A rough night

Sunday night Dada and I had our first real challenging night with Bevin. It was a real nurse-and-cry-athon if you will. It was at the moment when Bevin wanted to nurse for the umpteenth time in 2.5 hours that I a) realized why people give up breastfeeding and b) was simultaneously thankful I gave birth in a place where breastfeeding is the norm and formula is not even mentioned (hence no sample formula lurking around my kitchen).

I had these two thoughts last night:
1) Do I have enough milk?
2) I don't want to keep doing this! I want to sleep!

My realizations about those two thoughts:
1) Of course I had enough milk. Demand equals supply. If she demands it it will come. Sure enough, I put her on the breast and she sucked and pulled and lo and behold I had another letdown. She was finally satiated.

2) Could I keep doing this? Of course I could. Did I want to? Well I wanted to sleep. But breastfeeding is very important to me. Just as important as sleep. One of the main reasons I wanted to take the rest of the school year off was to establish and maintain a solid breastfeeding relationship and not have to worry about a decreased supply because of lack of time at work to pump. I was not about to give up after a week. Monday night we made some changes - Dada brought in a dim light for diaper changes as well as the beloved wipe warmer (I'll never understand why people think this is a useless product) - two things that might prevent her from being jolted awake after she poops (and after she poops is typically when she falls asleep). I also kept her close all night, and it helped that the room stayed pretty dark. In the end, we got more rest because she slept more than she nursed. Being a second-time mother, I at least have the hindsight to know that "this too shall pass" instead of getting caught up in the Oh-My-God-is-my-kid-going-to-be-like-this- forever? way of thinking.

Here are a few pictures from that night...