Breastfeeding: The beginning

Thanks for hopping over from Milk and Mummy and welcome to my post for the Keep Britain Breastfeeding Scavenger Hunt Day 1

 The Start of My Journey sponsors today include Boobie Milk with a £50 voucher, Cherub Chews who are offering a breastfeeding necklace and Loveyush who are offering a breastfeeding scarf for our Grand Prize winner. Over £700 worth of goodies are up for grabs entries via the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

I started my breastfeeding journey with nothing more than the determination to breastfeed. I mean, how hard can it be, right? Baby is born, offer baby the breast, repeat as necessary, voila! You’re a breastfeeder!
Wrong. It is so much more than that!

Maybe I wasn’t totally clueless, I’d seen the instructional video in the maternity ward that shows you how to latch baby on, how you put chin to breast, then “pop” your nipple in their mouth, babies lips turned outwards in a “pout” signalling that the latch is as it should be. I also had a feeding bra or two, and plenty of breast pads.
Looking back, at just how naïve I was, I realise I’ve been very lucky with Sebastien. He had the perfect latch from day 1, and was an avid cluster feeder, keen to call in my mature milk as quickly as possible! Although I’ll never forget the slightly clumsy way we latched on for his first feed. It was over an hour after he was born, and I had just been wheeled back in to our room on the delivery ward, after my elective C section. Sebastien had spent the first 40 minutes or so after birth nestled skin to skin inside his Daddy’s theatre scrubs.

 He was alert and a perfect shade of pink, his little mouth making constant yawning shapes (which I later discovered is a baby’s way of cuing for a feed, if they’re crying for a feed, then they are starving hungry!) the midwife helped to prop me up on cushions, and with a bit of fumbling, trying to avoid the tubes and wires attached to myself, Sebastien had his first ever feed.

 That was it. Just like that, we embarked on our journey! The very start, the first day, was a complete success.

14 months later, we’re still going strong! There have been many obstacles on the way, but we got there!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Following on from my journey, please do hop over to My Mummy’s World to see how her journey began and be in with more chances to enter the grand prize draw. Remember you need to earn 50 points to be eligible, full details can be found on the Keep Britain Breastfeeding Site