I didn’t plan to be a nursing mom…

I didn’t always plan to be a nursing mom. In fact up until I was about 23 years old I had never even known anyone who breastfed their child. At this time I worked with a group of women who were all breastfeeding their children and we got into a discussion about it. They taught me all about how amazing and wonderful breastmilk is for babies. I finally asked ‘So why doesn’t everyone just breastfeed’ and they all just shook their heads that they didn’t know. Man that moment stuck with me. Fast forward about 5 years to the beginning of my first pregnancy. I instantly knew I would breastfeed our baby. When I learned a few weeks later we were expecting twins my resolve weakened a little. Is it even possible to nurse more than one baby? Could I do that? Would I want to? Would it just be too much to deal with?
I was very fortunate to have a friend who had twins about six months before I did and she was successfully nursing them. She gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice I had ever been given. If you want to do it, don’t ‘TRY’ to do it. Get educated, get support and just do it. She suggested I contact the local La Leche League to attend their meetings while I was pregnant. I wasn’t too sure about that, since I had heard some of the women could be pretty extreme in their advocacy, but I decided to look into it. I was so excited to see that one of the leaders in my area had nursed twins. I contacted her immediately and she invited me to a meeting. When I was about 5 months pregnant I attended my first meeting. In the 3 1/2 years that have followed I have only missed a handful of these meetings. This group became my ‘place’ they helped me learn and to see the pitfalls that I may encounter at the hospital and how to handle them. They helped me to understand that while three o’clock in the morning may seem like the loneliest time of day when you are awake for the tenth time nursing yet again, it isn’t simply because of all the women who have been in your shoes who had survived just as I would.
In the early days the only place I felt really comfortable taking the twins alone was to a La Leche meeting. This was my monthly sanity saver for about 3-4 months. They helped me to feel comfortable with my own children. I set small breastfeeding goals for us. Two weeks, two months, 6 months, suddenly a year had passed and I couldn’t believe the pride I felt. I had given my babies the greatest gift in the world for over a year. It was no longer a struggle to nurse (in fact it really hadn’t been since the very first few months) and we had really found our groove as a nursing unit. Because there were two of them nursing granted us so much skin to skin time that I just couldn’t have made possible otherwise. Breastfeeding our twins helped me to connect to them, know them, love them on a level that I could never describe to someone who hadn’t nursed their children. My la leche group gave me that to me and so much more.
They helped me to become comfortable parenting in my own skin and taught me to trust my inner voice and instincts and that these would rarely steer me wrong. When the boys started biting they had suggestions, guidance and sympathy. As I nursed well past their first birthday they helped me to feel good about the gift I was still giving my children. When I again became pregnant and made the choice to gently wean our sons they gave me love and support through what I feared would be a tough process (and in reality it wasn’t!). These women were the first to gently suggest I consider my options with my next birth and eventually were my biggest cheerleaders during my pregnancy and natural birth with our daughter. It was one of my leaders who answered the phone at 4 am the night after Becca was born because she had jaundice and I needed someone to tell me I was not crazy in what I knew was the right course of (non)treatment.
These women have become my friends and I am so fortunate that they have become a part of my life. About a year ago I began the next chapter in breastfeeding book by taking on the role of a La Leche Leader. Now I get to pay forward all those new mommies asking all those questions I once asked. What a wonderful and fulfilling opportunity to help all these moms the way some very special ladies once helped me.
I never planned to be a cosleeping, breastfeeding, babywearing, cloth diapering, natural birthing, gentle parenting, selective vaxing mama and if it weren’t for my lovely friends from the La Leche League I might never have become one. What a shame that really would have been! So thank you to the founding mothers of La Leche for creating such a group to help us all be the mothers we were meant to be and thank you to all the mothers who helped guide me along my path. My journey as a mother is really just beginning and while I won’t always be an actively breastfeeding mom, I will always be a breastfeeding mom.

Kristen is a counselor, doula and childbirth educator working in Omaha, Nebraska. She is the mother of three children, three year old twin boys Alex and Nate and her VBAC baby Becca, 1 year.