For most of my life, breastfeeding wasn't something I gave real thought to.
Not even when my sister in law went through it, and it didn't happen for her, for reasons I still don't fully know. I was there for her in every way I knew how to be, I helped with the baby, with the house, with whatever needed a pair of hands. What I didn't do was ask about the part that wasn't visible. It didn't occur to me at the time that there might have been a specific struggle sitting quietly underneath everything else, something around breastfeeding itself that she wasn't bringing up, and that I wasn't thinking to ask about directly.
I can empathize with that now in a way I couldn't back then. I still don't know exactly what she went through, she never described it in those words, but I know now that something was probably there, and that women often carry that particular struggle alone, the way I did myself, sharing it mostly with Ivan and nobody else. That's my way of saying that becoming a mother changed what I understood, not that I know her story now, just that I finally understand there could have been so much more going on than I thought to ask about. I was there for her. I wasn't fully there for that part of her. Looking back, I can see I was just behaving the way people around this subject are trained to behave.
I had trained for a completely different birth. I had a whole hypnobirthing plan built around that first hour, skin to skin, quiet, him finding my breast in his own time, at his own pace. Then I ended up needing an emergency c-section, and none of it happened the way I'd pictured. A nurse took him and pushed him straight onto my breast before either of us was ready. He hadn't had a second to settle. It wasn't natural, and it wasn't the way a newborn is supposed to find his way there. That forced start broke something in the rhythm he was meant to go through, and he didn't get anything from it. He wasn't ready, my milk wasn't fully in yet, and he just needed time nobody gave him.
That was the moment I felt my whole plan start to crumble, and looking back, it was also the moment my breastfeeding story started going wrong before it had even really begun.
My breasts started to swell and go hard over the next while, engorged, milk coming down with nowhere to drain because he still couldn't latch properly. He was still hungry. I was three days in that hospital, more tired than I knew a body could be, in pain, emotional, right at the start of a postpartum I wasn't prepared for. Most of the nurses were kind to me. But the one who was actually supposed to teach me how to breastfeed, how to get this right, was the one who pushed me toward the bottle instead. He's hungry, she said. He's losing weight. You're starving him. I gave in. It broke something in me to hear that, because I had wanted this so much, and in that moment I simply didn't have the strength left to say no to her.
Ivan was there through all of it, and I think he was as wrung out as I was. He watched the whole thing happen and didn't know how to fix it either. There was no villain in that room, just two exhausted new parents and a system that moves faster than a woman's body does.
We went home half bottle, half breast, me still trying, still not sure how to hold him properly, how to get a real latch, how any of it was supposed to work. There's a lactation specialist you can call from the hospital, but nobody tells you that calling her means adding one more thing to manage while your body is still recovering from major surgery. I didn't have that left in me.
Then my c-section scar got infected, on top of everything else. A lot of women recover from a c-section just fine. Mine didn't. I went looking for help, and my GP could see straight away what state I was in. She kindly told me that for both our peace of mind, the safest thing was to get an ultrasound. GPs don't usually have that equipment themselves, that's completely normal, so she referred me to the hospital.
At the hospital, a different doctor looked at that referral and dismissed it on the spot. He told me my own GP was being overzealous, as if her judgment didn't need to be taken seriously at all. They couldn't even find my file when I got there. I'm still not sure they ever did. I was sent home with nothing. I left that hospital feeling completely insecure, like there would be nobody there for me if I actually needed help. After everything I'd already been through in that building days earlier, I went back needing something from them once more, and I got nothing again. I still carry something from that place that I haven't fully put down. That's not really what this post is about, so I'll leave it there, but I wanted you to know it's there.
Alongside all of this, Ian was having his own struggles. He had reflux and a rash, and we went through formula after formula trying to find one that wouldn't upset his stomach. He liked the bottle, understandably, it's easier for a baby, the milk just comes without any real work. I'd later read that bottle feeding takes a lot less muscular effort than nursing does, and that leaning on it too much has been linked to a narrower palate and crooked teeth down the line, but that wasn't even what worried me most in that moment. What worried me was his tummy, and finding a way through it without reaching straight for medication.
And underneath all of it, my own body was still fighting. The pain from feeding was getting worse instead of better as the weeks went on. I'd already mentioned it once to the nurse who came to check on us at home, and she told me it sounded normal, which I don't think came from unkindness, I think she just didn't clock it as something worth pushing further. Then, at one of Ian's vaccination appointments, I mentioned it again, this time to my GP, while I was already sitting in front of her. She looked properly. Between the pain, a sensation like needles inside my breast every time he fed, a couple of small white spots, and clogged ducts that kept coming back, she said it sounded like thrush. She prescribed medication, and we watched Ian closely in case he picked it up too. Thankfully, he never did.
That pain is not something you push through and forget about by the next feed. Some nights it stopped me mid feed completely, actual tears on my face while he was still latched on, drinking, needing me, while I sat there in agony. Ivan saw me like that more than once. He told me gently that I could stop, that it was allowed, that it was hurting me too much to keep going.
By the last week of December I was worn down in every direction, my body sore, my scar barely healed, my son's stomach still unsettled, the thrush still burning through every feed. One evening I was standing by my bedroom window, and something in me just broke open. I started praying, properly praying, telling God how grateful I was for my son, and then, almost begging, asking for this one thing. Just this. The chance to actually breastfeed him the way I had pictured it for so long.
I went back inside afterward, sat down, and opened my phone, half looking for nothing in particular. That's when I found a free class by a Brazilian lactation specialist who had built a whole method around something I hadn't understood yet, that a correct latch alone isn't enough, the baby has to coordinate dozens of tiny muscles to actually remove milk properly, and that effective feeding is what tells your body to keep making more.
I bought the course that same day. I'm not usually someone who buys things on impulse. I was in a place where I needed to try one more thing before I let myself let go.
I told Ivan I wanted one real, proper attempt. If it still didn't work after that, I'd accept it and stop. He said if we're doing this, we do it properly, no more formula, no easy way out for either of us. So on the thirtieth or thirty first of December, we dropped the bottle completely.
The first two or three days were brutal. Pumping in between feeds was one of the steps from the course, a way to signal my body to make more instead of just waiting and hoping it would, so I pumped constantly on top of every feed. The first time I got fifty mils out, I cried, real relief tears, over fifty mils of milk. By day three he was taking every feed straight from the breast. I remember standing there with him afterward, just holding him, and thinking, we did it, we're here, we actually made it. I cried again, but different tears this time, tears of happiness, of gratitude to my own body for not giving up on me, to God, to Ivan for standing beside me through all of it, and to Ian, who didn't give up either.
My body was still sore, my nipples still healing, and the thrush was already a near past by then, but I could still feel exactly what it had felt like, that kind of pain doesn't fade quickly from memory. Somewhere in that stretch I also learned not to reach for nipple creams the way I first wanted to, and definitely not for a nipple shield, which I'd almost tried out of desperation. What I found out was that a shield doesn't fix anything, it just hides a bad latch underneath it, changes how the baby's tongue sits so he's not actually removing milk properly, slows down healing instead of helping it, and traps moisture that can make thrush worse, not better. There were still clogged ducts and pain for months after that, more nights of crying through a feed than I expected, even with everything already working the way I'd hoped for.
“He's hungry, she said. He's losing weight. You're starving him.”
Then, at five months, he got his first two teeth, and suddenly I was breastfeeding a baby with a brand new pair of tiny, sharp weapons and absolutely no idea yet how to use them responsibly. Every mother who's been through teething while nursing knows this exact fear, that split second mid feed where you feel him shift his jaw and your whole body braces. I spent weeks tensed up like that, and it did happen, more than once, and it hurt exactly as much as every mother reading this already knows it hurts. There is a very particular kind of betrayal in being bitten by the same mouth you're feeding. And yet you still kiss those same two teeth goodnight ten minutes later, because that's just what being his mother looks like some days, love and mild warfare in the same breath.
I'm not telling you this to make myself sound brave. I'm not special, and I don't think I did anything other women haven't done, some of them through far worse than I went through. What I want you to take from this is the part nobody says out loud. Society wants you to breastfeed, right up until you actually need support to do it, and then it goes quiet. The whole system around new mothers seems built to keep us quiet about it too, to make us feel like the struggle is something private, something to sort out on our own at three in the morning instead of something worth saying out loud.
And then, later, if you're still doing it when your toddler is two, that same society turns around and asks why you haven't stopped yet. He's too old for that now, people say. He doesn't need it anymore, surely. You're still nursing him? That's not even real milk at this point, it's basically just water, there's nothing left in it. This pressure doesn't only come from strangers or people who barely know you. Sometimes it comes from friends, from family, and, for a lot of women, from their own partners, which makes it land differently, because that's supposed to be the one person in your corner no matter what. Ivan has never been that person for me. He's had his own thoughts about it, and he's said them gently once or twice, but he's never pushed, never made me feel rushed, and he's let this be my timeline and Ian's, not something decided around us. I know that's not every mama's reality, and if it isn't yours, I feel you. I know exactly what those comments sound like even without the added weight of hearing them from the person closest to you, and I know exactly what those stares feel like too.
“He's too old for that now, people say. He doesn't need it anymore, surely. You're still nursing him? That's not even real milk at this point, it's basically just water, there's nothing left in it.”
Ian has never once checked whether it was a convenient time, place, or audience before deciding he was hungry. Babies are like tiny dictators with zero sense of timing, no manners, and absolutely no concept that mama might be mid conversation, mid meal, or mid queue at passport control. And honestly, why should either of us have needed permission for something this basic anyway. All I ever needed was somewhere to sit and feed him, nothing more complicated than that. I've breastfed him in Ireland, in Brazil, in Sweden, Spain, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Belgium, Luxembourg, all over Croatia, wherever we happened to be. Legally, nobody can stop a mother from feeding her child in public almost anywhere in Europe. Comfortable is a different story from legal, though. Sweden was the most relaxed by far, breastfeeding there barely turns a head. Other places were more mixed, and it's strange how a country that has no issue with a woman sunbathing topless on a beach can still give you a look for feeding your toddler in a cafe, which tells you the discomfort was never really about the body, it's about what people have decided breastfeeding is supposed to mean.
I've felt those looks. Not everywhere, some places genuinely don't blink, but enough places that you learn to notice a certain kind of stare. I didn't cover us up, not in the tense places and not in the relaxed ones either. I don't think I should have to, though I respect any mother who chooses to do it differently, that's her choice to make and I understand it too. For me, the answer was always no. These are my breasts and this is my son, and I was never going to make either of us feel like we were doing something wrong.
Something in me shifted permanently during those weeks, and it wasn't only my body recovering. I fought harder for this than I've fought for almost anything in my life, for him, and just as much for myself, for the mother I wanted to become and refused to let go of. Breastfeeding gave me far more than milk for my son. It gave me his eyes finding mine in the quiet of a four in the morning feed, his smell against my skin, his little hand resting on me while he drank, a kind of connection I still don't have the right words for, even writing this now. I came out the other side of it so much stronger than I ever thought I had in me.