As a breastfeeding helper, I get a lot of questions about nursing to sleep. Most mothers are worried that by nursing to sleep, they are setting up bad habits for their baby. They are worried that their baby will never fall asleep any other way. They are concerned that they are doing something wrong.

Sound familiar? There’s a lot of talk out there about how moms are doing things wrong, especially when it comes to sleep. Our culture has unrealistic expectations about infant and toddler sleep. The idea is that you are supposed to put your child in his bed, kiss him goodnight, walk out of the room, and not hear from him again until morning. This picture could not be farther from the truth. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now: babies and toddlers are designed to need parental help getting to sleep and staying asleep. Each child outgrows that need at his or her own pace.

Babies and toddlers are designed to suck to sleep. Sucking is their primary way of receiving comfort. Sucking releases hormones that make a baby sleepy, whether or not the baby received nourishment. That’s why a baby will fall asleep sucking on a pacifier.  Many moms are worried that if they nurse their babies to sleep, they will become “human pacifiers.” There is no such thing! There were breasts before there were pacifiers. Humans nursed their young to sleep for billions of years. And as far as I’m concerned, I’d prefer my baby to reach for a person when he needs comforting than a piece of plastic (if pacifiers work for you, that’s fine — they’re just not my cup of tea).  Babies who don’t nurse to sleep usually do suck to sleep on a pacifier, or a bottle, or a thumb.  The healthiest way for them to suck to sleep is by breastfeeding, not just nutritionally, but for good teeth alignment.  Nursing will not be the cause of braces down the road, whereas pacifiers, bottles, and thumbs could be.

To me, nursing to sleep is a sweet, heavenly experience I love being able to give my children. It’s nourishment, peacefulness, closeness, and relaxation. It’s the sleep association I want them to have.

Most children will be amendable to falling asleep other ways when mom isn’t there — in Daddy’s arms, a baby carrier, stroller, car seat. But if nursing to sleep is working for you, why change it? Also, for many busy babies and toddlers, nursing to sleep is one of the only ways to get in a good nursing session! Usually these sessions are the last to go when a child weans. Ending nursing to sleep before your child is ready may accelerate the weaning process too quickly if you aren’t ready.

So when to end it? It’s up to you! My older son stopped on his own when he was four.  It just kind of happened.  Sucking to sleep just didn’t work anymore.  That length of time is not for everyone, I know, and if you just let it happen, your child may outgrown it sooner or later than mine did.  But if you want to transition away from it sooner, you can.  The idea is to find gentle substitutes for nursing: back patting, cuddling, shushing, stories.  Some might have to enlist Daddy to help.  Like anything else with children, it’s is possible to wean from nursing to sleep gently, and with love.

So go for it.  Enjoy it!  It’s OK.

I love sleep. I love sleeping next to someone. I love sleeping alone. I love napping. I hate waking up early. I love going to bed early.

I thank my parents for my love of sleep, my father who rocked me, my mother who nursed me. My parents who let me sleep in their bed until I was done, who helped me find comfort and ease in a bed of my own. A lot went wrong in my childhood (divorce, anger, custody battles), but before all that, I was soothed night and day by my parents and I credit their attachment-style parenting with how I survived all the hard stuff that came later.

Because of my parents, I can sleep alone, and I can sleep cuddled up against my husband or my children. In fact, sleeping with my children has come naturally because of how I slept as a child. My parents taught me to seek comfort at night in other people, bodies, warmth, love.  My parents taught me that parenting doesn’t end when a child goes to bed.

If I teach my children anything, it is this: to seek comfort in the arms of another. I have seen too many people scared to touch, to connect, to surrender into sleep or love. Life is hard enough. If I can teach my children that love is there for them always inside themselves and in others, I have done my job.

In line with my post about breastfeeding in the postpartum period, I bring you a guest post by a wonderful Pilates instructor about giving your body time to recover after childbirth (a topic I hold near and dear!).  Leah Stewart, M.S., is a Pilates instructor, mom, and writer.  Her website and blog is at www.pilatesfornewmothers.com.  I personally have found her video, LiveLife Pilates for New Mothers, to be a great, relaxing, and effective way to regain strength after childbirth.

Nice and Slow: Patience With Your Recovering, Post-Baby Body

by Leah Stewart, M.S.

Get Your Body Back! How many times have pregnant women and new mothers read and heard this title for magazine and newspaper articles, DVDs or featured segments on the news? One too many, I think! It’s an unoriginal and inaccurate marketing ploy that is meant to intrigue, motivate and sell, but it’s not the real, healthy or smart message that new mothers need to hear and understand. Naturally, I can’t speak for other cultures, but for American women, there is this ridiculous notion that we need to “lose the baby weight” and we need to lose it fast, fitting back into our pre-pregnancy jeans in record time, or else…….

Or else what? We honor and respect our amazing body and the incredible process it endured bringing life into this world? This option sounds a lot more appealing than beating ourselves up for not looking like so-and-so we saw in a magazine three weeks after having a baby.

The truth is, healing and recovering after birth is a sacred process, one that requires self-love, self-kindness, patience, understand and knowledge. It’s not a race against the clock, it’s a time to embrace the power and inspiring capabilities of the female body. Plus, when we give our body the opportunity to heal at a healthy pace by maximizing its success with good lifestyle choices, we greatly reduce the chances and incidences of adverse and undesired conditions, pain and frustration.

The changes that occur to our body during pregnancy are gradual and consistent, and they take place over a relatively long period, especially when compared to the rapid process of labor and birth. What I mean is, even if you had a long labor, your body, which took months to adjust to the changes of a growing baby and uterus, goes from fully pregnant to not in just a matter of hours. It’s a swift process by comparison.

Whether its a vaginal or Caesarian birth, the instant our body goes from prenatal to postpartum it is left with the enormous task of healing from not only the effects of pregnancy, but from the major physical demands of labor. And to boot, a whole new array of physical demands are placed on our body in the caring for a newborn. Really we should view ourselves as Wonder Woman!

By many accounts, and in my opinion as well, the postpartum body can take 9 to 12 months to fully recover, and somewhere in the that healing process our body begins to shed itself of the pregnant look and that is when we start to feel like we are “getting our body back”.

But, here’s the thing – your body will never be the same. You’re a mom now! You’ve journeyed through a significant rite of passage that has forever changed you, including your body. The changes your body has endured were nature’s way of preparing you to carry life, bring life into this world and to nurture and nourish that life once it arrives. Celebrate those changes, they are amazing and so are you – soft belly included.

After your baby is born your body is going through yet again major shifts in hormonal changes, physical changes and of course, emotional changes:

1. Hormones such as relaxin, that were responsible for softening your joints, ligaments and muscles in preparation for labor are still very much present in your body, especially if you are nursing. These hormones play a significant role in keeping that “soft” and “loose” kind of look and feeling that so many new moms experience. Subsequently, the looseness of the joints and muscles make them prone toward injury, especially when it comes exercise choices.
2. Many moms complain of still having a pregnant-looking belly. This too is normal and apart of the slow, natural healing process. After birth your uterus takes several weeks to return to its normal size. Plus, the stretch that was placed on the abdominal wall by the expanded uterus during pregnancy has been suddenly released in labor, leaving the abdominal muscles and surrounding skin lengthened and somewhat loose, which all contribute to that still-pregnant-belly look.
3. Labor may leave you with bruising, soreness, healing incisions, scars, aches and discomfort. Every muscle in your body was involved in your labor, and whether it was a vaginal or Caesarean birth, your body is rehabilitating from a fairly dramatic event (I use the word dramatic here not in a negative sense, but rather a striking, exciting and impressive event, in which its effects are major).
4. Pregnancy, labor and now caring for a newborn may leave you navigating the space between feeling elated and full of energy to exhausted and overwhelmed. The complexity of these varying emotions requires patience and love with ourselves as they too are apart of the natural process.

If you had gone through a major surgery (Cesarean sections are major surgeries) you would naturally expect to go through a recovery period that required patience and understanding. You would probably not expect to be doing your pre-surgery activities again in a short amount of time, and you would probably respect and honor your body and the time it needs to heal. Right?

Recovering from pregnancy and labor is really no different. It requires patience and most importantly, a good solid plan for a safe and effective recovery. In my teaching practice, I encourage women to begin simple exercises (deep breathing, light movement and walking) within days of giving birth. These gentle and smart initial exercises increase and promote blood flow, relaxation, focus, realignment, gentle stretches and a few precious moments alone, which greatly facilitate the natural healing process in profound ways. They build and create a solid physical and emotional foundation from which a woman, in the months to follow (with a progressive exercise program) can rebuild strength, control, movement integrity, body awareness and most importantly, a strong sense of appreciation and love for her incredible body.

When a woman patiently embraces the process of healing after pregnancy and labor, rather than rush or resent it, she sets the stage for a successful journey down the long road of life in which the years will continue to present her with challenges, changes and growth.

It’s surprising how many wonderful exercises a new mother can do to facilitate a healthy and effective healing process. It is my passion to help new mothers understand their bodies and obtain the knowledge of what exercises are safe and effective for them to perform in their first six to twelve months postpartum.

Each week I send out a free video showcasing a fun, new exercise breakdown for new moms, an important Q & A or a yummy healthy raw food recipe on my website www.pilatesfornewmothers.com. Below are two of those videos. I hope that you watch and enjoy! Please let me know if you have any specific questions regarding safe exercises for new mothers or Pilates in general.

This first video will teach you the ins and outs of one my favorite postnatal abdominal exercises. It’s highly safe and effective and it feels good too!

http://www.pilatesfornewmothers.com/exercise-breakdown-reverse-seated-roll-down/

This second video is a Q & A video about the pelvis, how it is effected by labor and what that means for exercise.

http://www.pilatesfornewmothers.com/qa-wednesday-9-12-12/

Thank you for reading (and watching)!

In living life,

Leah

The internet abounds with lists of things you’ll need when you have a new baby.  Cribs, blankets, bibs, bottles, pumps, diapers, breastfeeding pillows, pacifiers, etc., etc.  Most new moms feel overwhelmed in the last few months thinking of what they might need.  Most of the stuff is unnecessary for a breastfeeding mom.  Here’s a good list of what you will most likely actually need.  My personal list goes something like this: diapers, clothes, a safe place to occasionally put the baby down (pack-n-play, swing, co-sleeper), a few slings or other carriers, and the number of a breastfeeding helper.  Anything else can easily be purchased on a as-needed basis, and most of the stuff will be given to you as gifts.

It’s very hard to know exactly how your postpartum period will go, and how breastfeeding will progress in the first few weeks.  There are so many variables and unknowns including how your birth goes, your baby’s physicality and temperament, and how you handle the giant transition of being a mom (that’s a big one, and one I hope to write about someday, because it’s quite a difficult transition for many new moms).  But this much is certain: the first few weeks of new mommyhood are long, intense, and sleepless (and, of course, amazing and life-altering in every way).  And the other thing that is certain is that if you are planning on breastfeeding, you will be doing so very often.  In fact, it will seem like that is all you do for a while (that’s normal!).

If there was one gift I could give a new mom, it would be the gift of time and help.  In many traditional cultures, a mother stays in bed with her baby for the first bunch of weeks.  She is attended to by her family and by her community.  Her home is taken care of, she is fed, love is showered down upon her.  Her job is to care for her baby, that’s it.  She doesn’t have to host anyone when they come over.  She doesn’t have to keep house.

My transition to mommyhood was a little rough with my first son.  Once I got over the hump of the first few days, breastfeeding went well, and I did nurse him often and on demand.  But I still felt obligated to keep my house in order.  I wanted to get back to exercising as quickly as possible.  I hosted visitors.  I wanted to do it all.  It was exhausting and it took longer for me to recover from childbirth than it should have.  It also caused me an undue amount of anxiety.  I didn’t realize how much I needed that time to recover, to rest, to transition into motherhood.

We don’t live in a  culture where new mothers are ceremoniously ushered into motherhood.  Many of us don’t have family nearby, and even if we do, we don’t always have families who can commit to our well being as they once could.

When I was pregnant with my second son, I decided that I was going to have a great postpartum period, not matter what it took.  Money was very scarce, but I had my husband take off the first two weeks after the baby was born (without pay), and pare down his schedule after that.  I did almost nothing for two weeks.  It was heaven.  I healed quickly from the birth, my mood was good, breastfeeding was amazing, and the transition to being a mom of two went well.  Once I started doing more, I had more energy than I’d had for months after my first son was born.

I wish we lived in a country where all women could be cared for the way they should after they have babies.  I’m sure our breastfeeding rates would increase, and our postpartum depression and anxiety rates would decrease.  Even in European countries, the services of a doula-like caregiver is free to new mothers.  But in the US, we have to pay for such services.  If you don’t have family or friends nearby who can help, and if there’s no way your husband or partner can take a leave from work, try to get a postpartum doula to help you a few days a week.  Ask for this as a gift instead of the fancy stroller or bottle warmer.  Look around — if your income is low, you can often find a postpartum doula for families in need.  Do it for yourself, for your baby, for the months and years to come.  Getting things off to a good start is worth its weight in gold.

I think many breastfeeding moms feel a tinge of sadness when their babies are about to start eating solid food. I felt this with my first baby, though it felt like a bit of a secret — I thought I was pretty strange for crying the night before offering him solids.  And I feel it now, as I imagine offering this baby his first bite of food.

For nine months, he grew inside me.  I gave him flesh, bones, organs, blood.  And for six more months, all of his nutrition has continued to come from my body.

Those thunder thighs!

Those big round appley cheeks!

Oh, he meets all the criteria for solid food readiness.  He can most certainly sit up on his own, he can reach and grasp for food, he has lost his tongue thrust reflex.

His interest in our food has grown as we’ve given him a seat at the dinner table.

Of course, I know from experience that wanting to grasp for food doesn’t necessarily mean that a baby wants to eat the food.  My first son was even more determined to eat our food than this little guy is, but it took him many months to actually like the way it tasted.  Here he is after tasting his first bite of food!

I also know that eating food most certainly does not mean the end of breastfeeding is near.  When I was shopping online for baby spoons for my little guy, I was a little irked by some of the names of these spoons.  A weaning spoon?  Really?  While it’s true that eating solid foods is one of the steps toward weaning, breastmilk should still be the baby’s primary source of nutrition for the first year of life, and for those babies who continue to nurse into the second year, breastmilk is still a substantial part of their diet.  (Did you know that babies who nurse past a year do not need to be supplemented with cow’s milk?  Breastfeeding 2-3 times per day fulfills their “dairy” requirement.)

If this baby is anything like my first, I will be nursing him for several more years and his weaning will be so gradual that both of us will be ready when it happens.  I know that.  I trust that.  But still.  I’m sure another tear will be shed for this transition.  Oh dear.  Life is just so full of the bittersweet.

For many years, I nursed him in the middle of the night.  As a baby, of course.  Sometimes just a few times, sometimes every hour.  Often, he was hungry.  Sometimes he was teething, and nursing soothed his sore gums.  Sometimes he was learning a new skill and I would nurse him while I held down his jittery body.  Sometimes I didn’t know why he wanted to nurse again but I was too tired to guess and I knew nursing would get us both back to sleep quickly.  As he got older, a nursing toddler, he began to tell me things then, in the middle of the night.  My mouth is sore or I dreamt about the snakes again or What was that sound?  Usually no words were spoken — he just needed to nurse.

Slowly, over many months and years, he stopped nursing in the middle of the night.  Some of the nightwakings didn’t require a nurse to go back to sleep, just a cuddle, a touch on the back.  We had a crib sidecarred to our bed, and he would roll in and out of our bed, into the crib.  Sometimes I saw him in that crib, tossing and turning, putting himself back to sleep.  Sometimes he did, other times he rolled back into bed and cuddled or nursed.  He nursed in the middle of the night until he was about three years old.

Even after he stopped nursing in the middle of the night, he nursed to sleep.

Our days were filled with hustle and bustle, the full life of a curious, growing, young boy.  One month he was obsessed with The Beatles.  Then swimming in swimming pools.  Then learning to read.  Then the multiplication table.  He ran away from me in the park.  Sometimes he wanted Daddy more than me.  Sometimes only I could soothe him.  He wanted to play video games.  He wanted to bury his face in a book.  He went to preschool, then Pre-K.  He wouldn’t stop talking, he wouldn’t stop doing, the wheels in his mind always spinning.

When he nursed there with me in the dark, he began to relax, the wheels turning more slowly, then coming to a halt as he drifted off.  Sometimes the nursing was interrupted with talking — an idea that would come to him, a fear that he had, the kind of stuff that comes up when you lie in bed at night.  Soon the nursing was replaced by cuddling.  He wanted the physical contact with me, but would rather talk than nurse.  That’s when he weaned.

The cuddling lasted for many months after the weaning.  When I was pregnant, we got him a bed that we pushed up against the other side of our bed.  Soon he began cuddling for a little, then rolling into his bed.  Then he’d roll right in, but want to hold my hand.  All the while, talking, confessing, cooking up ideas, telling me the things he was too busy to tell me during the day.

He’s in kindergarten now.  Sometimes he asks for my hand as he falls asleep, sometimes my hand against his back, sometimes we don’t touch at all.  Mostly he talks about school, about what his friends said, about how he felt, trying to work out the web of socializing that happens there.  When I pick him up from school, he doesn’t talk about school.  When I lie next to him at the end of his long day, he tells me everything.

Sometimes the baby is there next to us, nursing to sleep, or sleeping already, and I’ve got one hand on the baby, one on my big boy.  Human Mommy Pretzel, I call myself then.  Sometimes the talking is too loud and the baby wakes up, or the talking just won’t stop, well after it’s time for him to go to sleep.  Times like these I want to just leave the room.  I want to scream and leave the room.  My husband helps.  I don’t think I could handle those times without my husband.  Most of the time, it all works out, putting them both to sleep at once.  I don’t know exactly how, but it does.

I don’t judge you if you don’t lie down each night while your six your old falls asleep.  I don’t judge you if you didn’t nurse your child as long as I nursed mine.  Each family is different.  Each child has different needs and for different lengths of time.  But for me and my son, this is what works.  I lie with him until he falls asleep because I know doing so keeps him centered.  It’s his therapy, his meditation.

However you parent your child, remember that nighttime is just as important as daytime.  The baby/child sleep books would have you think differently.  But when a baby cries at night and wants you to nurse him, pick him up, or rock him, he is talking to you.  If you listen to him, he will continue talking to you.  He will speak his heart to you.  He will trust that he has listeners.  He will trust the darkness, he will sleep.

Listen to your child, listen to yourself.  And then savor those intimate, rich nighttime moments with your child.  They are over all too soon.

This coming month marks the one year anniversary of my older son’s weaning.  I am quite used to the idea of him being weaned, and when I look at his long body, his strong, capable hands, and the new, sharper angles of his jaw, I simply can’t imagine him nursing.  Oh, but for many years, he was the boy who would never wean!  He loved to nurse, from babyhood to toddlerhood.  He always seemed to nurse more than other babies, other toddlers.  He loved the ritual of it.  He was (and is) a very smart, strong willed boy, and would not take any substitutes for nursing, for many years.  I see now that all of this is just who he is.  When he loves something, he loves it with all his heart.  When he knows something, he knows it well.  It becomes etched into his brain.  It’s why he learned to read at three years old, and was reading novels by four.  It’s why he still stays up late into the night reading and reading and reading.  And it’s why he kept that nighttime nurse for so many, many months, until it ever so very very slowly died away.  By the end of his nursing, he was doing it once or twice a week, at night only, for literally twenty seconds at a time (I counted!).

Looking back, having done it, I can tell you this.  Nursing a child is not like nursing a baby, and is not like nursing a toddler.  It isn’t like the Time Magazine cover portrayed it.  It doesn’t happen often, it is not a source of nourishment (although the immunities of breastmilk stay constant throughout nursing).  It is a moment of connection, it is one last shred of babyhood to be reckoned with.  It happens mostly at night or in the early hours of the morning (though some do it once during the daytime).  It happens at home, not in public.  And it feels, to both mom and child…normal.  It’s not a major part of life anymore.  You forget to do it sometimes (that’s partly how it ends).  It doesn’t feel relentless, like breastfeeding a baby can sometimes feel, or demanding, like breastfeeding a young toddler can sometimes feel.  At the end, for most of us, these short, seldom nursings are bittersweet.

And when it’s over, that’s it really.  There is some discussion.  Or the discussion is sparse.  There isn’t much of a hormone shift for mom because it all happened so very slowly.  The child is done.  The child is proud.

Nursing a child is not for everyone.  But it happens more than you realize.  You just don’t see it because it happens in private, in the dark.  And it has happened for much of the course of human history (this is my favorite article about natural weaning), and will continue to happen.  If you’ve made it past two years of nursing, if you’re not sure when to stop, if you’re not sure when your kid will ever give it up, know that he will.  Know that it is part of the human spirit to seek independence.  Know that there is no damage you can do by following your child’s lead when it comes to nursing.  Know that you are not alone.

My older son, reading when he’s supposed to be sleeping.