After reading Mother Distracted's blog post, I decided to share my breastfeeding story too - I have blogged my journey as it happened, but I thought I'd summarise it and explain the choices I made, and didn't make.
Before I had Squidge, I always had serene visions of us sat in his nursery, classical music playing on the radio, and us sat there in the middle of the night while he breastfed. The reality was pretty far removed from this idyllic vision.
When he was born, he was really bunged up, and his little chin and tongue were pretty far back (without being actually tongue-tied). He tried and tried but wasn't able to breastfeed. In the couple of days after he was born when we were still in hospital, I had midwives come around a few times and try to help him latch on, but it just didn't happen - all that happened was he'd scream and scream.
Once we were home I'd try to breastfeed him several times a day, we even had breastfeeding support workers visit the house on several occasions - it was only with their support that we had successful feeds - and by successful, I mean he'd latch on - he'd still be hungry afterwards, and it was only if I was wearing a Medela nipple shield.
From the moment my milk came in (the day after we came home from the hospital - he was 3 days old) I expressed several times a day, and continued this for 2 months until my supply eventually dried up. Yep, in theory I could have expressed more frequently to get my supply going again, but as he was awake and really quite needy, I found that I didn't have time to express. I was still attempting to breastfeed him, but again, he wouldn't latch.
I persevered for as long as I could, and eventually I realised I needed to stop expressing. I was lucky if I'd get 10ml from a half hour pumping session (using the Medela Swing), which I realised was totally fruitless - there wasn't even any point in keeping such a tiny quantity.
I quietly stopped, felt like a total failure and was really quite upset about it. But I did feel good in knowing that he'd had the best start, even though he couldn't breastfeed, he still had all the milk I could produce/express to give him that protection he needed.
Since I stopped I've seen so many people talking about how shameful it is to feed babies formula, and that they should be breastfed, people being really rude and horrible calling people who feed their babies formula names like 'uneducated' and 'morons' - what so many people don't realise are the silent struggles we're going through, and how many of us would love to breastfeed but physically weren't able to. Lets stop the shaming and accept that all mummies and daddies go through an incredibly difficult time when they have a new baby and that they'll be doing the best they can, for THEIR child.
Brestfeeding seems like the most natural thing for a woman and while in many cases it is, some people struggle with it! I brestfed both my boys for the first couple of months and then went with the formula, because I wasn't producing enough milk, they were constantly hungry, my nipples were constantly sore, even the second time round and we were all very stressed. People who judge women for not brestfeeding are not educated and morons, whether a woman decide not to brestfeed or can't do it, it's entirely up to her and there are million healthy, happy babies brought up on formula! x
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