by Keelar

Created on: September 13, 2008

When I became pregnant for the first time I wasn't sure whether to go for breast or bottle. I didn't know whether I would like the feeling of feeding my child; I had also married into a complete bottle feeding family who knew nothing about breastfeeding, and they were very concerned about my husband and whether he would be able to bond with the baby if he couldn't bottle feed it... I thought this was a ridiculous reason for choosing bottle feeding, surely a father can bond with his baby in other ways, such as giving lots of cuddles and attention to his child when Mummy is resting? (And as it turns out, he had plenty of bonding time, especially after an evening feed, because I used to feed her then go to bed, so he had her to himself for a few hours before the next feed was due, so it worked out perfectly).

Anyway, I did lots of research on the internet into both methods of feeding, and obviously breastfeeding came out on top every time, so I made my choice, breast was best.

So, after a pretty stress free labour and delivery, here was my beautiful little girl. Unfortunately for me I had torn pretty bad during the delivery (3rd degree tear, ouch!) so had to be whisked away to be stitched up, and the new Daddy was left holding the baby.

On my return, the midwife asked me how I was planning on feeding her, so I told them, and they plonked her on my right boob and after a bit of coaxing she sucked a few times and fell asleep, so the midwife suggested tickling her feet and this prompted her to suck a few more times, so I kept doing this for about ten minutes until she had completely dozed off, and back in her crib she went.

Once I was moved onto the maternity ward I had a lot of assistance with the feeding, all the midwives thought it was brilliant that I wanted to breastfeed (bottle feeding is rife in this area!) and so were all eager to help me and baby establish ourselves. The right boob was fine and she fed from this one no problem. The left one however was a different story, she just would not get her mouth round it, and I had all sorts of people coming along and stuffing my boob in my baby's mouth, but to no avail.

Eventually one of the nurses had to hand express some colostrum from this breast to get it going. Not a very nice experience, but she expressed it into a syringe and then squirted it all in my hair (an accident I might add). So we expressed some more and this time it was squirted in my baby's mouth; but my boob was feeling pretty sore by now so we took

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