Wel­come to the Sep­tem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val! Thanks for vis­it­ing, and be sure to read all the way to the end of my post so you can visit oth­ers who have shared their thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed.

When I was preg­nant with my first child, I knew I wanted to breast­feed. I did some read­ing. I searched the inter­net for what I felt were infor­ma­tive arti­cles. By the time my breast­feed­ing class at the hos­pi­tal rolled around I felt pretty con­fi­dent. My con­fi­dence increased when I went to the class. She didn’t tell me one thing in an almost two hour class that I didn’t already know! I knew I was going to be able to do it. As a sort of insur­ance, I found a breast­feed­ing forum/message board and asked if there was any­thing else I should do to be pre­pared or informed. The answers were pretty run-of-the-mill. “Just keep on going!” “Don’t let any­one talk you into quit­ting.” “You can do it!” I knew that I was set.

When K was born, I had a bit of a sur­prise. Maybe shock is a bet­ter word. He was born nearly 4 weeks early and he wouldn’t latch. He looked at my breast. He half-heartedly opened his mouth. Then, he fell asleep. What?!? This wasn’t the plan. He was sup­posed to know what to do, because I had done my part to get informed about breast­feed­ing. Well, after three days in the hos­pi­tal, we were dis­charged. I had a nip­ple shield and a baby who ate for 45–60 min­utes every 3 hours. Not exactly fit­ting my plan.

For­tu­nately, my mom had breast­fed both myself (for around 18 months) and my brother (for nearly 3 years). She was an amaz­ing sup­port. She kept telling me, “Trust your­self. You know best. You know what is right for you and your baby.” She got up with me for the mid­dle of the night feed­ings and held K after­wards until he had his burp and could fall back asleep. She vis­ited with me when I thought I was too tired to do another feed­ing. She was won­der­ful, and that was a major com­po­nent for my suc­cess. I am sure of it.

When she left and I was home alone with my baby, I began to doubt myself, so I went back to the mes­sage board where I had asked for help so many weeks prior. I began post­ing ques­tion after ques­tion after ques­tion. I got won­der­ful sup­port, and I got great infor­ma­tion. There was one per­son in par­tic­u­lar on that mes­sage board who I still feel a debt of grat­i­tude toward. Her name was Joan, and she was a mod­er­a­tor of the breast­feed­ing forum. Sure, other peo­ple would answer my ques­tion, but I didn’t feel like I had the real answer until I heard from Joan. Over the weeks and months, I gained con­fi­dence, and I also gained a friend­ship. Joan is still one of my close on-line friends. She and I have kept in touch over the past few years, and when a friend of mine had a baby who had nurs­ing trou­bles (over­sup­ply and over­ac­tive let­down, some­thing I knew very lit­tle about) Joan was avail­able over the phone to help her out, too. I also began read­ing www.kellymom.com dur­ing any spare moment I had. I loved that web­site. It was so easy to nav­i­gate and so easy to read and under­stand. It is where I got the bulk of my early breast­feed­ing knowledge.

Almost two years later, when I had my sec­ond son, I was pretty con­fi­dent again. I had been through so much with K that I thought I should have it under con­trol. But, as almost any­one who has breast­fed knows, every baby is dif­fer­ent. With A, I had dif­fer­ent issues, and again I turned to www.kellymom.com and a sup­port­ive on-line com­mu­nity to help me get through the first weeks that were tough.

Now, I’ve been nurs­ing K for almost 35 months, and I’ve been tan­dem nurs­ing K and A for 14 months. I feel like each day I can learn some­thing about breast­feed­ing whether it be from a book, a web­site, a friend, another nurs­ing momma, or one of my kids. I think it’s one of those things where you can keep learn­ing more and more, but I’m not sure that you can ever say that you have “learned to breast­feed.” To me, it’s a jour­ney more than a destination.

Check out these blogs for more thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed (updated through­out the day):

• BreastfeedingMums.com
• Breastfeeding123.com
• Hobomama.blogspot.com
• Breastfeeding.blog.motherwear.com
• KateWicker.com
• Babyfingers.blogspot.com
• StopDropandBlog.com
• NurturingNotes.blogspot.com