managing contractions bfing while pregnant
violajack
member
I'm nearly 36 weeks pregnant and have not had any pre-term labor issues with either this pregnancy or my first. I had BH with my first for the last month. We've been nursing through this pregnancy until I thought he was losing interest. We were down to just bed time, nap time, and some mornings. Then, all of a sudden about two weeks ago, DS wants to nurse all the time and for long stretches, like 30-45 minutes long. I guess he's going through stuff. I gently try distraction or straight up telling him we can nurse later, but he's pretty insistent and gets really sad when I say no. I don't want to cut him off, but the nipple pain was my first clue that I needed to POAS, and it has not let up in 8 months. I'm tired and I hurt.
On top of it, in the last few days, I've started getting contractions from nursing. They're mostly just BH, hard belly, uncomfortable, but some are strong crampy, really low, make me cry, contractions that remind me of how I felt on Pitocin. I'm not cool with those. I've tried cutting him off when things start to get uncomfortable, but all that did was get him from nearly asleep to sitting up crying at nap time today. I tried to tell him we needed to wait till bed time to try again, but of course he managed to not nap at all and then bump his head 3 hours later resulting in asking to nurse. He at least fell asleep quickly this time. He clearly needs the closeness since it's ramped up lately, and honestly, the lay down and snuggle on the couch is nice for me too since I'm running low on energy to chase him, but I'm tired of the pain and the contractions are not making me happy I try to tell myself that I only have a month left, then it should at least stop hurting. But I need to cut back.
Should I try to limit amount of sessions, length? Any other ideas for distraction? He pushes away sippies of water when offered. My husband is relatively useless right now, which is a whole other post, but enlisting his help is not an option at the moment. Is there anything else I can do to minimize the effects of nipple stimulation leading to contractions?
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