There were three in the bed and the little one said...

TWO-TWO MILKS!!!!!

Likely bellowed from bed (his mood pre-milk is much like mine pre-coffee) or at the start of a long car ride once everyone is strapped in, most people who have met N soon learn his term for nursing. Some babies adopt adorable terms like "Mo-mo", "Nummies" or even the simple, Hooters-approved, "Booooobies!" N is more practical. "There are two of them, they make milk. It's not rocket science," I imagine him explaining, exasperated. 

I'm vaguely aware that a sizeable portion of the U.S. has some sort of opinion about nursing a nearly two year old. Some passionately support the health and psychological benefits for mother and child; others see it as socially unacceptable to provide nourishment to a child who's old enough to ask to be fed from a body part that society would rather resexualize. 

For me, it's simply a continuation of the mixture of feelings, challenges and benefits of feeding a newborn. It's often a pain in the boob. The physical discomfort has graduated from the cracked, raw nipples of learning to latch, to the exquisite pain of having soft, delicate flesh treated like the extendable rubber of a taught elastic band. The clawing scratches of infant fingernails made way for heel-to-the-boob kicks when suddenly, "toesies want two-two milks!" And now I am almost nostalgic for the awkward fumbling of public latch-ons with a squalling babe, when strangers and friends alike are often treated to N confidently locating and removing all coverings to his beloved Two-Two Milks at a moment's notice. 

I hear there are a few mothers out there who are able to marry modesty and breastfeeding for longer than a few months. That's wonderful. After 18 hrs of labor, birth, bleeding nipples and a screaming, hungry T, Modesty was simply reprioritized to somewhere between color-coordinating my linen closet and gnawing off my big toe.

But for a mama who spends 40-50+ hrs a week away from her two little ones, telling stories to a nursing N--bown eyes wide and attentive--when I get home from work; stroking his hair while he nurses to sleep at night; and when he wakes up, snuggling his body in a ball that I can tuck against my belly, are three of my favorite times of the day. Sure, he could get all his daily nutrition from food alone; but maybe not with breastmilk's antibodies and extra je-ne-sais-quoi. Sure, we would still cuddle if he weaned. But my arms would compete more often with the thrill of bed jumping, the curiosity of whatever his sister is up to, and the indefatigable draw of glowing screens. 

So I'll put up with my not-so-tiny bed-hog and the midnight roundhouse kicks to the face (see footnote on bed-sharing); the umpteenth assertion that I do NOT have Go-Go-Gadget nipples; and the occasional flash of boob to the unsuspecting public. We'll save pennies and patience for the excessive and expensive travel plans to keep him, and a familiar caregiver, with me on work trips. And if anyone is looking with eyes that judge me or him for being two and "still" nursing, let them look. I'm too busy feeding my son and trying to keep my clothes and sensitive parts in tact as I do so, to notice or care. 

Because he is my last baby, and once this particular connection is gone, it doesn't come back. Because I believe the clearest path to independence is the one children choose to pursue themselves. Because right now I can't give him everything, but this is a gift--of nutrition and connection--that I can. 

Photo on exhibit in the Nursing is Normal project, VT, by Studio Ten13

*We started co-sleeping in large part because as sleep-deprived new parents, the idea of getting up 5x a night to nurse a baby for 20-60 min, then finagle her into a crib, (start again if she wakes!) and then repeat it all 30 min later seemed ludicrous. We also had a newborn that refused to sleep for longer than 10 min unless she was nestled against another warm body. So out of desperation, and then choice, we co-sleep... but that story is for another post!

There were three in the bed and the little one said roll over!

...I think I'm the one who fell out.

One of our more recent parenting/growing up transitions has been getting T from our bed into her own bed. In one of those strange twists of deeply ironic parenting fate, she went willingly! In fact, she flat out loved it. Guess who got her back in our bed, where she is currently snoozing happily, diagonally between B and the millimeter I had left on the mattress? We did! How did we get into this predicament? I'll tell you. How do we get out of it? Any experts out there, feel free to tell us!

First of all, I never planned to co-sleep.

Learning about it before T's birth I could see the pros and cons, but for me, the fear of being too deep a sleeper and rolling over and squishing my tiny, helpless infant was too great. Instead, I did a lot of research into the best bassinet I could find - which for us was a baby hammock. Ergonomically correct (i.e. good for baby's spine), a great way to reduce colic and reflux, mimicking the snug, constant, multi-directional motion of the womb, babies love it the reviews raved.

Evidently, T didn't read the reviews. Our first night home from the hospital we tried her in it. She stayed asleep for 5-15 min, but invariably, then woke. This went on for hours. Do you know how frustrating it is to get a baby to sleep over and over and over again only to have them wake up minutes later? Giving up on the hammock, we tried other locations and surfaces around the house. Nope. If she was touching one of us, she slept. If she wasn't, she didn't. The decision to co-sleep was made out of sheer exhaustion. Luckily, for us, it was a good one.

Even luckier was that my fears about not waking or being aware enough of her presence in the bed were unfounded. Along with all the other gifts new mama hormones seem to bestow, I was now constantly aware of her - whether she was hungry, whether she stirred (it didn't seem to go for when she had soiled herself, but oh well) - our bodies became in tune with one another. And while I wasn't sleeping as deeply, I was sleeping a lot more. After that first fateful night I could no longer imagine the effort and time it must take to wake up, go to my baby's crib, take her out to feed her (with little mouths that could easily take an hour), then get her back to sleep, and try to lay her back in her crib without waking her, before being able to return to bed. How exhausting! Over the first few weeks it got to the point where I would begin to wake as she was stirring, she'd latch and then I usually fell back to sleep before she was even done.

Our 3 neighbors in our small 4-unit apartment complex (without air con so there were a lot of open windows during the hot San Diego summer) marveled that they never heard our newborn cry at night. It's because she didn't. She got what she needed and we got what we needed. As far as newborn sleeping went it was as close to perfect as we were going to get.

However, like any season of parenting or other sleep arrangements, co-sleeping had its ups and downs. Teething, rolling, crawling and more teething, brought restless nights and the need to transform half our bedroom into a layer of wall-t0-wall mattresses on the floor. But as long as we adjusted, were patient, and realized that these stages too would pass, it continued to work for us far better than the alternatives. Thea got lots of sleep (if in 2-3 hr spurts), I never had problems with my milk supply (they say supply is largely determined/regenerated based on your stores between 2 am and 6 am), I was able to find the sleep-disruption manageable, and I cherished our night-long and early morning snuggles.

While we were happy, around us swirled controversy. Despite years of research that shows co-sleeping (when practiced without the risk factors of a very soft mattress, drug or alcohol use, and very deep-sleeping or obese parents) reduces SIDS, and its widespread practice over nearly every other continent than ours, mainstream opinion is currently against co-sleeping. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against it due to its lack of safety for those with the aforementioned risk factors. Naturally, they can only recommend the safest sleep arrangement for the lowest common denominator to avoid getting sued. But among some parents a different prejudice lies: "you'll never get her out of your bed!" "What about your poor husband?" (assuming that this decision may be good for mom and baby, but what about the lonely dad squished to the margin and deprived of his marital perks)? "That must be so inconvenient! How do you get any sleep?"

We persisted, though the worries that this arrangement may be hard to break once we were ready (which I imagined would occur sometime in the next half decade), did begin to nag at us. We'd already debunked the "if you keep nursing her to sleep and don't let her Cry-It-Out she'll never learn to self-soothe!" proclamations... As she approached her second birthday T was sleeping 6-7 hr stretches, often waking and self-settling with the help of her pacifier or just rolling over. But she was bigger, kickier, and taking up more than her share of our queen size bed (N.B. co-sleeping advocates insist a Cal King is necessary for co-sleeping. We've only slept on one during hotel stays and I certainly agree with the recommendation! Unfortunately, as our Tempurpedic Queen cost a quarter of what our car cost, getting a King, a new bed frame, and a new house as our bedroom would also need resized, just wasn't in the cards) and the desire to have her in her own space near us was growing.

Cue Working Mother's Guilt. Approaching rapidly was a much-lamented 2 week work trip to the Philippines. To make a long story short, we decided to hold off on night weaning (the prerequisite to getting our bed back) until that forced hiatus. And while I wouldn't recommend that any mother abandon their toddler or infant for 2 weeks to achieve this objective, it did work.

The good news was that the transition wasn't quite as bad as we'd feared. T was used to going to sleep with B and they cuddled happily in bed, sans "nummies." When I returned, meeting them at my parent's home in Canada, she was weaned and content to just "cuddle nummies" to sleep, after which we could lie her in a little nest of blankets on the floor and she'd sleep happily there the whole night long. When we returned home to San Diego, we moved a crib mattress to the floor of her room and offered a transition to her "big girl bed."

A little hesitant that we were rushing things, we began the first night by asking her, "T, where would you like to sleep tonight? Mommy and Daddy's bed or T's bed in your room?"

The enthusiastic response shocked us: "T's bed!"

From then on, every night and nap time, that's where she wanted to be. We should have been thrilled, right? Yes...and for a while we were. But getting up and down from a short, crunchy mattress shoved in a corner on the floor was awkward and increasingly difficult with my ever-growing belly. B could walk her to sleep, but when he did she rarely stayed asleep as he tried to bend down onto the ground to lay her in bed. Both of us started preferencing taking her back into our bed if she stirred or woke, even though she never asked to go there.

About a month later when my very experienced mother of 7 learned of our weakness on the phone she made pleading "suggestions" for us to keep T in her bed. We didn't heed them soon enough. Sure enough, T's answer began to change. "T, time to go walking with Daddy to sleep!"

"No, T go sleep in Mommy-Daddy's bed!"

Hmm... now what do we do?

It's less work to get her to sleep by just laying with her in our bed; it's much more comfortable for this midsection-heavy mama; and we sleep fairly well with her there where she wakes up 0-1 times, rather than 1-2 times in her bed. But with only 16 weeks until this little, needy guy will be joining us in that still-too-small bed, we know taking the easy path now is setting ourselves (especially for T) up for hard times to come.

Anyone have a Tempurpedic, electronic (silent) raising-and-lowering full size single mattress they're selling?