Today I grappled with the age old dilemma most parents face at some point or another during the adventure that is parenting.
How the do you keep a breastfed baby happy while trick or treating with older children?
It seems like it wouldn't be too hard really, but let me tell you. It is. Older kids RUN from house to house, cutting through yards, leaping over landscaping, and pushing each other to get to the front of the line at each door with a lit porchlight and a pumpkin on the doorstep. Babies don't run. They demand to be fed when THEY want to be fed. They don't care that their preschool aged sisters want to cram as much free candy into a pillowcase as they possibly can. And preschool aged sisters don't care that their baby brothers want to stop and drink some Momma Milk.
We feed our son (who experienced his first Halloween at the ripe old age of not-quite-eight-weeks-old) the occasional bottle of formula. So we thought we'd be ok. Until we ran out of formula in a cul-de-sac fifteen minutes away from home (and the emergency can of Similac). Our children also tend to dislike pacifiers, and the adorable generic Nemo one we brought was locked in the diaper bag in the car several culs-de-sac away (yes the plural of cul-de-sac IS, in fact, culs-de-sac).
So needless to say, by the end of the night, after a lot of butt patting, finger sucking, empty bottle nipple sucking, and cuddly bouncy walking, we (and by we I mean my husband and my best friend who took turns carrying the baby while I carried the candy bags- for security purposes of course) were exhausted and Parker was ready for some DAMNED MOMMA MILK! If babies could talk, I'm fairly certain he would have screamed those exact words.
Next year he will be a year old. He will probably go more than 30 minutes between feedings. So any advice you can give me on this topic is moot for him. However, what happens when we have another tiny baby joining us on our Trick Or Treating Extravaganza ( we were the first to start at 5pm and the last out at 9pm)? So I've decided to throw out a few ideas I thought of after we were warm in our home for the night.
@ Learn to walk and breastfeed at the same time. (I figured this one out right as we were hitting our last house of the night- Grandma & Papa's.)
@ Figure out a way to force the older children to take breaks. (Please tell me how in the comments section. Please!)
@ Make sure you bring not just one bottle of formula or expressed milk, but two... or three... or maybe twenty.
Of course, I'm fairly certain that not all parents take their kids (and the neighbors kids, and the old neighbors kids) Trick Or Treating for FOUR, eff-ohhh-yooo-arr, FOUR hours straight. But those who don't are definitely jealous of baby Parker's candy stash.
And since baby Parker is only 8 weeks old and he can't really eat candy... He will be having Reese's, Kit Kat, and Hershey flavored breastmilk (without interruption) for the next few weeks. :)
So, if any of you lovelies out there have any tips/suggestions/ideas on how to deal with breastfeeding and non-stop trick or treating, please, for the love of God (or whomever you choose to fill in that blank with), please, PLEASE, feel free to share in the comments!
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Parker was a Banana for Halloween.
2 comments:
Wow! That's a lot if trick-or-treating!
I have pretty good success walking and nursing using a carrier. Ergo is my fave lately with my big baby, but ringslings, mei tais, and wraps are also great for nursing on the go. I'd probably go for a woven wrap for hardcore trick or treating with a newborn, with those you can get a nice secure wrap to keep them in place and they are infinitely adjustable so you can get just the right fit for a newborn.
A non-babywearing strategy too is to take a candy break. My kids are usually more than happy to sit on the grass and eat candy for a few minutes while I nurse and then we head out again.
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