"I have been breastfeeding babies for 11.5+ years straight! Im so incredibly proud to say that because it wasn't always easy. Our first baby passed away just 2.5 months after she was born. As a new mom it was a tough thing to do - I knew no one who breastfed their babies and got support from a group at the local hospital. After she passed away due to an intestinal defect, I realized how much I loved that bond that breastfeeding creates. We were blessed with our rainbow baby, Lucy, less than a year later and I could not wait to get back to it. However, she and I had a bit of a traumatic birth experience which greatly impacted my breastfeeding efforts. It was a long hard month or two of struggles and difficulty but we ended up pulling through until I encouraged weaning around a year old. I really wanted to have another baby and luckily her little brother, Nate joined our family before Lucy turned 2. Again I was ready to get back to breastfeeding and Nate was ready! Breastfeeding a 9 and a half pound baby was a lot of work - all he wanted to do was eat! I am blessed with a great milk supply and he enjoyed every minute of it gaining weight quickly! I became pregnant with our next baby Tessa when Nate was a toddler and he showed no signs of being ready to give up nursing so we just continued on. He nursed through my entire pregnancy and decided he would be done with 'nur nurs' after santa came just before his 3rd birthday. I was able to tandem nurse the two of them until Tessa was 7 months old. I became pregnant with our 5th child, Mae and since tandem nursing went so well with the previous two, it just seemed natural to allow it to keep going. Mae and Tessa tandem nursed until Tessa's 4th birthday when she decided that she would like to have a "No More NurNur Party'. We celebrated at Chuck E Cheese and Tessa was happy and proud to have made that decision on her own. Mae is almost 4 years old and she nurses about every other night once before bed. I nursed her throughout my entire pregnancy with our latest edition, Leo, who is now 9 months and 21.5 pounds. I have been nursing as long as I have been a mother. Breastfeeding and being a mother go hand in hand for me. It has not always been easy, in fact it is sometimes hard and frustrating, and feels like I'm trapped, because we very rarely ever did bottles. We have dealt with mastitis, jaundice, blocked ducts, thrush, biting, nursing strikes, engorgement, sleepless nights and more of the less than desirable things that go along with breastfeeding. But it is the one thing that I have been able to share with ALL six of my children. There were so many things I missed out on with our first baby, but she, like all of her siblings felt the love, sacrifice and nourishment that nursing gives. I have evolved as a mother from the first one through the last and breastfeeding all of them has been the biggest part of that. I can only hope that one day each of my children gets to experience this with their own children, and then one day they will know the love that I feel for them and have felt for them since they day I found out the were to join our family."
