(ATTENTION: The following post contains photographs of myself nursing my daughter.)
Hello Lovelies,
I’m starting something new on the blog today.
I had decided by the end of last year that I wanted to gear the primary function of this blog in another direction.
Something that comes very true to me, besides fashion, is motherhood.
Sharing my personal experiences through this crazy, complicated, rewarding life has really helped me connect better to my readers. That is so rewarding to me.
At the beginning of my second pregnancy, I had decided that I would nurse our future newborn. I hadn’t nursed Lewi, so this was going to be a completely new experience. Never could I have prepared myself for what was to come.
Nursing is a choice. It seemed that simple.
In my head, I thought of it as if I were building my own burrito bowl. “Brown rice or white rice?” “Formula fed or breastfed?”
I had no idea what my life would really be like as a nursing mom.
Nothing could have prepared me for the pain that’s experienced the first few weeks.
I had no idea how much work would go into merely feeding my newborn. Planning our day-to-day life would change forever.
No more were the days that I could get myself ready for the day in an hour and a half (including a shower).
In that first month, I was lucky to be ready in under four hours. I’m not even kidding. We were never on time for a single thing. I had to nurse every forty-five minutes or less for three weeks.
Nothing told me how much less sleep I would experience, and how many more emotions would encompass me every minute of the day.
It is so much work.
In the midst of all that chaos, was a toddler that started to feel underappreciated and unnoticed. His parents had brought home a foreign child.
Every second I wasn’t sitting right next to Lewi was an opportunity for him to seek attention. It was an opportunity to completely destroy a room, empty an entire tube of toothpaste in his father’s closet, rub diaper cream all over his body, or empty every condiment in the refrigerator on the kitchen floor.
I was definitely in way over my head with all my misinterpretation. Which brings me to my overall point.
You’re never told a negative thing about breastfeeding.
I feel like the stigma around nursing scares anybody from speaking out because we live in a world of mom-shamers.
Choosing formula, makes you a bad parent. Using anything non-organic on your child’s diaper-rash, makes you a bad parent. Letting your child watch more than an hour of television a day, makes you a bad parent. Not using the same damn sippy cup as other moms, makes you a bad parent.
All of these things discourage mothers from asking for needed guidance! That’s not fair.
There is nothing wrong with formula feeding. Nothing will prevent me from using Resinol on diaper rash because I know it works. Lewi will watch television if it means mom getting to enjoy a cold cup of tea because it was forgotten about. That damn 360 cup is NOT spill-proof, regardless of what you try to tell me.
Nobody told me how hard nursing would be, and I want to change that for future nursing moms. I did not love nursing in the beginning. Quitting was all I could think about for the first three weeks. I stuck it out, and I am so grateful for that little ounce of hope I had. Because today, I love breastfeeding.
If I can help out one researching momma, I have accomplished the goal of this segment.
I have so many stories to tell, and so many experiences to share. Thank you for following along.
xo, Tay
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