You’re Gonna Miss This
I still follow all the breastfeeding support groups and pages I utilized while nursing. Day after day I see moms asking for advice, for recommendations, for simple acknowledgement that they’re doing the right thing. From time to time I comment, hoping to help.
I’ve been out of the breastfeeding game for 2 years now and I still miss it very often.
I miss the bond with my children. I miss the milk drunk smiles and their little hands rubbing my face while they happily nursed. I look back on that time with so much fondness. I’ve breastfed 3 out of my 4 children. My daughter nursed for three and a half years, my two youngest sons each nursed for around 2 years.
My breastfeeding journey didn’t start out easy. I remember holding my daughter as a newborn and absolutely bawling out of frustration. No one had warned me about cluster feeding. No one had warned me about much of anything. I hadn’t grown up around breastfeeding, I had never been exposed to it. I was essentially on my own.
Yet, I persisted and we made it through. When you’re deep in the trenches, breastfeeding is nothing but getting to, and meeting goals. We made it through a week, then six weeks, then 3 months. At that point you might as well have called my little one and I old hands at it. But just because we adjusted, doesn’t mean it got easier. We dealt with thrush and nursing in public and me returning to work, and it’s a whole other ballgame when you have to start adding pumping to the mix. It was hard. It was selfless. In the end, it was rewarding.
Nursing my other two children came a little easier but even so, tongue ties and medical issues came into play. Still, we persisted.
I consider nursing my children one of my greatest accomplishments.
I am so proud to have been able to nurse as long as I did and even today, I’m a huge advocate for breastfeeding. It’s not for everyone, of course, but that doesn’t mean I can’t spread my message about it and educate and share my joy regarding it.
In those early days with a newborn and even those days later on, with a clingy toddler reaching down your shirt, you don’t think you’ll miss it when it’s over. The desire to just get your body back and not constantly be touched is overwhelming some days.
