Yes, check that again. I said “wouldn’t”. As in, please wake me up to nurse. I am living in bizarro world. Even for me. I wait 8 years for a baby that will sleep from 8pm until 6am and then find myself trying to sabotage that just as soon as I get it. Isn’t that just like me too? But I have a good reason. I promise.
With the last baby I nursed him until he was, like, 2. The baby that never slept. The baby that took co-sleeping to new levels in our house. And remember when he was 18 months, when I googled (oh, I forgot, this post is not for boys – move on – that’s my disclaimer) why I wasn’t having a period yet. I’d never gone that long without one, I mean don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily, just wondering if it was okay, normal. And it was. Or so said forums on night nursing like these on the La Leche League’s site. Which was eye-opening for me. Really? I had always wondered why my menses had started back so early with my first child (at 9 months post partum) meaning that I was still nursing and pregnant with my second at the same time. Whereas with the next 2 children my period didn’t return until after I weaned them at 12 months and 13 months. Then came BigMan, menses returned at 20 months post partum, and whom I nursed until he was 2 (meaning once again, I was nursing and pregnant at the same time).
And then TheFinalist was born. And he started sleeping through the night really early on (on the nights I laid him in his bed to sleep until he wanted to nurse – at which point he would co-sleep with me the rest of the night). Obviously really early, because he is only 3 months old and he’s sleeping from 8pm until 6:30am. Once again, not my doing – just how God made this child. Which was nice at first. But then I started thinking. Thinking things like, “Hmm, I haven’t had such a good sleeper in the house since TheOldest was this age.” Oh. OH. Wait. See, we practice Natural Family Planning. We didn’t start out in search of that. It just happened. We aren’t comfortable with our birth control options. We didn’t know what we did had a name or a following. We just did what we did. Now, before you start making really funny jokes about how we (and all our progeny) are living proof that NFP doesn’t work please realize that we intentionally tried for each of our children (after our first sweet surprise!). We follow the ovulation method. I’ve only had 6 periods in about 9 years (maybe that many). One of our children was actually conceived before my period returned. Because I knew what to look for. So, really we have living proof that the ovulation method of Natural Family Planning works. (Wanna know another little secret? I’m not a smart woman. I don’t study, I might have mentioned that before. I just today found out what all these different methods are called. One of the other natural family fertility methods is called the symptothermal method and yet another is called the rhythm method based on calendar calculations. You can go to FamilyDoctor.org to see their definitions of each. I know what we do – I just never knew there were names and whole sites dedicated to it!)
So, back to my sleeping habits. I’m seriously debating co-sleeping more with him. Because when I do he inevitably nurses more. But when I lay him in his bed at 10pm and think, “Maybe he’ll wake me up in a couple of hours to eat.” I look at the clock at 6am and think, “What happened?!” I know, don’t hate me, we should all be so lucky. But do you know how badly I do not want another period so soon? If he is TheFinalist then I have to have them for the rest of my youthful years, right? I don’t want that, people. Who would sign up for that if they knew they could avoid it? I mean really, now that I’m bed sharing with my baby it’s much easier to nurse and sleep and nurse and sleep and repeat.
So, tonight when I crawl into bed I may just bring that mega-sleeping little cuddle bug with me. And maybe, just maybe, avoid the inevitable just a little longer.
I know, I’m a little bit crazy, right?
