Every breastfeeding journey is different. Every breastfeeding journey brings with it the good, the bad and the downright painful. But, if we’re honest, doesn’t that perfectly encapsulate motherhood as a whole? These little creatures who enrich, perplex and, ultimately, empower us present us with a multitude of experiences and emotions in the course of their early years. Some more uplifting than others.
“Every breastfeeding journey is different.”
Often as a mother, the things that felt hard at one stage blur into oblivion with the next heart-warming triumph, head-scratching development or decisive course correction – it’s all part of the journey. Similarly with breastfeeding, you might find that things go off without a hitch (#whoisshe?) and you adore the breastfeeding bubble, or that you push through the pain of cluster feeding to arrive at a more harmonious expression. You might also get to a point where you realize that you can’t pour from an empty cup and prioritize your mental health to move to bottle feeding for everyone’s sanity. You might contend with return-to-work pressures, which bring you to a bottle-feeding ritual. You might have made the decision to forego breastfeeding entirely. All of these experiences are valid, and they’re a drop in the ocean of the breastfeeding-related decisions that mothers make every single day around the world.
“Whether you breastfeed for two hours, two days or two years, or not at all it’s worth honoring...”
So, whether you breastfeed for two hours, two days or two years, it’s worth honoring the process, accepting it’s a rollercoaster and acknowledging all the highs and lows. It’s your journey, your decision, your child, your mental health, your reality and your power as a mother. So we celebrate World Breastfeeding Week and mothers everywhere finding their groove raising new life as they choose.
No matter what your feeding journey looks like, it’s one piece of the puzzle in the gloriously multifaceted experience of motherhood, be sure to drink it all in.
