I breastfed my son for 2 years. In that time we had some problems which I thought I would share with you. These issues helped me to become a breastfeeding peer support volunteer.
We took to breastfeeding really well, I encountered our first problem when my son was a couple of months old. Breast/nipple thrush, this is very painful, it felt like my son was drinking glass shards when he fed, but with the right treatment this cleared up quickly, allowing us to enjoy breastfeeding again. We went through this a few times, mainly down to the fact I would leak a lot breast milk and the moist, warm breast pads was the perfect environment for the candida albicans to multiply and cause the infection.
Our next issue was teeth! Those little white things that we are all so pleased to see in our baby’s mouth, meaning we have reached another milestone, left a hole in my nipple my son was just 7 months old. We had been feeding successfully with teeth for about a month and a half by then. This was a situation that I had always said if he bit me I would stop feeding. I couldn’t stop, I liked the feeling of closeness the breastfeeding gave me, so I continued through an agonising 6 weeks whilst my wound tried to heal. He never bit me again, but I was also very aware of him not paying attention to his feeding, and would remove him from the breast if his attention wondered.
Our final problem was my son taking expressed breast milk (EBM). When I started to express my son would take the fresh EBM really well from the bottle, I was very fortunate to be able to express a lot of milk, and I didn’t have New Mama tea then! Eventually the expressing allowed me to have a good store of EBM in the freezer. Unfortunately once I started to defrost the EBM to give to my son, we encountered a problem, as the EBM defrosted it was turning sour, my son refused it. I found that this can happen if you have a high fat content in your milk. You can over come this by scolding the milk before you freeze it but this also kills off all the goodness in the breast milk. it was a very sad day when I stood at the sink throwing away all the EBM, in fact I cried. I did continue to express and we went back to my son having fresh EBM.
These issues have given me the experience to help other Mama’s who are breastfeeding, and talk to those Mama’s who are thinking of breastfeeding. I am now feeding my 13 week old daughter, which has also had its ups and downs, but we are now settling into a lovely routine. I am going to feed her for as long as she wants to.
