Nursing an older baby ... again.

Eli turned nine months old on Saturday! His growth and development have just taken off in the last month; he's been crawling for a while now, and now he pulls himself up to a stand on everything, he's started "cruising" from one thing to another, and he's started trying to climb the stairs. He's got a lot of strength built into his 27-pound body, and he's grown to over 30 inches tall. A recent development over the last week is the likelihood that he'll pull stuff over on top of himself if we're not watching closely. He'll pull himself up to a stand on a floor lamp or something else in the house that's top heavy, and you can see it sway and start to tip. Yikes!

It's been a challenging couple of months of continuing to nurse Eli, but I think we've made it through the toughest part. It's a phenomenon familiar to pretty much any Mom who nurses a baby past six months--the "I'll do anything except nurse, thank you very much!" attitude of an older baby that can be absolutely infuriating at times, and can be very challenging for a Mom who's trying to maintain a decent milk supply! About a month ago, Eli was so distracted, so focused on moving and exploring, that nearly every nursing session felt like a mini-power struggle. There wasn't a lot of warm and fuzzy breastfeeding bonding happening around here.

But, we made it through, and in retrospect I think I've found a new way of thinking about nursing an older baby that's been helpful to me. Maintaining breastfeeding through these challenges has felt like my first real process of discipline with Eli, in that it's been a process of teaching him about priorities and values. Ultimately, I felt like I've sometimes been communicating the following message: "no, Eli, seven-month-old babies don't get to make decisions about nutrition. Parents do. We have things to teach you." It's not that I'd force him to nurse at a time when he clearly wasn't going to, but I wouldn't substitute something else; waiting 20 minutes or an hour and trying again would almost always be successful.

I realize, too, that going through this has forced me to reach deep down and remind myself why breastfeeding is so important to me. I've been sick myself twice through the last month, and I've attended several births recently, and neither of those events is easy on my milk supply; it's taken discipline and time and energy to keep my supply up through it all, and there have been a couple of times where I've had to ask myself "Why am I still working so hard for this now that he's eight months old?" My own answers to that question are my own--they have to do with nutrition and bonding and immune health and tons of other things--and it's been interesting to remind myself of those answers at a time when I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'd have to. (During the first few weeks of a baby's life, most Moms ask those questions all the time--it's been illuminating going through it again with a much bigger baby!)