When Sophie was born I was learning everything for the first time (and I was blogging much more frequently already), so I had a lot more baby content (and just content in general) on my blog. I’ve always loved sharing my experiences here because I know how helpful it can be to hear from someone else who is going through the same thing you are, whether it’s getting married, moving across the country, having kids, or tough stuff like having a sick family member, navigating your parents divorce as an adult, hair loss or other health issues, etc.

Even though I haven’t been posting as frequently in the past year or so, I hope to always maintain this space to share my life and let you know that you are never alone in your experiences.

That’s quite an introduction to basically just say that this week I wanted to share some ways my breastfeeding journey has been different the second time. I know that a lot of this is just because I have a bit more experience this time, and even more of it is because we’re in a pandemic and rarely leave the house. But I thought it was worth sharing!

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So without further ado, here are a few ways that breastfeeding has been different for me with a second baby:

MASTITIS/CLOGS: I still got mastitis a few weeks after Gideon was born, which is what happened with Sophie too. I think establishing a supply and figuring everything out initially makes it hard to avoid sometimes, but this time luckily I knew exactly what was happening and was able to get on top of it right away. I got antibiotics and started taking sunflower lecithin regularly for a few weeks, and I’m so happy to say that I haven’t gotten it again! I did feel a clogged duct coming on one other time but felt like I knew what to do to prevent it from turning into mastitis (warm compress, extra pumping/nursing, more sunflower lecithin).

LATCHING: No nipple shield for us this time! I used a nipple shield with Sophie for almost 6 months and it was brutal. It made it really hard to nurse at night and in public, but I couldn’t seem to get her to latch without it. I would always try to get her to latch without it first and then grab it, but that was so frustrating so I really just stayed committed to the shield because in many ways it was a lot easier. One day she just figured it out, but it really did take months.

With Gideon I used it for a week or two but I found that the lactation support here was much better than I had in California. Our pediatrician automatically made me an appointment with the lactation consultant at Gideon’s first checkup and it made all the difference. After two appointments, she had us nursing without the shield and it has been so nice.

PUMPING: Because I’m not working right now, I never really have to pump, which has actually helped my supply so much. When Sophie was about 4 months old I went back to teaching Pure Barre, so I did a lot more pumping. I remember constantly stressing about pumping enough on top of nursing her and wondering if I was going to be able to maintain my supply for a year. I even took a bunch of different supplements that were supposed to help increase your supply. This time around I haven’t had to think about it, which was a big relief.

Gideon and I pretty much just nurse exclusively and he will only sometimes get a bottle if we are on a trip or if I have somewhere to be and Rob needs to feed him. It’s hard sometimes to be the only person who can feed the baby but for me it was really worth it to not ever have to think about my supply, or have pump parts and bottles taking over the kitchen counter. Now that he’s older he’s eating some solid food and I do leave him with the nanny a few times a week, but I really only pump at night and then occasionally during the day if I’ve been away from him.

I know some people who pump and bottle feed exclusively, and I did that for three or four months with Sophie, but I personally find nursing to be a lot more straightforward and definitely prefer it.

GEAR: A few things I used this time around that I didn’t the first are this nursing pillow and this hand pump, which works just as well and sometimes even better than an electric pump (plus it doesn’t include the mental block that I feel when it’s time to pump and I feel like I have to stop everything I’m doing to get all hooked up).

NURSING IN PUBLIC: I used to pump and bring bottles if we were going to be out, but this time around I just don’t care about nursing in public. We don’t go out very often but I have nursed in coffee shops, at lunch, at parks, friends houses—if Gideon is there and hungry, my boob is coming out!

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Overall, my second time as a nursing mom has been a lot easier and I have found it to be a lot more enjoyable so far. I loved breastfeeding Sophie but I had a lot to learn and it was stressful at times. From supply issues to latching and not knowing where or when or to whom to go for help, she definitely helped me pave the way for a smoother second go-around. One of my best friends had her second baby a few months before we did, and she told me that she felt a lot less stressed this time. I crossed my fingers to have the same experience and so far I have, which has been so great. There are a lot more aspects of my motherhood experience that I would be happy to share, but for now I will just say that while two kids is definitely more work, having a second baby didn’t shake up my life and change everything the way having a first baby did.

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MY ADVICE TO NURSING PEOPLE: If you are having trouble, definitely see if you can get an appointment with a lactation consultant. Those two appointments I had after Gideon’s birth really made all the difference and gave me the confidence to feel like I knew what I was doing.

I also know that this probably sounds silly since I just wrote an entire blog post about my own experience, but you really can’t compare your experience to others. If something is or isn’t working for you, don’t worry about what other people are doing. Pumping exclusively? Never given your baby a bottle? Switching to formula? Doing something in between? You do you! We all have different lives and schedules and situations—remember that fed is best. You’re doing great.

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This post contains affiliate links.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with Monica Daar of Moonlit Photography on this motherhood/nursing shoot, which came out even dreamier than I could have ever imagined. Gideon is definitely living that Second Child Life full of hand-me-downs and slightly less attention than Sophie got as a baby, so I was thrilled to get some photos of just the two of us.

Almost every single thing about my pregnancy with Gideon was the exact opposite as it was with Sophie, so there was a part of me that wondered if that would be the case for my labor and delivery experience as well, and that turned out to be completely true.

For a few days we thought he might be transverse and I thought “well a scheduled c-section would certainly be the opposite of a long, hard labor and 4 hours of pushing,” but once we had an ultrasound at 36 weeks and saw that he was actually head-down, I started to hope that the “opposite” experience would actually end up just being a quick and relatively easy delivery.

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I went to my 39 week appointment on a Friday and my blood pressure was slightly elevated—not enough to need to do anything, but enough that the doctor sent me down to triage at Labor & Delivery so they could monitor me for a few hours. I was completely beside myself, trying not to cry and feeling totally overwhelmed that I hadn’t said a proper goodbye to Sophie before bringing a sibling home to her. After a few hours, the doctor on call said he wasn’t super concerned about my blood pressure but rescheduled my 40 week checkup for the upcoming Monday so they could check again and make a plan from there if it was still high.

My brother had been working from our house for almost a week by this point so that he could be there to watch Sophie when it was time to go to the hospital, so that was one less thing to worry about, but as soon as I got home I booked Ender a stay at the doggie hotel for the following week. We finished packing our hospital bag, I wrote out Sophie’s schedule and cut up some veggies for her snacks, and basically prepared to be admitted for real on the 24th after my appointment.

Luckily my blood pressure hadn’t gone up any more, but because my due date was approaching and it was still higher than it should have been, we decided to schedule an induction for Wednesday the 26th. When I was pregnant with Sophie, the thought of being induced would have totally freaked me out, but I practically jumped for joy to have something on the books and know exactly when we were going to be at the hospital this time.

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The night before our appointment, Rob and I put Sophie to bed and tried not to get too emotional about the fact that it was our last time doing her bedtime routine just the three of us. We told her we’d be gone for a few days and be back with her little brother and that Sean would be there to take care of her, and she seemed fine and even excited about it all. We had to be at the hospital at 7:00 AM so I tried to go to bed early, excited to be completing my last night of terrible pregnancy heartburn.

For weeks we had been working on a list of names we liked and we just couldn’t settle on one. We had Sophie’s name settled by the week of her birth, but for some reason we felt like we needed to meet this guy before we named him. We had three potential first names and one middle name and I joked that maybe we would just let one of the nurses decide. I fell asleep wondering what this baby would be like, who he might resemble, and feeling so excited to be meeting him so soon.

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The next morning I took a shower and threw up! This baby had me nauseated for 40 full weeks and I had actually joked about possibly being sick up until the day he was born. We made coffees to go and said goodbye to my brother and drove through McDonald’s for a quick breakfast. I was feeling really nervous but calm and pretty confident about everything—my biggest goal for labor was to just be more present this time. With Sophie, I was so exhausted by the time I even got to the hospital that I feel like I barely remember a lot of it. I also wanted to get an epidural much, much earlier this time and not be so scared of that procedure, so it felt good to let the nurses know that when they asked me what my plans were for pain management.

By 8:30 AM we had started the Pitocin! I was already 2 centimeters when they admitted me and having a few contractions here and there, but nothing major. Every 30 minutes the nurse would come in and up the dosage, and after a couple of hours I was definitely starting to feel contractions that were strong enough that I needed to stop what I was doing and breathe through them. I wasn’t super uncomfortable yet, so I didn’t think I needed to get an epidural, but I was extremely mindful of how quickly things could change and didn’t want to end up wishing I had gotten it sooner.

Around 11:30 AM the doctor came in, checked me again, and broke my water. I was still only 2 centimeters but she said that once my water broke things would probably start to progress faster. Another hour or two passed and I was having contractions every 4-5 minutes and they were definitely getting more intense and painful. I was hoping to be more dilated than 2 centimeters when I got my epidural, so the nurse checked me again and said I was at about 4, which seemed good enough to me.

We called for the anesthesiologist and he showed up around 2:00. I was way more aware of my surroundings that during my first labor and delivery, so I definitely felt more than I remember from my first epidural, but just like the first time it really wasn’t anything to be too scared of. Within 20 minutes, I was feeling so much relief and didn’t realize how much pain I had been in. We relaxed for a while.

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The nurses and my OB kept reminding me that second babies tend to come much faster, so to be sure to tell them if I felt like I had to go to the bathroom because it could be time to push. My nurse probably thought I was a nut because I kept telling her I had to pee—she put a catheter in but there wasn’t really anything there. I was probably around 6-7 centimeters when they had me lie on my side with the peanut ball between my knees for at least 30 minutes. After another 45 minutes or an hour (around 3:30 PM), I was starting to feel really intense contractions, and I was surprised by how painful they were even after the epidural. I was at 9 centimeters by this point, and I must have stayed there for an hour. The contractions started getting really intense—my whole body would shake and I felt like I didn’t have any control over anything. The nurse kept checking me because I was actively trying not to push, but I was still at 9 centimeters. She told me he was moving down but my cervix wasn’t fully dilated yet. It was intense and painful, but he was doing a lot of the work for me.

Finally the nurse called my doctor and said I had been actively trying not to push and that I was so close to 10 centimeters. She came in at 5:00 PM and while they got set up she told me to do a “practice push” at the next contraction. It was such a relief to be able to finally work with the contractions, and after my first one she said “okay he’s crowning, you’ve got this!” I held my breath and pushed two or three more times, and he was born at 5:04 PM.

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He was 8 pounds 3 ounces and 21 inches long, a little heavier than his sister but just as tall. We must have stared at him for an hour or two before we finally settled on his name. He wasn’t a Theo, or a Liam—he was Gideon, and he completed our family in an instant.

How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.