breastfeeding

Successful breastfeeding take courage, resilience, patience, and support and it always has. If your partner or support group hasn't piled on the accolades for your heroism, then let them know you will expect oohs and has when you make it through the first two to three months (no matter how you got there) and your baby is happy and healthy -- because you are awesome!

I can absolutely assure you that birth is nothing like holding an ice cube in your hand for a minute and breathing through the "pain.

Though breastfeeding is supposed to the most natural thing ever, it seems like a rich-people sport for all the stuff we buy to help.

The silence stretched out between us as I stared at him, the tears blurring my vision as I waited for him to save me from this torment. Surely he could find a way.

In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.