Breastfeeding a newborn vs infant...

Before I became a midwife/LC, I heard other mums talking about how they would stop breastfeeding once solids were started, once teeth came in, once their baby started walking or talking. At the time I thought it sounded so easy, this is what happens.

Then I became a midwife, and a mum myself. A breastfeeding mum. Then I realised it was not easy, BUT it was bloody worth the trouble. Worth the sore nipples at first, the huge breasts initially, the soft boobs, the biting, the nip-lash.

Breastfeeding a newborn has its own challenges, like all parenting moments. Attaching, detaching, repositioning, positioning, leaking milk, breast pads flailing, and arms and hands in all the places I want to see. Then the quiet sleepy newborn moments. Those uninterrupted breast sleeps. Ahhhhhh....bliss.

Breastfeeding an infant or toddler, I think, is more like swimming in the ocean. In winter.

You get your bathers on, its freezing cold, your nipples are so frozen you feel like they may fall off, but you decide to keep going because you WANT this.

At some point you decide you are actually having a good time, that this may be fun! Then you stub your toe on a rock you didn't see. Falling into the freezing water. Holding on to your toe. BUT somehow you get up, hobble to the shore, wrap yourself up in your sandy salty towel. And decide to do it all again soon. Because it was amazing!!

Let me pick you up from the freezing water, let me wrap you in a towel and help you hobble too shore. That is what us LC's do.