Breastfeeding: Is Breast Best?

This is a breastfeeding post I originally wrote as a guest post on plus2point4; where you can read some cracking articles.

After watching Is Breast Best? tonight I thought it may be worth reposting on my own blog to share a positive experience of breastfeeding as BB and I start the approach to our one year marker of exclusively breastfeeding.  Apparantly I am in the 3 of the population who exclusively feed past a year.

Please let me know what you think….

Written when BB was seven months old…..

“Like most things in life breastfeeding was not what I expected, it has far surpassed all my expectations and I feel I may have become a happy addict.

It looked really easy when I saw my girlfriends feed their babies, yet when I  latch on my rather beautiful baby I tended to resemble a big breasted king kong trying to navigate a mouse up to the nipple on the top of the empire state building.Not to mention that when she did latch on it felt like the mouse was trying to tear the nipple off the top of the empire state building with its toothless mouth.

It was all a bit of a kerfuffle really.Beautiful baby was born by emergency c section seven months ago, and as myself and fifteen other midwives had failed to get the twins to latch on I had gone into hospital prepared. I had a breast pump, nipple shields, nipple cream, and warm hands ready to knead my bosom to encourage the milk flow.

Turned out for her first feed she didn’t need anything but me, she lay skin to skin and latched on perfectly and it felt like how beautiful looks.It went a bit pear shaped after that, back on the ward she couldn’t latch on again until day four when a rather skilled midwife taught her what to do whilst I lay back and thought of breast milk. Until day four I became rather close with a medula breast pump and a syringe.

I was warned because I am particularly well endowed but at the same time not particularly ‘pert’ I may find breastfeeding hard work.Never had a truer word been said. For eight weeks my breasts worked overtime creating an oversupply that I couldn’t control.  Mastitis became my arch enemy and cold cabbage became my bosom buddy.  The stream of antibiotics I took caused me to get repetitive thrush in both my section scar tissue and my nipples.

One day I sat tears streaming down my face and dripping off my nose as I tried to nurse through a blocked duct and he who helped create them said;

“Just stop, its enough”.

I am no martyr to pain, in fact a paper cut can cause me to sob but for the first time in my life I realised that the enjoyment I had when nursing my daughter without infection was more significant than the pain I felt nursing through infection.  So me and beautiful baby decided to stick with it.

Seven months on I still struggle with trying to discreetly latch her on; you may notice the odd eclipse of the sun now and then when I begin to feed. I still love every feed and know this journey was right for me and bb.  It and she was more than worth it.

I figure I’ll stop when she goes to college.”

She seems to be doing well on it….