World Breastfeeding Awareness Week

When I was pregnant, one of the most common questions I was asked was how I was going to feed my baby. My answer was always the same. 

I was completely open to breastfeed not out of any other reason except I wanted too but if it didn’t work I wasn’t going to be overly concerned as I’m not completely opposed to formula. I felt this way right up until the day he was born.

I’d gotten a lot of information about breastfeeding from talking to the community midwife and the health visitors at the antenatal classes about it and felt like I knew it was going to be hard work and it may not come naturally.

After my baby was born we had immediate skin to skin for about 30 minutes and then after transferring rooms the student midwife asked if I wanted to try feeding him. She showed me loads of different ways to latch and found he did it straight away with no issues except he didn’t suck which at first was thought to be he just wasn’t hungry.

After 24 hours off repeated attempts of getting him to feed still in hospital, a midwife support worker convinced me that I wasn’t enough and he’d need formula otherwise he’d starve. During this 24 hours I’d had maybe around 10minutes of help from midwives which I was disappointed about.

Arriving home, visits from the midwives and health visitors to try and get him to breastfeed weren’t working, I was expressing so he was having a combination of EBM and formula feeds throughout the day. We ended up going back into hospital for issues with jaundice. Because he needed the extra feeds to help him reduce the jaundice I was then told to just give him formula and that maybe breastfeeding wasn’t going to be with us. I was heartbroken, I felt like my body had failed me and him and there was no support within the healthcare system. My health visitor suggested as one last ditch attempt to go to a feeding specialist. Luckily for us at 3 weeks old following the meeting with the specialist Harrison decided to breastfeed.

Since then we’ve been in and out of exclusively breastfeeding and combi feeding with one formula bottle either a day or every couple of days, there’s not really been a system to it. We’ve just gone with the flow. I’ve had various concerns about breastfeeding over the months, we’ve been through stages of him screaming at the breast, not feeding for long, refusing at bedtime.

Every time I’ve asked a health visitor etc I’ve been passed from pillar to post with not real advice given. I’ve been told to go to support groups where I’ve been told to contact my health visitor. All my concerns left unanswered, until I’ve scrolled through a million Instagram or Facebook posts to find a potential explanation.

One point recently (baby being 5monthes) I asked the health visitor if him screaming at the breast meant he’d had enough as I couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. I was told “yes probably” and I figured it was the end of BF for us. Luckily I’m stubborn so persevered for a couple of days stumbling along the way onto a Facebook post a friend posted and read through some comments where someone mentioned having a fast flow. A few hours of googling it seemed as though the symptoms ticked all the boxes, and speaking to a different healthcare professional we realised that coupled with teething and the heat was the problem. And I almost gave up previously after being given the wrong advice.

Struggles with breastfeeding has certainly contributed to my anxieties especially when going out in public with him, worrying about feeding him has stopped me leaving the house on a few occasions. Feeling guilty about giving him formula and being “mum shamed” out in public has also not helped.  I believe way more support is needed post birth to parents as there is a widespread lack of it currently.

Breastfeeding has been a tough journey for us and i wish someone had told me how hard it could be when I was pregnant rather than just feeding me the “breast is best” campaign, I wouldn’t have been as hard on myself when things haven’t worked as well as I thought. 

Its taken me 5 months to get to a place where I’m comfortable with the way I feed him, he has breast milk 90% of the time but does have formula for top ups or if he’s too hot to feed.

To get to this point and have been able to breastfeed at least 90% of the time,  I’m so proud of me and him and I’m grateful that  we were able to have this bond together and will be more sad than I thought I would be when it’s time to stop.