🇬🇧 what would held you breast feed? 🇬🇧

Breastfeeding is hard. The knowledge among our community of women is nearly gone. Most of us have no women who (A) breastfed and (B) are willing to live with us for 2 weeks pp and help 24/7

My mum is a midwife, with more breastfeeding training than most. She exclusively breastfed 3 babies. She did live with me for 2 weeks after each baby.

And it was STILL hard to establish breastfeeding. I did it. But it was fucking hard.

All medical professionals should have breastfeeding training. All midwives should have equivalent training of an ibclc (international board certified lactation consultant). All women should get daily in home midwife visits for the first week.

So many of my friends did breastfeed at the point where I had my daughter I felt a bit like the odd one out at times.
I reached out and had plenty of support but due to other issues it wasn’t working for me.
I think better advertising of what’s available would be great - I didn’t know I had a local breastfeeding cafe literally 5 mins from my front door for example.

Honestly what shocked me was nobody tells you how difficult breastfeeding can be both physically and mentally. When I was struggling, that’s what made me feel like failure because I thought every mum found it so easy and I thought I was doing something wrong. I have finally been referred to a lactation specialist after speaking to my health visitor but I really wish that was there from the get go as standard practice