@shelleyandthebean recently ended her breastfeeding journey when her son Jenson self-weaned. Here’s her story, in her own words:
“Our Breastfeeding Journey 🤍
Like many, our journey to breastfeeding started off with a few bumps. Jenson wasn’t able to latch because of tension in his mouth (due to a speedy delivery) mixed with me having inverted nipples.
Thankfully, I had amazing support whilst at the hospital as well as after we were back at home from a breastfeeding consultant who kept in regular contact with me. Claire was always up for a face-to-face meeting or a quick chat on the phone. I know for a fact, if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have even got to 3 weeks of feeding. She also gave me nipple shields that eventually enabled us to feed for as long as we did.
To tackle our problems we started off with me expressing milk and topping up with formula. In the first week I got mastitis and then, once the antibiotics were done and his tension had eased, we finally got a really good latch and he properly fed from me for an hour!
After this, we were able to exclusively breastfeed and had a relatively ‘easy’ ride, the trickiest part being finding places to feed during a winter lockdown without freezing to death!
Through all of our ups and downs, the hardest part for me was the ending.
I always said that I wanted Jenson to self wean and that I was going to try my hardest to feed until he was ready to stop. I was pretty convinced he would be at least 2, possibly even 2.5, before this even looked like it was on the cards. He was a huge boob lover and fed regularly and on demand until around 18 months when he began to self wean and drop feeds.
Jenson had his last feed on 29th May, just short of being 21 months old. I struggled really badly with my mental health for a few weeks, which I now know is actually a really common side effect after weaning off feeding. At the time, it was scary and intense but I would do it all again to have the honour of being able to feed Jenson for almost 21 months.”
🤍
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