It's been 1 and a half month since I started tandem nursing my 31 months old boy and 1.5 months old girl. Life with 2 kids is keeping me pretty busy, though I did an update on day 14 on my tandem nursing on how I was slowly getting used to tandem nursing, I'd like to blog down in more details on how I survive my aversion to tandem nursing.
During the first week itself, I was already feeling very depressed that I'm having this negative reactions whenever Ben comes asking for his nen-nen (that's what we call for our breastmilk).
I searched for more info on how other tandem nursing mothers cope with this (and even wondered am I the only one having this emotional battles?!). I even ordered the "Mothering Your Nursing Toddler
" book in hope to find out more (by the time the book arrived, I'm on my way to feeling much much better already!). I read through blogs and websites of experienced tandem nursers and tried their approaches and add in some of my own.
Thank God, I'd like to report that I'm feeling much much better now.
* Image from Google search
If I could put in a percentage on my recovery to tandem nursing aversion right now, I'd like to say it's about 90% OK, the other 10% being those times when Ben had nightmare and I tried to nurse him back to sleep and Alyson suddenly woke and cried and wanted her share and I had to manoeuvre both of them to nurse which is pretty hard when they are both in sleeping state.
Bear in mind that the following are what works for me. Here it goes:
# 1: Think the worse!
As a Chinese, we like to have a party when our newborn turns 1 month old - we called it the full moon celebration. It is during then that we invite families and friends over to celebrate with us as our newborn turned 1 month old. For me, I make use of this celebration to survive through my negative feelings.
* Image from Google search
I think the worse! I imagined being drilled by friends and relatives on how stupid I am to try tandem nursing, I imagined people coming up to me and said 'I told you so! You're not capable to do this! Serves you right!'. I imagined myself crying and begging these people to stop the teasing and the mockery and to leave me alone.
After all those imaginary situations I cooked up in my head, I told myself, I will not let this come true. I need to get over this negativity in less than 1 month time. And I'm going to stand up tall during the full moon party and show to people I did it. I survived it and I'm capable of doing anything if I put my mind to it.
# 2 : Reminisce my past challenges
I also think back what challenges I encountered before and how I got past it. I breastfed Ben exclusively for the first 6 months despite people saying I should supplement with formula, and even when he started solids, he still continues breastfeeding, past 1 year, 1.5 year, 2 years, and then I got pregnant and Ben continues suckling even though I stopped producing breastmilk at my 5th month of pregnancy, all throughout the pregnancy.
Breastfeeding Ben at 16 months old...
So I told myself, I want to add tandem nursing to my list of challenges that I have overcome too!
# 3 : Distraction!
* Image from Google search
I got this tip from Dionna of Code Name: Mama via personal messages with her through Twitter. What I do is when I tandem nurse my kids, I distract myself by thinking other things. Or I'll just close my eyes and rest. But nowadays, I don't quite feel irritated when I nursed my kids at the same time and I'll try to use that opportunity to teach Ben to touch his baby sister gently (he's still getting used to having a baby sister)
If you are here to look for ideas and tips to overcome your tandem nursing aversion, I hope my approaches help, if not, I hope you will know that you are not alone in this situation and it happens to a lot of tandem nursing mothers as well.
So there you go, the above are the few things I do to survive through my tandem nursing aversion.
