How I Ended Up Exclusively Expressing…

The next wonderful blogger in my guest post series is the lovely Jules;

I had the pleasure of meeting Jules from Pondering Parenthood at the Hybrid pushchair event late last year and am thrilled to have her here guest posting today

Pondering Parenthood is a beautiful space that she fills with gorgeous photos and post about her parenting journey with her beautiful daughter, M so do pop over and visit her.

You can also find Jules here:

    

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How I Ended Up Exclusively Expressing…

When I first fell pregnant, I thought I’d probably want to breastfeed. At least, I thought I’d give it a go. Then if it didn’t work out, I’d formula feed. Because that’s what people do, isn’t it? My mum formula fed me, and hubby’s mum formula fed him, after what she describes as ‘three torturous months’ of breastfeeding.

Then I went to NCT classes. I was brainwashed by the breastfeeding consultant. I say brainwashed, because this is how I feel; unable to even contemplate feeding my baby formula. This is the bit where I have to say that I have no beef with women who choose to formula feed at all. In fact, I think in many cases it isn’t a choice. Just like I don’t feel I have a choice to formula feed. It’s the brainwashing, you see.

Anyway, the short story is, I had a terrible time with latch: Midwives telling me Little M was latching perfectly; my screams of pain begging to differ. But apparently my discomfort (that word is a massive understatement) was irrelevant. I persevered. Then, 72 hours in, the midwife visited at home and told me that I was doing it all wrong and Little M was losing too much weight. Cue panic, expressed breast milk popped in a bottle and a baby who drank it. The rest is history.

At first I thought I’d express for the first two weeks. You know, to give her the best start. Then I wanted to get to one month. Then two months, then three. I’ll tell you what, those early weeks were so, so hard as Little M had to be fed every three hours. Once expressing and feeding had happened, we were lucky if there was an hour before the next session of expressing.

But I did it. By the time three months had passed, I resolved to make it to six months. Fortunately, Little M started more or less sleeping through the night by that time (although she is still often fighting sleep until midnight, she does then sleep solidly until at least 6:30am). It’s amazing how much more manageable things feel when you’ve had a decent block of sleep.

Now we’re at seven and a half months, and I’m still expressing. Little M has never had a drop of formula. I’m extremely proud of that fact, but at the same time, it hasn’t help me to overcome this phobia of formula that I seem to have. Now that we’re into weaning and I’m trying to feed her three meals per day (gosh it takes forever!), it’s getting trickier to fit in the expressing again, despite the fact that I’m only doing it four times per day now.

I think the move to formula will come soon, as I know I’ve given Little M absolutely the best start and many women who breastfeed from the breast move over to formula at this stage with their return to work etc. I just need to get over my fears and bite the bullet I think!  

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Thank you Jules for sharing your story with us.

Please do pop over and visit Jules and see what else she is writing about over on her blog, Pondering Parenthood.