Thankful....

Another blogger posted a challenge. Post one thing you are grateful for each day in November. I'm a little late, but I love the idea, so I'm going to do it!

As I post this, I'm nursing my baby, Alaina. So, today I'm grateful for the amazing ability to feed my child. This is truely a gift from God. Only He can create the perfect food for our babies! This is the second baby I've had the blessing of breastfeeding. And I call it a blessing because not everyone gets to do it. I wasn't sure I would.

See, I had a breast reduction when I was 19. Yes, that was a looooong time ago, lol! When I became pregnant for the first time, I started to research breastfeeding after a reduction. It used to be that people thought if you had a reduction, you couldn't nurse. Of course, what you read posted by others is usually the bad stuff. There was lots of information on what to do if you couldn't breastfeed or if you needed to supplement. But nothing on people that actually did it. So, I just decided that I would pretend nothing was wrong. I didn't buy anything to fall back on. I had no bottles or formula or supplementers. I like performing without a net ;).

When I checked into the hospital to have Taryn, they asked me if I planned to nurse or bottle feed. After that nurse left, another one said to me, "I heard you say you had a breast reduction. I just wanted to let you know I had one and I had no problems nursing my son." I told her thank you for the encouraging story!

So, to make a long story short, I had no problems. That's not to say it was easy. I had the normal issues, but nothing related to my reduction at all. I nursed Taryn for 13 months and she never had formula. Alaina is 2 months old and going strong! I post this so that if anyone is out there looking for encouraging words, they are here.

I have no pictures of nursing Alaina yet, but here's one of Taryn: