Nursing Strike.....WTF is that?

So it seems Miss Sadie Marie is going to make us earn our parent patches....one by one.  I feel like we already have a vest full of patches and we are only 12 weeks in. Last week miss thang apparently was pissed at me and decided to stop nursing and go on an nursing strike......I mean really!?! Up to this point nursing was our one fail safe, it was the one thing in our ammo box that we could pull out when everything else failed and now it was not working. It started out innocently enough, we were getting ready for her evening feeding, she was tired and hungry and then rather than a happy gulping baby, I got an extended version of the milk monster only this time she was not taking the bait. Panic set in.....is she sick? Maybe she's just not hungry?......who am I kidding she's always hungry......so I tried to calm her down and when she was calm I tried again.......screams ensued......now I'm starting to sweat.....what do I do? Will 911 accept this as an emergency? The baby daddy was gone on travel and I'm all alone....I quickly decided I had to hike up the mommy panties I was already wearing and figure it out.

I settled her down again, tried one last time, and boom she ate. I'm thinking OK maybe she was just super pissed off tonight and needed a chill pill before she could eat. I proceed to feed her and go to bed, 3 AM she wakes to eat.....no issues.....whew, I'm thinking it was a one time thing and she back to being my little milk monster. Not so fast mom, 7 AM she refuses to feed for 45 minutes. I'm in a full out sweat, in a I had to put her down for a few minutes to collect myself panic by the time she finally latched on.

All I can say is WTF.

I fed her and got her down for a nap after our next refusal and whipped out the computer. What I had on my hands was called a nursing strike. I mean really......what the hell is that all about? It did not sound fun.....

A nursing strike is when a baby (of any age) who is nursing refuses to nurse. It can differ in ranges of severity as well. Sometimes they refuse to nurse altogether but will drink from the bottle, sometimes you have my situation where they refuse to eat for a while but will eventually latch on. Well boys and girls at least I had a name for this nonsense and then loaded myself know with information. A nursing strike can last anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. Babies under a year old are not trying to wean themselves. If the mother is persistent the baby will almost always go back to nursing, but if you desire you can wean at this time. Well I am not ready to wean my little peanut just yet so at our next feeding I proceeded to drop some knowledge on Miss Sadie Marie. I calmly told her she was just being silly, she was hungry she needed to eat. I calmed her down, let her scream it out and boom she ate. It only took 30 minutes this time.

At our next feeding she put up a fight but I was ready I stuck that pacifier in her mouth and after a few seconds pulled the ole switchero and boom she ate. Mommy 1, Sadie Marie 0...... Later that night we had some fussing again but she eventually ate. So we were two days into this strike and when I woke up the next morning I was hopeful it was a short strike and luckily I was right. She latched right on and we have had zero problems ever since. Phew......all I know is I earned my nursing girl scout patch this past week. It's stressful as hell to have your baby scream at you when your trying to feed her, but I survived to sweat another day.

Lots of things can cause a nursing strike and there's no real pinpointed cause. I feel like mine was caused by a change in lotion I was using. The strike started right in line with a change in my lotion after showering, but rather than go back to my old lotion I continued to use the same lotion fearing changing again might only anger her more. Who new baby's were so temperamental!

Anywho, today is my last day of maternity leave and I go back to work tomorrow, but luckily Auntie JuJu is here to watch the baby my first week back. She's going to watch the baby here while I work at home this week and the Sadie Marie is going to daycare from 9-12 tomorrow and Tuesday to get her used to it and then she will go all day on Wed and Friday. I looked at my inbox today and I had close to 1000 emails. I know what this week will be spent doing.

Well this baybay is stirring from her nap so I best go tend to her.

Love y'all!