My breastfeeding story Part 7: The good stuff!

As you may know, I’ve written about my breastfeeding story in detail, starting with the first hour, and working my way up to the turning point where it finally started to get easy. I actually found it quite difficult to write that story so far, because those first few weeks of feeding were tough in many ways for me, and I still get a bit emotional thinking back on that time. But I’ve realised that stopping at the turning point doesn’t do the story justice, because the truth is that once those few months were over and breastfeeding started working well, we then had many months where it was fantastic – a truly wonderful experience.

We continued to give Little Man one formula feed most nights at about 10.30, because we wanted to keep him used to getting a bottle so that if I needed to be away for one of his feeds it wouldn’t be a problem. But all of the other feeds were breastfeeds. When Little Man was about 11 or 12 weeks old, I stopped expressing completely and just nursed him for all of his feeds. The freedom of it! No more sterilising, no worrying about whether or not we had a bottle with us for Little Man’s next feed. If he needed to be fed, I had everything I needed right with me! We could leave the house at a moment’s notice, just grabbing a couple of nappies and some baby wipes on the way out, and that was it, we were good to go!

I really found those months stress-free from a feeding point of view. In fact for a month or two, I even tried my hand at nursing in public. I was very shy about it – good old fashioned Irish Catholic guilt I suppose making me uncomfortable with the idea of feeding while there are other people about! But I tried to get past it and to work myself up to nursing in public. First I nursed Little Man in the back of our car when we were out, and then later I progressed to nursing him in feeding rooms or changing rooms in shopping centres and the like. I loved going to the Mammy and Baby showings in our local cinema, because I could watch the movie, feed Little Man when he got hungry, and then let him sleep in my arms until the movie ended. I gradually started to grow in confidence about feeding Little Man while out and about, first feeding him in the coffee shop in my local hotel while I was there with the girls from the Breastfeeding Support Group, and then feeding him in that same coffee shop when I was there on my own.

But then something happened that I wasn’t expecting! Just as I was gaining in confidence, Little Man got nosey! I couldn’t feed him in public even if I had wanted to because if there was anything at all happening around us, he had no interest in being fed – he just wanted to watch what was going on instead. So I’m afraid our foray into nursing in public was shortlived! By the time he was four or five months old, I had to find a quiet place in which to nurse Little Man or he would be too distracted to feed. And if he didn’t feed during the day, well you can guess what happened – he’d make up for it at night instead!

Tiring as they were though, there was something just so lovely about those night feeds, and now that they’re long done, I look back on them with nostalgia. There’s just something so lovely about sitting there in the quiet of night, nursing a baby. In fact, oddly enough, when I eventually weaned Little Man it was the night feeds I missed the most. Especially because he continued to wake for a bottle for months after he was weaned, so I often found myself wishing I could just nurse him again instead of having to heat a bottle in the middle of the night!

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25 May 2011: Update – this week I submitted this post to a Breastfeeding Blog Hop on Breastfeeding Success Stories. Be sure to check out the other great stories in the list!