A Mother’s Alamanac: Se7en “Brilliant Baby” Posts…

It is World Breastfeeding Week and since I have been nursing solidly for nearly twelve years, and a couple still to go… It would be so remiss not to have an Almanac post all about babies and nursing. Click on the links if you want to read more… here we go:

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  1. Se7en Things You Absolutely Don’t Need When Having a Baby: Seriously before you have a baby you are a marketers dream! They will sell you anything that is “Best for Your Baby” and we don’t want to fail our kids in any way. So we throw frugality out the window and purge our potential guilt! Of course most children in the world get by perfectly happily without all this paraphernalia and so I discovered could ours.
  2. A Baby Shower in Se7en Steps: Now that you have figured out what you do and don’t need you will have to convince a lot of well-meaning friends of the same. You need to do it quite clearly before they spring a baby shower on you. Trust me on this or you will be spending the first couple of weeks, with your fresh baby, returning goods. Really, trust me on this, you really don’t want to be doing this!
  3. Se7en things I Never Thought About Before Having a Baby: Before having our first baby the only thing I thought about was getting through labor. It was my all consuming thought! I never gave a moments thought to living with a baby – apart from the fact that sweet commercial image of mothers sitting serenely in immaculate soft-lit homes while their babies slept. And then there was a bit of a reality check!!!
  4. Se7en Things I wish I had known about nursing: I knew that we would nurse, but just assumed it would happen. Just another wonderful natural process that mothers can perform. Ahem – no!!! It is not such a smooth transition to motherhood and nursing for most moms. In retrospect I could have been a lot more informed than I was, not necessarily with book knowledge but practical knowledge. I had never even met someone who had nursed their child let alone noticed a nursing mother before we had our first!!!
  5. Se7en of the Best Things About the La Leche League: If you are nursing then you are going to need support from like minded mom’s who are actually doing it! There is no point in getting support from an old aunt who bottle fed forty years ago – trust me on this you will battle valiantly and most likely fail at nursing. (Which doesn’t mean you have failed as a parent, by any means!). Make it your priority to get to a local La Leche League Meeting, look up the number in your local directory they are all over the world. I really wish I had attended a meeting long before I had battled my way through nine months of parenting before I looked them up in pure desperation!
  6. Se7en of The Best La Leche League Books: If you cannot get yourself to a meeting then at least try to beg or borrow these books and get reading!
  7. Beyond Babies – Se7en Tips and Life Skills: Finally, just as you have got into the “newborn” groove folk will start asking you about solids (their child is eating three three course meals a day), and sleeping through (their child sleeps eighteen hours a day) and toilet skills (didn’t you know all three month olds are out of nappies). Trust me on this, let it rest until you are really ready – in the scheme of your child’s whole life these things are nothing, well nothing compared to being loved to bits!!!

That’s it – Baby Preparation in a nutshell!!!

5 Replies to “A Mother’s Alamanac: Se7en “Brilliant Baby” Posts…”

  1. oh yes i loved nursing my trio, now 10,9 and 4, — 7 years of nursing, nursed my first thru my second pregnancy and then two at the same time!

    the womenly art of breastfeeding was my favorite book

    and living here in the american midwest — most folks thought i was nuts, first of all for breast feeding and then for breast feeding past about 2 months — almost truly unheard of here

    but with my mom having done her midwifery in england had grown up hearing stories about it, I thought nothing of it, and could easily blow off the naysayers (ie: my inlaws, co-workers, strangers) — something i’ve found very few women in this area have to backbone to do.

  2. Hi G, Thanks for commenting! I was astonished myself when our entire antenatal class had given up nursing by 6 weeks and by three months all their poor babies were being stuffed with solids – poor babies! I am sure more folk nurse more than one at a time than we are led to believe!!! Well done you and have a great weekend!

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