Nursing Olympics

This is the fourth child I've breastfed. My goal with every kid has been to nurse for 1 year, and I've been pretty successful at it so far. It sure is nice to have confidence that I actually know (a little) about what I'm doing. I'm also blessed in that my body makes enough milk to feed a small country.

I remember nursing our first: what a daunting task. The pressure to "get it right" was so overwhelming. At the hospital we shared a recovery room with another sweet couple who also just had their first baby. The first kid is always the toughest.

(Can I just say that was crazy to actually have to share a hospital room! The room would have been small for just Jeff and I, and then they crammed in another couple! It worked out that we were able to have a private room the second night which was so nice. My girlfriend Alisa pulled some strings for me.)

With R, all the nurses in the NICU left me alone and didn't even offer to help me when they saw my baby latch on like a pro. One nurse even commented that I was the first "10" she ever gave.

All of our kids have slept through the night at 8 weeks old. Even before we had our first child, the devoted Mr. Garland and I took a class at our local church to learn about parent-directed feeding (PDF). We've practiced the principles of Parenting along the Infant Way by Gary Ezzo, with each child and they have worked great for us each time. (It's also known as Babywise by Gary Ezzo.) The method isn't the most popular among the attachment parenting and feeding-on-demand crowds but it worked for us, and I loved the structure of having a dependable schedule.