my breast feeding journey
I wrote a piece for the first issue of Gingernut Magazine on my experience of breast feeding. Issue one is now out and so I have the pleasure of sharing it with you here too. You can find @ginernutmag on Instagram and read the whole issue here. It’s well worth a look. Special thanks to Edie Campbell for asking me to contribute to the issue.
I spent a lot of time learning and thinking about pregnancy and birth. It felt natural and exciting to educate and prepare myself for each stage of pregnancy, and to consider several different options when it came to my birth preferences. Breast feeding on the other hand, didn’t get a second thought. Breast feeding was the plan and I assumed that it would be straight forward. That’s as deep as the thought process went. My mum breast fed us. It went without saying, in my mind, that I would do the same.
Fast forward a few months to a wonderful, if slightly complicated and eventful birth, and we found ourselves with a premature baby on the special care ward. Constantin needed to be fed formula through a little tube in his nose, and I didn’t get that special moment you hear of, when your newborn finds the boob all by themselves ‘just like that’.
For us, breast feeding has ended up being a beautiful and powerful part of our story and, in some ways, the backbone of my experience of motherhood. After 28 months we’re still going. But there was absolutely nothing ‘just like that’ about it. Not for us. Because Stan had to be fed through a tube, the primary focus was learning to do that, not how to breast feed. I quickly began pumping so he could have my milk through his tube. My milk was slow to come in. Once he was ready to start actively trying to latch, nipple shields were needed. So were formula top ups owing to weight drops and therefore, bottles too. It was messy, tiring, sometimes overwhelming and it took us about 10 weeks to find our way and make it work. What that looked like for us was: Constantin managing to latch well consistently (at last), my body catching up and managing to produce enough milk for him, and my confidence growing to the extent that I could breast feed him out and about so we were no longer tied to the house. It took a lot of time and perseverance but we got there. I had no idea that breast feeding could be so hard and I wish I had done. I wish that more people spoke about it.
Another (pre-motherhood) assumption I had made about breast feeding, was that “once a child is old enough to ask for it, he’s too old to have it”. I realise now what an ill-informed and silly position this was. I’m a little embarrassed that I ever felt that way. Nursing your baby just doesn’t work that way. It hasn’t been led by me, but by Stan and his needs. The only reason I would have stopped to date would be because of that limited assumption I had originally made. For us there has been no reason to stop. The closeness, the comfort it brings him, the ability it has to make him sleepy or calm him down, breast milk’s magical healing qualities on cuts and scrapes, it’s all part of ‘our normal’ and I feel so blessed to be able to do it. I know now that it doesn’t always come easy and that it doesn’t have to stop based on anyone else’s timeline. It’s all about what works for us and our family.
More profoundly, I’ve learnt the life lesson that anything that ends with success will not necessarily start with ease. This has been life changing and I’m still learning every day.
