Lisa

I decided to breastfeed Daniel just because I felt it was the best thing for him. It’s something that I’d always wanted to do, it had always been my plan to breastfeed when I had children, and I just thought it was the best thing and was totally prepared for giving it a good go. I’m generally quite a well person so I thought I’d pass that on to my child and I felt that it was the best start in life to be breastfed for as long as I could do it.

My experience of breastfeeding was really positive, I really enjoyed it and was really happy that I did it. It was harder than I thought it was going to be – I thought it was going to be the most natural thing in the world, I was going to put this baby to the breast and he was just going to go with it, but it took a couple of weeks to properly get the hang of it. I can see why people do give up in the beginning because it can be difficult to start with, but once you get it, I found it the easiest thing in the world. It’s great for me, it’s great for Daniel. It did develop a fantastic bond between us, it was lovely to have our “cuddle time” and it has made us a lot closer now because of it. It was great to know that you could completely provide for your child, that you could completely satisfy your own child.

When I was breastfeeding, the people who helped me the most were the midwives in the hospital, who were great for teaching you what to do and the different positions and stuff like that, my mum, who was a fantastic help to me, my mum before having children had worked in Forthpark Hospital and that had been her job, helping mums to learn how to breastfeed, so she was a fantastic resource, and I also went to a breastfeeding group where there were lots of other mums and you could talk to them and get their tips and their advice. My health visitor was one of the people who ran the group and she was great for helping.

The only problems or issues I had was that Daniel had got a bit of thrush, which he passed onto me. I knew that Daniel had got thrush because his tongue and the inside bit of his mouth was white. He was about seven months by this point in time and it was one day when we were lying on the floor and I was tickling him and he had a big wide open mouth and I thought “hmm, that doesn’t look normal”. I was thankfully going to my breastfeeding group that afternoon and I showed my health visitor and right away she said that’s what it is and gave us the treatment. I think as long as you catch it quickly and take the treatment then there’s no reason why it should affect your feeding at all.

I breastfed Daniel for nine and a half months and only stopped breastfeeding him because he didn’t want to do it anymore. He just was more interested in what was going on in the world around him, didn’t want to latch on, didn’t want to lie in that position, and he would maybe latch on for a few minutes, then he would come off and look around, then he’d latch on, and come off, and it got to the stage when as soon as you tried to put him into that position he got upset so I just thought “right”, and that was the natural end of it. I was a bit upset at the time, but he didn’t want to do it, and he’d done long enough, he’d done nine and a half months. That was the only reason I stopped, he just didn’t want to do it.

When I fed in public I generally wore discrete feeding tops like this one which was great, you just un-clipped the top bit, and it left a slot at both sides which you were able to put the nipple out, get the baby latched on, and that was you. I wore big cardigans to keep me cosy, and I’d say it’s not the latching on that I found to be the exposed bit, it’s that Daniel tended to be like “I’m finished!” so you could just cover yourself back up, clip it back shut, and that was you.

The advice I would give to mums who are thinking about breastfeeding is to give it a go. It doesn’t necessarily work for everybody and I don’t think anyone should beat themself up because it doesn’t work, do it for as long as you feel you can and if it’s really not working then it’s not working. It doesn’t make you a bad mum or anything like that, it’s just one of those things. So if you can do it, go for it, it’s great.