I wanted to use this space to reflect on my breastfeeding journeys with both boys, as a kind of journal entry for myself to read in years to come, but also because I think if there’s one thing that we can do to promote breastfeeding to those who haven’t considered it, or those who tried it and found it difficult, it’s to talk about it more. Be open and honest. Because in retrospect, I was completely naive about the reality of breastfeeding before I had Oscar; some aspects are talked about in antenatal classes but there’s a whole world of information that you just just don’t come across until you’re experiencing it yourself, and then your knee-jerk reaction is to think that you’re the only one to feel like you do.

Breastfeeding, and everything related to it, is fully laden with emotion. Guilt, self-doubt, uncertainty, feelings of failure – and add to this the fact that your body is awash with hormones that leave you in tears for absolutely no reason at all. Even if you have an easy ride, it is still really hard at the start, and I think simply knowing that is completely normal in advance is what I needed (and what I think a lot of other new mothers need) as a way of reassurance that if you grit your teeth now, it will get easier.

[Just to add, before I go on, that for some breastfeeding is incredibly challenging, for various reasons, and depending on your situation and feelings, gritting your teeth and continuing is not always the best option.]

If you’ve read my birth story with Oscar, you’ll have seen that Oscar was placed on my chest immediately after he was born and latched on and started suckling when he was about 20 minutes old. I didn’t really know what I was doing but he certainly seemed to, and for that I feel incredibly lucky. We stayed in that position, skin to skin, and suckling on and off for about 2 1/2 hours. In the first three days Oscar easily spent more hours feeding, day and night, than not, and he preferred to sleep with a nipple in his mouth! We spent one night in hospital, and the next morning the midwife asked me how many times I’d fed him overnight. I looked at her, confused, and answered, “erm, continuously?”

Although Oscar’s latch seemed to be fine, with all of that suckling I suffered with the obligatory sore, cracked nipples that leaves you wincing and curling your toes in pain at every feed, despite religious use of Lansinoh lanolin nipple cream. I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t experienced this in the first few days of breastfeeding! For me, it was worst between about day 3 and day 7, and by 2 weeks I found breastfeeding completely pain-free.

My milk came in somewhere between day 3 and day 4, and I was shocked to wake up to huge, hard painful breasts that looked stuck-on – like I’d had a boob job! I had a really strong let down, which I could feel as a tingling sensation soon after starting a feed, and I could hear Oscar gulping away frantically. I soon realised that he’d decided that my flow was a bit too much to handle, and would let excess milk dribble out of the corner of his mouth, all over my clothes. After that I always had to tuck a muslin in my bra at the start of a feed, to avoid walking around with a wet patch on my top all day! I also quickly learned that I needed to wear breast pads day and night, and at night that meant wearing a sleep bra to hold them in place.

Oscar put on weight beautifully, and as breastfeeding was going so well, from about 2 weeks old I started giving him a bottle of expressed breast milk to give me a little break – we continued to do this about once a week to keep him used to the idea of a bottle. The only problem was that I couldn’t go longer than 3 or 4 hours between feeds before my breasts became painfully engorged; I think this began as a result of Oscar wanting to feed so frequently (he seemed to ‘graze’ – a little feed every 1-2 hours, and only ever from one side at a time), but in turn I would offer him milk very frequently to ease my discomfort. This was one of the main issues I found with breastfeeding Oscar – it was SO frequent. He rooted and cried for milk every 2 hours, day and night, for the first 6 months, and I obliged. I was absolutely and utterly exhausted, to the point that I cried and I have huge blanks in my memory of that time, through mind-numbing tiredness, but I never considered giving up – and I want to make a point of saying that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr, I really didn’t want to quit – I loved breastfeeding so much. Every single time I nursed it was me and him, in a bubble of oxytocin, and all was right with the world. It was an addictive feeling and those frequent moments of bonding and togetherness are what kept me from resenting him for allowing me painfully little sleep.

The other breastfeeding-related issue that I suffered from recurrently was blocked ducts/mastitis, which I’m sure was as a result of my overproduction and tendency to engorgement. On three occasions I had the full whack of symptoms – high fever, flu-like symptoms and an exquisitely tender breast with a wedge-shaped firm, hot, red patch that was agony to feed from. On each occasion, I managed to get away without antibiotics as the symptoms began to improve after about 48 hours of feeding to drain the breast, paracetamol and bed rest. I’ve gone on to suffer with this recurrently with Wilf; I seem to be prone to it.

After the early days, breastfeeding Oscar was very straightforward, he would never say no if I offered him a feed and I sometimes used my ‘magic trick’ simply to pacify him if he was upset.

We continued exclusively breastfeeding until I went back to work at 9 1/2 months. I breastfed him morning and night, and on my days off work, but at nursery he would have cows milk in a bottle. Around his first birthday, he started to pull off me after his bedtime breastfeed and look around expectantly for more, whereas before this he would nurse to sleep every single evening. I offered a bottle of cows milk, which he accepted. After that, I would offer more milk in a bottle after his breastfeed, and most of the time he would want it, and eventually I felt that my supply was pretty low and not filling his tummy for bedtime as much as he would like. One night, when he was about 14 months old, he pushed me away in favour of the bottle, and that was that.

I don’t remember our last feed, and thinking about it now makes me feel a bit emotional. I would have definitely continued to nurse him for longer, but I feel like he made the decision to stop, and other than my feeling a little sad that it was all over, it was painless.

So there we are – what I always thought was an uneventful breastfeeding experience with Oscar and yet I still found over a thousand words to say about it! Wilf, on the other hand, was a completely different story, and I’ll be sharing that next week. I’d love to hear from you – did any of this ring true for you? Did you have a hard/easy ride with breastfeeding? Do leave a comment below.

Hannah x