The first week of August is world breastfeeding week. I’ve experienced a lot of trials in my life, yet the journey of breastfeeding was one of the hardest (mentally, physically, and emotionally). There is so much happening from the second you give birth. With it there is this intense desire to nurture your baby. They say it’s the most natural thing, your body knows what it’s doing, and it doesn’t hurt too much. Lies! The pain on that first latch is still engrained in my mind six year later. The constant feeding and dread in between feeds from the raw pain felt anything but natural. I made mental goals of surviving “1 week, 1 month, 6 months, that’s good, anything is good, we don’t need to get to a year.”
Fast forward six years and 2 children and I feel so very different than I did those first couple of weeks of motherhood. With an amazing support system, I was able to pull through and nurse both of my kids well past their first birthdays. It created this bond that I feel so honored to have.
Shortly after my daughters second birthday, I knew our end to breastfeeding would be coming sooner than later. So I decided to take a moment during our family photos to celebrate our journey. It’s much harder to wrangle a two year old gracefully as opposed to the cute baby milk bath nursing sessions I had wanted but never got around to doing. It was definitely worth it in retrospect because she ended up self-weaning on Christmas eve, and I never got much more photos of the tail end of our breastfeeding journey.
Breastfeeding resources:
- https://ibconline.ca/
- https://kellymom.com/
- Your midwifery team if applicable
- Breastfeeding Facebook groups (make sure they are properly vetted for your privacy)
Leave a Reply