Breast feeding guilt!

Breast feeding is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world, a bonding experience, the best thing for you and baby! It can help you to lose the baby weight quicker, pulls those muscles back and builds up your babies immune system. Win win!

How can you go wrong? Well for me it just wasn’t that easy, in fact it was quite an emotional and upsetting time for me.

Louie was born by emergency c-section which I was put to sleep for. When I came round I’m told I did breast feed Louie straight away unfortunately I can’t actually remember as I wasn’t really with it!

My hubby wasn’t allowed to stay with me and had to head home and leave us both in the hospital. During the night Louie woke up for a feed so I pressed the buzzer for the midwife to help me lift Louie. The midwife and I then spent the next hour trying to get Louie to latch on to my left side. The first time he fed it was on my right side without any problems but my left he just wouldn’t. After an hour we gave up and popped him back on the right side and decided we would try again later.

Every time Louie would want a feed the midwife would head over and we would try again! In the end we gave up and the nurse brought over a pump for me to try.

We eventually left the hospital a few days later and my husband rushed to the shop to purchase a breast pump for me. I then continued to bump and try to breast feed when Louie would latch on.

At this point it wasn’t too bad, my hubby was at home to help look after Louie whilst I pumped. It’s when he returned to work that I started to find it hard and emotional. I just couldn’t find enough time to learn to be a new mum and pump. Pumping takes a long time, time that you just don’t seem to have.

Louie would want feeding every 2 hours even during the night, trying to keep up with demand was near on impossible. I had to have the pump attached to me virtually all the time. My tears started flowing more than smiles so in the end it was best for me and Louie to stop and change to formula. This was when Louie was around 6 weeks.

The guilt didn’t actually kick in until after. We started baby massage a few days after I stopped. With 8 other mums in the room I thought it was a good time to make friends with others that had little ones too. As time went on I noticed one by one of the mums breast-feeding their babies. I was embarrassed to feed Louie in front of them being the only bottle feeder. I found myself justifying why I was formula feeding even when they hadn’t asked.

I don’t know why I felt like that, Louie is now 1 and a happy and healthy little boy. I know that a happy mummy makes a happy baby.

I’m now pregnant with baby number 2 and have started thinking about what I want to do. Yes I am going to try to breast feed again but I am going to completely take the pressure off! If it doesn’t work for me then I’m not going to feel guilty if I have to stop. On the same token if it works out well this time I’m not going to make myself feel guilty that I didn’t go for as long with Louie.

Did breast-feeding come naturally to you? Or did you struggle? Perhaps you didn’t even want to try? I’d love to hear you comments and views. xoxo