BF 2nd time success stories - was age gap important?

[smk84]

Recently read the thread about people being successful with breastfeeding second time round. With my DS, things went wrong early on, and when we have another baby, I'd really like to BF for much longer. Has anyone found the age of the older child to be important in breastfeeding their second baby? My DS is 18 months now, and am getting incredibly broody, but so want to BF the next & I really want to make sure it's well thought through !!

I haven't properly tried to breastfeed with my others but when my last baby was born i had an 18 month old a 3 year old and a 5 year old, none of them were breastfed so it was all new to them. And they all totally igrnoed it it was as if it never even registered that it was happening, none of them were jealous and Theu were all happy to watch tv or play in the playroom ( we put an arm chair in there for me to sit in.

So these age gaps were ok. Only thing is now my son pretends to feed dolls and no amount of chats will convince him that boys canyt breastfeed,

Thank you Fernie3 - that's really encouraging :)

I had a hard time BF first time round, DD1 never seemed satisfied so I topped up with bottles from 2 weeks. She ended up preferring bottles, so I did about 50/50 expressed milk and formula until 5 months when my supply seemed to dry up.

I think the second time I learnt from what happened first time round and was much more determined to BF and not give in to the temptation to top up with formula. This time I knew that when DD2 seemed to feed non-stop it wasn't a lack of supply it was a growth spurt, and I just fed and fed until things settled down. I also got over my fear of feeding in public, stopped worrying about routines and just fed my baby whenever and wherever she wanted! It also helped that DD2 was a dream to feed, she latched on well from the beginning and we didn't have any issues like thrush, mastitis etc.

I don't know if there is an ideal age gap - DD1 was 2.2 when DD2 was born and she did get a bit of a raw deal to begin with - lots of days sat on the sofa watching Cbeebies while I fed DD2. But it got easier. It helps that she still naps in the afternoons so I get some time with DD2 and she also goes to preschool 2 mornings now.

It's been hard combining potty training with BF though, so I guess the ideal age would be when no.1 is out of nappies!

I would say the best thing is to think through the things that made BF hard last time and try and figure out ways to make it easier next time. I did an NCT refresher antenatal course and found having some BF 'revision' was actually really helpful!

Putthekettleon - thank you so much for your post. I have only just realised you wrote it ! You are exactly right that I need to pinpoint exactly what was hard last time. I did have bad PND (which I think was partly caused by stopping breastfeeding as I just felt sooo guilty). I too topped up with expressed / formula from about 3 weeks and decided to pump. One day around 4 weeks I produced slightly less and went into a mad panic that I was drying up and started getting worse and worse emotionally. Then ended up on meds and couldn't give milk anymore, came off meds, tried to relactate and failed. Long story, sorry !! The refrehsher antenatal course sounds a good idea - if we are fortunate enough to get pregnant I will def do this. Not sure when my DS will potty train - cert not ready yet, I can't quite imagine what potty training is like?

ps I changed my nickname from smk84 to nonononono but then decided to change it back as you might not know who I am !!