Breastfeeding: A Goal

It is world breastfeeding week this week. I took part in my first blog march for World Breastfeeding Week 2013. The theme this year is: A Winning Goal for Life. 

What I am going take from this theme is the word ‘goal’. Breastfeeding is a goal, I told myself if I could breastfeed for the first three days then great. Then if I could breastfeed for the first week, even better, then I extended the goal to 2 weeks and so on. This was how it went for me. I put myself under huge pressure to breastfeed with my first son and breastfeeding didn’t come easy for either of us. I persevered and I’m glad I did but despite this my son has cow’s milk protein allergy and asthma. I still would and did do it again in a flash. Breastfeeding was much more the natural thing to do with son number two, he took to it easily and it went well until his reflux and cow’s milk protein allergy caused me to give up early on. A message I’d like to pass on for world breastfeeding week is that breastfed babies can get allergies too.

I will reiterate my message from last year to congratulate yourself on the wonderful thing you are doing if you can and are breastfeeding, but if something goes wrong, be proud of every feed you did manage and you are a winner for trying. There are many many ways in life to do the best you can for your children, breastfeeding is one of the first.

Irish Parenting Bloggers have a link-up for World Breastfeeding Week and we are each asked to share a photo of ourselves breastfeeding in the spirit of showing how breastfeeding fits into our lifestyles. Here’s mine.

You can read the other posts from the Irish Parenting Bloggers here.