I'm a full-time mummy

Welcome to the Carnival of Tandem Nursing

This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Tandem Nursing hosted by Mommying My Way. Our participants have shared their personal stories of the highs the lows and information on what to expect if tandeming is in your future. Please read to the end of each post to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

When I found out I was pregnant with Alyson, I surfed and Googled all the breastfeeding websites and forums to find out as much as I can about the possibilities of continuing on breastfeeding during pregnancy. That's because I was still nursing my 2 year++ old boy then.

I found some tips through some bloggy friends (Dionna at Code Name: Mama for sharing her tips and Twittering me, Dulce Chale for sharing her experience, Mama J for sharing her tips and emailing me and Germaine for referring me to Mama J) and also purchased 2 books which I find helpful: Adventures in Tandem Nursing: Breastfeeding During Pregnancy and Beyond and Mothering Your Nursing Toddler. These 2 books gave me the confidence to continue on nursing my boy throughout my pregnancy! (*Note: It is also because I have no risks or complications at all with my first and current pregnancy then)

Despite my breastmik stopped coming in at my 5th month into pregnancy, my boy nurses on! I cherished the moments I had while nursing him and actually resented the thoughts of my baby in my tummy - as if she is going to come between the wonderful bond I have with my boy. On the other hand, I also felt guilty as if I'm not paying 100% attention to the baby in my tummy as well... weird huh?

When Alyson was born on 2nd Sept 2011, my breastmilk came almost immediately! It was a breeze nursing her and there was not any chance for her weight to drop after the meconium was out as she was on my breastmilk since she was born! (unlike my boy who lost about 300 hundred grams on the 5th day). We left the hospital on day 2 and my problems started that very night.

My 2 year old wanted to nurse too when he saw me nursing the baby. I have no idea how to position my boy and the baby and I actually felt angry at my boy for wanting to nurse! Within the first 2 weeks, I was depressed and I reached out asking for help, telling my hubby and friends and bloggy pals that I am struggling and trying to cope with tandem nursing.

I think the first step of acknowledging and telling people I am struggling in tandem nursing greatly eases my own depression and tensions I placed on myself. Thank God I received advices, prayers, hugs and encouragement from friends and family members and I began to slowly get used to tandem nursing.

A month and a half after the birth of Alyson, I wrote another blog post about surviving my tandem nursing aversion. In that post, I also shared my own tips on how I overcome my nursing aversion. It is a good thing that I keep telling myself the aversion is all in my head and it is a waste and failure on my part if I give up just because of what's playing in my head!

At 3 months into tandem nursing, I wrote another update on my life tandem nursing 2 kids and how I get around to nursing them and using the opportunities to teach my toddler as well while I nursed them.

And now, close to 9 months into tandem nursing, my oh my... let me just pause here for a moment and reminisced back my 9 months journey into tandem nursing...

Wow oh wow...!!!

Never had I imagine I'll get to this stage where I sit back and goes 'Wow oh Wow!!!' 9 months into this crazy spectacular magnificent journey!  

I thank God for helping me getting through and to this stage and I feel happy being able to nurture my children as long as they want.

Ben at close to 39 months old now is down to one nursing a day, before his bedtime, that too for not more than a minute. Of course, there are times I can feel the let-down reflex when he suckles, but most of the time, he does it for comfort, just the act of being able to still nurse from mummy and he always unlatched when I tell him 'OK, enough already!'

As for Alyson, close to 9 months old, she has started her solids 2 weeks before she turned 7 months old and is currently on 2 times solid a day, the rest of her feedings are still on my direct breastfeeding, on demand, whenever she wants.

How long am I going to do this? I don't know... Like I said earlier, I feel happy being able to nurture and nourish my children, so, I will just take this one day at a time...

• My Tandem Nursing Journey: Jenny at I'm a full-time mummy is sharing her tandem nursing journey so far...
• Built for Two: No matter how much you read and plan, things may not always go as you expect. A few things that Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy wished she knew when she was planning to tandem feed her toddler and newborn.
• Tandem Nursing - Magic Cure?: Jorje of Momma Jorje had high expectations of tandem nursing easing her toddler daughter's transition from being the baby to being a big sister.
• Mutually Desirable - Navigating a Tandem Nursing Experience: Amy Willa at www.amywilla.com talks about limit setting and meditations that help her navigate an intense tandem nursing experience.
• My Adventure in Tandem Nursing: Alicia at Lactation Narration tells her story of nursing her daughter through pregnancy and then tandem nursing.
• 4 months in: the good/hard: Becca at Exile Fertility writes about the joys and struggles of having two nurslings 17 months apart.
• Tandem Nursing: One at a Time: When tandem nursing resulted in a nursing aversion, Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children looked for ways to meet everyone's needs.
• Why Nurse a 4 Year Old?: One of the questions Dionna at Code Name: Mama keeps getting is, "but why breastfeed a four year old? What are the benefits?" Today she answers that question.
• My Hurt Feelings: Shannon at The Artful Mama shares how her first son reacted to nursing after the birth of his brother and the gift she received the last time he nursed.
• Carnival of Tandem Nursing: A Letter To Myself 7 Years Ago: Dulce de leche shares the advice and reassurance that she would have given to herself if she could go back in time.
• Nursing Both My Babies: Cassie at There’s a Pickle in my Lifeshares her experience with nursing and transitioning into tandem nursing. She also gives tips for struggles.
• Our Tandem Nursing Journey: Kim at Life-is-Learning describes her journey into tandem nursing and why it is important to her.
• Based on her own experience, Lauren at Hobo Mama dishes about the benefits and downsides to nursing multiple children.

If you have been following my blog regularly, you would know I go crazy over chocolates. Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to review food and it was Nutella Chocolate Chip cupcakes without the icing/frosting. I love eating them so much and I think it shows in my review and the sponsor was so happy reading my glowing review that she baked me another batch of cupcakes. And I got hooked and after a few weeks, I ordered another batch from the sponsor (am getting embarrassed for eating for free hahaha!)

At this point, I think it is sufficient to say that yes, I am addicted to the Nutella cupcakes and I spent some time Googling for the similar recipe to make it. And yes, I managed to find it and gathered up my courage to drive my long-time-untouched car by myself (the last time I drove the car was when I was pregnant with Alyson) to the nearest baker's shop to get the ingredients and waited for the right day, chucked my girl to my MIL to take care and I gave it a try, so without further ado, here goes:

SELF-FROSTING NUTELLA CUPCAKES

PREPARATION TIME: ABOUT 40 MINUTES

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Bake Time: 15-20 minutes

Ingredients:

10 tablespoons butter, softened  (I used about 125g of butter at room temperature)
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, sifted  (I used wheat flour, can't find AP flour)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
Nutella, approximately 1/3 cup  (I didn't measure this, just scoop based on how addicted I am to Nutella which probably might be about 10 tbsp : 1 tbsp for each cupcake?)

What to Do?

* Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper liners.
* Cream together butter and sugar for 2-3 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, waiting til one is incorporated before adding the next. Mix in vanilla.
* Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt until incorporated and completely mixed. DO NOT OVERMIX!
* Scoop into liners, filling each 3/4 full. Add a teaspoon of nutella to the top of each and swirl in with a toothpick.

* Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean (don’t insert it into the nutella swirl, make sure it goes into just the cake). Remove from pan and move to a wire rack to cool completely.

THE RESULTS

REACTIONS FROM MY "GUINEA PIGS"

ME	"A bit too moist but otherwise.... ahhhh... nice....!" Note to self: Must try other cupcake liners as the one used is a bit hard, suspect it causes the cupcakes to be too moist and shrink up at the sides (too dry at top?)
BEN	"Mmmmm! Somemore!"
HUBBY	"Very moist, nice!"
MIL	"Not bad, not too sweet!"

So there you go.... my attempt of making SELF-FROSTING NUTELLA CUPCAKES!

To view my other recipes, feel free to hop over to my Recipe Library page for more info!  

Few months back, I have the opportunity to review this wonderful website which is aim at providing information such as recipes, news and more to nursing mothers as well as giving the avenue for mothers to interact with the professional staff on the site with regards to food intake and breastfeeding matters. So here goes my review for the "EatingForBreastfeeding " website:

Description from the product page:
"We have a free video series we are offering right now. To access the rest of the content, a viewer has to purchase a membership.  With that, they get life-time access to the site. We have video interviews with our Registered Dietician talking about the foods they should and shouldn't be consuming while nursing, meal plans, recipes, shopping lists, etc. We also have a section where members can ask questions directly to our Registered Dietician. Our goal is to be their personal nutritionist while they are nursing, so mom and baby get the most out of breastfeeding."

Note from sponsor:

"We are adding a section that will provide nursing moms with 5 recipes a week for a full year (plus a shopping list each week)! We want them to get all the nutrients we recommend, so we have brought a chef on board to provide original recipes containing the foods nursing mamas need :-)  We will be rolling that out within the next month."

Feedback for "Home" section:

The website is easy to navigate, with the following sections on the menu tab: Home, Ask Stacy, Recipes, Meal Plans & More, News and Resources. I like the list of videos provided in this section such as Breastmilk Basics. A very informational video clip!

Feedback for "Ask Stacy" section:

I like that members of this site can get to ask questions directly to the registered dietician! The Q&A layout makes it easy to see the questions and replies but I would prefer if there are categories for each questions asked so that it is easier and quicker to search through the topics we wanted to look for instead of scrolling up and down each Q&A.

Feedback for "Recipes, Meal Plans & More" section:

I like the recipes provided though I'm not sure whether it's my Firefox setting or what but the bulleted list of recipes is not aligned properly with the recipe names. I'm just a bit particular with alignments hahahah... I also appreciate the meal plans in PDF format provided as well as the shopping list and more. I totally love the freezer fridge guidelines in this section!

Feedback for "News " section:

In this section, there are news relating to pregnancy, baby, formula and more which may be of interests to mothers. I would appreciate if there are more news being added to this section as there are currently not much articles in this section.

Feedback for "Resources" section:

In this section, there is a list of websites which members can check out to get more information on other resources. I think it would be great if websites such as Kellymom.com or LLL are being included into this section as well.

Summary of feedback:

I think there are a whole lot more potential for this website as I don't get to see many websites which has information with regards to eating healthily for breastfeeding mothers, what more with a registered dietician on site to answer any questions you may have!

I do however think there should be more information and articles provided to keep members interested and to stay on to this website.

You can find out more info from http://eatingforme.com/

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the member access by EatingForBreastfeeding.com in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.