Yesterday, I was speaking about the choices I had to make when I had my son and the things I knew, or thought I knew, for certain, I would “do” with him. Though I had never intended on co-sleeping, after a few failed weeks at trying to transition him to his own bed, I slipped him, almost accidentally, into our bed.

I was nursing him, and out of exhaustion, I nursed him in bed one night, and fell asleep with him beside me. My practice had been to get up with him and go to the front room.

You see, for the first FOUR months of our nursing relationship, I had to pump for 15 minutes… Nurse for 15, pump for 15… At 4am, that pump, she started talking to me! But I got the nursing going, finally, and I could leave the pump behind. However, I was tired. Instead of getting up with him, after his brief hour sleep in his playpen, I brought him into our bed, nursed him there, and drifted back to sleep.

This worked well… For me. Not so much for my husband, who after a few weeks, moved, along with the dog, to the spare bedroom. This is how it went, more or less, for the next five years. We tried occasionally to transition him to his own room (as he did have his own room) but he’d cry. At two, we did try, in earnest, to transition him. I spent many a night sitting at his bedroom door, or beside his toddler bed trying to get him to settle. But it never lasted long. In the end, we did what worked for us. At times, it was frustrating. I did not always like having to lay down with him until he fell asleep. Creeping out of bed, hoping he didn’t wake. It was exhausting. But the one day, we redid his room, he moved in, and boom. He slept in it, and we never looked back.

Our nursing journey was another story. I expected it to be easy peasy. It should be as natural as opening a carton from the fridge! As I alluded to, getting going was hard. My son was a c/section. That delays the milk coming in. He was a big baby, and according to the nursing staff, he needed to be supplemented with formula. These further delay milk production because baby isn’t eating (suckling) enough. He was also a lazy eater and kept falling asleep. We had to use a nursing shield as he didn’t latch properly. It seemed like it just was not meant to be.

But I was insanely determined. I use ‘insane’ because I was crazy. Pushing and pushing more than I ever should. He would have survived fine on formula, I didn’t need to be crazy over breast milk, driving my husband and I to the brink to insanity over breastfeeding him. But we did it. After all those months pumping and nursing, nursing and pumping until the doctor said, ‘just stop pumping and see what happens’. So, I did, and he nursed more than he ever had, and we did fine.

We did so well I found it hard to stop. I developed a really close bond with him and extended our nursing relationship for well past a year. When it clicked, it clicked! While I had all these ideas of how things would be, it didn’t go according to plan. I think this happens to prepare you for all the things that go awry later on. Those are the joys of parenting.