Our little guy likes to eat.  Recently, I’ve felt that all he does is eat, and when I started paying attention, my suspicions were confirmed.  This is when (and for how long) Holden was eating yesterday.  After 5:00 we went to a cookout and I stopped keeping track:

 

• 9:15-9:35
• 10:00-10:35
• 10:50-11:10
• 11:20-11:35
• 11:40-12:00
• 12:20-12:40
• 1:15-1:35
• 2:50-3:20
• 3:50-4:00
• 4:20-4:35
• 4:45-5:00

 

Most people will tell you that breastfed babies eat once every 2-3 hours in addition to occasionally cluster feeding.  What they don’t say is that when you are establishing your milk supply (and when your baby is going through some serious growth spurts), you will be like a human cow.  All you will do is nurse.  For the few blocks of “free” time I had between feedings yesterday, I did exciting things like brush my teeth and apply deodorant.  After the 12:20 feeding ended, I said enough was enough and loaded Holden into the stroller for a walk.  The walk was really more for my own benefit than for his.  He slept the whole way to the library.  Once there, I selected a couple of books on breastfeeding, but before I had the chance to leaf through them, someone became hungry again.  So I nursed Holden in the youth section of the library while reading about breastfeeding.  I found one particularly good book, “Breastfeeding Made Simple:”

This book is phenomenal.  What I find especially interesting is how other cultures deal with the first 40 days of life—the mother is expected to do nothing else except nurse and rest.  Plenty of support is provided to make sure other tasks get done without the mother’s involvement.  From this perspective, the fact that postpartum depression is unheard of in developing countries like Uganda is not really a mystery to me.  Other mammals have differing patterns of nursing, characterized by differences in nursing frequency, duration, protein and fat content of the milk, amount of contact between mother and offspring, and extent of development at birth.  Our species produces low fat milk (relative to other mammalian species), necessitating frequent nursing.  We are also not very developed at birth and require constant contact.  I can attest to this last point as Holden does not want to be put down for a second.  In a sense, his protest at being left in his boppy for even 1 minute ensures that he is receiving adequate stimulation necessary for his development, and in another sense, ensures that I stay in bed and avoid mopping the floor or attempting similarly Herculean tasks postpartum.  His dependence forces me to slow down and rest, a benefit that I am only beginning to appreciate.  Anyway, the book above has some really great passages about how milk supply works—very informative.  The take-home message is that I need to continue to indulge these frequent feedings because it will pay dividends in the end.  In other news, we never need the nipple shield anymore for daytime feedings—I’ve only been using it at night.  We are indeed making some progress.