boobs, tits, knockers, breasts, milk, bags, jugs, fun balloons.......BOOBIES!

Boobs, tits, knockers, breasts, milk, bags, jugs, fun balloons..... what ever you call them as soon as you become a mother that's where everyone's focus seems to go. "Are you breastfeeding? Has your milk come in? Do your boobs hurt yet?" I have been guilty of asking new mums all of these questions after having a baby. When i ask i am only doing it as a loving gesture, i don't want to put pressure on anyone i care about BUT i do believe "breast is best"

I sparked some debate today and offended a few people with a quote i put on my blog today

"When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breastmilk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution" -Christine Northrup M.D.

You can have a look at the whole lot here

Let me tell you about my experience with feeding my daughter. when she was first born she wouldn't latch properly no matter what i tried. I had HEAPS of milk, the midwives at the hospital were calling me a dairy cow, but she just wouldn't get hold of my nipple.
I was pawed at and touched and treated like a blob with boobies. I was told to hand express but not shown how to do it, my baby was starving and therefore not sleeping, so i wasn't sleeping and just felt crap! They weren't keen on letting me go home until i had our feeding issues sorted but i stood fast and was determined to go home where i would be more relaxed and less harassed at all hours by different faceless people holding a torch checking my blood pressure.
I was put on the midcall program, where a midwife would come to my home every day for up to 10 days until i was settled into motherhood.
As soon as i got home my mum took me out and bought me the best breast pump on the market and told me not to give up, if giggle girl wasn't going to feed from my breast she was going to get the next best thing.
(that was actually a very interesting shopping trip, my first time away from my baby and my milk was coming in BIG TIME! By the end of our hour at the shops (and 3 phone calls home to make sure she was OK, she slept the whole time luckily, I was becoming a crazy person. I was in so much pain i was sure my chest would rip open, i was tired grouchy and missing my baby. The guy walking in front of me was walking too slow and in the middle of the aisle so i couldn't get past so i politely told him to "move the F*UCK out of my way!" i then realised it was a very elderly man with a walking from and OXYGEN TANK!!....well didn't i feel like the scum of the earth!)

After getting the Medela in style advanced, I pumped every 3 hours, not only feeding her needs well and truly but also ending up with almost 20L of frozen mummy milk in my freezer.
I HATED pumping with a passion, it made me feel sick to the stomach, it felt unnatural and, for want of a better word, just downright YUCKY! But i stuck with it and when giggle girl was 6 weeks old we went to a lactation consultant for a day stay too see if she could help me, and low and behold my giggle girl latched perfectly first go and we were feeding! The lactation consultant was great, she showed me how to do it myself rather than doing it for me, she was patient and answered all and any questions i had about feeding and anything else that was worrying me at the time.

I fed in public, i was discreet about it but i wouldn't cover up. my child was entitled to have her lunch as much as anyone else and i dared anyone to comment. luckily for them, no one ever did, they would have been met with a very cranky mamma bear who didn't want to be treated like a leaper because of how i choose to feed my baby.

This was Not going to happen to me!



Then when giggle girl was about 5 months old i went to my uncle's wedding. As my mum was there i figured i could have a few drinks with hubby and mum would cherish the time with her only grand-child (the difficult part is getting mum to give her BACK!) so i had enough expressed breast milk to get me though the weekend so i didn't have to worry how many drinks i had already had and the alcohol in the breast milk etc etc. In the space of that weekend my supply dropped to almost zero and it didn't matter the number of feeds i did it wasn't picking up!
So giggle girl was given expressed milk for another 4 weeks or so and the we moved on to formula.

She was formula fed until she hit 12 months, then we switched to cows milk. it was only recently that a good friend mentioned to me that the patch of itchy, dry, rashy skin on her chest could be from lactose sensitivity, we switched to soy....she refused to drink it, so we swapped to lactose free cows milk, in two weeks her rash was gone! i would never have worked it our without other mummy advice!



So my reason for posting all these paragraphs of boring information on my daughters life in milk phases is not to send you off to sleep but to illustrate that i have done it ALL! So i cannot be called a hypocrite for what I'm about to say.

I just want to say that this isn't directed at women that for whatever reason are unable to breastfeed. And my heart goes out to those who were so very crushed that you couldn't. This is more directed at those who bottle feed for convenience or laziness or for fashionable reasons and for those who put women's breasts solely in the "sexy time" bracket.

GET YOUR TITS OUT WOMAN AND FEED THAT CHILD!








Love and Smiles
Z.