Guest Post: Breastfeeding and Society Today

Welcome to Mommy's Milk : A Breastfeeding Series! Today I welcome Candice from The Messy Baby for a guest post.

When you think of breastfeeding what comes to mind? For me it is pictures of smiling mothers looking down at their sweet babies happily sucking away, with just a hint of flesh showing. So when my own son was born that was exactly what I expected and luckily for me it was what I got. My son latched easily and by the end of the first day he could latch correctly all on his own.

Breastfeeding was a dream, no mastitis or cracked nipples, in fact the worst thing that happened was painful engorgement. So you could imagine my surprise when a friend of mine, whose baby was born a month after mine, had every possible ailment. She used nipple shields and topped up with formula as she felt her daughter was not getting enough milk. These setbacks led to her quitting breastfeeding early at around 4 months.

I was honestly shocked at how difficult this supposedly natural task was for her and so many other women. It really got me thinking about breastfeeding and our society today. I feel that society has let us all down and has set a lot of women up to fail in breastfeeding. We don't see other women breastfeeding, we don't openly discuss breastfeeding (generally as a society) and we see asking for help as failing or being weak so we struggle onwards alone and finally out of desperation we give formula.

I am so thankful for all the friends who spoke to me and showed me all about breastfeeding with their babies before mine was born, I am convinced that this helped me to have the amazing breastfeeding relationship that I have with my son.

We as mothers have a right to be exposed to breastfeeding and we should all do our part to help to normalise it in our society to help other mothers and babies to have positive breastfeeding experiences. I am not saying that we all need to stage protests or flash our breasts at people, just that we each do our part. For me that means just being open to discussing breastfeeding and to breastfeeding my son openly and modestly in public, it is nothing extreme but every little bit helps. If we all work together we can change society's "normal" for the better.

I am Candice, mom to an amazing little boy called Graham. I am a breastfeeding, baby wearing, baby led weaning, cloth diapering, Montessori homeschooling and gentle parenting stay at home mom. I recently started blogging about all things baby over at The Messy Baby and am embarking on a journey to becoming a work at home mom.