A customer shares her story with us…
She writes: “I am a firm believer in ‘do what you have to do’. My births both went well (both c-sections, one emergency and one planned – but I was happy both times) and breastfeeding has gone quite well too – which surprised me in a good way.
My hubby attended breastfeeding classes at the hospital, which I think was one of the main contributers to things working out so well.
It is a wee bit tough after a c-section and you get moved on from hospital so soon, it is amazing more people don’t have problems getting started with breastfeeding.
My wee man was breastfed for 13 months. I weaned him overnight when I ended up in hospital with mastitis – that was the worse part about feeding my son.
Until he was about 6 months I had to express milk for him to top up before he went to sleep at night. He was such a hungry feeder that I had to express about 300ml – it was quite time consuming, but I was happy to do it. I decided to keep breastfeeding until he was a year because we decided to take him backpacking through South East Asia from 6 – 12 months. This worked really well, though we used some formula so I could go on daytrips by myself and expressing became difficult and probably unhygienic given the amount of moving around we were doing. The most fantastic thing was being able to get him to sleep by feeding him on planes and trains!
I am still breastfeeding my 8 month old baby – she won’t take a bottle! So I might be in a for a rough ride weaning. I have had milk supply issues, but my lovely GP has helped out a couple of times with some medication to get things going again. My midwife and GP were so supportive of my breastfeeding efforts – but in a way that made me feel that they would have been exactly the same if I had bottle fed (good on them!).
I have never had a bad experience with breastfeeding in public – maybe I don’t care enough to look at people’s reactions. Wellington Cafes etc seem to be very supportive.
Both of my experiences feeding have been pretty good in their own ways. No matter how we feed our babies – we do it the best way we can. I was a bottle fed baby and I think I turned out happy and healthy!
All the best!
Kate
