For World Breastfeeding Week: My Story of Joy, Struggles, and Finding Peace

It's World Breastfeeding Week. To honor that, I wanted to share my nursing story

with my 3 kids. My hope is this brings encouragement to any momma that reads it. You

are not alone.

I nursed my first daughter beautifully. Aside from a few bouts of yeast that took a little while to get rid of, my nursing story with her was like a fairytale. She latched immediately with no issues and woke the textbook amount of every 2 hours to nurse for most of her first year. By 13 months old, she was nursing just to go to sleep at night, so I called it quits on her. She was not ready, but I was. If I could do it over, I would probably do that differently but circumstances of my life at the time is a story for another day.

My next 2 babies did not have that same fairytale story. After a difficult labor with my son, he didn’t latch well immediately, and the problems just kept piling from there. If I could get him to latch, he wouldn’t stay there…almost like he was in pain to be there. I tried everything my lactation consultant mother said to do. We brought him to chiropractic and cranial sacral therapy, nothing was working. The first time we had to supplement with a bottle of formula, I couldn’t watch. He was so happy and full after. I wondered what was wrong with me that I couldn’t provide for my child.

We played this game of trying everything for 6 weeks. I don’t remember most of those early days with my sweet boy. When I look back now, I can see that I had postpartum depression from the expectation I had put on myself to nurse my baby beautifully. I could have pumped and gave it to him that way but as a childcare provider, I didn’t have the traditional two 15 minute breaks and a lunch to pump. It was going to be nearly impossible to pump and care for the other kids I had in my care. I agonized over this decision to not pump for weeks. It sent me even more in a spiral in my brain. It was a hard, dark time for me.

By the time my last baby girl came I didn’t know what to expect. And like her brother, she did not latch well immediately either. I felt like a failure. I tried all the things again but not as long this time. I didn’t have as much milk as I did with the first 2(I suspect when I stopped nursing my son and did it cold turkey, not expressing any milk to help it dry up faster, I did damage to my milk ducts) and I could feel myself slipping into a depression again over this decision to only nurse and I couldn’t go through that again. I wanted to be able to remember her first weeks of life!

I now know that my expectations of how I thought things would go sent me into the agony of my thoughts around this. I nursed my first so well, why wouldn’t the rest be that way! And I also felt the pressure of what would people think of my mom who helped woman everyday figure out their nursing problems! Would they think she was credible if she couldn’t figure out her own daughter's reasons for not being able to nurse. The pressure and the pain of it was awful!

I still support nursing. I still think it’s wonderful and beautiful. But what I support more is mental health around that decision. Women need immense support after having a baby and whether to nurse or not is just one decision out of many that they need support on. After going through both ends of the spectrum with nursing, I’m here to be a light for momma’s who seek my advice about anything, but I especially want to help them feel well with whatever decision they make about feeding their baby