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| Teeny's First Feed Photo courtesy of Karen Pooler |
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| Breastfeeding Beyond Infancy Photograph courtesy of my lovely friend Julia |
I remember it vividly, it was the summer of 2007 and 18
months before our twins arrived, talking about how I didn’t want to breastfeed
any babies that we had; if I’m honest I was 25 and blinded by the sexualisation
of women’s breasts in today’s society, but at the time I didn’t realise
that.
So let’s fast forward three children later to now and I am
pretty sure that our littlest has weaned so, with no plans to add any more
children to our family, my journey as a breastfeeding mama is complete after having
spent four of the last six years breastfeeding; our twins for 15 months and the
littlest for 2 years 7½ months.
I am sat here trying to write down how I feel about the end
of this journey and yet I don’t really know.
It is a whole mix of emotions. Were
somebody to ask me that question then of course my immediate answer would be
sad. Sad that this journey with Teeny is
over, sad that a breastfeed no longer makes everything in his world better; I
could have a list as long as my arm of why it makes me sad, but the most heart
wrenching thing is that I will never ever breastfeed another baby ever again. At this moment in time that thought makes me
feel sick in the pit of my stomach.
However when I spend a little more time pondering on how
this time in my life makes me feel there are a whole host of other emotions
wrapped up with this sadness. I don’t say
this very often, but I am so proud at having exclusively breastfed all three of
our children for as long as they’ve wanted.
They are two particular times that are very prominent in my memory and
those are my belief in my instinct, my body and our daughter that despite a 12%
weight loss at day five there was no need to bow to the pressure to top her up
with formula and then there is my post two year wobble with Teeny when, for a
while, I wasn’t even sure how I felt about our continuing journey because
breastfeeding past infancy/ natural term breastfeeding are not without their
own challenges.
Then of course I feel completely blessed; blessed to have
had straight forward births, no medical complications and the best support from
my husband, our families and the overwhelming majority of midwives and health visitors who cared for us
which made our breastfeeding journey possible.
I’m also full of excitement; excited to watch Teeny grow and
to get to know the boy and man he is set to become. We have so many more milestones to reach
together and we are just at a cross roads at the moment, not a dead end.
Then of course I am excited about the journey that having
been a breastfeeding mama continues to take me on; I might be at the end of my
own breastfeeding journey, but as a salaried and volunteer NHS breastfeeding
peer supporter and vice chair of our local hospital’s MSLC I have the huge
privilege of being able to support families at the start of their journey into
breastfeeding and parenthood. This is
just the beginning of another journey for me and at the moment I am unsure of
the destination, but I hope it will be as long and fulfilling as my own
breastfeeding journey with many a twist and turn along the way and without
being a breastfeeding mama I would never have taken this amazing path in life.
Finally and importantly I feel immense gratitude for my babies who were the catalyst for an amazing journey that
continues despite those babies no longer being breastfed and of course I am
grateful to everybody who has encouraged, supported, empowered, educated and
reached out to me throughout this journey and even to those who have judged or
criticised because those judgements and criticisms only serve to make me more
determined to be the change.
