My two sons, age four and two-and-a-half, are wrestling and laughing in the living room as I write this. You know in cartoons when two dogs start fighting and turn into a sketchy ball of action, with clumps of fur and dustballs and stars popping out of it? That's kind of what they look like. Almost all the time. As entangled as they are in real life, so are my memories of pregnancy, birth, and early infancy for the two of them. Really, it's just been a continuum of labour, delivery, nursing, weaning... all while constantly plucking reckless boy-children from peril. Here's a little timeline to help fill in some blanks. My husband and I met, fell in love, moved in together, planned a wedding, had a baby (and had to postpone the wedding on account of the due date being the same weekend as the wedding was to be), bought a house, found out I was pregnant again, had the wedding for real during the height of my nausea, had another baby... all within three years. I know, I know. There are couples who are just starting to put their laundry in the same load after three years together. What can I say? It's a love-match. My daughter – who was almost four when we all moved in together – approved the union. That was enough for me. When I found out I was pregnant with Charlie, my first boy, I was overjoyed, but a little nervous. I wasn't afraid of pregnancy or childbirth, because those had both been fairly easy the first time around. But memories of the misery of those early days of breastfeeding Bonnie were enough to make me want to cry. Of course, I was confident that it would all work out, but I was also resigned to the idea that I wouldn't produce much milk, and that breastfeeding was, at least at first, going to be difficult. What's that thing people say? The only constant in life is change? Well, such was the case with the first of my boys. Just to keep me on my toes, he decided to take about four times longer to be born than his rushed older sister had (when everyone had been telling me that second babies are always born faster than their older siblings). Once he was out, he took to breastfeeding immediately, and we never had a problem. I was taking my fenugreek capsules and drinking all kinds of herbal teas from my very knowledgeable midwife, so they may have helped somewhat, but I was also more relaxed, in a supportive relationship, in a generally happy place. Which is not to say that everything was peachy – I did have some serious blues in those first months. But even that anxiety didn't have an impact on my milk flow. Charlie was still nursing when I found out I was pregnant with Jude. In fact, I remember having to wiggle myself out of my wedding dress and fancy stick-on strapless bra to feed him in an upstairs corner during my wedding reception. A few weeks before the wedding I had found out that I was pregnant again (confirming the suggestion that breastfeeding really is not an effective form of contraception... heh... no, seriously). A few months after this, Charlie pretty much weaned himself at about a year and a half of age. I never understood the concept of self-weaning before. Why on earth would a child wean unless he or she had to? But really, that was it: he was too busy to stop and nurse, I was too tired to encourage him to nurse if he wasn't into it, and so off he went. And here's the really funny part: the whole routine with Jude was virtually the same. Same labour and delivery (to the point that our midwife looked at Jude's wrinkly newborn face and joked, “Didn't you already have this one?”), same ease of breastfeeding, same length of time nursing, same relatively effortless weaning at age one-and-a-half. By which time I was pregnant with the next baby. Now, I'm sure it does some kind of disservice to my boys' individuality to lump them together like this, but really, although they are like chalk and cheese in terms of personality, they followed an identical pattern through their early months of life. And since I've been in baby mode for so long, it only makes sense to streamline them into one long baby story, right? Photo Credit Read More...

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