During my first National Breastfeeding Week as a breastfeeding mum there was a coffee morning at my local Health Centre in place of the usual breastfeeding clinic. I didn’t realise, it was my first time to attend. I walked in with my baby and saw lots of Mammies chatting, drinking tea and coffee, eating scones, feeding their babies. It was just lovely. Then, my three week old baby pooed all over the place when he was lifted off the scale after being weighed, and while the bright yellow stain left on my jeans and blouse took a while to fade, but the memories of that room full of women and babies stayed with me. Imagine my surprise two weeks later when I attended the clinic and there were half as many mammies and no scones or tea.
“Every breastfeed makes a difference” is the theme of this year’s Irish National Breastfeeding Week which runs from October 1st to 7th and the Irish Parenting Bloggers have organised another blogmarch which also includes a competition to win some breastfeeding paraphernalia from NUK. Check out the other posts and the details for the competition here on mama.ie – there are NUK pumps up for grabs.
The message is simple, every breastfeed counts. Every single one.
A lot of new mums don’t consider breastfeeding at all, some feel it’s “unnatural”, others that it’s “not for them” or that they don’t wish to tie themselves down too much, many can’t for health reasons.
I’m not here to preach to anyone, to insist that they latch a baby on, it’s a personal choice. I’m on record decrying the “judgey” people who carry on like that.
But, for National Breastfeeding Week I wanted to take this opportunity to give a big pat on the back to the mammies who tried and in their heads (ONLY in THEIR heads) “failed” at breastfeeding.
The ones who hang their heads and say that they “only” fed for a day/a week/ten days/three weeks until the pain or tongue tie or the supply issues or anything else meant that they stopped. Some of them are what I call the “superhero” mammies who when they couldn’t feed pumped milk for months.
So, if that’s you take this pat on the back, and a round of applause, my thumbs up, a “well done”.
You did it.
You did your best.
It might not have been what you expected or hoped for, but you did it.
Every feed counts.
Every single one.
If you would like to read more about breastfeeding you might find this post that I wrote as part of the last IPB blogmarch interesting-
