Mark turned five weeks old yesterday.  We’ve definitely had our ups and downs with tandem nursing since he was born.  Mark himself is a champion nurser.  He did hurt me a bit for a couple weeks when he latched on but that fairly quickly resolved on its own,  thankfully.  Compared to his sister, nursing with a newborn has been lovely.

I gave you a glowing report about how tandem nursing was going when Mark was a week old.  Now, four weeks later, I have a rather more realistic, measured view with both positives and negatives.

(I wish there was a better way to delineate between physically nursing two babies at the same time vs. having both a nursing toddler and a nursing infant.  The term “tandem nursing” is usually used for both but for the most part, I’m using it to mean that I have a nursing toddler and infant.)

Here’s what I love about tandem nursing:

1. We’ve seen a depth of compassion and kindness in Ellie that we hadn’t seen before.  If she hears Mark crying while she is nursing (particularly during the difficult going-to-bed hour), she stops, says, “Baby Mark crying.  Baby Mark’s turn!” and then patiently waits (with some cuddling from Baba to help her to be patient – she is two, after all) until I have him calmed down and back to sleep again.  She also is usually happy to cut her turn short during the day if she notices that Mark needs me.  I love seeing her heart in this.

2. I haven’t had any trouble with engorgement (i.e. too much milk) or mastitis because Ellie is such an efficient milk guzzler.  She takes care of any problems I might have!

3. Nursing is an quick and easy way for me to meet Ellie’s needs for connection and love as well as calm her down after an “ouchie-booboo” or a tantrum.  Nursing is definitely a much-used tool in my parenting toolbox!

4. An unexpected side benefit of tandem nursing is that I’ve lost about 75% of my pregnancy weight and have been back in regular clothes for about two weeks.  (I’m still wearing pants that are a size too big so don’t be too impressed!) This has happened despite the vast amounts of food I’ve been eating so I really can only credit it to two babies drinking a lot of Mama’s milk (and therefore Mama’s calories).  I know that not all women lose weight easily while nursing (it’s harder for some) and so I feel even more grateful that this process has been really easy for me so far.

5. I’m able to nurse Ellie to sleep, which has allowed for easy nap and bedtimes, for the most part – easy for sure from Ellie’s point of view (see below for my mixed review).  Going to sleep for her is still a relatively quick, stress-free part of her day.

6.  During this insane cold and flu season, I’m grateful that both of them are getting the help of breast milk to stay healthy.

Ellie, making sure her bear gets some solo nursing time.

Here’s what I don’t like about tandem nursing:

1. I really despise nursing two at the same time.  There’s something about the different way that each of them nurses that really gives me the creeps when I’m feeling them both latched on at the same time.  I’ve done it many times by now (despite my desire not to) because sometimes, when they’re both screaming, what else can you do?  Plus, now that I’m at home alone with them, especially for Ellie’s naptime, I just have to; otherwise no one falls asleep.  I pretty much avoid it at all costs otherwise.

2. Having to nurse Ellie to sleep, although getting easier for us to manage, has definitely been stressful.  During the day, I’ve had to figure out a way to nurse both of them while lying down, which involves extra pillows and a not-so-comfortable position for me.  (Once Mark stays asleep for longer than just a few minutes by himself, I’m hoping to not have to do this anymore.)  At night, it’s been hard to keep Mark happy during the cluster-feeding-frenzy to give me 15-20 minutes to nurse Ellie to sleep.  Again, we are getting better with managing all of this, but I do think longingly about the time when Ellie will just lay down and go to sleep without me.  I know it will happen eventually but I hope it’s before she goes to college! 🙂 (Although I’m complaining about this, I usually am happy to nurse her to sleep when all goes well because it’s a good time for us to connect a little bit before she goes to sleep.  So it’s definitely not all negative for me.  Plus it helps her fall asleep really quickly, giving Nik and I more time in the evenings.)

All told, I don’t regret our decision to allow Ellie to keep nursing, rather than weaning her when we found out that we were pregnant again.  I won’t pretend that it’s easy all the time (maybe I’ll blog about those struggles another time) but in the end, I’m grateful to be nursing two.

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This is turning into a bit of a tandem nursing series!  If you click on the “nursing” category on the sidebar of the blog, you can get all my posts about nursing, including my other tandem nursing posts.