breastfeeding

Staying in Control – Nicola’s story

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This is a story about breastfeeding. Like all stories, it needs a context. So this story starts 12 weeks before I started breastfeeding, in March 2009.
I had been sick for months and putting on weight. I had a thyroid problem, but it was getting worse and I had started to suspect that [...]

Persevering – Leah’s story

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My mother breastfed each of us for around 2 years and my older sister breastfed her two boys also. It was just natural that I was going to do the same. During my pregnancy I did a lot of research into breastfeeding, and the more I did, the stronger I felt about it. I wanted [...]

A difficult decision – Kirsten’s story

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I had a fairly normal pregnancy – or so I thought.  In the last trimester, I started experiencing a lot of back pain, but since everyone seemed to have back pain during pregnancy, I just passed it off as normal.  My daughter, Sophie, was born in July 08.  I had always said I did not [...]

It pays to be persistent – Liz’s story

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Meanwhile, I was pumping and trying to build my supply so that I could nurse them when they were strong enough. At first, we were adamant that they not have pacifiers or bottles, but when the nurses said that bottle-fed babies go home sooner, I gave in. It was two days before they even were able to have the first drops of colostrum swabbed on their gums. Slowly, they started to be able to take little bits of my milk from a bottle nipple, once they were off the ventilators. It was five days before we got to hold Jonah, the stronger of the two. I kept asking when I could nurse them, but the nurses told me that it would make their oxygen levels drop, and they had to be on a certain type of ventilator, and all kinds of other excuses.