband will once again sleep upstairs.  Some day i'll be able to come the evening downstairs until i'm ready to sleep.


Until then i'll watch the patterns my fraying sanity make in the dark, cherish the lullaby of his breaths next to me and his little hands gripping me as he nuzzles, snuggles and feeds because it won't last forever.

Milk Monster

The week isn't by any means over yet and so far it started with The Dog eating Thing Two's sausage roll that was lunch-box bound before school resulting in an impromptu trek to the super market and then to school to drop of a replacement lunch and last night I had to call out a paramedic for The Husband who was having an asthma attack.  In between all that we've got Thing One who's practicing being a vile teenager five years early with utter insolence and sheer obtuseness and The Toddler who has apparently banned all forms of sleep for himself and thus me.  Not to forget The Husband having to rush to school, following a drama-whorish call saying Thing Two was frightfully distressed and in considerable pain due to a toe nail apparently hanging off and could he possibly go there with some nail scissors to 'see what you can do'.  He was in a terrifically bad mood due to suffering from a migraine and had been somewhat of a total twunt so needless to say he was rather bemused to find Thing Two happily sat in her classroom, barefoot, having her lunch with her teacher.  One corner of a toe nail had been digging in to her toe. That was all.  I would have gone myself but I had the time critical task of supervising brownies baking in the oven. Shame.

The Toddler has near completed his training as The Sanity Assassin and having rather cleverly lulled me into a false sense of security at night deciding to do the absolutely unheard of and sleep for 5 hours straight only to then spend the past 5-7 days waking every 60-120 minutes and feeding fervently like a newborn, yes, at 31.5 months of age.  I'm so abysmally tired that my eyes feel like spinning metal balls in their sockets and my limbs feel like concrete blocks of pain.  Add this to the creeping onslaught of yet another M.E trough coupled with an accelerated dip in mood i'm rather more bits then pieces.

There is 'well you could night wean him' road to wander down yet unfortunately he is simply not ready.  You just 'know' when they are and it's untraumatic and surprisingly easy (see also potty training etc etc).  I actually have no qualms with a waking or two during the night and a quick boobie snack with added snuggles, however I do become considerably grumpsome when it becomes every 60-120 minutes, as you would.  We've tried the counting up to ten method which is what worked when Thing Two was a toddler and indeed The Toddler is on occasion been known to be somewhat amenable to this idea, which is nice.  It also proves our suspicions that he indeed absolutely understands the proposal.  However, more oft then not lately he'll simply shake his head and mumble around a mouthful of boob 'no'.  If I try and subtly remove said boob then well...all hell breaks loose.  Arse.

There is a possibility that he's still teething, again.  For now i'll go with that idea with it being terrifically more endearing then the alternative 'he hates me'

So for now he shall remain, the boob junkie boobie monster.

It has taken me several days to write this.  The Husband is now en route to Austria and i'm home, alone, avec The Spawn, and I have no chocolate.  This could get messy.  Thankfully The Grandparents are coming to my rescue and having Things One & Two for the night.  They're all currently in the bathroom (The Spawn, not The GrandParents) as The Toddler fights them for the bog.  I'm best off not knowing really.  I'm pretending to ignore the arguments and the 'MuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuM!!!!!!' calls.  Is it vodka o clock yet?  Oh Bollocks. I'm practicing neglect by hiding behind the laptop.  Tomorrow i'll be all smiles and weave lentils with them.  Honest.

Doctor Toddler

You know your Toddler has seen far too many Doctors when upon receiving Thing Two's old doctors kit to play with for the first time, he immediately puts the stethoscope on and tries to listen to your chest and back without any guidance nor prompting.

'Extended' breastfeeding.

....there's so much negative media on breastfeeding and especially on breastfeeding toddlers.

So go on, tell me it's weird, tell me it's obscene, tell me it's all about the mum and the toddler gets nothing out of it  (because quite frankly, I'd LOVE to see how you 'make' a toddler breastfeed, bet it's almost as difficult as trying to distract one when *all*they want is to feed)

It's an amazing parenting tool,especially when your toddler is poorly, hurt, teething, overtired, upset, scared, cross and has many benefits.  It's also at times irritating as hell ;)