Podcast number 5 is now available for your listening pleasure. Follow this link to listen to it or download it from iTunes.
When Toddlers Refuse to Nap
Before I had kids I was under the impression that once the baby starts sleeping through the night they just get better and better at sleeping longer and longer until they are 18 months and sleep 12 hours a night. It makes logical sense and before I had kids or researched all the possible variations I just let that idea roll. Maybe there are babies that follow this pattern, but my toddler does her own thing.
I have noticed somewhat of a pattern. She goes for a while where she sleeps from about 11 pm until 7 am and will take an hour to two hour nap around 1pm during the day. Then she goes for a while where she won’t nap at all, she goes to be late like midnight. I think she just goes to be when I do during this time. And then she wakes up early. Did I mention she refuses to nap during these times? She also is likely extra attached during these no nap spells. If I am in the kitchen and she is in the next room she looks around and does not see me and starts crying and looking for me. I go to her and when she sees me she runs to me and wraps her arms around me and instantly stops crying.
She snacks more and nurses more during these no naps times. I suspect she is awake more so she can eat more and nurse more. Her stomach is only so big so I guess she has to stay awake more to capture all of the food she needs to grow. Anyway it is just an idea. Once I think I have it figured out, she changes. She keeps me on my toes.
Luckily after these no naps times she falls asleep early one day like about 7pm and then she surprisingly sleeps all night until 7 or 8am. One time she slept 13 hours. My husband and I were flabbergasted. I checked her multiple times during the night to make sure she was breathing.
By all accounts she is a happy healthy super interactive 17 month old toddler. It appears she is getting all of the sleep, food, and love she needs to thrive so it is ok that I don’t have her on a rigid schedule.
Some Benefits of Extended Breastfeeding
Extended breastfeeding can be defined a few different ways depending on who you ask. I currently live in the U.S. where nursing past 1 year is considered extended breastfeeding. According to wikipedia‘s breastfeeding article, a recent CDC study stated that 75% of women start breastfeeding but only 43% are breastfeeding at 6 months, and only 22% are still breastfeeding at 1 year. To be honest I was surprised that 22% are still breastfeeding at 1 year.
In 1956 when La Leche League was founded only 20% of women started breastfeeding so we have made some progress.
My daughter is 17 months old and we are still breastfeeding.
Benefits for Mom
Breastfeeding mothers reduce their risk of ovarian, uterine, thyroid and endometrial cancer. Also reduced is the risk of rheumatoid arthritis and they are protected against osteoporosis. Breastfeeding may also help prevent lupus and obesity. For each year of breastfeeding a mother engages in she reduces her risk of Type 2 diabetes by 15 percent. Thus if a women nurses for 4 years that is (4 * 15) a reduced risk by 60%. In fact breastfeeding decreases a mother’s need for insulin if she already has been diagnosed with diabetes. According to 47 different international studies “for every year a woman breastfeeds, she reduces her risk of breast cancer by an average of 4.3 percent … For example, if you had three children and nursed them each for two years, your risk for breast cancer would be reduced by 46.8 percent. In fact, one study found that women who’ve nursed for six years or more reduced their risk of breast cancer by as much as a 63 percent. The multi-study report estimated that breast cancer rates could be cut by more than half if women increased their lifetime breastfeeding duration.”
Benefits for Baby/Toddler
Continued nursing decreases the risk of all of the following:
- Ear infections
- Bacterial meningitis
- Respiratory infections and viruses
- Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- Asthma
- Allergies (nasal and skin)
- Urinary tract infections
- Gastrointestinal infections
- Diarrhea
- Lymphomas, leukemia and Hodgkin’s disease
- Autoimmune thyroid disease
- Type 1 and type 2 diabetes
- Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease
- Necrotizing enterocolitis
- Multiple sclerosis
- Obesity
- Bacteremia
- Celiac disease
- Botulism
- Pneumonia
- Lung disease
- High blood pressure
- Anxiety/stress
- Bed-wetting
- Nearsightedness
- Increased intellectual, developmental, and cognitive aptitude
My Personal Benefits
After my daughter wakes up she crawls into bed with me and nurses which affords me an additional 30 minutes lying in bed relaxing while she nurses her breakfast. We are allowed to take our time waking up instead of having to get to the kitchen to feed her as she is hungry. Of course I feed her after she has nursed but it is so nice to wake up slowly while my toddler nurses.
Sometimes she gets into this real fussy mood where she is tired but still wants to play and she won’t sleep but playing isn’t fun because she is so tired. Nursing is perfect for these times. I just cuddle her up to me and latch her on. Sometimes I can even feel her body go from rigid and agitated to relaxed and calm. Sometimes she drifts off to sleep for a nice nap and other times after a good nursing she is energized and ready to take off super happy.
I don’t worry so much about what she eats. She still nurses quite a bit so I know she is getting all kinds of vitamins, minerals, omega3, stem cells and all kinds of other awesome essentials that science has not even discovered yet. So she can refuse to eat anything but applesauce for a week and I still know she is getting the following:
In the second year (12-23 months), 448 mL of breastmilk provides:
- 29% of energy requirements
- 43% of protein requirements
- 36% of calcium requirements
- 75% of vitamin A requirements
- 76% of folate requirements
- 94% of vitamin B12 requirements
- 60% of vitamin C requirements
I also really love the closeness and the connection. Somedays she is so busy running around, climbing on things, getting into things, the only time I can catch her is when she is ready to nurse. Then we are in this nice calm relaxing (even though she is an acrobat nurser) moment of connection. She goes through times of separation anxiety and she will loose track of me in the house. She will start crying and searching for me. She finds me and I pick her up and she instantly stops crying. It is remarkable.
To date we have been nursing for 17 months and we will see how long it goes and how child-led weaning goes.
Additional Resources
Podcast No. 4: Are You New to the Idea of Home Birth?
Podcast number 4 is now available. As always you can put birthgeek.com/podcast in your url or click the link below to navigate to the podcast page. This week give an introduction to the idea of giving birth at home. Hopefully it will open some people’s minds to the idea and they can understand and be more tolerant of other’s birth choices.
Podcast No. 3: Nursing in Public
Podcast number 3 is now available so just point your browser over to birthgeek.com/podcast or follow to link below to hear about breastfeeding in public.
Raising Attached Children in a Detached World
When I first had my daughter I was confronted with the fact that there are many different parenting styles and even more controversies in how you “should” raise your children. I mean if you have a parenting dilemma there is someone with an answer; usually in book format for about 9-20 dollars. I remember one mother friend of mine remarking about a 300 page book on potty training, “they will be able to potty train themselves by the time I finish reading this book”.
Before I had kids, the only method I had heard of was where you let you kid cry when you put them to bed. Once I had a child, I hoped that I could avoid that method. I mean I had a serious physiological response to her crying. Before she was 3 months old I don’t think I could have physically controlled myself. When she cried it was all I could do to get to her and feed her or change her diaper.
Here is where those emotions that women have are super important and probably the reason we have them. So all of you guys out there that make fun of women and all their emotions keep in mind that is the reason us homo sapiens are still here. If it were up to your dad he might have left your crying annoying ass in the tall grass while he ran off with a spear to hunt that elk that just ran by.
Thus I thought my physiological response was very important and natural, I wondered if I wasn’t doing what I “should do” according to the experts.
So I did some research. All of these “should’s” came from somewhere.
The Cry it Out method (CIO) is usually traced back to a book by Emmett Holt ”The Care and Feeding of Children” from 1895. This got me to thinking. A method that was established by a man who attended university and lived in the 1800s may not be the best way. I mean if he attended university in order to become a doctor he was probably quite wealthy. If he was wealthy he was probably quite removed from raising his own kids. They probably had a nanny and a cleaning woman and a gardner. What experience did he have with raising kids. He probably wrote the book as a response to fathers who wanted more of their wife’s attention. If the wives were getting up with the kids then they obviously could not tend to their husbands. I came to the conclusion that his priorities and my own were probably not aligned.
Luckily on my parenting studies I found Dr Sears and Attachment Parenting. I have consistently found it to align nicely with my own parental instincts. I love that the relationship between parent and child is held to be important. It is the opposite of those detached children found in orphanages or ferrel children who can not connect with any other human being and sometimes can’t even speak. Sometimes it may be inconvenient but I think it is more important to teach my children how to have healthy relationships as opposed to being in bed at the same time every night.
Practicing this parenting method, I think, puts me in the minority. I don’t know if it just the sheer number of books about CIO but AP feels unpopular. This big world of big business and TV sometimes feels quite detached. It is my fear that I am raising my kids to value relationships in a world where I go to a big name department store and the cashier is talking on her cell phone while ringing me out. I mean try to call someone and you will be lost in phone menu hell going around in circles. You could spend a few minutes trying to decide which category your question falls under.
Am I hurting my children by raising them in an attached parenting style while living in a detached world?
Podcast No. 2: Was My Period 2 Weeks Late or Did I Have a Miscarriage?
We have added a podcast to this website. You can access the podcasts via the menu above or go to the url www.birthgeek.com/podcast.
Podcast No. 2: Was My Period 2 Weeks Late Or Did I Have a Miscarriage?
Babywearing Photos 0-2 Months
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Potty Training at 15 Months?
Potty training starts at different ages throughout the world and it is definitely culturally sensitive. According to the parents I have asked in the United States 2 years old seems to be the age at which parents try to start potty training their kids. Or is it the parents are potty trained by the kids? Doing a google search there are sites that claim the average age to be 2 or 2.5 or 3 depending on which one you read.
Just like with all things parenting related there seems to be controversy; when to start, weather to reward, parent-led or child-led…. Sifting through all of the BS to extract information becomes irritating. My conclusion; no one really knows what they are talking about:)
Anyways so my 15 month old exhibits some signs of being “ready”. We thought we would introduce it to her and let her go at her own pace. We try to practice as must Attachment Parenting as we can, we did a little elimination communication, and my own parenting philosophy is that I don’t want to impose my ideas on her. I want her to live her life her way as much as she can.
Is she ready?
- Dry diaper after her nap frequently
- Notices when she has a dirty diaper and tries to take it off
- In fact many times takes her diaper off and the has a BM
- She brings us diapers sometimes when she needs changing
- She sits on her potty when I or my husband use the bathroom
- Has been interested in doing things for herself since she was a newborn:)
She of course does none of this when she is engaged in an activity. She even ignores me when she is engrossed. But hey I put off urinating when I am really on a good creative groove. I do avoid peeing my pants.
So what is a parent to do?
We bought her a cute little training potty and are introducing her to the idea. We will try some of the techniques that we have researched and what works we will stick with. At 15 months she still seems young for potty training so I doubt I will be as insistent as if she were 3 years.
I will keep you updated on what we try and what works.
Breast-feeding Photo
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I am remembering breast-feeding my daughter when she was about 2 months old. I took this picture almost a year ago on May 11th 2010. She was nursing almost all of the time; like a boob tick. She is still going strong today at 13 months. For us it fits in well with our priorities … Continue reading
