(2/3) “Breastfeeding was not second nature at all. She was born a week early, by c-section, so I had a lot of struggles with my milk coming in. We ended up in the ER the first night she was home, because she wasn’t getting the nutrients she needed. I didn’t know enough to know that was what the problem was, and I should have probably given her a bottle of formula, in hindsight...
(1/3) “I think that intuitively, even before my daughter was born, I believed in being able to feed your child wherever and whenever you want, without having to feel uncomfortable doing it in public. That was definitely the mindset I wanted to have when it came time to feed my baby, but in practice, it was much more difficult to be comfortable in the very beginning when in public. I ...
(4/4) “I just recently found out that I’m pregnant. I am worried my supply is going to tank. I’ve been thinking about reaching out to other moms to see if I can find some help with wet nursing. We have been in Wisconsin for 15 years. I have friends that would wet nurse for me out there, but we just moved back to Portland, OR and I don’t have the connections out here yet. I would feel ...
(3/4) “When we wake up in the morning, he always wants to nurse right away. We snuggle and he smiles as he nurses. That’s one of my favorite things, waking up and nursing together. He nurses every 3-4 hours during the day. After he started walking he started losing weight, instead of just staying even, because he is more active, like all kids his age. But he just doesn’t have the calories ...
(2/4) “My son is 14 months old now and exclusively nurses. He does not eat or drink any other food. His older sister didn’t really start eating until she was 12 months, so I didn’t think much of it at first. I thought maybe he would just be a late eater like she was. She totally caught up, and she eats anything and everything now. We started him with baby led weaning, but he would gag to ...
(1/4) “We started tandem nursing in the hospital, and it was heartbreaking. My daughter had decided which breast was going to be hers and which one was going to be her brother’s before he was born. I had tried to explain to her “the baby is going to be coming soon and he will need milk too.” She said “ok, this one is mine, and this one can be the baby’s.” So when he was born ...
(2/2) “We went to a couple of lactation consultants when she was little and we were having so much trouble. It really wasn’t super helpful. She was already 9 months old when her lip and tongue tie were diagnosed. It was when her teeth were first coming in, and we were pulling up her lip to show the doctor her new teeth, and the doctor said “oh, that’s not supposed to look like that.” I’m not really sure how it had not been diagnosed before that. But even after they noticed it, we didn’t do anything about it, as we were doing fine...
(1/2) “With my first daughter, we had a really rough start. She had a lip tie and a tongue tie, so it was really pretty painful for the first couple of months. We just kept nursing, and eventually it got better. She ended up breastfeeding till she was around three. With my second daughter, it went a lot easier from the very beginning. She didn’t have the tongue tie, and I had more experience, so I ...
Bellos | LIFESTYLE
(4/4) "Sometimes it’s tough, I still get breastfeeding envy. You start feeling like “Why can’t i do what all the other moms do?” But I finally got over it. Everyone says breastfeeding is a bonding experience, but you know what, my daughter and I have still bonded, and have an amazing relationship. Through pumping my husband is able to help with feeding her too, and it’s given him opportunity to bond with her. Which is something I feel was really important...
(3/4) "Eventually I decided I was ok with exclusively pumping. I did all this research, sat online for hours, researching what exclusively pumping meant. There aren’t that many resources for people who exclusively pump, so I read what I could and made it up from there. Spreadsheet after spreadsheets, and graphing. Oh my poor husband, he would say “do we really have to chart this?” and I would say “just write the numbers in the boxes”...
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(2/4) "When I was in the hospital, the lactation consultant said 'Ok, everything is looking good. Give her some time, she will latch on eventually.' So I just kept trying, and she ended up with high bilirubin levels and they started throwing out words like ‘possibly jaundice’. There I am freaking out as a new mom, at that point I’m asking 'What am I doing wrong!? What is wrong with me!?' You don’t really know what to do in that instance other than to just keep trying. But it wasn’t working. So I started hand expressing into a spoon...
(1/4) Some of my closest girlfriends had their children a couple years ago and they said “Look, breastfeeding is hard.” and I said “ok ok, I get it. Breastfeeding is hard.” But it’s not until that baby is actually in your arms and you are actually trying, that you really grasp how hard it is. I was talking to some of the girls I met at prenatal yoga recently and was saying “It’s really hard guys. This is not joke. I cried, a lot, when I was first trying to do it.” ...
(2/3) “The stages of breastfeeding are a lot like the stages of raising a child. You get through one stage and then there is always something new and challenging. Right now we are in the gymnurstics stage, a mix of gymnastics and nursing. Yes, I had a baby doll in my face today. She brought one of her babies and was smacking me in the face with it while breastfeeding.”
(1/3) “I have let down nausea. With my son, every time I was about to have a let down I needed a bowl and I needed it now. I thought I was going to throw up every single time. We talked to a couple of lactation consultants and it was just “oh it will go away soon” and “it’s just your hormones in flux.” When it didn’t go away at 4 months, I went to a La Leche League ...
(2/2) “I started meeting people [on Facebook], just tons of wonderful women who donate and sacrifice their time. I've driven up to an hour to meet people and pick up milk. It might seem overwhelming and a totally new foreign thing to jump into, but when you are working with other moms who are all so kind, you learn so much along the way ...
(1/2) "We'd been in the adoption process about 2 years and I had looked into the possibility of inducing myself to breastfeed but decided to not go that route since its unpredictable when you are going to get placed with a child and I didn’t want to be on hormones for an extended period of time. And so, I guess my friends had observed that breastmilk was really important to me ...
