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In honor of his 9th birthday today, my story of nursing Scootch! My second son, “Scootch”, was born prematurely at 34 weeks. He was a good size at five pounds, 11 ounces. I was happy that he made it to 34 weeks. At 29 weeks, I started leaking amniotic fluid. Assuming that delivery was imminent, I was given a shot to mature his lungs and sent by ambulance to the nearest hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) over two hours away from our home. We were lucky that I stopped leaking fluid and I was sent home and put on bed rest. I spent the next five weeks in and out of the hospital in an ongoing game to stop my labor. The hardest part of this was being away from my other baby, my 16-month-old son. Scootch was born healthy and breathing well, but he was sleepy. He did not wake up when I delivered him. It was 24 hours before he cried. I began pumping right away so he could be fed through a tube and almost cried when I saw the few drops of colostrum in the bottle. "This woul...

Challenged by the Motherwear Breastfeeding blog , I'm posting about the history of breastfeeding in my family. Even though I was too late to actually participate officially, I was inspired to write! My mother gave birth to her first child in 1955 at the age of 21. She had recently moved to California and was far away from any friends or relatives. She was not one to follow the mainstream. She was an art major in college, she was “natural and crunchy”, and I like to think she was a bit of a hippie before hippies existed. As a result, she did not want to follow the advice of all of the medical professionals who were telling her that bottle-feeding was best. She gave birth while completely sedated and has no memory of the birth. When she finally got to see her baby she put her baby to her breast. The nurses would come in and tell her “I don’t know why you are doing that. We have perfectly good formula.” She was in the hospital for about a week (as was common at the time) and spent mos...

The Real Benefits of Breastfeeding by Dayna Markley We all hear about the benefits of breastfeeding from our doctors and other health care professionals. We hear it on TV, newspapers, magazines, just about everywhere! Well, what about the benefits we don't always hear about? The real benefits of breastfeeding. All the health benefits of breastfeeding are wonderful but the amazing emotional benefits to moms and babies are something you get to see and feel each day! I know well the deep feelings of love, closeness, and pride that come with nursing your little one. The breastfeeding moms group on the site Cafemom.com , a social site like facebook that is just for mothers, is a place for breastfeeding moms to come together and talk. Not to my surprise, many of the other moms had similar experiences to share. I want to share our thoughts and feelings with everyone who is a mother or soon will be because I feel these benefits aren't spoken about nearly ...