From the category archives:

Nursing and bottle feeding

Inducing Lactation: Pros and Cons

by Gail July 29, 2009

The lactation project has been going well. I spend every other night in the bedroom with Ira, while Lyn gets a good night’s sleep in the living room. Most of the nights I am able to feed Ira all night without even using the supplemental nurser or a bottle. On the nights I’m going to [...]

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The Payoff

by Lyn July 22, 2009

We’ve written a lot about Gail’s adventures in re-lactating for Ira, and at our last check-in, it still wasn’t clear we were going to get a big payoff from all of that work (piles of herbs and pills, way too much quality time with that pump). At this point, it’s still not clear we’ll get [...]

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Nighttime Parenting

by Gail July 1, 2009

I have now been doing one feeding a day for Ira for a little over a week. Some of the feedings have been a little challenging, but overall the project is going well. I have a much better understanding on my son’s feeding patterns. I am sometimes deciding when he is hungry and when he [...]

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Do they ever talk about anything else?

by Lyn June 30, 2009

Yes, this is yet another post about sharing nursing of Ira. I swear we think about more than nursing around here, with all two brain cells that we possess between us in our current sleep deprived state, but since we haven’t found anyone who has documented this particular process (two-mom family, one mom birthing, other [...]

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Sharing Lactation, Part II

by Lyn June 21, 2009

After Ira’s birth, I was in rough shape. While Gail and I were admiring our brand new son, our doctor was assessing the damage. After several minutes, she said to me very gently that she was going to need to stitch me up in the operating room, under spinal anesthesia, “It will be about 20 [...]

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Sharing Lactation, Part I

by Gail June 21, 2009

Either Sunday or Monday, I am finally going to take the plunge and begin nursing Ira. At this point, I’m pumping about 10-13 ounces a day, or a little over 2 ounces each time I pump (5x daily). This isn’t enough to be the sole milk supplier, but it is enough to feed half of [...]

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Readiness Update

by Lyn May 17, 2009

We’re long overdue for an update, but you won’t get anything profound. It’s all bullets around here. First, Gail is having super pumping success. She is a total milk machine. She cleared 5 ounces pumping yesterday and gets a few mL more every day. See the graph above of her output since day 2 of [...]

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I am grateful for the chance to be an NGP

by Gail May 5, 2009

In part because of Lyn’s recent complications, I’ve been spending a lot of my time taking care of her. Some of that care is physical: massages are particularly soothing for her right now. Some of the care is emotional. Much of the care consists of doing the lion’s share work needed to take care of [...]

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The first drops of milk and a brief update

by Gail May 1, 2009

In anticipation of our earlier-than-expected arrival, I decided to accelerate my schedule for inducing lactation. Tuesday night I took my last birth control pill and last night, for the first time in almost two years, I used my old friend the breast pump. After pumping for 5-10 minutes I was able to produce a couple [...]

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Facing the Costs of Nursing

by Gail March 25, 2009

Many other folks have weighed in on Hanna Rosin’s article The Case Against Breastfeeding, including both Amy and Marc at Equally Shared Parenting and Lisa Belkin at Motherlode, so I’m a little late to the party. But I can’t let the article go by without making some comment, because it is an important issue that [...]

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Couvade: My Pregnancy Symptoms

by Gail February 16, 2009

Here’s your new word of the day: Couvade, otherwise known as sympathetic pregnancy. All of the material around it calls it a condition of expectant fathers, ignoring those of us non-gestational parents who happen to be women. But whatever — I think I may have it. Of course, in my case it’s complicated by the [...]

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