Can I ask you about your determination to breastfeed? What did you know about breastfeeding when you were pregnant?
I didn't really, to be honest I didn't look into it, my mother had breastfed, my mother's side of the family, my grandmother, my aunt, had all breastfed so they were very much for, my partner's mother hadn't and not, I don't think many of his family had so it's, but because I've grown up like that and I'd grown up watching my aunt breastfeed my cousins etcetera, to me that was just what happened there wasn't another option I wasn't, I didn't look into it I just and I just naively assumed it was easy, which I think, you know, for some people is it but not for all people and there is, you know, it can be hard, but going back to it I, because I had this bad labour and I felt a bit of a failure for not doing things my, I felt I didn't do things myself because it was assisted, that made me even more determined to succeed at breastfeeding, because I didn't want to give up on the two things that were really important to me because, you know, unlike some women and I was really looking forward to the labour, that was a very special thing for me to have a natural special labour was, something that I was looking forward to and enjoy rather than being scared of, and with the breastfeeding I was looking forward to that. So when my labour didn't quite go to plan it made me even more determined that I was going to succeed at one of the things that I set out to do.
And that made you feel better about things?
Yeah, yeah definitely I, because I was confronted with so many problems, you know, now that I've got over that and it is a pleasure to feed but in looking back I do feel very proud that I stuck with it. So I go to a breastfeeding group, Bosom Buddies, and they've been fantastic there as well, the support that I receive there is fantastic. And all the time they say, you know, how much they admire me because not a lot of younger mums these days do breastfeed or they, you know, according to them they said, you know, they perhaps wouldn't have stuck with it as much as what I've done, so that's nice to hear, it's always nice isn't it when you get praise but yeah. |
