When you tell people you're pregnant, one of the inevitable questions is "are you going to breastfeed?"
I'd always say that yes, I was going to try, but that if for any reason I couldn't, then my mental health was more important - and I was formula fed because my amazing mamma was in a coma for a week after I was born (also via emergency section). Besides, I'm also really tight and any money I could save from not buying formula sounded amazing to me.
When I woke (kind of) from my section, I remember the theatre midwife telling me our baby son was going to have some formula with dad. Even in my completely spaced out state she must have seen the look of disappointment on my face, because she said "Don't worry, you can still breastfeed, we'll try in the morning".
And so at 7am the next morning, I met the angel who would make my first full day as a mamma the most amazing day ever. In all honesty, I wish I'd been able to see her more because I just felt like we built a rapport immediately, and she was probably the only person that I remember really caring for Phill too during that time.
So after she'd got some tea and toast arranged, I remember she helped me hand express some colostrum for Alex. We did this twice over the course of the morning, before she handed him to be latched on for a feed. And in all honesty, 13 months later he's barley been off!
I will never EVER forget how comfortable Enfys made me feel. Though I was still pretty groggy that day, she made me laugh (even though it hurt to laugh), helped me feel safe and really made me feel like she cared. When she went off shift at 7pm, I thought she would be back the following day - but of course I never saw her again (she might have been on shift, but I didn't see her), and have never had the opportunity to thank her for being so vital in getting our breastfeeding journey started.
The next day we went down to the maternity ward, and though there were breastfeeding specialist midwives there, I didn't really have anything to do with them because he was feeding so well. Frequently, so I was knackered, but still well. Around day 4 I think - Wednesday - my milk had DEFINITELY come in. I can only describe having two basketballs on my chest, and made Phill hold one to check how heavy it was 🤣
So after 5 days, home we went to continue raising our little man. While everyone encourages you to breastfeed, not ONE person told me how exhausting and time consuming it would be. I didn't have an issue with that, but my goodness it would have helped my mental health if I had been warned of that in the first place. Within those first few weeks we had the (now I know as normal) cluster feeding, not much from pumping (which I also now know is no indication of the supply baby gets) and oral thrush to contend with, but all in all our little man was putting on weight and that was all that mattered.
Obviously, the comments about 'giving him a bottle' or 'giving him a dummy' were thrown about all over the place. And I know they came from a place of love, care and well-meaning. But they Drove. Me. Crazy!
I knew that for my milk supply to establish, that I needed to do as much feeding as possible myself. I knew this from our breastfeeding workshop and from the hours and hours of googling I had done. I decided to give myself little goals, rather than a longer term goal. At 4 weeks we would try a bottle and a dummy, I would initially feed for 6 weeks and see how it went.
Yes, I was knackered, coupled with generally being a new mum and a very probable PTSD from the birth. But this was what I wanted to do. My body had let us down at the birth, but he was thriving on my breastmilk, so at least I was "doing something right". That is not to say I think anyone is doing things wrong if you chose to formula or even combi feed - you're still feeding your baby - but for me this was what I needed.
Of course, the thought of being out and about with him terrified me, because he didn't seem to want to go very long without a feed. The first time we properly went out (thanks to Phill pushing me out the door), Alex slept the whole time. But as soon as I did that first public feed when I went out for lunch with my extended family, I wondered what the hell I'd been so worried about.
13 months on (granted, 4 of those months we've been stuck inside....) and I'm yet to receive a comment while feeding him (apart from a lovely one from a lady in Tesco cafe who spotted me balling to my friend Gemma).
Six weeks turned to 12 weeks. 12 turned to 16. By the time he was about 20 weeks old I was ready to try combi feeding. So Phill would give Alex a bedtime bottle after a bath. And that lasted about 2 months.....when his second tooth started cutting and he did NOT want to know about the bottle anymore, whether it was my milk or formula. We tried putting it in one of his sippy cups too, and he still didn't want to know.
Now we've hit the next milestone - ONE YEAR. I honestly never thought we would get here. Alex is showing no signs of slowing, and I am perfectly happy to continue feeding him while he wants to.
We've gone longer than I ever expected. I imagine had nursery continued to be open when he was going for 4 days a week, the journey might have slowed a little. He's now starting back for just 2 days a week as I'm still working at home, so I don't think that is going change our journey much at the moment.
He eats solids of course, though his appetite is up and down for all sorts of reasons - immunisations, teething, who knows what else. He is a HUGE lover of Italian food (I don't recall having a craving for that during pregnancy), wolfing down pasta, pizza and risotto at a rate of knots. He can sometimes take ages to eat his food too - but then so could I before he came along.
I am armed with lots of responses should I receive any comments the first time I feed him in public again. Maybe I'm being too cynical about the whole thing, and I'm not scared to admit that I too wondered why older babies were still breastfed before I had one. But armed with the knowledge that the World Health Organisation recommends continued breastfeeding alongside solid foods up to 2 years of age and beyond, I know that I was wrong to question a mother's decisions on how to feed her baby.
I definitely feel that my lack of knowledge was a product of our Westernised world. I don't ever recall breastfeeding being discussed in our sex education classes (what we had of them). Why is this? I don't know if it's discussed in schools now, but I certainly think that it should be.
I've been catching up on Sex in the City episodes recently, and one in particular shocked me for the scathing views of breastfeeding older infants. I know it is a product of its time, much like a plethora of TV shows which have come under the spotlight for various reasons recently, but for a show that was meant to be about empowering women, that particular episode didn't do much to empower women to make their own decisions on how to raise their children.
Anyway - sorry to ramble - my point is, ever since the first baby was born, women have breastfed. For thousands of years before the invention of formula, babies have been raised on breastmilk - even milk from other women when the mother was unable to feed herself for various reasons.
So why now, in 2020, are we still fighting a battle to normalise breastfeeding - both for newborn babies and older infants?
They are called milk teeth for a reason. I'm not sure how long I will feed for, there may come a time when I am tapped out and will want to stop for my own mental health, or maybe Alex will stop on his own before I even want him to. But until and beyond then, I will ALWAYS support a mother's
right to feed her child in whatever form is best for her and her baby,
And the rest of the world should too.
Here are some websites if you need support for breastfeeding:
This #WorldBreastfeedingWeek please help support women, fellow mothers and children and let's #normalisebreastfeeding